The music of Clint Needham has been described as “wildly entertaining” and “stunning... brilliantly orchestrated” by The New York Times, as well as “well-crafted and arresting...riveting” by the Herald Times. Needham recently served as the Music Alive: New Partnerships Composer-in-Residence with the Albany Symphony where his work “Everyday Life” was premiered, and was the Andrew W. Mellon Composer/Educator-in-Residence during the orchestra’s 2014/2015 season.
Needham’s orchestral music has been commissioned and performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Omaha Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Spokane Symphony, Aspen Concert Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Sioux City Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Texarkana Symphony, and Symphony in C, among others. Various chamber groups including Alarm Will Sound, the American Brass Quintet, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Chicago Ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, Fifth House Ensemble, Hawthorne String Quartet, New York Classical Players, Dinosaur Annex, President’s Own Marine Band Brass Quintet, Camerata Aberta, Quintet Attacca, and the Stanford Wind Quintet have given performances of his chamber music across the country, as well as in Europe, Brazil, Japan, and Australia.
Upcoming performances of his work include those given by the Albany Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Cleveland Chamber Symphony in collaboration with Verb Ballets, Grand Rapids Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, Iowa State University Orchestra, Da Capo Chamber Players, Space Coast Symphony, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Wind Ensemble, the Choral Arts Initiative, Factory Seconds Brass Trio, and Imani Winds.
Needham’s music has been recognized with numerous awards including the International Barlow Prize, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Project 440 Commission, Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, the William Schuman Prize/BMI Student Composer Award, the Jacob Druckman Prize from the Aspen Music Festival, First Prize in the International Ticheli Composition Contest, the Heckscher Prize from Ithaca College, a Lee Ettelson Composer Award and the coveted Underwood New Music Commission from the American Composers Orchestra. Clint is also the recipient of a 2014 Cleveland Creative Workforce Fellowship with funding from the Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.
As an educator, Needham currently serves as Composer-in-Residence/Assistant Professor of Music at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. He has served as an Associate Instructor at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music as well as Assistant Professor of Music at Ohio Wesleyan University. He holds degrees from Indiana University, where he was a four-year Jacobs School of Music doctoral fellow in composition, and from the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. His principal teachers include Claude Baker, Loris Chobanian, David Dzubay, Michael Gandolfi, Per Mårtensson, Sven- David Sandström, and Richard Wernick. He has also studied with Robert Beaser, Syd Hodkinson, Christopher Rouse, and George Tsontakis at the Aspen Music Festival as a Susan and Ford Schumann composition fellow and with Mario Davidovsky at the Wellesley Composers Conference as a composition fellow.
