Mark Kilstofte 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 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 (three times) and the Gardner Read and Francis & William Schuman Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony. He 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.
Kilstofte’s compositional style reflects his interest in everything from Gesualdo to Jethro Tull. His innovative approach to form—he is the son of a structural engineer—results in a music of tremendous integrity and clarity which can be humorous one moment, achingly beautiful the next. His music is published by The Newmatic Press.
Training
Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, William Albright, Eugene Kurtz and George Wilson
University of Michigan
Andrew Imbrie
Schweitzer Institute
Arthur Campbell and Charles Forsberg
St. Olaf College
Whether in classroom or studio teaching, my philosophy is one that integrates imagination and technique, artistry and craft, spontaneity and calculation. I stress the importance of having something to say, even as young composers are hard about the task of developing the wherewithal to say it.
MUS-501: Independent Study (Composition)
MUS-412: Senior Project
MUS-410: Tonal Counterpoint
MUS-313: Modal Counterpoint
MUS-311: Composition
MUS-310: Form and Analysis
MUS-211: Basic Musicianship: Written, Aural
MUS-113: Composition Seminar