2012 Charles Ives Scholarship recipient Chris Rogerson has been hailed as a “confident, fully-grown composing talent” (The Washington Post) whose music has “virtuosic exuberance” and “haunting beauty” (The New York Times). Mr. Rogerson has been commissioned to write works for the Attacca Quartet through the Buffalo Chamber Music Society; for Orchestra 2001, the Chicago Sinfonietta, and the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington, where he is the composer-in-residence. This summer he completed at Yaddo and at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming.
In recent seasons, Chris Rogerson has been commissioned by The New York Youth Symphony, which premiered his work That Blue Repair for cello and orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2012; The New World Symphony, which premiered Our Game in 2012; Curtis on Tour which premiered his piece Lullaby: no bad dreams at Jazz at Lincoln Center and at the Ravinia Festival, among others; the Amherst Symphony Orchestra, and the Buffalo Philharmonic. As the 2010-12 Young Concert Artists Composer-in-Residence, two works were commissioned by YCA and premiered in the Young Concert Artists Series in New York and at the Kennedy Center.
Mr. Rogerson’s music has been performed by the Aspen Concert Orchestra, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Third Angle New Music Ensemble, the Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble, the VERGE ensemble and the JACK Quartet. Winner of the New York Art Ensemble 2010 Composition Competition, Mr. Rogerson has also been the recipient of the 2009 Presser Music Award, the 2008 Morton Gould Young Composer Award from ASCAP and has won prizes from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, the National Association for Music Education, and counter)induction, a composer/performer collective. He was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in 2011, the Aspen Music Festival in 2010, where he won the 2011 Jacob Druckman Award, Yale School of Music’s Norfolk New Music Workshop in 2008; the Young Composer-in-Residence at the Music from Angel Fire Festival in 2009; and was a guest composer at the Vivace String Camp in 2009 and the Chautauqua Institute in 2008.
Born in 1988 in Amherst, New York, Mr. Rogerson started playing the piano at the age of two and the cello at eight. He received a Bachelor’s degree at the Curtis Institute of Music, studying composition with Jennifer Higdon, a Master’s degree from Yale University studying composition with Aaron Jay Kernis and Martin Bresnick, and is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. Mr. Rogerson has participated in composition master classes with John Corigliano, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Tilson Thomas, William Bolcom, Krystof Penderecki, and Christopher Theofanidis.
