Composition Department

Oscar Bettison

BMus (Hons.), Royal College of Music; MMus (Distinction), Guildhall School of Music and Drama; MM, Royal Conservatorium of The Hague; MFA, Princeton University; Ph.D, Princeton University.

Oscar Bettison was born in Jersey, UK. After studying in London with Simon Bainbridge and Robert Saxton, he attended the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague, Netherlands, where he studied with Louis Andriessen and Martijn Padding. He recently completed his Ph.D at Princeton University where his advisor was Steve Mackey. He was was a fellow at the Tanglewood (2001) and Aspen (2007) music festivals and was selected to be a participant in Luca Francesconi’s Earlab 2008 in Norway and Italy in the summer of 2008.

He is the recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music Pianist/Composer Commissioning Project (2009), a Jerwood Foundation Award (1998), the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize (1997), and the first BBC Young Composer of the Year Prize (1993). He was a Naumberg fellow at Princeton University from 2003–2007.

He has received commissions from the BBC (1996), the London Sinfonietta (1997), the New London Children’s Choir (1998), the Oxford Contemporary Music Festival (2001), the Eliza Miller Dance Company (2004), the Orkest De Ereprijs (2004, 2009), and Ensemble Klang (2006, 2009).

In addition to having works premiered on three continents (Europe, North America and Australia), his work has received press coverage in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Italy and Australia and has been featured on British Radio, BBC Television, Australian Radio, Dutch Radio, and New York Public Radio, as well as being profiled in The Times (London).

McGregor Boyle

Dr. McGregor Boyle is active as a composer, performer, and music educator with a primary interest in digital media and computer applications to music composition and performance. With a Master’s degree in guitar performance and a Doctorate in composition, Dr. Boyle is uniquely qualified to explore the applications of emerging digital technologies to the difficult problems posed by serious music composition, and its presentation to the audience in performance.

The recipient of many prizes and awards for his composition, Boyle is especially interested in collaborations with artists from other disciplines, from work with choreographers and visual artists to his more recent scores for outdoor laser and fireworks spectacles. He was the composer of the music for the pioneering multimedia performance piece Red Zone, which combined digital sound with computer-controlled visual images, modern dance, and spoken word to create a seamless integrated whole which was highly acclaimed by audiences and critics in 1987.

Dr. Boyle is on the Computer Music Faculty at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches computer applications to music and chairs the Composition Department.

Michael Hersch

Widely considered among the most gifted composers of his generation, Michael Hersch has been the recipient of among others, First Prize in the American Composers Awards, the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition. Recently Mr. Hersch he was honored by his peers with the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Other awards include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and three ASCAP. Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. His work has been conducted in the U.S. and abroad under conductors including Mariss Jansons, Robert Spano, Alan Gilbert, Marin Alsop, James DePriest, and Carlos Kalmar; by orchestras including the Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Baltimore, Bournemouth, Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras. Festival orchestra performances include those of Grant Park and Cabrillo. He has additionally written works for ensembles including the String Soloists of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia; and soloists including Garrick Ohlsson, Midori, Boris Pergamenschikow, and Peter Sheppad-Skaerved.

His music increasingly recorded, Mr. Hersch’s second disc on the Vanguard Classics label was selected by The Washington Post as one of the most important recordings of 2005. A disc of Mr. Hersch’s orchestral works, including his Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2, was released in 2006 with Marin Alsop conducting the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra on the Naxos American Classics series. And in late 2007, with Mr. Hersch performing, his two hour work for solo piano The Vanishing Pavilions was released as a double-CD set.

A formidable pianist, Mr. Hersch has appeared on the Van Cliburn Foundation’s “Modern at the Modern” Series, the Romaeuropa Festival, the Festival of Contemporary Music “Nuova Consonanza,” American Academy in Berlin Series, Festa Europea della Musica, St. Louis’ Sheldon Concert Hall, and in New York City at Merkin Concert Hall, the 92nd St. Y – Tisch Center for the Performing Arts and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall among others. During the summer of 2001, Hersch was asked to write a work for composer Hans Werner Henze which Mr. Hersch performed for Henze on the occasion of his 75th birthday.

In 1997, Mr. Hersch was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. In the summer of 1998, he was a fellow at the Norfolk Festival for Contemporary Music and the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. Mr. Hersch’s primary studies were at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, with additional studies at the Moscow Conservatory.

Kevin Puts

Hailed by the press as “one of the best young composers in America,” Kevin Puts has had works commissioned and performed by leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists throughout North America, Europe and the Far East. Known for his distinctive and richly colored musical voice, Mr. Puts has received many of today’s most prestigious honors and awards for composition.

As the Composer-in-Residence for the Fort Worth Symphony, Mr. Puts is writing a violin concerto to be premiered by concertmaster Michael Shih in April 2007. He has been selected as the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival’s 2007 American Composer-in-Residence, and will write a new orchestral piece to be premiered there by the New York Philharmonic. Mr. Puts is also the recipient of a Music Alive Residency with the Mobile Symphony, which will premiere a new work in February 2008, and he is writing a clarinet concerto for Bil Jackson and the Colorado Symphony, commissioned by Kathryn Gould and Meet the Composer, to be premiered in 2008–2009. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center gives the New York premiere of And Legions Will Rise, and the Baltimore Symphony performs River’s Rush, both in November 2006.

Chamber music projects include a string quartet for the Miro Quartet, commissioned by Chamber Music Monterrey, to be premiered in Fall 2007, and a commission from Music Accord for a piano trio, to be premiered by the Eroica Trio during the 2007–2008 season.

Mr. Puts’ 2005–2006 season included the premieres of three major orchestral works: a percussion concerto for Orange County’s Pacific Symphony and the Utah Symphony, premiered by Evelyn Glennie and performed again at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music; Sinfonia Concertante for five solo instruments and orchestra for the Minnesota Orchestra; and a cello concerto, Vision, commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival and performed by Yo-Yo Ma in honor of David Zinman’s 70th birthday. The New York Philharmonic performed Network in November 2005, marking Mr. Puts’ debut with that orchestra.

Mr. Puts’ honors include the 2003 Benjamin H. Danks Award for Excellence in Orchestral Composition of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2001 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a 2001–2002 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and the 1999 Barlow International Prize for Orchestral Music. The first undergraduate to be awarded a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Mr. Puts has won BMI’s 2001 Carlos Surinach Fund Commission, BMI’s 1998 William Schuman Prize, three student composer awards from BMI, and three grants from ASCAP. He was also the recipient of the 1996 BMI Young Musicians’ Foundation Orchestral Premiere. Mr. Puts was Young Concert Artists Composer-in-Residence from 1996–1998, and is still a member of YCA’s management roster.

A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Mr. Puts received his Bachelor’s Degree from the Eastman School of Music, his Master’s Degree from Yale University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts at the Eastman School of Music. In the fall of 2006, he joined the composition faculty of the Peabody Institute.

Christopher Rouse

The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University is pleased to announce that internationally acclaimed composer and Baltimore native Christopher Rouse has been appointed Distinguished Composer-in-Residence at the Peabody Conservatory. Rouse is one of America’s most prominent composers of orchestral music. Commencing in the 2008–2009 academic year, Rouse will give a number of master classes to Peabody composition students. He will also give an annual presentation on his work, which will be open to the public.

Christopher Rouse is one of today’s most celebrated composers. His works have been heard around the world and have received many of music’s most prestigious honors, including a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award. The Baltimore Sun has written: “When the music history of the late 20th century is written, I suspect the explosive and passionate music of Rouse will loom large.”

Born in Baltimore in 1949, Rouse graduated from Oberlin Conservatory and Cornell University, numbering among his principal teachers George Crumb and Karel Husa. His music has been played by every major orchestra in the U.S. and numerous ensembles overseas including the Berlin Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney and Melbourne Symphonies, the London Symphony, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He has written for soloists including Yo-Yo Ma, Carol Wincenc, Evelyn Glennie, Dawn Upshaw, and Emanuel Ax. Christopher Rouse’s accomplishments as a composer were honored in 2002 with his election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Rouse lives in Baltimore and has a long history with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO). In 1986, he was appointed the BSO’s first composer-in-residence and continued to serve as the symphony’s new music advisor from 1989 through 2000. Rouse’s Symphony No. 1 (1986), commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and winner of the prestigious Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, was rated by the Boston Globe as “probably the most completely successful symphonic composition yet written by an American composer of his rising generation.” A CD devoted to Rouse’s music features BSO Music Director and Peabody Distinguished Faculty Artist Marin Alsop leading the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in Gorgon, Iscariot, and his Pulitzer Prize-winning Trombone Concerto. Alsop also conducts on “Passion Wheels,” a new recording containing Rouse’s Concerto per Corde, Rotae Passionis, Ku-Ka-Ilimoku, and Ogoun Badagris. The CD has won “Best of the Year” designation for 2000 from both Gramophone magazine and Fanfare magazine.

Geoffrey Wright

B.A., Kalamazoo College; M.M., D.M.A., Peabody Conservatory. Composition studies with Morris Cotel, Curtis Curtis-Smith, Jean Eichelberger Ivey, Gunther Schuller, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Ramon Zupko. Fromm Composition Fellow at Tanglewood. MIT computer music studies with Barry Vercoe. Faculty and Director of Computer Music at Goucher College. Compositions for various media (including orchestral and chamber music as well as computer music, dance and video) performed in U.S., Europe, and Asia. Listed in Who’s Who in American Music. Artistic director of Peabody’s millennium music for Times Square 2000.