MIT Music Faculty

Music Faculty and Academic Staff

		Brian Robison (brobison@mit.edu), Assistant Professor of Music, D.M.A., Cornell University, 1999, as a composer and theorist draws on his performing experience in a broad range of musical styles. His principal composition teachers were Steven Stucky, Karel Husa, Roberto Sierra, and Burt Fenner. He also studied with Philippe Manoury and Tristan Murail at the famed American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, where he was awarded the Maurice Ravel Prize in 1991. In July 2000, the American Composers Orchestra named him the winner of the 2000 Whitaker Commission; the new work, In search of the miraculous, received its world premiere performance by the ACO in Carnegie Hall in 2003. A recording of his first work for wind ensemble, The Congress of the Insomniacs, was recently released (Innova Records 621), in a performance by Dr. Frederick T. Harris, Jr. and the MIT Wind Ensemble, for whom the work was written. Prof. Robison also recently composed and performed the soundtrack to a 1920s short silent film, "Cockeyed," available soon in the 3-DVD set More treasures from American film archives, 1894-1931. His latest work, The bonfire of the civil liberties, will be premiered by Boston Musica Viva on October 3, 2004, under the direction of Richard Pittman. Prof. Robison has also received commissions from the Sidney Cox Library of Music and Dance, the Cayuga Chamber Winds, the Paterson Duo, and the Empire State Youth Symphony String Ensemble. Current projects include works for the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston, the Locrian Chamber Players, and the Boston Horns. As a researcher, he spent four months in the spring of 2004 as a fellow at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, studying the manuscripts of the celebrated British composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle. Detailed information about Prof. Robison's music is available at his website.

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