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Commissioned Composers -
Guitarist and composer Jeffrey Van has premiered over 50 works for guitar including Dominick Argento’s Letters from Composers, five concertos and a broad variety of chamber music. He has performed in Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and as part of Duologue, with flutist Susan Morris De Jong, has premiered and recorded commissioned works from more than a dozen composers, including Stephen Paulus, Roberto Sierra,
Tania Leon, Michael Daugherty, Libby
Larsen and William Bolcom.
He has been featured on many NPR broadcasts, made several solo and ensemble recordings and appeared on ten recordings with The Dale Warland Singers. Van has performed and taught master classes throughout the United States, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree
from the University of Minnesota School of Music, where he is a lecturer in classical guitar. Former students include Sharon Isbin, John Holmquist and members of the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet.
Mr. Van’s compositions include works for guitar, guitar and violin, guitar and flute, chorus, chamber ensemble, vocal solo, organ and a concerto for two guitars and chamber orchestra. His music is published by Boosey & Hawkes, Walton, Colla Voce, Mark Foster, Earthsongs, MorningStar and Hal Leonard.
Website: University of Minnesota - Faculty Profile
Ethan Wickman joined the faculty of UW-Eau Claire in the fall of 2006 as Assistant Professor of Music in the Department of Music and Theatre Arts where
he teaches music theory and applied composition.
He holds a Doctorate in Music Composition from
the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory
of Music where his principle teachers were Joel Hoffman, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, and Michael
Fiday, with additional degrees in music from
Boston University and Brigham Young University.
Dr. Wickman was formerly Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Indiana University South Bend.
With works hailed as "very, very exciting . . . with
a lot of color and dynamic impact," (Bernard Rubenstein, Music Director, Fargo-Moorhead Symphony), and possessed of "a flair for colorful orchestration" (Harvey Steiman, San Francisco
Classical Voice), composer Ethan Wickman's music
has been performed by such groups as the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony,
the Aspen Concert Orchestra, Flexible Music, Proteus, the Gryphon Trio,
and the CCM Philharmonia, and by performers such as violinists Bayla Keyes
and Piotr Szewczyk, pianist Ananda Sukarlan, cellist Sumire Kudo, and guitarist
Daniel Lippel, among others.
He has received commissions from Barlow, The American Composers Forum
and the Mostly Modern Chamber Music Society. His incidental music was featured
on select episodes of the nationally broadcast PBS series Ancestors. His orchestral work Night Prayers Ascending won the Jacob Druckman Prize for Orchestral Music
at the Aspen Music Festival, and was a finalist in the 25th Annual ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Orchestral Composition Competition.
He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from Fulbright, the Aspen Music
Festival, the Norfolk Contemporary Music Workshop/Yale Summer School of
Music, the Wellesley Composers Conference, and co-recipient of an Artist Grant from the Utah Arts Council. He has additionally participated in masterclasses and lessons with Christopher Rouse, Augusta Read Thomas, Joan Tower, George Tsontakis, Mario Davidovsky, and Antón García Abril while a Fulbright Fellow in Madrid, Spain.
Website: ethanwickman.com