|
|
|
William Campbell (1969) is a composer, pianist and improviser. In addition to European and American art music, he has studied and performed music of West Africa, Bali and Native America, and integrates a wide variety of these musical influences into his own music. His personal and unique musical sensitivity synthesizes old and new, secular and sacred, into a powerfully cohesive whole. William's music has been performed throughout North America by orchestras, chamber groups, vocalists, and in theater productions. Additionally, he has composed for films and stage productions, and his worship music is sung every Sunday in multiple churches across the country. He is currently one half of the Rayapati-Campbell Duo, a group specializing in contemporary art song for soprano and piano, and is a member of the acclaimed Sonoran Consort.
Recent premieres include Heartwood, for concert band, the score for the dance-theater piece Coyolxauhqui ReMembers by the Latina Dance Project, and Coyote Dances With a Star, for wind ensemble. He also composed and recorded the score for the documentary film, Bomb Hunters, and the electro-acoustic score for Trickster Dances, commissioned by New ARTiculations Dance Company. Performances of his sacred music continue throughout the country and are published on his own label and through Chalice Press and Episcopal Church Publishing. He has been awarded with honors of scholarship and teaching from the University of Oregon and Pima Community College. Composition awards include the Penfield Music Commission Project Composition Prize (2006), a Waging Peace International Composition Special Honor (2003), a Tucson/Pima Arizona Arts Fellowship (1999) and the 1995 Jim Highsmith Award from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for his orchestral work, Sinfonietta.
William is a member of the American Composers Forum, ASCAP and CCLI. He is a board member of the Iowa Composers Forum, helping to organize festivals of contemporary music. He earned degrees from the University of Arizona (B.M.), the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (M.M.), and the University of Oregon (Ph.D.). His dissertation was Earth Mass, a contemporary ecological, liturgical expression. He has taught music theory, technology and world music classes at Pima Community College, and Missouri State University, and was a music director and worship leader at churches for twelve years. William is an Assistant Professor of music at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, teaching Music Theory and Composition. For details, please view his Academic CV.
From 1999--2001, he and his wife built a straw-bale house and music studio in the desert near Tucson, Arizona. To learn more about that adventure, please visit the HOMESTEAD section of this website.
Sonoran Consort in performance
Photo by Erica Shuckman
Conducting EarthMass
Photo by Bryce Downing
|
|
|
