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

Doctoral composer Seth Shafer has been selected as one of three finalists in the Lyra Society's Costello Competition for Composition for his solo harp piece Night in Arcturus Stream. As a finalist, Shafer will compose a new work for solo harp with a chance to win a $1000 prize, a world premiere at the Curtis Institute of Music's Field Concert Hall in May 2017, and a publishing contract with Fatrock Ink Music Publishers.

Alumnus composer Chaz Underriner (PhD 2016) has been appointed Assistant Professor of Digital Arts at Stetson University, beginning in the fall of 2017.

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.

Graduate composer Bihe Wen's composition Regression was selected as a finalist in MÉTAMORPHOSES 2016. The program will take place on 19 October 2016, during the international festival "L'ESPACE DU SON" in Brussels, Belgium.

Doctoral composer Jacob Thiede received an Honorable Mention from the Flute New Music Consortium in the "Flute and Accompaniment" category for his composition, And Everything In-Between. The Flute New Music Consortium, Inc. is a 501c3 nonprofit organization whose members live around the world and perform newly commissioned pieces and outstanding works from the composition competition in individual recitals, as well as at FNMC-organized events at regional and national flute festivals.

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...

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 Daniel Sabzghabaei's 2017 POLYPHONOS commission work The Blue Booby, on a text from James Tate, will be performed three times (6-8 October 2017) by Seattle's leading choral ensemble The Esoterics on their concert GRAVITAS: Investigating Gravity.

Doctoral composer Omar Fraire presented his video installation To be radical is a privilege at the Museo Espacio in the city of Aguascalientes, México. The work was commissioned by the International Festival Ctrl + Ñ in collaboration with the Institute of Culture and the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, for a collective exhibition from August through September 2017. 

Graduate composers Michael Smith, Jacob Thiede, Bihe Wen, and Jinghong Zhang will have works presented and performed at the National Student Electronic Music Event (NSEME 2017), 10-11 March 2017 at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA.

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.

Alumnus composer Daniel Sabzghabaei (BM 2014) recently received a commission from the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) for a new work for soprano, baritone, and piano to be performed on their Next concert series. The performance will be on 11 December 2017 in NYC at the CUNY Graduate Center inside the Elebash Recital Hall as part of the Bernstein Marathon, celebrating his 100th anniversary.

NoiseFold (UNT faculty artist David Stout and Cory Metcalf) exhibited "Transform Series One," a show of glass sculpture utilizing generative digital techniques to visualize virtual vessels, at the Form & Concept Gallery in Santa Fe (July 2017). NoiseFold's glass plasma sculptures were recently featured in New Glass Review (38), published by the Corning Museum of Glass.  This work was made possible by an invitation for a guest artist residency at the Pilchuck Glass School, where Stout and Metcalf worked with two of Dale Chihuly's gaffers to create a large body of work in glass, and taught a class in "Transcoding Glass." 

Nothing in the Nothingness, an opera by alumnus composer Daniel Zajicek, was one of eight works selected for performance in Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers 2017 program on 4-5 May 2017. As part of the performance, Daniel and his librettist, John Grimmett, will be in residence at Fort Worth Opera for a week of rehearsals and workshopping.

The interactive music and image duo NoiseFold (UNT faculty artist David Stout and Cory Metcalf) recently completed a new work titled The Ten Thousand Things. The work was premiered at the University of New Mexico Arts Lab as part of the John Donald Robb Composer's Symposium in March 2017.

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.

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.