Faculty composer Joseph Klein has been named as one of two 2016-17 Faculty Fellows from the UNT Institute for the Advancement of the Arts. Klein will use his fellowship in the spring of 2017 to complete his large-scale modular chamber work, An Unaware Cosmos, to be premiered at UNT in October 2018.

Alumnus Composer Jonathan Camacho (BA 2008) recently composed the complete soundtrack to the film What Carter Lost, which premiered on ESPN on 24 August 2017 as a part of the Emmy Award Winning 30 for 30 series on ESPN. The film focuses on the 1988 Dallas Carter High School Football team that was featured in the movie Friday Night Lights. What Carter Lost can be seen on rotation on ESPN, as well as on the ESPN App and the ESPN 30 for 30 website. 

Electroacoustic works Contemplating Larry by alumna composer Elainie Lillios (DMA 2000) and Regression by graduate composer Bihe Wen were two of thirteen prizewinners selected from a pool of 109 composers from 25 different countries in the Concours de Composition Acousmatique Métamorphoses 2016. The prizewinning works are included on the CD recording Métamorphoses 2016, released in February 2017.

Eight UNT-affiliated composers were selected to participate in the SEAMUS 2017 Conference at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, MN, 20-22 April 2017: faculty composers Andrew May and Jon Nelson; student composers Miguel Espinel, Timothy Harenda and Michael Smith; and alumni composers Elainie Lillios, Jon Anderson, and Eli Fieldsteel. Also performing at the conference is faculty flutist...

NoiseFold (UNT faculty artist David Stout and Cory Metcalf) presented The Ten Thousand Things at Southern Oregon University, Oregon Center for the Arts, where they were joined by the Left Edge Collective (former UNT faculty composer David Bithell, trumpet and electronics; and Terry Longshore, percussion) in May 2017.

Faculty composer Joseph Klein will present an academic paper titled "Practical Applications of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form on Musical Materials and Structures" at the On Growth and Form Centenary Conference, 13-15 October 2017 at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland).  The paper includes an analysis of three original compositions that are related to Thompson's research: the road in its unfoldings, Occam's Razor, and Interstices.  Klein has also been invited to present a lecture on his work at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.   

Faculty Composer Andrew May’s composition Abstraction with Reference has been selected for performance on 10 March 2017 in the Open Space Festival of New Music at the University of Northern Colorado (Greeley, CO).

Andrew May's Ada for electric violin and computer was one of nine works (out of 114 submissions) selected for the 2016 SEAMUS Interactions CD.

Alumnus composer Ilya Rostovtsev (MM 2010) has completed his PhD in Music Composition at UC Berkeley (August 2017), and has accepted a position at Microsoft (Seattle, WA) for the position of an Applied Scientist, where he will be working on new music authoring tools.

Landscape Series: 1 by alumnus composer Chaz Underriner (PhD 2016) is one of five works selected (out of 288 submissions from composers in 36 countries) as a finalist for the prestigious 2017 Gaudeamus Award in Composition. His work will receive a performance at the Gaudeamus Muziekweek in September 2017, at which time the award winner will be announced.

Alumnus composer Daniel Sabzghabaei (BM 2014) was selected as a VocalEssence ReMix Composer Fellow. He will be working with Minnesota's premier choral ensemble VocalEssence and composer mentor Timothy Takach in various workshop sessions on two new commissions for a cappella chorus: one will be premiered in the fall 2017 at the Minnesota ACDA conference, the other at McNally Smith College in the spring 2018.

Faculty composer Joseph Klein will be the featured speaker at two concerts by Orchestra 2001 in April 2018, including the Philadelphia premiere of Frank Zappa's The Yellow Shark at The Fillmore Philly in April 2018.  This residency was supported by a grant from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and will also include a program of works by Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern, and Pierre Boulez.

Guitar Construction #2: Progressive Fracture, a work by alumnus composer Dave Gedosh (DMA 2009), was selected for performance at several venues in 2016, including the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (13-19 June), the VU Symposium (Park City, UT, 5-7 July), Sound and Music Computing Conference (Hamburg, Germany, 31 August - 3 September), Electronic Music Midwest (Chicago, IL, 13-15 October), and Diffrazioni Multimedia Festival (Florence, Italy, 21-27 November).

In August 2017, Elizabeth McNutt performed three concerts at the National Flute Association Convention in Minneapolis, MN, during which she premiered new works for flute and piano by UNT faculty composers Kirsten Broberg and Jon Christopher Nelson. Dr. McNutt was also a guest artist with the Texas Flute Symposium 2017, where she performed a recital of recent works and led two masterclasses.

Graduate composer Christopher Poovey's composition Dripstone for baritone saxophone and stereo fixed media will receive its New York City premiere at the 2017 Bushwick Open Studios at MISE-EN_PLACE, which takes place 23-24 September 2017.

Alumnus composer Daniel Sabzghabaei (BM 2014) was recently selected as a composer fellow for the 2017 Intimacy of Creativity Festival in Hong Kong. Daniel will be working in collaboration with Master of the Queen’s Music, Judith Weir, co-founder/associate artistic director of the New York Festival of Song, Michael Barrett, acclaimed tenor Jonathan Blalock, and internationally renowned composer and artistic director of IC 2017 Bright Sheng on performances of his cycle, Four Glimpses of Desire (چهار نگاه اجمالی ازهوس) (2016).

Alumnus composer Ben Johansen (PhD 2012) has been appointed Lecturer in Composition/Music Technology at Baylor University, beginning in the fall of 2017.