First Name
Bill

Last Name
Ryan

Title
Composition/Director of New Music Ensemble, Professor

Email
[email protected]

Office Phone
616-331-3087

Office Location
2757 HCPA

Website
http://www.billryanmusic.com

Biography
For more than three decades, Bill Ryan has been a driving force in contemporary music. Through his work as a composer, conductor, producer, and educator, he has brought the music of our time to audiences across the United States and beyond. He has received the American Composers Forum Champion of New Music Award, the Michigan Governor’s Award in Arts Education, and the Distinguished Contribution to a Discipline Award at Grand Valley State University. Bill’s compositions are energetic, evocative, and deeply personal. They have been described as “constantly threatening to burst at the seams, were those seams not so artfully structured...rarely has music this earthy been so elegant” (Gramophone). His work has been performed across the country and internationally throughout Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia. A central part of Bill’s career has been creating opportunities for new music and the musicians who perform it. Through his Open Ears and Free Play concert series, he has presented over 80 concerts and earned national recognition with three ASCAP/Chamber Music America Awards for Adventurous Programming. With contemporary music ensembles he established at Suffolk County Community College in New York and Grand Valley State University, he has commissioned and premiered over 100 compositions throughout the United States, as well as produced six critically acclaimed commercial recordings.