COMPOSERS FORUM:
TURNING IDEAS INTO MUSIC
WATCH THE COMPOSERS FORUM RECORDED FROM ZOOM DIRECTLY BELOW
COMPOSERS FORUM: TURNING IDEAS INTO MUSIC
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2021 11 AM - NOON (MST) ZOOM WEBINAR Moderator: Norman Huynh, Music Director Composers: Scott Lee, Composer-in-Residence and Eric Funk, Composer Music Director Norman Huynh will moderate the Bozeman Symphony's virtual panel discussion, “Composers Forum: Turning Ideas into Music,” featuring our Composer-in-Residence Scott Lee and local composer Eric Funk. Together, they will discuss how composers take people, places, and ideas, and represent them through music. NOTE: Please register ahead of time for the Zoom webinar by clicking the button below. |
COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES:
SCOTT LEE, COMPOSER

Praised as “colorful” and “engaging” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Scott Lee's music often takes inspiration from popular genres, exploring odd-meter grooves and interlocking hockets while featuring pointillistic orchestration and extended performance techniques. His music marries the traditional intricacy of classical form with the more body-centered and visceral language of contemporary popular music, creating complex music of the present with broad appeal. The Berkshire Edge described the world premiere of his Slack Tide at Tanglewood Music Center as having “moments both of calm and maximum tension...we’ve never heard anything like it.”
Lee has worked with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, Symphony in C, the JACK Quartet, yMusic, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and pop artist Ben Folds. Recent commissioners include the Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music Festival, Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, loadbang, and the Raleigh Civic Symphony. Notable honors include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.
Lee is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Florida School of Music. Lee earned a PhD in Composition at Duke University, and also holds degrees from the Peabody Institute and Vanderbilt University.
Lee has worked with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, Symphony in C, the JACK Quartet, yMusic, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and pop artist Ben Folds. Recent commissioners include the Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music Festival, Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, loadbang, and the Raleigh Civic Symphony. Notable honors include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.
Lee is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Florida School of Music. Lee earned a PhD in Composition at Duke University, and also holds degrees from the Peabody Institute and Vanderbilt University.
ERIC FUNK, COMPOSER

Eric Funk’s “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Op 71” won the 2018 Global Music Award "Gold Medal - Best of Show” honors: Gold Medal: classical, Gold Medal: composition/composer.
A former student of Tomas Svoboda, Sandor Veress, and Krzysztof Penderecki in the 1970s, Mr. Funk has composed numerous works, including nine symphonies, four operas, six ballet scores, three large works for chorus and orchestra, nineteen concertos, several orchestral tone poems, and numerous works for chamber ensembles, solo instruments, and vocal works. Eric Funk just completed a new solo violin work entitled "Melisma, Op 147," homage and farewell to our dear friend Andre Melief, the recording by Vilmos Olah can be heard on the works/recording page of this site. Prominent premieres of his works include “From the Dreams of Montana Children” [Carnegie Hall, NY]; his one-act solo opera-ballet for contralto and ballet troupe, "Akhmatova," based on key texts from the Russian poet's life; his solo concerto "Vili: Concerto for the Violin Alone, Op 109" (now an award winning PBS-TV documentary "The Violin Alone," was awarded six 2018 Emmy Awards: "Music Composition," Best Documentary-Cultural, Director, Photography, Editing, Audio; "Best Documentary" 2017 Chicago Amarcord Arthouse Television Awards,) triple string quartet (The Old Masters,) commissioned by New Music USA for the Cassatt String Quartet, and "Variations on a Theme by Jan Hanus, Op. 127" for violin and string orchestra which was awarded The American Prize in Composition Special Judges' Citation as "Best Concerto of the Year" 2017. His newest commissioned score, a piano trio "Les Soeurs, Op. 142" was written for the renowned Ahn Trio and the James Sewell Ballet Company and premiered in Minneapolis in 2017. Funk most recently created a transcription for piano trio for the Ahn Trio of his 3 BeBop tunes: Flyswatter, Raid, and Deet.
A former student of Tomas Svoboda, Sandor Veress, and Krzysztof Penderecki in the 1970s, Mr. Funk has composed numerous works, including nine symphonies, four operas, six ballet scores, three large works for chorus and orchestra, nineteen concertos, several orchestral tone poems, and numerous works for chamber ensembles, solo instruments, and vocal works. Eric Funk just completed a new solo violin work entitled "Melisma, Op 147," homage and farewell to our dear friend Andre Melief, the recording by Vilmos Olah can be heard on the works/recording page of this site. Prominent premieres of his works include “From the Dreams of Montana Children” [Carnegie Hall, NY]; his one-act solo opera-ballet for contralto and ballet troupe, "Akhmatova," based on key texts from the Russian poet's life; his solo concerto "Vili: Concerto for the Violin Alone, Op 109" (now an award winning PBS-TV documentary "The Violin Alone," was awarded six 2018 Emmy Awards: "Music Composition," Best Documentary-Cultural, Director, Photography, Editing, Audio; "Best Documentary" 2017 Chicago Amarcord Arthouse Television Awards,) triple string quartet (The Old Masters,) commissioned by New Music USA for the Cassatt String Quartet, and "Variations on a Theme by Jan Hanus, Op. 127" for violin and string orchestra which was awarded The American Prize in Composition Special Judges' Citation as "Best Concerto of the Year" 2017. His newest commissioned score, a piano trio "Les Soeurs, Op. 142" was written for the renowned Ahn Trio and the James Sewell Ballet Company and premiered in Minneapolis in 2017. Funk most recently created a transcription for piano trio for the Ahn Trio of his 3 BeBop tunes: Flyswatter, Raid, and Deet.