15th Anniversary Celebration

Christopher Marshall is a composer and teacher based in Orlando where he continues to carve out a successful freelance career, securing commissions from top conductors and performers around the world. His music has featured on concert programs in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Center, and the Barbican in London.  An American citizen since 2015, Marshall was born in France of New Zealand parents. He received his early music education in New South Wales, Australia. Self-taught as a composer, he earned a Masters Degree in Music with Honors from the University of Auckland, New Zealand and a Fellowship in Composition from Trinity College, London. He held the Mozart Fellowship at the University of Otago, New Zealand (1994 and 1995), and in 1996 was Fulbright Composer in Residence at the Eastman School of Music. Prior to taking up these positions he spent three years teaching and composing in the South Pacific island nation, Samoa, and for ten years prior to that taught English to Indochinese refugees in Auckland. Many diverse influences can be heard in Marshall’s music, from Brahms to Corigliano to Polynesian chant. However the foundation of all his work is the conviction that music is primarily a means of expressive communication with the listener.  Christopher Marshall’s orchestral, wind ensemble, chamber and choral music has been very widely performed and broadcast particularly in the United States and Europe. His music is accessible, idiomatically written and often exhilarating in its rhythmic ingenuity. It also places great emphasis on expressive memorable melody and frequently delights in integrating diverse stylistic elements. Marshall has received commissions from City of Dunedin Choir, Washington Men’s Camerata, Summit Brass, San Francisco Choral Artists, UMM Symphonic Winds, Space Coast Symphony Orchestra, United States Air Force Academy Band, Richard Stoelzel and Matthew Marshall. Recent premieres include Méndez (2015) for brass band performed by Summit Brass, To The Horizon (2016) for choir, Journeys of the Soul (2016) for orchestra performed by the Auckland Philharmonia, Burning Blue (2017) by UMM Symphonic Winds, and We Gather Together (2022) by the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra. Christopher Marshall’s music is published in the United States by Alliance Music, EC Schirmer and C Alan Publications and in Britain by Maecenas and has been recorded on several American and European labels. In addition, he has his own desktop publishing company, Vaia’ata Print which supplies high quality computer-set editions of his music.

Kevin Wilt is a classical music evangelist. He composes music to introduce new audiences to the joy, drama, and adventure of classical music through familiar colors and lush textures, while engaging seasoned audiences with an underlying craftsmanship and sophistication. Composer John Corigliano praised his expert orchestration and beautiful writing, while the Bloomington Herald wrote, “[his music] has a keen sense of mood and tonal balance.”   Kevin’s recent commissions include AutoBonn for Michael Francis and The Florida Orchestra, and March of the West River, premiered at the College Band Directors National Association Southern Division Conference.  He was a resident at the Millay Colony for the Arts, and winner of the Music Teachers National Association Commission in Florida. He won the Fresh Squeezed Opera Call for Scores with his chamber opera, Prix Fixe, and the Musical Chairs Chamber Ensemble Composer Search. He was awarded a grant by the Atlantic Coast Conference Band Directors Association to create Urban Impressions, a multi-movement work for large wind ensemble. He was a recent finalist for the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra Call for Scores, a finalist for the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennel Prize, the Symphony Number One Call for Scores III, the Hartford Opera Theater Call for Scores, and the American Prize in orchestra, band, and chamber music categories.  Recent performances include those by the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Contemporary Orchestra, the Boston New Music Initiative, Fifth House Ensemble, the h2 Quartet, Project Fusion, the Apollo Fund, SHUFFLE Concert, the Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, ensembles at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, the University of Texas at Austin, Florida State University, the University of Kansas, the University of Oklahoma, Michigan State University, Kennesaw State University, as well as a reading by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Leonard Slatkin.  Kevin is equally at home composing for film and television, earning him a Michigan Emmy® Award Nomination for Best Musical Composition. Other film projects include The Inevitable, The Happy Couple, a string quartet for the short film Renegade, and The Wars of Other Men.  He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition and a Master in Music Composition from Michigan State University, where he studied with Ricardo Lorenz and Jere Hutcheson, and Bachelor of Music Composition and Theory from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.  He is Associate Professor of Music, Composer-in-Residence, and Chair of the Florida Atlantic University Department of Music in Boca Raton.  His works are published by Whistling Vine Music and Murphy Music Press.