David Biedenbender Associate Professor of Composition and Chair of the Composition Area

Area(s):

  • Composition

213 Music Practice Building
East Lansing, MI 48824

517-432-0147

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About:

David Biedenbender serves as Associate Professor of Composition and Chair of the Composition Area at MSU's College of Music.

His music has been described as “simply beautiful” by (twincities.com) and is noted for its “rhythmic intensity” (NewMusicBox) and “stirring harmonies” (Boston Classical Review). His music has also been by described as “modern, venturesome, and inexorable…The excitement, intensity, and freshness that characterizes Biedenbender’s music hung in the [air] long after the last note was played” (Examiner.com).

Biedenbender has written music for the concert stage as well as for dance and multimedia collaborations. His work is often influenced by his diverse musical experiences in rock and jazz bands as an electric bassist; in wind, jazz, and New Orleans-style brass bands as a euphonium, bass trombone, and tuba player; and by his study of Indian Carnatic Music. His present creative interests include working with everyone from classically trained musicians to improvisers, acoustic chamber music to large ensembles, and interactive electronic interfaces to live brain data. He has had collaborated with and been commissioned by many renowned performers and ensembles, including Alarm Will Sound, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, the U.S. Navy Band, the Stenhammar String Quartet, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonie Baden-Baden (Germany), VocalEssence, La garde Républicaine, and the Eastman Wind Ensemble, among many others.

Biedenbender joins the MSU College of Music having served most recently as assistant professor of music composition and theory at Boise State University. He holds degrees in composition from the University of Michigan and Central Michigan University, and has also studied at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and in Mysore, India, where he studied Carnatic music.

Cyclotron (2017) for Wind Ensemble:

Red Vesper (2014):

I'm Down (2012):