Tim Edwards

Timothy Dwight Edwards is a composer, scholar and educator. His music has been described as having "a sense of purposeful direction that kept us anxious to hear what would happen next" (Chicago Sun Times). His music has been performed by numerous ensembles including the Lincoln Trio, the New York Virtuoso Singers, Eighth Blackbird, Pinotage, CUBE, the Asparagus Valley Contemporary Music Ensemble, Duo Ahlert & Schwab, Wu Man, and the Contemporary Chamber Players, the West Village Chorale, and the Chicago Chamber Collective. His choral music has been featured in the past two Composers' competition Concerts of the New York Virtuoso Singers (2007, 2009). His chamber and electronc music has been presented at many concerts and festivals including the SIU Outside the Box festival (2008, 2009), The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS 2006 & 2007), Sonic Impact at the Museum of Contemporary Art 2006, Eurofest Zupfmusik 2006 in Bamberg, Germany, the 15th Annual Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival 2006, Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art (2006), the North Ameriacn Saxophone Alliance Conference 2006, Electronic Music Midwest (2005, Kansas City), and the BGSU New Music and Art Festival (2004), Ragdale Fellowship (2004), New Music DePaul (2004).

He has wide ranging experience in the classroom, having taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst prior to joining the faculty at Columbia College Chicago. At Columbia he has taught in both the Music and the Audio Arts and Acoustics Departments. This experience has included courses on music theory, analysis, orchestration, history and composition as well as MIDI, computer music, and digital recording theory and production. Currently he teaches on the faculty of the Department of Music, and he is 2009 Technology Fellow at Columbia College Chicago through the center for Instructional Technology and the Department of Audio Arts and Acoustics. This fellowship has facilitated the creation of new software for Macintosh and Windows to teach digital audio concepts to Audio Arts and Acoustics students. Through a similar fellowship in 2004 he created software to help music students drill in the areas of rhythmic dictation and sight reading. He has also developed software for exploring the monochord, for emulating analog synthesizers, for complex audio processing applications in live performance, and for teaching the alphabet to toddlers.

He has also taught young children, having participated in community outreach through the American Composers Forum at Genvieve Melody Elementary School in the Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, having taught at the Merit School of Music, and having been Director of Vocal Music at Ray Elementary School in Hyde Park.

He graduated magna cum laude with Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from Amherst College, where he studied composition with Lewis Spratlan, and won the Sundquist Prize for creative achievement in music. He also holds a Master of Music degree in African American Music and Jazz Composition and Arranging from the University of Massachusetts. There his compositions and arrangements for big band have been performed numerous times. Edwards' studies in music composition brought him to Chicago for doctoral studies where his teachers were Ralph Shapey, Shulamit Ran, John Eaton, and briefly Andrew Imbrie.

Dr. Edwards is treasurer of the Chicago Composers' Consortium, a member of the Society for Electroacoutic Music in the United States, The Society of Composers, the Chicago Composers Forum, the College Music Society, the American Bach Sociey, and the Riemenschneider Bach Institute.