Furman Music Professor Mark Kilstofte receives coveted Copland House Award
Note: Mark Kilstofte received South Carolina Arts Commission Music Composition Fellowships in 2001 and 2012.
Furman University Music Professor Mark Kilstofte has received a 2016 Copland House Residency Award. The award was granted to nine gifted American composers from nine states, and marks Kilstofte’s fourth time to be honored by Copland House.
The Copland House prize consists of an all-expense-paid stay at Aaron Copland's National Historic Landmark home in New York's Lower Hudson Valley. The honor provides composers the opportunity to focus on their creative work in the same inspiring environment enjoyed by Copland himself for the last 30 years of his life.
The honorees were selected out of nearly 100 applicants from 25 states by a jury including composers Pierre Jalbert (a two-time Copland House Resident), Carman Moore, and Robert Sirota (Former-President of the Manhattan School of Music).
On an individual basis, the Residents will live and work for three to eight weeks in the prairie-style, hilltop house near New York City that Copland called "my hideaway, my solitude," and was his home from 1960 to 1990.
In addition to three previous Copland House Residency Awards, Kilstofte's honors include the Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, ASCAP's Rudolf Nissim Prize, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His music has been featured on NPR's “Performance Today” and “From the Top” and performed by the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, New York Virtuoso Singers, New Amsterdam Singers, and Dale Warland Singers. His song cycle, "The White Album" (commissioned by the Fromm Foundation and developed during a previous Copland House Residency), will be premiered by Musiqa (Houston) this January.
As a Copland House Resident, Kilstofte will become eligible for post-residency awards, commissions, and various performance and recording opportunities from the Music from Copland House ensemble. Possibilities include the Sylvia Goldstein Award, Borromeo String Quartet Award, Hoff-Barthelson Music School Commission, and others.
He is a graduate of St. Olaf College and the University of Michigan where he was a Rackham Predoctoral Fellow. A resident of Greenville, Kilstofte teaches music composition and theory at Furman, and is guest researcher at the University of Oslo's Center for Ibsen Studies, where he is writing an opera based on Ibsen's "Brand."
An official project of the federal Save America's Treasures program, Copland House is the only composer's home in the United States devoted to nurturing and renewing America's rich musical heritage through a broad range of public, educational, musical, and electronic-media activities that embrace the entire creative process. Additional information about Copland House can be found at www.coplandhouse.org.
For more information, contact the Furman News and Media Relations office at (864) 294-3107.
Furman music professor Kilstofte’s “Peace” to be featured on NPR
Furman University professor Dr. Mark Kilstofte is a two-time recipient of the South Carolina Arts Commission's Individual Artist Fellowship for music composition.
From Furman University:
A musical work by Furman University professor Dr. Mark Kilstofte will be aired on National Public Radio’s “From the Top” Monday, Dec. 22.
The composition, “Peace,” was performed by the Cantus Chamber Choir from the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities Nov. 6 at the Peace Center before a live audience.
“Peace,” conceived during the aftermath of 9/11, was selected by the ensemble's director, David Rhyne, for its powerful interpretation of Gerald Manley Hopkins' poetry and its modern-day relevance.
“From the Top,” with host Christopher O’Riley, is distributed by National Public Radio and taped before live audiences across the United States. The show celebrates the accomplishments and stories of extraordinary young classical musicians. “From the Top” is carried by 250 public radio stations across the country and is estimated to reach 700,000 listeners around the world.
The Cantus Chamber Choir was honored as one of five performers to be featured on the show. Twenty vocalists from the Governor’s School took part in the November taping. In addition to participating in the elite choral ensemble, students work weekly in private studio voice lessons and perform each semester in opera scenes and recitals.
Kilstofte, Furman University Professor of Music Composition and Theory, is admired as a composer of lyrical line, engaging harmony, strong, dramatic gesture and keen sensitivity to sound, shape and event. Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as "exciting and beautiful, consistently gripping," his music has garnered a 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 (three times) and the Gardner Read and Francis & William Schuman Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony.
A Greenville resident, Kilstofte has also earned commissions from the Dale Warland Singers and the Fromm Foundation. His music, performed regularly throughout the United States and Canada, has been featured on NPR's “Performance Today” and is heard in concert halls from Moscow to Bangkok. His music is published by Newmatic Press. More information about Kilstofte may be found at this link.
South Carolina artists invited to apply for fellowships
South Carolina artists working in visual arts, craft, media production or media screenwriting are invited to apply for a 2013-2014 Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the South Carolina Arts Commission. Up to four fellowships of $5,000 will be awarded. The deadline to apply is Nov. 1, 2012.
Past fellows agree that fellowships offer endorsements that may open doors to other resources and employment opportunities.
"The (fellowship) provides artists a significant level of support to pursue their work. I found it tremendously validating, and it inspired me to create music that I hope will be a source of pride to South Carolinians for years to come," said Mark Kilstofte, 2011-2012 music composition fellow.
The Arts Commission's Individual Artist Fellowship program encourages the pursuit of artistic excellence and provides financial support to South Carolina artists of merit. Since 1976, the Arts Commission has awarded more than 200 fellowships to actors, craftsmen, poets, screenwriters, visual artists, musicians and others in recognition of exemplary artistic talent. Fellowship awards have no restriction on use of funds.
Fellows and alternates are recommended by out-of-state review panelists, who make selections based solely on a review of anonymous work samples. Applications and guidelines are available on the Arts Commission's website.
Related: Who are this year's fellows? Writer, poet and choreograher named as artist fellows.
