Biography

Clifton Callender is Professor of Composition in the College of Music at Florida State University, teaching composition, music theory, and music programming and computation. He studied at the University of Chicago, Peabody Conservatory, Tulane University, and King’s College, London. His works, which often draw on mathematics, are recorded on the Capstone, New Ariel, and Navona labels. Recent commissions include Chain Reactions, for the 75th commemoration of Chicago Pile 1 (the first nuclear reactor), Canonic Offerings and Hungarian Jazz, for the Bridges Conference on the Arts and Mathematics, gegenschein, for Piotr Szewczyk’s Violin Futura project, and Reasons to Learne to Sing, for the 50th Anniversary of the College Music Society. A recent composer in residence at Copland House, his music has been recognized by and performed at MACRO, NYCEMF, Third Practice, the Spark Festival, the American Composers Orchestra, SEAMUS, Forecast Music, Composers Inc., Studio 300, the Florida Electracoustic Music Festival, the International Festival of Electroacoustic Music “Primavera en La Habana,” NACUSA Young Composers Competition, the Northern Arizona University Centennial Composition, the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conferences, the World Harp Congress in Copenhagen and the ppIANISSIMO festival in Bulgaria. Recent works include a focus on the climate crisis, including Dear Matafele Peinam, a setting of Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s poem for the 2014 United Nations Climate Summit, Meditations on a Warming Planet, for solo piano, and On ice and Melting, a new work for harp, electronics, and video. Also active in music theory, Callender has published in Science, Perspectives of New Music, Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory Online, and Intégral. He served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Mathematics and Music, and currently serves as Co-Editor for Perspectives of New Music.