Composition
An Adventurous, Supportive Environment
Our composition faculty bring a wealth of experience across a wide variety of styles and genres, including classical, jazz, pop and rock, and electronic and ambient. In private and group lessons, the classroom and the concert hall, these professors lead a studio of gifted and enthusiastic students through a program. Here you will be challenged and encouraged in your growth as a musician, developing your unique musical voice in an environment of warm support from both faculty and fellow students.
WSU Composition studio is a place for exploration, collaboration, and adventure, a place for pushing the boundaries of what you can imagine and achieve in your music. Whatever your interest, from concert music to game audio to songwriting to the avant-garde, you are welcome here.
WSU Composition graduates have gone on to complete graduate degrees at institutions such as John’s Hopkins University, the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, The Seattle Film Institute, the University of Kansas, and many more. Our graduates have won national and international prizes, been selected for performance at competitive national conferences and festivals, and gone on to careers in academia, freelance performance and composition, and in video game music, sound design, audio engineering, and music publishing.
Festival of Contemporary Artists in Music
The Festival of Contemporary Artists in Music has been an annual fixture in the WSU School of Music since 1989, bringing distinguished professional composers and performers from around the country to WSU for a celebration of living music. Over three days of concerts, discussions, and masterclasses, FoCAM serves to enhance the education of WSU music students, and to present the music of today to our community. Composition students benefit from close interaction with guest and visiting artists, and have the opportunity each year to have their own works performed on the festival concerts.
Click here to listen to several recordings of faculty compositions.
Composition Faculty
Festival of Contemporary Art Music (FoCAM)
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