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The music of Curtis Rumrill explores the intersection of literary form, theater, opera and modern chamber music. His work tells darkly comic stories, often fableistic or meta-fictional, and often of animals, with an attention to language, theater and experimentation. He is a composer, writer, teacher and organizer. He also composes instrumental chamber music with and without electronics and works for tape.
Kamratōn, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and Shana Simmons Dance premiered his opera, Her Holiness, The Winter Dog. Eco Ensemble premiered his sinfonietta, The Square. Juna Toksöz Winston premiered and co-composed the concert-length theatrical work, Õs Grândė Fædeur dî Rïdiendo, Rage Thormbones premiered his 40-minute theatrical oratorio, Unky Dead Bones McGringo. Soo Yeon Lyuh and Ashley Bathgate premiered The Fur Rabbits of Toft Farms at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, Kamratōn premiered and made a studio recording of his work In this Styrofoam Room for soprano and chamber ensemble. Ensemble Dal Niente featured his piece The Parasite, and Her Sister on their tour of Latin America. Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble premiered his concert-length work, The Passion of the Wilt-Mold Mothers. Ensemble l’Itinéraire premiered Abigail, Martin, the Virus and the Voice of God.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured the premiere of The Passion of the Wilt-Mold Mothers on their list of 10 ways to whet your musical appetite this year in Pittsburgh, and described his piece, Rover, as offering “intriguing melodies and fanciful vignettes within the elegant (yes, elegant — bass drum solos come to mind)” in their review of the 2016 Pittsburgh Festival of New Music.
His music has been commissioned, premiered and performed by, among others, Juna Toksöz Winston, Ensemble l’Itinéraire, Ensemble Dal Niente, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Rage Thormbones, Soo Yeon Lyuh, Ashley Bathgate, Kamratōn, Sydeboob Duo, NAT 28, Alia Musica, Tony Arnold, Thomas Rosenkranz, Aiyun Huang, Jordan Dodson, Kenneth Meyer, the Syracuse University Contemporary Music Ensemble, Eco Ensemble and Lisa Cella.
He has been performed in the United States and internationally, including Panama City, Panama; Bogota, Colombia; Mexico City, Mexico; Vienna, Austria; Basel and Baden, Switzerland; Maccagno, Italy; Brooklyn, NY: Stanford and Berkeley, CA; Washington, DC, Boston, MA; Bloomington, IN; Cleveland, OH; Bowling Green, OH; Kalamazoo, MI; Pittsburgh, PA; and Syracuse, NY, in venues including the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City; Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia; Teatro Amador and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Panama; the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics; MITU580 Theater and Scholes St. Studio in Brooklyn; Freer Sackler Gallery at The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC; New Hazelett Theater, Kelly Strayhorn Theater and The Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, in Pittsburgh, PA; the University of Pittsburgh; Indiana University; Syracuse University; Chatham University, Bowling Green State University; Western Michigan University and Boston University.
Works of his have been included in the Music on the Edge: Microtonal Music Festival, Pittsburgh Festival of New Music, Re:Sound New Music Festival, JazzWerkstatt Wien, Vienna Roomservice Festival, Numu: Neue und Unentdeckte Musik, New Hazelnut Community Supported Arts Season, the soundSCAPE Festival, the 2018 SCI Student National Conference, the 2021 SCI National Conference, SPLICE Festival and Alia Musica Presents.
Along with Andres Carrizo and Lilliana Carrizo he co-founded MusicArte Panama, a new music festival in Panama City which ran until 2015. Past featured composers include Mario Lavista, Ileana Pérez-Velazquez, Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez and Valentín Pelisch. Featured ensembles and performers include Ensemble Dal Niente, Grupo Paisaxe, Alia Musica, Graciela “Chelín” Núñez and the soundSCAPE Trio.
He also served as Board Chair of Alia Musica, a Pittsburgh-based New Music ensemble and presenting organization producing multiple concerts, new music festivals, and tours. During his tenure on the board the organization produced two New Music festivals, presented three solo recitals by Frederic Rzewski (including the New York Times 10 Best Classical Events of 2015 performance of The People United will Never Be Defeated at Wholey’s Fish Market), performed nationally and internationally, kept a regular season of concerts, recitals, and presentations of touring musicians, and in 2015/16 hosted Ken Ueno for an extended residency including the Pittsburgh premiere of On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific Hypothesis (concerto for overtone singer and orchestra), and commissioned and premiered a new work by Ueno, Sawdust on Ararat.
He served on the student board of SCI producing a national student conference. He worked in collaboration with the faculty at UC Berkeley to create a self-sustaining ensemble residency program and fundraise for department performances and technology acquisitions. Since 2021 has been on the Board of Directors for Kamratōn Ensemble.
He is the winner of the Nicola De Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition for his opera, and the Nicholas C. Christofilos Jr. Memorial Prize, “awarded annually to a graduate student in music who combines qualities of outstanding intellectual accomplishment with concern and support for his or her fellow students.”
Aside from his work in New Music, Rumrill is a committed activist for social justice. This work has taken many forms. He has worked to end the abuses of sweatshops in the overseas production of apparel. He was an advocate on behalf of himself and others who were arrested at the Republican National Convention in 2000. He worked with residents of the Southside community in Syracuse to confront the County’s racially biased plans to demolish homes to build a sewage treatment facility. He worked with public housing residents in New Orleans after Katrina, as they tried to return to their homes. As a Union Organizer he has worked with healthcare workers to form unions, and to confront their employers over long-standing abuses and dangerous conditions for patients. Eventually he became the Western Pennsylvania Staff Representative for this Union, representing over 900 healthcare workers, bargaining contracts and leading strikes. He organized for the re-election of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a leader in the progressive prosecutors movement to end mass incarceration. He is Department Steward for his union, UAW Local 4811 and as a member-leader has played a small but important role in the transformation of the local from a low-participation anti-democratic union to a union that in 2022 took the largest strike in the history of academic labor. In 2020 he wrote an article, Why These Wildcats Will Weaken Us, which has been widely read by the membership and and become a core document of the union’s organizing program for new member-organizers.
He has presented at AMS/SEM/SMT as a scholar on music and labor organizing.
He graduated magna cum laude, BMus from Syracuse University, (composition, music history minor, performance honors in guitar), and completed his MM Bowling Green State University. He is a member of the American Composer’s Forum, New Music USA and Society of Composers, Inc. and is represented by BMI. His primary composition teachers have been Carmine Cella, Myra Melford, Franck Bedrossian, Edmund Campion, Ken Ueno, Elainie Lillios, Christopher Dietz, Kyle Gann, Daniel Strong Godfrey, Sally Lamb McCune and Patrick Long.
Rumrill is a committed educator, teaching classes at UC Berkeley and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has taught classes on harmony and form at various levels—for majors, non-majors, and graduate students. He teaches music technology classes on music production and MAX/MSP. He wrote a new course, Music 57 — Introduction to Electronic Music Composition, which is now a regular offering in the UC Berkeley Department of Music. He has taught an ethnomusicology course on music and culture, as well as a class on AI and creativity, and a class on creativity and innovation. He also wrote and taught a course on the literary essay and music writing.
Rumrill is currently Professor of Music Theory at San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a Doctoral Candidate at UC Berkeley.
Medium Bio
Curtis Rumrill’s music sits at the intersection of literary form, theater, opera, and modern chamber music. Known for darkly comic, fable-like, and meta-fictional stories—often involving animals—his work focuses on language, theater, and experimentation. Rumrill also composes instrumental chamber music with and without electronics, as well as works for tape. His music has been performed internationally across Latin America, the U.S., and Europe.
Commissions and premiers include the opera Her Holiness, The Winter Dog for Kamratōn, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, and Shana Simmons Dance, and Õs Grândė Fædeur dî Rïdiendo for Juna Toksöz Winston. Rage Thormbones premiered his theatrical oratorio Unky Dead Bones McGringo, and The Fur Rabbits of Toft Farms debuted at the Smithsonian with Soo Yeon Lyuh and Ashley Bathgate, who commissioned it. Ensemble Dal Niente commissioned and featured The Parasite, and Her Sister on their Latin America tour, and Quince premiered The Passion of the Wilt-Mold Mothers, a concert-length oratorio. He composed Abigail, Martin, the Virus and the Voice of God for Ensemble l’Itinéraire, and The Square, a sinfonietta, was premiered by Eco Ensemble.
His work has been featured internationally, including in Panama City, Mexico City, Bogotá, Vienna, Basel, New York and Washington, D.C., in venues including the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, and The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Festivals such as the Pittsburgh Festival of New Music, Microtonal Music Festival, Re:Sound New Music Festival, and the SCI National Conference have showcased his compositions.
Rumrill co-founded MusicArte Panama, a new music festival in Panama City, and served as Board Chair of Alia Musica, organizing concerts, festivals, and tours. At UC Berkeley, he collaborated with faculty to create a self-sustaining ensemble residency program and fundraised for performances and technology. Since 2021, he has been on the Board of Directors for Kamratōn Ensemble.
He has been a committed activist for social justice through community and labor organizing. He presented on music and labor organizing at AMS/SEM/SMT.
His is the winner of the Nicola De Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition for his opera and the Nicholas C. Christofilos Jr. Memorial Prize for his academic and community contributions.
As an educator, Rumrill has taught at UC Berkeley and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, covering harmony, form, music technology, and ethnomusicology. He designed Music 57: Introduction to Electronic Music Composition, now a regular UC Berkeley offering, and has taught courses on creativity, AI, innovation and change, as well as writing about music.
Rumrill holds a BMus in composition from Syracuse University and an MM from Bowling Green State University. His mentors include Carmine Cella, Myra Melford, Franck Bedrossian, and others. He is currently Professor of Music Theory at San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a Doctoral Candidate at UC Berkeley.
Short Bio
Curtis Rumrill’s music sits at the intersection of literary form, theater, opera, and modern chamber music. Known for darkly comic, fable-like, and meta-fictional stories—often involving animals—his work focuses on language, theater, and experimentation. Rumrill also composes instrumental chamber music with and without electronics, as well as works for tape. His music has been performed internationally across Latin America, the U.S., and Europe.
Commissions and premiers include the opera Her Holiness, The Winter Dog for Kamratōn, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, and Shana Simmons Dance, and Õs Grândė Fædeur dî Rïdiendo for Juna Toksöz Winston. Rage Thormbones premiered his theatrical oratorio Unky Dead Bones McGringo, and The Fur Rabbits of Toft Farms debuted at the Smithsonian with Soo Yeon Lyuh and Ashley Bathgate, who commissioned it. Ensemble Dal Niente commissioned and featured The Parasite, and Her Sister on their Latin America tour, and Quince premiered The Passion of the Wilt-Mold Mothers, a concert-length oratorio. He composed Abigail, Martin, the Virus and the Voice of God for Ensemble l’Itinéraire, and The Square, a sinfonietta, was premiered by Eco Ensemble.
Rumrill co-founded MusicArte Panama, served as Board Chair of Alia Musica, and collaborated with UC Berkeley faculty to create a self-sustaining ensemble residency program. Since 2021, he has served on the Board of Directors for Kamratōn.
A committed social justice activist, Rumrill’s work includes community and labor organizing. He has presented on music and labor organizing at AMS/SEM/SMT.
Currently, Rumrill is a Professor of Music Theory at San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a Doctoral Candidate at UC Berkeley.