Composition News
Graduate composer James Budinich's new EP, "scenes from a pigeon’s wing," released April 22
Tuesday, April 27, 2021Listen to scenes from a pigeon’s wing on bandcamp or Spotify. The 30-minute EP consists of four tracks: 1. Nascent 2. 5x8 3. White Stone (after Agnes Martin), feat. Kate Dreyfuss 4. The Way After All four tracks are from Budinich's collaborations with Pigeonwing... Read More »
Brittany Green receives New Music USA's Creative Development Fund Grant
Tuesday, April 13, 2021New Music USA has awarded Brittany Green, a graduate PhD student in Composition, $3000 to purchase equipment for an installation she is collaborating on with Duke CMAC (Computational Media, Arts, & Cultures) PhD student Kate Alexandrite. Green says, "The project, Black... Read More »
Portfolio Project: The Ciompi Quartet commissions Duke Graduate Composers 2020
Tuesday, March 30, 2021In the summer of 2020, the Ciompi Quartet commissioned a unique project from four composers in Duke Music’s graduate program. The parameters of the commission were unorthodox: to find a solution to the compositional and performing challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic by creating short works... Read More »
Brittany Green and Sid Richardson named 2021 Transient Canvas Composition Fellows
Tuesday, March 23, 2021Brittany Green, a current graduate student in Composition, and Sid Richardson (PhD Composition, 2018) were two of four composers chosen as winners of this year's Transient Canvas fellowship. Green and Richardson will each receive a stipend of $1000, three performances of their works, audio/video... Read More »
Graduate composer James Budinich's "White Stone" premieres at the Royal Danish Academy of Music
Tuesday, March 9, 2021On March 11, 2021 at 1:30 pm EST, Budinich's White Stone (after Agnes Martin) for violin and electronics has its Danish premiere as part of the PULSAR Festival at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. Watch the performance. Kate Dreyfuss premiered White Stone as part of her... Read More »
Jamie Keesecker's (Ph.D. composition, 2016) work "The Impetuous Winds" performed at the Sound Festival in Scotland
Tuesday, February 2, 2021The video of the performance, which was streamed and is still available to view, begins with a Q&A with Keesecker. The Impetuous Winds was written in 2008 for a composition workshop with visiting horn quartet Quadre, while horn player Jamie Keesecker was studying for his Masters in... Read More »
Sid Richardson (Ph.D. composition, 2018) releases new CD, Borne by a Wind
Tuesday, January 26, 2021Borne by a Wind will be released on February 12, 2021 on New Focus Recordings. The works on this debut portrait album are in many cases a direct outgrowth of collaborations made during Richardson's time as a Ph.D. student in Composition at Duke University. Recorded and mixed by... Read More »
Christopher Adler (Ph.D. composition, 1999) releases new CD, Triangulations
Tuesday, December 1, 2020Triangulations features works for solo khaen by Adler and fellow alumnus Sidney Marquez Boquiren (Ph.D. composition, 1999), as well as Christopher Burns, David Loeb, Vera Ivanova, Yu Kuwabara, and Jeff Herriott. About Triangulations, Adler writes, "I began researching traditional... Read More »
Scott Lee (Ph.D. composition, 2018) releases new CD, "Through the Mangrove Tunnels"
Tuesday, October 20, 2020On November 13, 2020, composer Scott Lee will release Through the Mangrove Tunnels on Panoramic Recordings, an imprint of New Focus Recordings. Through the Mangrove Tunnels, performed by the JACK Quartet with pianist Steven Beck... Read More »
Dan Ruccia's (Ph.D. composition, 2013) group Cyanotype releases its second album
Thursday, August 13, 2020Birdsongs of a Necromancer is a digital-only album recorded during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. It is an attempt to create presence through absence, in spite of absence, to spite absence. The eight tracks are fully improvised, each featuring a different quartet of NC-... Read More »