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Laurence Sherr

Laurence Sherr is Composer-in-Residence and Associate Professor of Music at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta. Honors and awards include top prizes in the Delius Composition Contest and the composition competition of the Association for the Promotion of New Music in New York City. Recent recordings include Jeri-Mae Astolfi’s interpretation of his Nocturne on Chroma: New Music for Piano, released by Capstone Records in 2009. EIMI for violin, saxophone, percussion, and piano, in a live recording by the German group “ensemble Intégrales”, was released on the Ein-Klang label in Europe in 2007. Cellist Theresa Villani included his Elegy and Vision on her 2007 recording Patterns of Eloquence.

International performances of Sherr's works have been produced in Holland and Switzerland, at the KOFOMI Festival and in Salzburg, Austria, at the International Clarinet Association’s ClarinetFest in Tokyo, Japan, and at the Festival Internacional de Guitarra de la Habana in Cuba. Holocaust memorial performances and presentations in Germany and the U.S. have engendered education, reconciliation, and healing. Canadian and Mexican performances include productions at the Banff Festival of the Arts, tours of Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario, and performances at the National School of Music and San Ildefonso Museum in Mexico City. United States performances occurred at CAMI Hall and the Kitchen in New York City, the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, the Salvador Dali Museum, the Carter Presidential Center, and in locations such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Diego, Dallas, Austin, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Honolulu, Omaha, Tampa, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Sherr has been awarded grants by the American Music Center, the American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, the Illinois Arts Council, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs, and the Alliance Française d’Atlanta. He has received fellowships for composition residencies from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Seaside Institute, the Charles Ives Center for American Music, the American Dance Festival, the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, and the Banff Festival of the Arts.

Commissions for new works have come from ensembles such as Thamyris and the Atlanta Chamber Players, and from organizations such as the [Jimmy] Carter Center and the Georgia Music Teachers Association. Soloists who have commissioned Sherr include Atlanta Symphony Orchestra flutist Paul Brittan and guitarist Mary Akerman. Flutist Christina Guenther commissioned his Duo Concertante in conjunction with her Florida State University doctoral treatise “Laurence Sherr: Chamber Music for Flute”.

Dr. Sherr studied at Duke University, the Vienna International Music Center, the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the founder and clarinetist of the Atlanta klezmer band Oy Klezmer!.

For more Information visit http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~lsherr

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