Cary Boyce bio (updated 7-4-2022)
Cary Boyce is artistic co-director and composer-in-residence of the production group and new music ensemble, Aguavá New Music Studio, which specializes in projects involving contemporary music. His music has been heard around the world in concerts and festivals in more than 25 countries, on nationally syndicated public radio and television, and in two films by Prix-de-Rome-winning director Evelyne Clavaud, Aria ou les rumeurs de la Villa Medicís (1996), and her artistic documentary Mandiargues: L’amateur d’imprudence (2000). Boyce’s credits include original music for the soundtrack of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) documentary American Horizons: The Photography of Art Sinsabaugh (2008), and music for Harp Dreams (2011), the PBS documentary on the USA International Harp Competition that won three regional Emmy Awards in 2011, including original music.
Dr. Boyce is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including awards from Arts International, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Indiana Arts Commission, and Humanities Washington. In 2006 he was awarded an ASCAP 2006 Rudolf Nissim Prize “Special Distinction” Award for his oratorio Dreams within a Dream which was commissioned and premiered with the Bloomington Chamber Singers in 2003. He is one of eight composers commissioned to set The Vonnegut Requiem that premiered at the “Granfalloon” in Bloomington, Indiana in 2019. Boyce’s music has been featured in the United States in concerts, festivals, film, radio, and television including NPR and PBS, and internationally on the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and France 3.
In his spare time, Dr Boyce is the president and CEO of Spokane Public Radio, a small network in the Pacific Northwest, and he teaches composition part-time at Whitworth University. He taught all levels of music theory as a teaching fellow at Indiana where he also developed and taught “Music in Culture,” perhaps the first interdisciplinary music course at Indiana University.
Dr. Boyce has been an active participant in diverse artistic and musical outreach endeavors of his community, not only as a composer but also as a producer and music essayist with public radio, online journals, major orchestras, and community presses. His music is published by G. Schirmer, Boosey and Hawkes, and Aquavá New Music Studio. He remains active as a tenor, pianist, and conductor as well.
Boyce was born in Santa Rosa, California. He earned a doctorate in composition (DM, 1994) at Indiana University Bloomington, studying composition with Claude Baker, piano with Asaf Zohar, and conducting with Jan Harrington and Robert Porco. He took his Master of Music degree at University of North Texas while studying composition with Martin Mailman and piano with Joseph Banowetz. He studied at California State University, Sacramento where he studied composition with Robert Aichele, piano with Frank Wasko and Tom Hulse, and voice with Claudia Kitka.
“A Garden of Roses is important because it’s good in every way music can be good, and it can provide pleasure to audiences of every age, cultural background and level of sophistication …”
—The Spokesman Review
“Fluent and creative.”
—Washington Post
“Such perfection! … A concert not to be missed.”
—Ha’aretz
“Lush vocal polyphony and his careful control of harmony enable this work to stand alongside the very best music in this vein.”
—American Record Guide
“A formidable composer whose technique and lyric gifts are exceptional.”
—John Corigliano, Composer, New York
“Dreams within a Dream, Boyce’s new oratorio commissioned and performed by the Bloomington Chamber Singers is…an honest, inspired, and deftly crafted work, one of scope; of carefully designed, satisfying, back-and-forth shifts from tension to relief; of musical elements fitting poetic content; of artistic worth.”
—Bloomington Herald-Times
“Three extraordinary pieces by American composer Cary Boyce …compare and contrast quite favorably with spiritualists/minimalists Pärt and Tavener. Noche oscura is a haunting setting of words by the Spanish monk and mystic St. John of the Cross, and its bittersweet intensity lingers long after the melody has faded. Boyce’s setting of the Marian Ave Maria is as close to a masterpiece as you can come in four minutes. Nightshade is for classical music fans who know where Freddy the Freeloader comes from…Hey MacArthur folks! Give that boy a grant and some Ritalin so he can spend more time composing!”
—Sequenza 21
“It’s wonderful, clear, evocative music, all of it, and the performances are beautiful. There is a timeless flow that comes through in each work and I found myself settling in to listen … a neo-renaissance feel that clearly takes acoustic space into consideration as a compositional element. It’s very striking.”
—Libby Larsen, Composer
“[The Ave Maria is] A stunning work, absolutely marvelous.”
—Dale Warland, Conductor, Minneapolis
“Refined, full of creativity and imagination.”
—Mario Lavista, Composer, National Conservatory of Music, Mexico City
“A soaring, effulgent voice all his own.”
Bloomington Herald-Times
“Tender and beautiful.”
—Sacramento Bee
