Info/Contact
BIO/CV/WORKLIST
I am a composer and organist. I studied composition at SUNY Purchase with Suzanne Farrin, Du Yun, and Huang Ruo, and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Erik Lund and Erin Gee. I also studied organ and harpsichord with David Higgs and Bill Porter at the Eastman School of Music.
I have held positions teaching Composition, Music Theory, and Musicianship at the University of Illinois, Illinois Wesleyan University and DePauw University. I’ve also taught composition and music theory to middle- and high-school aged students at both the University of Illinois Pre-College Academy and the Illinois Summer Youth Music program for several years.
My academic research focuses on the ways in which music can be genuinely communicative, and the political, ethical, interpersonal, and pedagogical implications of communicative music. This involves analyses of my own music, as well as the music of Helmut Lachenmann and György Kurtág.
My music is influenced by philosophy, by my childhood experience as a choirboy, by filmmakers like Béla Tarr and David Lynch, and by artists like Jeff Wall, Charles Ray, and John Ashbery. In the last couple years, an attempt to articulate the political and ethical possibilities of music and musical composition has become an increasingly central motivating force.
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Please send commissioning or score requests to williampearson@depauw.edu
Please contact me for score or commissioning requests!