Biography

Stephen Andrew Taylor composes music that explores boundaries between art and science. His first orchestra commission, Unapproachable Light, inspired by images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the New Testament, was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in 1996 in Carnegie Hall. Other works include the chamber quartet Quark Shadows, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony and premiered in 2001; and Seven Memorials, a 32-minute cycle for piano inspired by the work of Maya Lin and premiered by Gloria Cheng in Los Angeles, 2004; she also performed the work at Tanglewood in 2006. Excerpts from a new opera based on a novella by Ursula K. Le Guin have been performed recently by the New York City Opera and American Opera Projects. Highlights in 2009-10 include performances in New York, Montreal, Chicago, Belgrade, Toronto, Montreal, Georgia, and Mexico City. Besides composing for traditional instruments, Taylor also works with live electronics in pieces such as Agoraphobia for flute, harp and electronics, premiered by Jonathan Keeble and Ann Yeung in Amsterdam in 2008. He is also active as a conductor with the University of Illinois New Music Ensemble, and as a theorist, writing and lecturing on interactive music, György Ligeti, Björk and Radiohead. Born in 1965, he grew up in Illinois and studied at Northwestern and Cornell Universities, and the California Institute of the Arts; his teachers include Steven Stucky, Karel Husa, Mel Powell, Bill Karlins and Alan Stout. His music has won awards from Northwestern, Cornell, the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Composers, Inc., the Debussy Trio, the Howard Foundation, the College Band Directors National Association, the New York State Federation of Music Clubs, the Illinois Arts Council, the American Music Center, and ASCAP. Among his commissions are works for Northwestern University, University of Illinois, the Syracuse Society for New Music, Pink Martini and the Oregon Symphony, the Quad City Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, Quartet New Generation and the New Philharmonic, Piano Spheres, and the American Composers Orchestra. Taylor is Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he lives with his spouse, artist Hua Nian, and their two children.

photo by Chris Brown, 2008  Contact info  phone (217) 333-3712  School of Music  1114 West Nevada St.  University of Illinois  Urbana, IL 61801  email: staylor7 at illinois.edu

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Last updated December 19, 2009 by Stephen Taylor.