Creator Profile
Bio
Kevin Morse is a composer based in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada, where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Music at Mount Allison University. His diverse portfolio includes solo, vocal, and chamber music, several short operas, and works for orchestra. In addition, he has created audio installations and works that incorporate electronic and electro-acoustic elements.
Notable recent compositions include a new work for choir and orchestra commissioned by the Prince Edward Island Symphony Orchestra as part of its Canada 150 celebrations (2017) and a set of twelve variations for solo piano on a fantasia by J. S. Bach commissioned and premiered by pianist David Rogosin (2018). Morse's recent collaboration with visual artist Dan Steeves, titled The Space Between (2017), included an extended composition for string quartet and an eight-channel gallery audio installation paired with Steeves' images.
Kevin Morse's music is informed by his close partnership with performers during the creation, workshopping, and rehearsal of his compositions. Collaboration with poets, playwrights, and other artists is also an important part of Morse's practice, which has led him to write new art song and opera, and to explore creative new interdisciplinary projects.
A passionate and committed educator, Kevin Morse is the recipient of Mount Allison University's top teaching prize, the Tucker Teaching Award (2020), and the J. E. A. Crake Teaching Award for the Faculty of Arts (2015). He regularly teaches courses in Composition & Music Technology, Orchestration, and Arranging, and occasionally teaches Opera History, Music in Canada, World Music, and a Survey of Western Music for non-majors. He also supervises summer student research at Mount Allison, where his students have investigated diverse topics including women live-coders and electronic music, mysticism and the music of Galina Ustvolskaya and Sofia Gubaidulina, and aspects of national identity in Benajmin Britten's War Requiem.