Biography
Mark Kilstofte, whose music has been
hailed as “exciting and beautiful, consistently gripping” (The San
Francisco Chronicle), is admired as a composer of lyrical line,
engaging harmony, strong, dramatic gesture and keen sensitivity to
sound, shape and event. Kilstofte’s honors include the Rome Prize,
a Guggenheim, a Fulbright, the Rudolf Nissim Prize (ASCAP) and the
Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters in addition to several
Copland House Residency Awards. 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, Dale Warland Singers and Petri Sångare.
Kilstofte’s innovative approach to form — he is the son of a
structural engineer — results in music of tremendous integrity and
clarity which can be humorous one moment, achingly beautiful the
next. He is a graduate of St. Olaf College and The University of
Michigan where he was a Rackham Predoctoral Fellow. His teachers
were William Bolcom, Leslie Bassett, William Albright, Eugene
Kurtz and Arthur Campbell. Kilstofte teaches composition at Furman
University 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. His music is published by The Newmatic Press.
Articles
Kilstofte
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