Artistic Board

The Artistic Board of Musiqa consists of composition faculty from Moores School of Music of the University of Houston and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. The members of our Artistic Board – Karim Al-Zand, Artistic Director Anthony Brandt, Pierre Jalbert, and Marcus Karl Maroney – have been recognized with numerous international honors, including the Rome Prize, a Koussevitzky Commission, and three Aaron Copland fellowships.

Karim Al-Zand

Artistic Board Member

The music of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand (b.1970) has been called “strong and startlingly lovely” (Boston Globe). His compositions are wide-ranging, from settings of classical Arabic poetry to scores for dance and pieces for young audiences. His works explore connections between music and other arts, and draw inspiration from diverse sources such as 19th-century graphic art, fables of the world, folksong and jazz.

Facebook

Pierre Jalbert

Artistic Board Member

Earning widespread notice for his richly colored and superbly crafted scores, Pierre Jalbert (b. 1967) has developed a musical language that is engaging, expressive, and deeply personal. Among his many honors are the Rome Prize, the BBC Masterprize, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2007 Stoeger Award, given biennially “in recognition of significant contributions to the chamber music repertory”, and a 2010 award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Facebook

Anthony Brandt

Artistic Director

Composer Anthony Brandt (b. 1961) earned his degrees from California Institute of the Arts (MA ’87) and Harvard University (BA ’83, PhD ’93). Dr. Brandt’s catalogue includes three chamber operas, as well as orchestral, chamber, vocal, theater, dance, and television scores. His honors include a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet-the-Composer, the Houston Arts Alliance, the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance Program. Recordings of his music are available on the Albany, Crystal, and Navona Live labels. Dr. Brandt and neuroscientist David Eagleman have co-authored The Runaway Species: How Creativity Remakes the World, which is being published in thirteen countries. Dr. Brandt has written extensively about music cognition and creativity and is currently a co-investigator in a study of music and stroke recovery at Methodist Hospital’s Center for Performing Arts Medicine. He is a Professor of Theory and Composition at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.

Marcus Karl Maroney

Artistic Board Member

Marcus Karl Maroney studied composition and horn at The University of Texas at Austin (B.M.) and Yale School of Music (M.M., D.M.A.). His principal composition teachers were Joseph Schwantner, Ned Rorem, Joan Tower and Dan Welcher. In 1999, he received a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center, the First Hearing award from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and an ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer’s award. Other awards and fellowships followed, including a Charles Ives Scholarship from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Music 2000 Prize from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, further awards from ASCAP, two residencies at the Copland House and consecutive Woods Chandler Memorial awards from Yale University.