With music of luminous vocal resonance, percussive intensity, and shimmering instrumentation, internationally-performed composer Carrie Magin traverses a wide emotional range with her fresh and universal voice. This “wonderful emerging composer” (conductor Brett Scott) creates music described as having “an appealing lyrical quality” (mezzo-soprano Lynne McMurtry) and “playful and fun, and then filled with such a sad sense of longing and deep contemplation…so beautiful,” (poet Shannon Rayne).
Though her past work focused mainly on instrumental music (commissions by the Akron Youth Symphony, percussionist Kenyon Williams, and the Promethean Saxophone Quartet), Carrie Magin’s recent interests revolve around the relationship between sung or spoken text and music (recent commissions by Georgia College Choral Ensembles, the University of Cincinnati CCM Chorale, the UC Women’s Chorus, bass trombonist Russ Zokaites, and the Immanuel Presbyterian Choir in Cincinnati, OH). “Be a Voice, Sky,” a concert of Magin’s works presented in Cincinnati in 2013 highlighted her collaborations with local and international poets, and in 2014 she collaborated with University of Cincinnati Professor Don Bogen on “Elegies” for CCM Chorale and Café Momus Contemporary Ensemble. Also in 2014, she collaborated with Vancouver-based poet Shannon Rayne on “Coffee Stained,” a sassy, sensitive, and jazz-like 15-minute work for bass trombone, piano, and narrator. “Coffee Stained” was premiered by “Transformative Perspectives” at the ArtSEEDZ Festival in the Netherlands in May of 2014.
As a marimba-focused percussionist, Carrie Magin has worked closely with the renowned marimbists/percussionists Keiko Abe, Nancy Zeltsman, Bogdan Bacanu, and Peter Sadlo. She has frequently performed her own work and had various performances in Europe including solo and ensemble concerts in the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, and France.
Additional honors include a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship, a Strategic Opportunity Stipend from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the invitation to be a Visiting Guest Composer at Minnesota State University Moorhead. In June of 2014, Magin was a Composer-in-Residence with The Fiati 5 (Chamber Music Campania in Italy). In addition, ensembles that have read and performed her work include the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Ottawa New Music Creators, ascend voices, and performers Tim Munro (eighth blackbird), Alison D’Amato (Eastman School of Music), and Steven Philcox (University of Toronto).
Carrie Magin holds degrees from the University of Michigan (Bachelor’s Degrees in Composition and Percussion) and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (Master’s Degree and Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Composition) as well as certificates from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and the Janácek Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno, Czech Republic. She is currently Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at Houghton College in upstate NY, and she is a Composition faculty member at Interlochen Arts Camp.