Bio
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Andrew McPherson was born in 1982. He did his undergraduate work at MIT, studying composition with Peter Child and John Harbison, and viola with Marcus Thompson. A double major in music and electrical engineering, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was awarded the 2004 Sudler Prize in the Arts. He subsequently worked in Barry Vercoe's computer music group at the MIT Media Lab, completing a Master's degree in engineering in 2005.
Andrew completed his Ph.D. in composition at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, where his teachers included James Primosch, Jay Reise, Anna Weesner, and Maurice Wright. He has attended the Tanglewood, Aspen, Bowdoin, and N.E.O.N. music festivals, and has won awards including a 2008 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2009 Jacob Druckman Prize from Aspen, the 2009-2010 Symphony in C Young Composer's Competition, a 2009 Encore Grant from the American Composers Forum, and a 2008 Dean's Scholar Award from Penn. His compositions have been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, Network for New Music, the Tanglewood New Fromm Players, the BUTI Wind Ensemble, and the MIT Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, among others. Andrew is also active in electronic music research. As the recipient of a "Computing Innovation Fellows" award from the Computing Research Association and the National Science Foundation, his research focuses on understanding and shaping creative musical expression through computing. He is the creator of the magnetic resonator piano, a hybrid acoustic-electronic instrument augmenting the traditional grand piano, which offers new musical possibilities to composers and performers. He also continues to teach composition at the University of Pennsylvania. |
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