Brian Riordan's composition The Moon is Drifting Away from the Earth will be performed by Pittsburgh contemporary music ensemble NAT 28. Riordan's work was selected through a call for scores from emerging composers and will be featured on a program featuring two other emerging composers, Adam Shield, and Alex Marthaler as well as local university faculty composers Mathew Rosenblum, Amy Williams, and Reza Vali. The concert takes place at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater on Saturday, March 11 at 7 p.m.

Composer Philip Thompson (PhD 2002) likes to describe The Final Battle for Love as, “one of the world’s finest baroque-metal professional wrestling operas,” and he got no argument from enthusiastic performers and audience members during the work’s Chicago premiere in January of 2017.

Music Major Maggie Stiffler (composition track) is a Dietrich School Peer Advisor helping to guide and support newer students as they acclimate to Pitt.

The Music Graduate Student Organization at the University of Pittsburgh is pleased to announce its first annual conference, to be held on Saturday, February 4, 2017

Congratulations to Amy Williams, who has been awarded a commission from the Koussevitsky Foundation to create a new work for soprano Tony Arnold and JACK Quartet. The highly prestigious Koussevitzky commissioning program facilitates new works primarily for composers who have demonstrated considerable merit through their works and for orchestras and chamber groups that have a record of excellence in the performance of contemporary music. 

Mathew Rosenblum was a featured composer and lecturer at the fifth annual China-ASEAN Music Week in Nanning. Sponsored by Guangxi Arts University, the festival brought together composers and performers from South East Asia, Europe and the US for 21 concerts and 5 cultural exchange sessions.

Eric Moe is one of 25 artists from around the world selected for the Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo Arts Center. The distinguished group includes artists working in a range of musical genres, from new music to jazz, improvisation to television theme music. They hail from a total of eight different countries, including Sweden, Japan, Mexico, and the United States. Artist Fellows were awarded residencies of three months, which can be taken over the next three years.

Calling Pittsburgh’s range of classical music offerings “unparalleled,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review critic Mark Kanny highlighted the significance of Pitt’s Music on the Edge amongst the City’s cultural riches. Kanny advised new music fans to take, “special interest in the University of Pittsburgh’s Music on the Edge Series…” placing it in the company of regional treasures such as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music Pittsburgh, the Mendelsohn Choir, and Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble.

Amy Williams has been awarded a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Goddard Lieberson Fellowships, endowed in 1978 by the CBS Foundation, are given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts. Williams is one of two Lieberson recipients for this year.

Ivan Jimenez (PhD 2007) and Tuire Kuusi (Sibelius Academy, Helsinki) received a grant from the Kone Foundation (Finland) to study the way musicians and non-musicians mentally process and remember chord progressions.