Piano and composition profoessor receives his 10th American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers award
Kent Holliday of Blacksburg, professor of piano and composition in Virginia Tech's Department of Music in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, has been honored with an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) ASCAPLUS 2007 Award.
The award is based upon the unique prestige value of each writer’s catalog of original compositions and granted by an ASCAPLUS independent award panel for ASCAP’s Concert Music Division.
Holliday’s creative artistry has garnered ten ASCAPLUS Awards during the last 15 years. His 2007 award is based on four areas of accomplishments: awards, performances, recordings, and publication. In March 2006, Holliday received an honorable mention from the prestigious and highly competitive Michigan Music Teachers Association Composition Competition for his Temporal Longitudes for Flute and Piano.
Holliday’s Tango Exótico was performed by renowned pianist Jeri-Mae Astolfi at five venues: Henderson State University, University of Southern Florida, Florida State University, Pensacola Junior College, and at Trinity University for the joint national conference of the College Music Society and the Society of Composers Inc. (SCI).
Tango Exótico was also recorded by Astolfi in December 2006, for a special CD distributed to all members of the Society of Composers Inc. This CD was No. 2 in the SCI Composers Recording Series. On faculty at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Astolfi is highly regarded as an expert on new music and regularly participates at various national and regional conferences where she lectures on, performs, and premiers new literature for piano.
Holliday’s Sonatina for Alto Sax and Piano, published by Dorn Publications Inc. in the summer of 2007, and his Dances from Colca Canyon soon to be published by Leupold, join his growing list of over thirty published compositions.
Holliday studied composition with Paul Fetler and Dominick Argento at the University of Minnesota, where he received his Ph.D. in music theory-composition in 1968. He subsequently did postgraduate work in Paris, France, and at Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire. In 1969, he worked with Pietro Grossi on computer music in the Studio di Fonologia S2FM in Florence, Italy, and in 1988 studied composition on research-leave from Virginia Tech with Witold Szalonek of the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin, Germany.
Holliday was the winner of the Virginia Music Teachers Association Composition Competition in 1983, 1996, and 1999. His Four Evocations won first place in the New Music Delaware Composition Competition in 1996. He has taught music composition, theory, history, piano, and selected courses in the humanities at Virginia Tech since 1974. His book, Reproducing Pianos Past and Present, was published by Mellen Press in 1989.
Listen to Holliday’s Tango Exotico .
The Department of Music at Virginia Tech provides professional music training to select music students and enhances the cultural life of the university, region and the Commonwealth. These are accomplished through teaching, professional service, artistic performance, creativity, and research. The Department of Music, located in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, also provides high-quality training to a wide variety of ensembles and courses for large numbers of non-music majors.
