Marilyn Nonken

Marilyn Nonken is an Associate Professor of Music and Music Education at NYU Steinhardt.  She is one of the most celebrated champions of the modern repertoire of her generation, known for performances that explore transcendent virtuosity and extremes of musical expression. Upon her 1993 New York debut, she was heralded as "a determined protector of important music" (New York Times).

Matthew Goodheart

Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Music (2015–17)

Matthew Goodheart is a composer, improviser, sound artist, and educator who has developed a wide body of work that explores the relationships between performer, instrument, and listener. His diverse creations range from large-scale microtonal compositions to open improvisations to immersive sound installations – all unified by the analytic techniques and performative methodologies he has developed to bring forth the unique and subtle acoustic properties of individual musical instruments.

Anssi Karttunen

cellist

Anssi Karttunen is a passionate advocate of contemporary music and his collaboration with composers has led him to give over 160 world premieres of works by composers as diverse as Magnus Lindberg, Kaija Saariaho, Rolf Wallin, Luca Francesconi and Tan Dun. 

Nicolas Hodges

piano

An active repertoire that encompasses such composers as Beethoven, Berg, Brahms, Debussy, Schubert and Stravinsky reinforces pianist Nicolas Hodges’ special prowess in contemporary music. As Tempo magazine has written: “Hodges is a refreshing artist; he plays the classics as if they were written yesterday, and what was written yesterday as if it were already a classic.”

Magdalena Stern-Baczewska

Director, Music Performance Program

Hailed by the press as “One of the most innovative, even radical classical keyboardists in the U.S," Magdalena Baczewska [pronounced ba-CHEV-ska] is a concert pianist, harpsichordist, recording artist, producer, speaker, and educator. She is the Director of the Music Performance Program and Senior Lecturer in Music at Columbia University. She has performed with prestigious orchestras worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and China National Symphony.

Julia Den Boer

French-American pianist Julia Den Boer is a strong advocate of contemporary music. Based in New York city, she performs internationally as a soloist and chamber musician and has commissioned and premiered numerous works. She is committed to exploring and pushing her instrument’s boundaries through close collaboration with composers and has had the opportunity to work with some of the most prominent composers of our time such as Heinz Holliger, Philippe Leroux, Martin Matalon and Kaija Saariaho.

Alec Hall

Alec Hall completed his doctorate in composition in 2016. He also holds an MA in composition from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.M in composition and violin performance from McGill University. 

Bryan Jacobs

The works of composer/guitarist Bryan Jacobs have been performed in the US and internationally by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Wet Ink Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Talea Ensemble, the pianist Xenia Pestova and more. He has received awards and commissions from La Muse en Circuit, The American Academy of Arts and Letters, Bourges International Electroacoustic Music competition, MATA, Centre for Computational Musicology and Computer Music, and RTÉ Lyric FM, and his work is available on a recording put out by La Muse en Circuit.

Zosha Di Castri

Francis Goelet Associate Professor of Composition

Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer/pianist/sound artist, who joined Columbia University’s composition faculty in July 2014, as the Francis Goelet Associate Professor of Music. Her work (which has been performed in Canada, the US, South America, Asia, and Europe) extends beyond purely concert music, including projects with electronics, sound arts, and collaborations with video and dance.

Georg Friedrich Haas

Professor of Music, Composition

Georg Friedrich Haas joined Columbia University’s composition faculty as a full-time tenured professor in September 2013. This appointment promises to sustain and enhance our composition program’s reputation as one of the strongest, most progressive, and most international such programs in the United States.

Wang Lu

Alumna (DMA 2012)

Wang Lu is Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at Brown University.

Keith Moore

Keith Moore uses the fields of acoustics and psychoacoustics to compose expressive and conceptually rich works that compel listeners to consider the beauty and breadth of perception itself. 

Fred Lerdahl

Professor Emeritus

Fred Lerdahl studied at Lawrence University, Princeton, and Tanglewood. He has taught at UC/Berkeley, Harvard, and Michigan, and since 1991 he has been Fritz Reiner Professor of Music at Columbia University.

George E. Lewis

Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Composition & Historical Musicology

George E. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, where he serves as Area Chair in Composition and Faculty in Historical Musicology.

Ashkan Behzadi

Lecturer in Music

Ashkan Behzadi (b.1983) is an Iranian composer residing in New York City. He is a graduate of McGill University in composition and music theory. Prior to this he also earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from Tehran University. He has studied compositions with Alireza Mashayekhi, Chris Paul Harman, Brian Cherney, Philippe Leroux, Fred Lerdahl, George Lewis and Georg Friedrich Haas.

Anthony Cheung

Anthony Cheung is an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Chicago. 

Matthew Ricketts

Core Lecturer, Music Humanities

Matthew Ricketts (b. 1986) is a Canadian composer based in NYC. He earned his undergraduate degree at McGill University's Schulich School of Music (Honours Composition, Theory), studying with Chris Paul Harman, Brian Cherney and John Rea. In 2017, he completed his DMA in Composition at Columbia, where he studied with George Lewis and Fred Lerdahl. He is a Core Lecturer in Music Humanities at Columbia.

Alexander Mincek

Alex Mincek is a New York-based composer and performer. He studied composition with Tristan Murail and Fred Lerdahl at Columbia University (DMA) and with Nils Vigeland at the Manhattan School of Music (MA). He is currently the saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and artistic director of the Wet Ink Ensemble, a group dedicated to contemporary music, which he founded in 1998.

Natacha Diels

Natacha Diels (DMA, Composition, 2016) is Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego. Her work combines ritual, improvisation, traditional instrumental technique, and cynical play to create worlds of curiosity and unease.

Matthew Goodheart

Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Music (2015–17)

Matthew Goodheart is a composer, improviser, sound artist, and educator who has developed a wide body of work that explores the relationships between performer, instrument, and listener. His diverse creations range from large-scale microtonal compositions to open improvisations to immersive sound installations – all unified by the analytic techniques and performative methodologies he has developed to bring forth the unique and subtle acoustic properties of individual musical instruments.

Christopher Trapani

A composer with a genuine international trajectory, Christopher Trapani maintains an active career in the United States, the United Kingdom, and in Continental Europe. Commissions have come from the BBC, the JACK Quartet, and Radio France, and his works have been recently heard at Carnegie Hall, the Southbank Centre, IRCAM, and Wigmore Hall.

Tristan Murail

Professor Emeritus

Tristan Murail came to Columbia in 1997, having previously been professor of computer music at the Paris Conservatoire, and professor of composition at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris, where he was also consultant to the computer-assisted composition research team, and worked on the development of the program "Patchwork." His studies included Economics; Classic and North-African Arabic; Political Sciences; composition with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire; and computer music at IRCAM.

George E. Lewis

Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Composition & Historical Musicology

George E. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, where he serves as Area Chair in Composition and Faculty in Historical Musicology.