Music is often associated with performances taking place inside a space and/or for a specific situation. Moving that place to an outdoor space, and then centering the state of the location’s environment, represent a change in the field of new music. Ecocomposition is a growing practice, whereby composers create site-specific works that seek to integrate the specificity of the location and its concerns. Composers Kurt Rohde (2009 Fellow) and Christopher Stark (2023 Fellow) recently created works that were performed at two EPA Superfund sites in Brooklyn: the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek. They will discuss their experience creating these pieces, as well as how nature and ecology influence their work more generally.

Kurt Rohde [they/he] plays viola, teaches, and composes, and lives in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land with spouse Tim and dog Hendrix. He is fascinated with finding ways to incorporate notions of failure and catastrophe as part of the pursuit of making something beautiful. Rohde is artistic advisor with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, artistic director of the Composers Conference, and teaches music composition at the University of California, Davis. Rohde has received the Berlin Prize, fellowships from the Radcliffe-Harvard Institute for Advanced Study and the Guggenheim Foundation, and awards from American Academy of Arts and Letters, Barlow, Fromm, Hanson, and Koussevitzky Foundations, Chamber Music America, and Creative Capital.

Christopher Stark, whose music the New York Times has called, “fetching and colorful,” has been awarded prizes from the American Academy in Rome, Guggenheim Foundation, Chamber Music America, Barlow Endowment, and the Fromm Foundation at Harvard. Named a “Rising Star” by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, his works have been performed by ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony, Toronto Symphony, and Detroit Symphony. Stark has created orchestral arrangements for producers Nineteen85 (the producer of Drake’s “Hotline Bling”) and Luis Resto (the producer of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”) and is a creative partner of the St. Louis Symphony where he curates their contemporary chamber music series at the Pulitzer Foundation. Stark has held residencies at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Copland House in upstate New York, AiR Bergen in Norway, and the Bogliasco Foundation in Liguria where he was the Aaron Copland Fellow in Music. His film score for the feature-length film Novitiate starring Melissa Leo and Margaret Qualley premiered at Sundance in 2017 and was theatrically released internationally by Sony Pictures Classics.