Departments
Courses Taught
MMT 604: Graduate Theory Review
WNT100.CR: Creative Writing About Music
Education
Doctoral Candidate (ABD), UC Berkeley
MM, Bowling Green State University
BM, Syracuse University
Ensembles
Works premiered by l’Itinéraire, Ensemble Dal Niente, Juna Toksöz, and others
Q&A
What is your hometown?
Syracuse, NY.
What is your favorite recording? Why?
Wow, um, should it be classical? Piazzolla Live at the Montreal Jazz Festival? Llasa de Sela Live in Reykjavík? Ara Dinkjian's Conversations with Manol? Enno Poppe's Rundfunke is my favorite album to assign to my students. I learn who the real weirdos are with that one.
What are you passionate about outside of music?
I love literature, love writing, love long-form journalism. I'm also a longtime community and labor organizer.
Who were your major teachers?
Carmine Cella, Mu-Xuan Lin, Myra Melford.
What question do you wish students would ask sooner rather than later?
"Can we look at (X piece of music they love) instead of the thing you're teaching?" Yes, sure, in office hours, but please, let's do it!
What was the defining moment when you decided to pursue music as a career?
I was 7, and I saw the movie LaBamba, and decided I would be a Ritchie Valens impersonator when I grew up, and fly my space-car to various 50s retro space-venues, and sing Donna. It was a very specific plan.
What was a turning point in your career?
Everything real has come out of friendship, and everything I've really learned about music and how to be an artist has been through friendship, and my closest, best collaborators are friends. They've changed me more than any single opportunity. The things I love the most I've done with them.
If you weren't a musician or teacher, what do you think you would be doing now?
Writer? Labor organizer? I mean, I do those things too.
From a music history perspective, what year and city are most important to you, and why?
I mean, the year is easy. I'm a composer. I want to hear what happens next year. City? I've seen some of the most incredible performances of my life in Paris in the last year, but they weren't, for the most part, works by French composers: Heiner Goebbel's "Everything That Happened and Would Happen," Francesca Verunelli's "La nuda voce," to name two. But there are incredible things happening in a lot of cities. I saw Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey and Nick Jozwiak at The Lab here in SF this summer. That was incredible!
What is your unrealized project?
I'd like to write another opera. My friend Andrés Carrizo and I keep talking about writing one together.
Please list your most important collaborations.
The soprano Anna Elder has been an incredible champion of my music. Juna Toksöz and I have been making music for years. Duo Riso, more recently.
What recordings can we hear you on?
The best place to listen to my music is on the works-samples page on my website.
Media:
Biography
Curtis Rumrill is a composer, writer, educator, and organizer. His work moves between fiction, experimental music theater, opera, improvisation, performance, and instrumental chamber music, often employing narration, dark comedy, and fable-like forms. His compositions have been performed throughout Latin America, the United States, and Europe.
Rumrill’s theatrical work includes the opera "Her Holiness, The Winter Dog" for Kamratōn, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, and Shana Simmons Dance, and the experimental music-theater works "What the Interference Took," created with Juna Toksöz, and "The Saddest Music in the World," created with Duo Riso. He is a member of Musica ex machina at IRCAM in Paris, where his research explores new approaches to computer-assisted composition. His work has been commissioned and premiered by Ensemble L’Itinéraire, Ensemble Dal Niente, Rage Thormbones, Soo Yeon Lyuh, Ashley Bathgate, Théo Ould, collective lovemusic, and others. He is also co-founder of MusicArte Panama.
Alongside his artistic work, Rumrill is a labor organizer and West Coast Local Representative with the New York NewsGuild, representing journalists and other media workers. He has also organized with UAW 4811 and PASNAP and around housing in Syracuse and New Orleans.
He is a Doctoral Candidate in Music Composition at UC Berkeley (ABD). His teaching emphasizes experimentation, creative risk-taking, skill-building, and the development of one's own voice.