Faculty

Dr. Chen Yi

Lorena Searcy Cravens/ Millsap/ Missouri Distinguished Professor of Composition

As a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries, Dr. Chen Yi is the recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001, and a finalist of Pulitzer Prize with Si Ji (Four Seasons) for orchestra in 2006. She is the Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1998, where she has received UMKC Kauffman Award in Artistry/Scholarship (2006) and in Faculty Service (2012). She was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005.

Born in China, Chen Yi has received bachelor and master degrees in music composition from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University, New York, NY. Her composition teachers have included Wu Zu-qiang, Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky, and Alexander Goehr. She has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Women’s Philharmonic, the vocal ensemble Chanticleer, and Aptos Creative Arts Center (93-96) supported by Meet The Composer, and as a member of the composition faculty at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University (1996–98).

Fellowships and commissioning awards have been received from Guggenheim Foundation (96), American Academy of Arts and Letters (96), Fromm Foundation at Harvard University (94), Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress (97), and National Endowment for the Arts in the United States (94). Honors include first prizes from the Chinese National Composition Competition (85 for chamber work and 12 for symphonic work), the Lili Boulanger Award (93), the NYU Sorel Medal Award (96), the CalArts/Alpert Award (97), the UT Eddie Medora King Composition Prize (99), the ASCAP Concert Music Award (01), the Elise Stoeger Award (02) from Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Friendship Ambassador Award from Edgar Snow Fund (02), Honorary Doctorates from Lawrence University (02), Baldwin-Wallace College (08), University of Portland (09), The New School University (10), and the University of Hartford in CT (2016). She has been appointed by the China Ministry of Education to the prestigious Cheung Kong Scholar Visiting Professor at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music in 2006, and has become the Thousand-talents Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Tianjin Conservatory of Music in 2012.less

Her music is published by Theodore Presser Company, performed world wide, and recorded on Bis (02, 03, 04, 11), New Albion (97), CRI (99), Teldec (97, 99 w/ Grammy Award for Colors of Love, 03, 08), Nimbus (93/00), Cala (95), Avant (98), Atma (99), Hugo (00), Angel (01), Albany (04, 05, 06, 09), Koch International Classics (04), Delos (04), Centaur (04, 05, 15), Eroica (05), Capstone (06), Quartz (07), XAS (17), China Record Co. (86, 90, 13, 15, 17), New World (08, 09 w/ NPR Top 10 Classical Music Album Award for Sound of the Five) and Naxos (08, 09, 12, 15, 16 Grammy nomination for Symphony Humen 1839), among many others.

* Chen is family name, Yi is personal name. Chen Yi can be referred to Dr. Chen, Prof. Chen, Ms. Chen, or Chen Yi, but not Dr. Yi, Prof. Yi, or Ms. Yi.

Dr. Chen Yi

Room 439, PAC
cheyi@umkc.edu
(816) 235-2911

Dr. Paul Rudy

Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Music Composition

Paul Rudy (b. 1962) is a Rome Prize (2010), Guggenheim (2008), Fulbright (1997) and Wurlitzer Foundation (2007 and 2009) Fellow. He has won the Sounds Electric ’07 Competition (1st Prize), EMS Prize (Sweden, 1st Prize), Citta di Udine (Prize ex aequo), and has received recognition and commissions from IMEB, Bourges (2008 commission), SEAMUS, Meet the Composer, the American Composer’s Forum, SCI, National Music Teacher’s Association.

He teaches at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory where he received the 2008 Kauffman Award for Artistic Excellence. In 1994 he completed the Colorado Grand Slam after climbing all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000 ft. peaks. Rudy’s CD Series 2012 Stories is available online at iTunes.

Dr. Paul Rudy

Room 519A, PAC
rudyp@umkc.edu
(816) 235-2940
paulrudy.com

Dr. Zhou Long

Room 438, PAC
zhoul@umkc.edu
(816) 235-2924

Dr. Zhou Long

Distinguished Professor of Music Composition

Zhou Long (b. July 8, 1953, Beijing) is internationally recognized for creating a unique body of music that brings together the aesthetic concepts and musical elements of East and West. Deeply grounded in the entire spectrum of his Chinese heritage, including folk, philosophical, and spiritual ideals, he is a pioneer in transferring the idiomatic sounds and techniques of ancient Chinese musical traditions to modern Western instruments and ensembles. His creative vision has resulted in a new music that stretches Western instruments eastward and Chinese instruments westward, achieving an exciting and fertile common ground.

Zhou Long was born into an artistic family and began piano lessons at an early age. During the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to a rural state farm, where the bleak landscape with roaring winds and ferocious wild fires made a profound and lasting impression. He resumed his musical training in 1973, studying composition, music theory, and conducting, as well as Chinese traditional music. In 1977, he enrolled in the first composition class at the reopened Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Following graduation in 1983, he was appointed composer-in-residence with the National Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra of China. Zhou Long travelled to the United States in 1985 under a fellowship to attend Columbia University, where he studied with Chou Wen-Chung, Mario Davidovsky, and George Edwards, receiving a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1993. After more than a decade as music director of Music From China in New York City, he received ASCAP’s Adventurous Programming Award in 1999, and its prestigious Concert Music Award in 2011.

Zhou Long was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in Music for his first opera, Madame White Snake in 2011. In their citation the jurors described the work as ‘a deeply expressive opera that draws on a Chinese folk tale to blend the musical traditions of the East and the West.’ He has been awarded 2012–2013 Elise Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the largest prize devoted to chamber music composition and is presented every two years in recognition of significant contributions to the field. Zhou Long is currently Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance, and the Tianjin Conservatory of Music under the ‘Tianjin 1000 Plan.’

His awards include 2003 Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Masterprize and the CalArts/Alpert Award, and winning the Barlow International Competition, with a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is a two-time recipient of commissions from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard, Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, and the New York State Council on the Arts. He has received fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, in addition to recording grants from the Cary Trust and the Copland Fund for Music.

Among the ensembles commissioning works from him are the Bavarian Radio, BBC, Kansas City, Honolulu, California Pacific and Singapore Symphonies; the Brooklyn, Tokyo, and China Philharmonics, the New Music Consort, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Kronos, Shanghai, Ciompi, and Chester string quartets, Ensemble Modern-Frankfurt, the Post-Classical Ensemble, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, New York New Music Ensemble, Chanticleer, Opera Boston, Beijing Music Festival, and musicians Yo-Yo Ma, Lan Shui, Long Yu, Lihua Tan, and Leonard Slatkin.

In 2012, Zhou Long composed two orchestral works: University Festival Overture and Beijing Rhyme—A Symphonic Suite, commissioned by the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, premiered and recorded on EMI in 2013; a solo piano work Pianobells, commissioned by Dr. Susan Chan and premiered at the Musica Nova concert in the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance; a chamber work, Cloud Earth for chamber ensemble, commissioned by The New York New Music Ensemble and premiered on its 35th anniversary celebration at the Merkin Concert Hall in New York City. In 2013, Zhou Long composed an evening-length symphonic epic Nine Odes on poems by Qu Yaun (ca. 340 BCE–278 BCE) for four solo vocalists and orchestra, commissioned by the Beijing Music Festival Arts Foundation and premiered in October 2013 as a tribute to his 60th.

2014 has seen the completion of a new chamber work, Tales from the Nine Bells, co-commissioned and premiered by the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in New York and Wigmore Hall in London for their 2014 Seasons, and a new piano concerto, Postures, co-commissioned by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and BBC Proms, which premiered 4 July 2014 in Singapore and 2 September 2014 at Royal Albert Hall, as part of the BBC Proms’ 2014 season.

A United States citizen since 1999, Zhou Long is married to the composer-violinist Chen Yi. It should be noted that Zhou is his family name and Long is his personal name, and thus he should be referred to as Mr. Zhou or Dr. Zhou.

Zhou’s works have been recorded on Warner, Naxos, BIS, EMI, CRI, Teldec (1999 Grammy Award), Cala, Delos, Sony, Avant, Telarc and China Record. Zhou Long is published exclusively by Oxford University Press.

Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Zhou Long: The Rhyme of Taigu

Pianogongs, performed by pianist Chi-Ling Lok

Five Elements, recorded by the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jeffery Meyer with Luisa Sello (flute), in July 2012 during the Thailand International Composition Festival at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand.

Dhyana, performed by Contemporary Enclave with James Ogburn, conductor, on July 10, 2012 at the Thailand International Composition Festival.

The birth of Madame White Snake

Dr. Yotam Haber

Room 519A, PAC
ymhn4d@umkc.edu
(816) 235-

Dr. Yotam Haber

http://www.yotamhaber.com

Associate Professor of Composition

His music hailed by New Yorker critic Alex Ross as “deeply haunting,” by the Los Angeles Times as one of five classical musicians “2014 Faces To Watch,” and chosen as one of the “30 composers under 40” by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Project 440, Yotam Haber was born in Holland and grew up in Israel, Nigeria, and Milwaukee. He is the recipient of a 2017 Koussevitzky Commission, a 2013 Fromm Music Foundation commission, a 2013 NYFA award, the 2007 Rome Prize and a 2005 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He has received grants and fellowships from the MAP Fund (2016), New Music USA (2011, the New York Foundation for the Arts (2013), the Jerome Foundation (2008, the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation (2011), Yaddo, Bogliasco, MacDowell Colony, the Hermitage, ASCAP, and the Copland House.

In 2015, Haber’s first monographic album of chamber music, Torus, was hailed by New York’s WQXR as “a snapshot of a soul in flux – moving from life to the afterlife, from Israel to New Orleans – a composer looking for a sound and finding something powerful along the way.”

Recent commissions include works for Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor; an evening-length oratorio for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, CalARTS@REDCAT/Disney Hall (Los Angeles); New York-based Contemporaneous, Gabriel Kahane, and Alarm Will Sound; the 2015 New York Philharmonic CONTACT! Series; the Venice Biennale; Bang on a Can Summer Festival; Neuvocalsolisten Stuttgart and ensemble l’arsenale; FLUX Quartet, JACK Quartet, Cantori New York, the Tel Aviv-based Meitar Ensemble, and the Berlin-based Quartet New Generation.

Recent projects include New Water Music, an interactive work (2017) for the Louisiana Philharmonic and community musicians to be performed from boats and barges along the waterways of New Orleans and a chamber opera, The Voice Imitator, with librettist Royce Vavrek for the 92Y (2020).

Haber is Artistic Director Emeritus of MATA, the non-profit organization founded by Philip Glass that has, since 1996, been dedicated to commissioning and presenting new works by young composers from around the world. His music is published by RAI Trade.

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Dr. Ryan Oldham

Room 320, Grant Hall
oldhamrp@umkc.edu
(816) 235-2906

http://www.ryanoldham.com

Dr. Ryan Oldham

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Composer Ryan Oldham (b. 1977) is an adjunct instructor for the University of Missouri – Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance and teaches private lessons and theory classes at the UMKC Community Music and Dance Academy. He holds a B.M. from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (1999), a M.M. from the University of Louisville (2002) for music composition and theory, and a D.M.A. from the University of Missouri – Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance (2008).

Oldham’s music has been performed in Sweden, Mexico, and the United States. His research on Henry Cowell was presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for American Music. Oldham has been a guest clinician and resident composer for several organizations, including the Kentucky Opera, “Composers in the Schools”, and several high school music programs.