CUA Composers Bring New Pieces to Life

Composers benefit from hearing their own works performed as much as possible. This is one of our most important beliefs. At CUA, we work to provide numerous opportunities for your work to be read, rehearsed, and performed.

The Composition Area presents concerts, typically one or two per year, which include new chamber works for instruments or voices such as string quartets, piano trios, mixed instrumental pieces, song cycles for voice and piano, and electronic music. Faculty will typically present work alongside students at these events. All of our concerts are recorded and made available to student composers after the event. 

These concerts are usually administered through our composition seminar (called composition colloquium for grad students), a course that all composers take together during their time at CUA (undergrad and graduate). Within the composition seminar, there might also be special group composition projects, as well as readings by outside visiting ensembles. 

Both the Chamber Choir and the CUA Symphony Orchestra typically dedicates an entire rehearsal each year to reading and recording student orchestral works. In 2016, we started a composer-in-residence program with the Wind Ensemble: this project allows a student (typically one of our MM or DMA students; Undergrads are occasionally given this opportunity) to forge a relationship with the ensemble from the start of the academic year, resulting in a work, usually premiered on the ensemble's spring concert, that is tailor-made for the group. Based on the success of this program, we have expanded our composer-in-residence positions to include yearly residencies with the Chamber Choir and the Drama Department, and an every-other-year residency with the Orchestra. 

Another opportunity of which we are quite proud is the annual Christmas concert commission. Each year, a CUA composition student (typically a graduate student) is commissioned to compose a piece for the Chamber Choir and Orchestra to be programming on the University's annual Christmas Concert, held in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (every fourth year, a faculty member receives the commission). This concert, televised internationally by the EWTN network, represents an important milestone for the commissioned composers, providing them with a global audience and often representing their first orchestral performance.

Sometimes, students are also asked to create new arrangements or orchestrations for the Christmas concert. Cooperating courses and groups such as the Musical Theater Workshop and Opera Workshop have also rehearsed and performed student works. Our students have also been active as composers and music directors for the Centerstage student-run theater company. 

Each Labor Day weekend, students in the MM Composition, Stage Music Emphasis program have new theatrical pieces or pieces-in-progress presented at the The John F. Kennedy Center .