ABOUT COLIN
Colin McAllister is Director of Humanities and an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where he directs the Sagitta Guitar Ensemble and organizes the Solertia Humanities Speaker Series.
His performances as a guitarist and conductor have been hailed as ‘sparkling...delivered superbly’ (San Francisco Chronicle), ‘ravishing’ (San Diego Union Tribune) and ‘an amazing tour de force’ (San Diego Story), and he has recorded on the MicroFest, Summit, Innova, Centaur, Naxos, Albany, Old King Cole, Vienna Modern Masters, Carrier, and Tzadik labels. His research interests include contemporary music performance and pedagogy, musical modernism, and the apocalyptic paradigm as manifested in varying phenomena—literature, music, and art.
Colin is the guitarist and conductor for the ensemble NOISE, and a co-founder of the soundON Festival, held annually since 2007 in La Jolla, California. He performs regularly with guitarists Derek Keller and Wayne Wilkinson, and leads his own jazz quartet, which can be heard monthly in various venues in Colorado Springs. He appears frequently with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs, the Playground Ensemble, and the Hennessy 6. He is the founder and director of Through a Glass Darkly: Annual Symposium on Apocalyptica, a collaboration between UCCS, Concordia University Montréal, McGill University, and Colorado College. His most-recent publications are Music in the Apocalyptic Mode (Brill, 2023) and Aeneas in the Underworld (MicroFest Records, 2023). He is the author of two best-selling guitar instructional series, produced by The Great Courses—Learning to Play Guitar, and Playing Guitar Like a Pro. Colin is endorsed by PRS Guitars and is an Artist Partner with Taylor Guitars.
A dedicated performer of contemporary repertoire, Colin has given over 100 first performances, including:
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the U.S. premiere of works by leading European composers Chaya Czernowin, Franco Donatoni, Brian Ferneyhough,
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Beat Furrer, Vinko Globokar, Helmut Lachenmann and Rolf Riehm.
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He has performed throughout North America and Europe including the Monday Evening Concerts,
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New Music Miami,
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San Francisco sfSound,
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Darmstadt International Music Festival,
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Festival Hispanoamericano de Guitarra,
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Dallas Festival of Modern Music,
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Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez in Mexico City,
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PRISMS New Music,
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Seattle Transport Jazz,
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Breda Jazz Festival,
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Colorado College Summer Music Festival,
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and the Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras (CMMAS).
Colin earned both the Master of Arts and Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of California, San Diego, where he studied guitar with Los Romeros and Stuart Fox, interpretation with Bertram Turetzky, and conducting with Harvey Sollberger and Rand Steiger. He also holds a Master of Arts in History from UCCS.
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