In this Musical Moment, VocalEssence artistic director and founder Philip Brunelle shares insider information and beautiful music by the composer Mark Kilstofte.
Mark Kilstofte
b. 1958
Mark Kilstofte is admired as a composer of lyrical line, engaging harmony, strong, dramatic gesture and keen sensitivity to sound, shape and event. His music has garnered a growing number of awards and honors including the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, ASCAP’s Rudolf Nissim Award, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Aaron Copland Award (four times) and the Gardner Read and Francis & William Schuman Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony. His music, performed regularly throughout the United States and Canada, has been featured on NPR’s Performance Today and From the Top. Kilstofte’s compositional style reflects an interest in everything from Gesualdo to Jethro Tull. His innovative approach to form results in a music of tremendous integrity and clarity which can be humorous one moment, achingly beautiful the next. An experienced performer and conductor, Kilstofte studied with William Albright, Leslie Bassett, and William Bolcom at The University of Michigan and with Arthur Campbell at St. Olaf College. He is the newly-appointed Composer-in-Residence at Furman University and is currently at work on an opera based on Henrik Ibsen’s “Brand.”
Suggested Choral Works:
- A Prayer (Newmatic Press NP0060211)
- Caritas (Peer HL00280046)
- Enfold Us (Newmatic Press NP010-2102)