User:Jomoz/sandbox

Keeril Makan (born 1972) is ... composer and teacher. Musical style. Significant works. Significant awards.

Life and career
Makan was raised in New Jersey by parents of South African Indian and Russian Jewish descent. He began his musical training at the Interlochen Center for the Arts where he began to compose without the benefit of being given models to emulate. He has said that recordings of folk songs from the 1920s and ’30s helped him find his own voice as a composer.

Trained as a violinist, he received degrees in composition and religion from Oberlin and completed a PhD in composition at the University of California, Berkeley. He spent a year at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, on a Fulbright grant. He also studied for two years in Paris. (bio)

Makan is associate professor of music at MIT, where he has been on the music faculty since 2006. He lives in Cambridge, Mass. (bio)

Musical style
Makan's style has been said to be influenced by "Steve Reich-style minimalism, or the sonic experimentation of the European avant-garde." He has said that "Up until 2006 there was ... an exploration of the emotional life I had at that point which was extremely negative at times. There was a lot of negativity, a lot of depression, a lot of other types of emotional experience that, when I try and portray it honestly in my music, is discomfiting.” He has said that his more recent compositions “aren’t as negative as the other pieces are.”

Critical reception
His music has been said to have "an expressive intensity that can be terrifying."


 * Financial Times
 * New York Times
 * The New Yorker
 * Newsday

Chamber music

 * (2012) Return (string quartet)
 * (TK) 2 (violin-percussion duo)
 * (TK) Zones d'accord (solo cello)
 * (TK) Target (mezzo-soprano and four instrumentalists)

Opera

 * (2012) Persona

Awards and recognition
TK

Recordings

 * Target

Interviews

 * Keeril Makan in conversation with Chris McGovern

Category:20th-century classical composers Category:21st-century classical composers Category:American classical composers