Bio

American composer Emerson Voss (b. 1991) dramatizes everyday mundanities through site-specific, multimedia installations and staged music theater works that include music and field recordings, video and lighting, performance and narrative as well as site-specificity and audience interactivity.

Emerson has been invited as an artist fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, São Paulo Contemporary Composers Festival, New Music On The Point, Wintergreen Composers Retreat, and Snow Pond Composers Workshop. His artistic and scholarly work has been supported by the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination and the University of Pittsburgh’s Physics and Astronomy Department, Nationality Room Scholarship, and Whittington Leadership and Innovation Challenge. His scholarly research concerning public arts funding in Norway has been presented at academic conferences both domestic and abroad, most recently in Seoul, South Korea and Lucca, Italy. His intermedia sound installations have premiered internationally in Novi Sad, Serbia for the international new media arts festival Videomedeja and Oslo, Norway. His chamber and solo works have been performed by the JACK Quartet, Duo Cortona, TAK Ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, Dior Quartet, The Boston New Music Initiative, Michael Lowenstern, Miranda Cuckson, Steven Beck, and Julia Den Boer, among others.

Emerson received a BA in Music Composition and Theory from Campbell University, a MM in Composition and Theory from East Carolina University, and a PhD in Music Composition and Theory from the University of Pittsburgh. Currently, he is part of the music faculties at the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University teaching courses in electronic music, music theory, and sight-singing. He is originally from Raleigh, North Carolina and is now based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.