Songs & Ayres – A Faculty Recital featuring Derek Keller and Colin McAllister

The McAllister Keller Duo (MKD) present a recital on Friday, February 2, 2024 at the SOU Music Recital Hall.

Their performance “Songs and Ayres” presents a wide variety of music for voice and two guitars, from Elizabethan-era composer John Dowland to contemporary guitarist Al DiMeola.

Since sparking a musical partnership in 1998 at the University of California, San Diego, Colin McAllister and Derek Keller have performed across the United States and Mexico, presenting eclectic programs original compositions as well as their own arrangements of pieces from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries. They have been featured on notable concerts series, such as the SoundOn Festival of Modern Music (San Diego, CA), the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento, CA), Festival Hispanoamericano de la Guitarra (Tijuana, MX), and San Francisco sfSound, among many others.

ARTIST BIOS:

Colin McAllister is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where he is a 2021-2022 Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Fellow. 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 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.

Recent publications include the Cambridge Companion to Apocalyptic Literature, the first modern-language translation of the Cambridge Glossa in Apocalypsin (Brepols, Corpus Christianorum in Translation) The Road Less Traveled (Summit Records), and Dies irae, dies illa: Music in the Apocalyptic Mode (Brill Word and Music series, forthcoming 2022). He has two works with Productions d’OZ: The Vanguard Guitar and Fourteenth Century Counterpoint: Music of the Chantilly Codex. The Vanguard Guitar was praised by Soundboard magazine as ‘a great success…not only a primer of modern techniques, but also a library of current performance practices’. His two guitar instructional courses: Learning to Play Guitar: Chords, Scales and Solos and Playing Guitar Like a Pro: Lead, Solo and Group Performance are produced by The Great Courses. Colin is endorsed by PRS Guitars, and is also an Artist Partner with Taylor Guitars.

A dedicated performer of contemporary repertoire, Colin has given over 100 first performances, including the U.S. premiere of works by leading European composers Chaya Czernowin, Franco Donatoni, Brian Ferneyhough, Beat Furrer, Vinko Globokar, Helmut Lachenmann and Rolf Riehm. He has performed throughout North America and Europe including the Monday Evening Concerts, New Music Miami, San Francisco sfSound, Darmstadt International Music Festival, Festival Hispanoamericano de Guitarra, Dallas Festival of Modern Music, Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez in Mexico City, PRISMS New Music, Seattle Transport Jazz, Breda Jazz Festival, Colorado College Summer Music Festival, and the Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras (CMMAS). As a guest artist, he has appeared with the San Diego Opera, San Diego Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of the Springs and the La Jolla Symphony. He is the guitarist and conductor for the ensemble NOISE, and a co-founder of the SoundON Festival of Modern Music, held every January in La Jolla, California. He is a member of the Hennessy 6 jazz sextet and the Trilix Jazz Trio. Each spring, he hosts Through a Glass Darkly: UCCS Symposium on Apocalyptica at the Heller Center for Arts & Humanities.

Colin earned both the Masters 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 Masters of Arts in History from UCCS.
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Born from his uncommon versatility as an award winning composer and performer (guitar/voice), Derek Keller’s music explores the myriad of possibilities in the coexistence, inter-mingling and hybridity between contemporary concert music, jazz and rock. Keller has received commissions from John Zorn (Tzadik). Loadband, SACRA/PROFANA, the Empyrean Ensemble (UC Davis) Fondation Royaumont RedFishBlueFish NOISE, Colin McAllister (guitar), JitaZax

City Water, Cantoria (Truman University), Cappella Gloriana, the Athens Master Chorale, Mark Menzies (violin) and Morris Palter (percussion). His music has been performed in the Americas, Europe, Australia, China, and at notable festivals such as the Oregon Fringe Festival (Ashland, OR), Visions of the Wild (Vallejo, CA), the World Saxophone Congress, June in Buffalo, SoundOn (La Jolla, CA), and the Festival of New American Music (CSUS).

In addition to being a composer, Keller is an accomplished guitarist. He has won and placed in numerous state, regional and national competitions and performed in notable master classes, such as those with Christopher Parkening. With his own ensemble, he has performed at festivals, including the Oregon Fringe Festival (2023), the Festival of New American Music (2013, ’12, ’07), In The Flow (2006, ’08, ’11), and the 2007 SPRING festival of New Music at the University of California, San Diego.

Of late Keller has been making regular use of his vocal talents. While completing his Ph.D. in Music Composition at UCSD, Keller studied voice with Carol Plantamura. While in San Diego, he was a member of Cappella Gloriana, with which he performed in Europe, and for which Keller composed extensively. Keller was a member of Resurrexit and the Tenor Choral Scholar at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (Sacramento, CA). Some of Keller’s recent performances include singing his own arrangements of Monteverdi for countertenor, soprano, and guitar; and Schubert, Dowland, and Gesualdo for guitar and voice with the McAllister Keller Duo; selections from Four Andalusian Love Songs for countertenor and piano by Kurt Erickson; and selections from Récitations by George Aperghis.

Keller holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the UCSD, where he had the privilege to study composition with Roger Reynolds, Anthony Davis, Chaya Czernowin, and Rand Steiger; and live music processing and computer-interactive technologies with Miller Puckett. At UGA, he studied composition with Lewis Nielson, Leonard “Chic” Ball, and William Davis; as well as guitar with John Sutherland.

Keller is an Assistant Professor of Music at Southern Oregon University at SOU. There he directs the Music Industry & Production (MIP) program, and produces the music of MUSIX, the ‘house band’ of MIP, which specializes in composing, performing, and producing music in styles of the popular sphere. Keller’s music and performances are available on the Tzadik and Centaur labels. His ideas can be considered in print in Arcana X, edited by John Zorn (Hips Road), and Dies Irae, Dies Illa: Music in the Apocalyptic Mode Edited by Lorenzo DiTommaso and Colin McAllister.