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Clint Needham, Baldwin Wallace composer-in-residence

clint-needham.jpg
clint-needham.jpg

fyoo zh en: new music + dance: the distinctive partnership between BW composition students and student choreographers. This annual event teams student composers and choreographers to create a "fusion" of completely original movement and music.

When: March 20-22 at 7:30 p.m.
March 23 at 2 p.m.

Where: John Patrick Theater
Kleist Center for Arts and Drama
95 East Bagley Road, Berea

Tickets: Call 440-826-2240
or visit the Kleist Center Box Office.

Prices: General Admission: $10 Seniors/Students: $5

The music of Clint Needham has been described as “wildly entertaining” (New York Times), “well-crafted and arresting… riveting” (Herald Times), & “stunning... brilliantly orchestrated” (New York Times). Needham recently served as the Music Alive: New Partnerships Composer-in-Residence with the Albany Symphony where is work “Everyday Life” was premiered. Following the premiere, the Daily Gazette praised his work as “full of a boisterous energy… his use of the orchestra’s various colors was impressive” while the Times Union called the work “a pastiche of beautiful, string-filled cinematic passages.”

Needham’s orchestral music has been commissioned and performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Omaha Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Spokane Symphony, Aspen Concert Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Sioux City Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, Texarkana Symphony, Symphony in C, and the United States Air Force Band of the West, among others. Various chamber groups including Alarm Will Sound, the American Brass Quintet, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Chicago Ensemble, Fifth House Ensemble, Hawthorne String Quartet, New York Classical Players, Dinosaur Annex, President’s Own Marine Band Brass Quintet, Camerata Aberta, Quintet Attacca, and the Stanford Wind Quintet have given performances of his chamber music across the country, as well as in Europe, Brazil, Japan, and Australia.

Upcoming performances of his work include those given by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in collaboration with Verb Ballets, Iowa State University Orchestra, Idaho Falls Symphony, Space Coast Symphony, Buffalo Chamber Players, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Wind Ensemble, Mirari Brass Quintet, Imani Winds, & Orpheus Winds.

Needham’s music has been recognized with numerous awards including the International Barlow Prize, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Project 440 Commission, Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, the William Schuman Prize/BMI Student Composer Award, the Jacob Druckman Prize from the Aspen Music Festival, First Prize in the International Ticheli Composition Contest, the Heckscher Prize from Ithaca College, a Lee Ettelson Composer Award and the coveted Underwood New Music Commission from the American Composers Orchestra.

As an educator, Needham has served as an Associate Instructor at Indiana University, Assistant Professor at Ohio Wesleyan University, and is currently Composer-in-Residence/Assistant Professor of Music at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. He holds degrees from Indiana University, where he was a four-year Jacobs School of Music doctoral fellow in composition, and from the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. His principal teachers include Claude Baker, Loris Chobanian, David Dzubay, Michael Gandolfi, Per Mårtensson, Sven- David Sandström, and Richard Wernick. He has also studied with Robert Beaser, Syd Hodkinson, Christopher Rouse, and George Tsontakis at the Aspen Music Festival as a Susan and Ford Schumann composition fellow and with Mario Davidovsky at the Wellesley Composers Conference as a composition fellow.

Needham’s music is published by the Theodore Presser Company with additional works published by Manhattan Beach Music and Triplo Press. Recordings of his works can be found on the Summit Records and Mark Masters labels, as well as those recorded by the United States Air Force Band of the West, Bala Brass Quintet, Jack Sutte, and the American Composers Orchestra Digital Release series, vol. 1.