Staff

Lawrence Fritts, Director

lawrence-fritts@gmail.com

Shane Hoose, Graduate Assistant

shane-hoose@uiowa.edu

Zach Zubow, Graduate Assistant

zach.zubow@gmail.com

Lawrence Fritts is an American composer born in Richland, Washington in 1952. He received his PhD in Composition at the University of Chicago, where his teachers included Shulamit Ran, Ralph Shapey, and John Eaton. He is currently an Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Iowa, where he has directed the Electronic Music Studios since 1994.

His recent works combine instruments and voice with electronics. These have been performed throughout the world and are recorded on the Albany, Innova, Frog Peak, SEAMUS, and Tempo Primo labels. He has received awards from SEAMUS, the Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition, International Look and Listen Festival, International Society of Contemporary Music, International New Music Consortium Competition, and the International Insitute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics. As a composer, he is interested in musical applications of mathematical group theory and has written a number of papers on the subject. He serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Mathematics and Music.

In 1997, he created the University of Iowa Musical Instrument Samples database, a collection of 22 orchestral instruments recorded in an anechoic chamber. These recordings may be freely used for any purpose without restriction and may downloaded by following the link at the top of this page.

Shane Hoose is interested in the expression and realization of musical ideas through careful manipulation of musical materials. In each piece, he chooses and utilizes techniques in order to best express the potential and character of his materials. He uses technology in his works as a means for expanding the musical potential for expressiveness, timbre, and musical nuance. The resultant music precipitates from the interaction of observation and intuition.

Shane is a graduate of Bowling Green State University (MM) and Ball State University (BM) and is currently pursuing a doctorate in composition at the University of Iowa.  He composes in both the acoustic and electroacoustic media, and his works have received honors, awards, and performances across the United States. His mentors in composition include David Gompper, Lawrence Fritts, Elainie Lillios, Burton Beerman, Mikel Kuehn, Jody Nagel, Michael Pounds, Jesse Allison, Keith Kothman, and David Foley.

Zach Zubow’s compositions have been featured on numerous new music conferences and festivals throughout the United States and abroad, including the 2010 Society of Composers (SCI) National Conference in Columbia, South Carolina.  Zach was also named regional winner in the 2011 SCI/ASCAP Student Composition Commission Award for his string quartet, Sundown, and was also the 2011 first prize recipient of the Five College Composition Competition hosted by the University of Massachusetts for his alto saxophone and percussion duo, Rounded Angles.  As well as composing, Zach has presented his research regarding beat class transformations in Ligeti’s Étude No. 4, Fanfares, from Ligeti’s first book of études that will be published in the online journal, Proceedings, for the New Music Festival at the University of Central Missouri.  Zach was also recently accepted as one of six composers worldwide to participate in the Alba New Music Festival in Alba, Italy in May 2011, where Mr. Brian Ganz performed Zach’s work for solo piano titled Prevailing Wind.  Along with performances, a new CD of works produced by ABLAZE Records titled “Millennial Masters Series” will be released in August 2011 that will feature Nebulae for flute and tape performed by Dr. Rebecca Ashe.  Zach has received degrees from Luther College, Illinois State University and is now pursuing a PhD in music composition at The University of Iowa.  For more information please visit his website here.