bio
With works hailed as "clever, elegantly crafted and deliriously charming," (Steve Smith, Night After Night), and "possessed of "a flair for colorful orchestration" (Harvey Steiman, San Francisco Classical Voice), composer Ethan Wickman's music has been performed by such groups as the Aspen Concert Orchestra, the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony, the Newton Symphony, Zeitgeist, the Avalon String Quartet, Flexible Music, the Gryphon Trio and many others in venues in the U.S. and abroad. He has received grants and commissions from Barlow (twice), Meet the Composer, the American Composers Forum, and was recently awarded a commission from the Wisconsin Music Teachers Association as the first place winner of its annual composition competition. His incidental music was featured on two episodes of the nationally broadcast PBS series Ancestors. His orchestral work Night Prayers Ascending won the Jacob Druckman Prize at the Aspen Music Festival, and was a finalist in the 25th Annual ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Orchestral Composition Competition. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Aspen Music Festival, the Norfolk Contemporary Music Workshop/Yale Summer School of Music, the Wellesley Composers Conference, and Fulbright (Madrid, Spain). Current projects include a new work for Zeitgeist, a featured piece for violinist-composer Piotr Szewczyk's "Violin Futura" project, a new work for world-renowned Euphoniumists Brian Bowman, Neal Corwell, Steven Meade, John Mueller and David Werden, and a forthcoming CD release of Namasté by the Avalon String Quartet on the Albany Records label. Beginning this year Ethan Wickman will serve a five-year term on the board of advisors for the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University.
Wickman holds a DMA in Composition from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, with additional degrees from Boston University (Mus.M.) and Brigham Young University (BM). Formerly Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Indiana University-South Bend, he is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
