Department of Music

• Colloquium - Friday, March 22, 2013, 3:30pm, Open Grounds
  Concert - Friday, March 22, 2013, 7:00pm, Open Grounds
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Composer Mara Gibson and Violist Michael Hall will be presenting a colloquium and concert, brought to you by the Composition and Computer Technologies program at the UVA McIntire Department of Music.

Mara Gibson is originally from Charlottesville, VA, graduated from Bennington College and completed her Ph.D. at SUNY Buffalo.  She has received grants and honors from the American Composer’s Forum, the Banff Center, Louisiana Division of the Arts, Arts KC, Meet the Composer, the Kansas Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, the International Bass Society, ASCAP, and the John Henrick Memorial Foundation. Internationally renowned ensembles and soloists have performed her music throughout the United States, Canada, South America, Asia, and Europe. Dr. Gibson teaches at the UMKC Conservatory while leading the Conservatory’s Community Music and Dance Academy as director, where she is founder of the UMKC Composition Workshop and co-director/founder of ArtSounds. 

Michael Hall lives in Chicago and has performed and taught across Europe, Asia and the United States. Described by the New Music Connoisseur as “utterly masterful,” and Chamber Music Today as having “superb technique,” he recently presented to critical acclaim the North American premiere of the first viola concerto written by a Chinese composer, Chen Yi’s, Xian Shi, with the Chicago Composers Orchestra. Hall has been a featured performer at the Thailand International Composition Festival, Positano Chamber Music Festival in Italy, Vianden International Chamber Music Festival in Luxembourg and the Composer’s Concordance Series in New York City. Twice he has presented world premieres at International Viola Congresses at Minneapolis and Reykjavik, Iceland. Hall is on the faculties of VanderCook College of Music, and the Chicago Academy for the Arts, a Kennedy Center Award recipient. He is a graduate of Ball State University, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Composer, Mara Gibson and violist, Michael Hall first met in Bangkok, Thailand as a part of the Thailand International Composition Festival in 2009.  In 2011, Michael premiered Mara's Canopy, especially composed for him, at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in celebration of Roxy Paine's new installation, Ferment.  Since then, the violist and composer have recorded and released Canopy, and participated in several new projects including Mara's new trio, Methods, for clarinet, viola and piano.  The two have presented together in Bangkok, Kansas City, Chicago and at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.  They will be touring the east coast in March with performances and presentations at the University of Virginia, the Salon Series in Philadelphia, Ithaca and Bennington Colleges.  They share affections for new music, teaching and art. 

More on Mara Gibson: http://composerscircle.com/mara-gibson/
More on Michael Hall: http://michaelhallviola.com/Welcome.html