Composition at UD

Still Breathing/SCI Improv
Members of the UD Composition Studio are heavily involved in Still Breathing: The University of Delaware Contemporary Music Ensemble, as well as the SCI Improv ensemble. 

The program and focus for Still Breathing changes every semester, thereby enabling composition students to design and pursue a wide variety of performance projects. These programs have ranged from performances of iconic twentieth-century works such as Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King, Terry Riley's In C and Edgard Varèse's Ionization; to a concert of new String Quartets written by UD graduate students; the premiere of a new chamber opera written, composed and produced by a UD graduate student; concerts of new ensemble works written for and performed by the entire membership of the UD Composition Studio; and the creation of a nationally award-winning collaborative opera. Each semester brings an exciting new program suggested and implemented by the composition students. 

SCI Improv is a student-run ensemble whose membership includes composition students and other music students. In addition to performing at SCI/Composition Studio concerts, this ensemble has performed off-campus on several occasions. The ensemble performed the musical underscore for a campus-wide production of Dracula, and it also performed at a Crane@UD art exhibition in Philadelphia.  
The instrument set-up for Still Breathing's April 2016 concert of new works written by members of the UD composition studio for performance by all members of the studio. The ensemble included two accordions as well as a variety of winds, brass, percussion, piano, celeste, harpsichord, four synthesizers and electronics. The ensemble was joined by Newark's First Presbyterian Church Handbell Choir for one of the pieces. 
Premiere performance of UD graduate composition majors, Emily DeWoolfson's, 
chamber opera Death and the Drifter; October 2015
Premiere performance of the UD Composition Studio's collaborative opera, Waulking in the Glen; April 2018