Composer In Residence

 

John Christian Orfe

John Christian Orfe has earned recognition as composer, arranger and pianist. His honors include a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, an Otto Eckstein Family Fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center, the William Schuman and Boudleaux Bryant Prizes from BMI, nine Standard Awards and the Morton Gould Award from ASCAP, and first prizes in competitions held by the Music Teachers National Association, the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, the National Federation for Advancement in the Arts, the National Association of Composers USA, and New Music Delaware. His works have been performed in Russia, Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and throughout the US; his percussion trio Dragon has received performances by over fifty different ensembles. He and flautist Sergio Pallottelli premiered his Sonata for Flute and Piano in November 2004 at the University of Utah to critical acclaim from the Deseret News, and toured with it in Peru, Costa Rica and Ecuador in 2006. The work received its Boston premiere as part of the Dinosaur Annex series in January 2009. He participated in the 2004 Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute and Reading Sessions, and has fulfilled commissions for Duo Montagnard (PA), Dez Cordas (NC), the NOVUS Trombone Quartet (NY), the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra (IL), Alarm Will Sound (NY), the Music Institute of Chicago (IL), the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra (IN), the Lila Muni Gamelan Ensemble (NY), Peter Hereld (CT), and Ludovico (MA). Ensembles that have played his work include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. The New York Times hailed his "Cyclone" for two violas as "the most striking and momentous work on the program" of a Carnegie Hall concert in March 2007. Oyster, commissioned by Ohio University's School of Music and School of Dance, was premiered in June 2008 and performed at the North Carolina School of the Arts in January 2009. Chamber Symphony, commissioned by Alarm Will Sound and Ludovico, was performed November 2008 to critical acclaim in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia. He is a winner of a 2008 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was awarded the DMA by the Yale School of Music in February 2009.

As pianist, he has premiered over fifty solo and chamber works and performed in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C., the former Orchestra Hall (now Symphony Center) in Chicago, Mandel Hall in Minneapolis, the World Financial Center in New York, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Hertz Hall in Berkeley, and at universities on the East Coast and the Midwest. Dr. Orfe is the core pianist of the critically acclaimed Alarm Will Sound. He arranged two tracks of techno artist Aphex Twin for the June 2003 Bang On A Can music marathon (NY); they appear on the CD Acoustica. He performed as soloist in the Ligeti piano concerto with AWS at Dickinson College (PA), where the ensemble had a three-year residency, and at the Miller Theatre in February of 2005, earning praise from the New York Times for his "virtuosic ardor." His transcription of John Adams' "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" for solo piano has been hailed as "a knockout" by the Boston Globe and "breathtaking" by the San Francisco Chronicle, which also praised his "hypervirtuosic" performances of Nancarrow. He served as Visiting Instructor of Piano and Theory at Dickinson College in 2006-07, and the next year worked as artist-in-residence at the Julia and David White Artists' Colony in Costa Rica and the Prairie Center for the Arts (IL). Currently Dr. Orfe is Temporary Assistant Professor of Music at Bradley University in Peoria, IL.

http://slane.bradley.edu/music/john-orfe
http://alarmwillsound.com/about/members/orfe.html