John Fitz Rogers

Profile

The music of Visiting Faculty John Fitz Rogers has been performed around the world in leading venues and by ensembles and festivals.

Rogers has performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Bang on a Can Marathon, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Cathedral, the Albany, Louisville, Charleston, and Tulsa Symphony Orchestras, New York Youth Symphony, Eastman Wind Ensemble, the MATA, Rockport, Bumbershoot, Bowling Green, and Keys To The Future festivals, Festival of New American Music, Phillips Collection Concert Series, and by individuals and chamber ensembles such as Antares, New Century Saxophone Quartet, Capitol Quartet, Lionheart, Composers, Inc., Opus Two, Meehan/Perkins Duo, Bent Frequency, Ambassador Duo, guitarist Michael Nicolella, pianist Marina Lomazov, and bassoonist Peter Kolkay.

Recent premieres include Double Concerto for two pianos and orchestra, commissioned by the South Carolina Philharmonic with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, and Magna Mysteria for soprano, chorus, and chamber orchestra, with soprano soloist Martha Guth. In 2009, Rogers’s alto saxophone concerto “The Rivers” was featured at the 2009 World Saxophone Congress in Thailand. The work was jointly commissioned by a consortium of seven universities.Rogers has received many commissions, fellowships, and awards, including those from ASCAP, the American Composers Forum and the Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, Music at the Anthology and the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, National Flute Association, MacDowell Colony, South Carolina Arts Commission, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, as well as the Heckscher Foundation Composition Prize for his orchestral work Symphony of Cities.

Recent recordings include Once Removed, a collection of Rogers’ chamber music on Innova Recordings, as well as Prodigal Child on Alanna Records. Previously released recordings include “Transit” and “Push” (both on Gale Recordings), “A Savage Calculus” on Equilibrium Records, and the Albany Symphony’s performance of “Verge” on Albany Records. A dedicated advocate of contemporary music, Rogers founded and is Artistic Director of the Southern Exposure New Music Series, which received the 2007 Chamber Music America / ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. Since its inception in 2001, Southern Exposure has become one of the most dynamic and innovative concert series in the southeast, regularly hosting enthusiastic standing room audiences for performances by local and regional artists as well as internationally recognized artists such as Alarm Will Sound, So Percussion, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the Los Angeles Piano Quartet. Rogers holds degrees in music from Cornell University, the Yale School of Music, and Oberlin College, where he studied composition, piano, and conducting; his composition teachers included Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, Martin Bresnick, and Jacob Druckman.

Rogers has served on the faculties of Cornell University and the Longy School of Music, as composer-in-residence for the Chamber Music Conference and Composers Forum of the East, Conductor’s Institute of South Carolina, and the Southeastern Piano Festival, and as visiting faculty for the Composition Intensive Program at the Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival. Rogers is currently an Associate Professor of Composition at the University of South Carolina School of Music. His work is published by Base Two Music Publishing.