The Music Composition program challenges individual composers to hone their creative skills. Students will cultivate the ability to use all the building blocks of music to create a diverse portfolio of original works, gain necessary professional skills and explore a variety of musical styles as they develop their unique voices.
Each year, we bring in several distinguished and emerging composers to teach composition lessons and/or give presentations on their music.
Our former students have also received recognition in the field, including awards such as the Guggenheim Fellowship, Aaron Copland Award and Rockefeller Foundation Artist Fellowship. Former students have also had their works performed by violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the American Composers Orchestra and the Louisville, Austin and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras.
graduates have created musical organizations such as Access Contemporary Music, Anaphora Ensemble, Chicago Composers Orchestra, Singers on New Ground and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Players.
Kyong Mee Choi
Program Director of Composition Program and Music and Computing Program, .