Nkeiru
Okoye
b. 1972
b. 1972
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Nkeiru
Okoye
b. 1972 |
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Composer, pianist, and conductor, Nkeiru Okoye won her first award for writing music at the age of thirteen, while a student at the Prepatory Division of the Manhattan School of Music. A 1997 protege composer for the Detroit Symphony Orchestrašs African-American Composer Symposium, and a 1995 ASCAP Grant for Young Composers awardee, Okoye has also received recognition from such organizations as the NAACP, the Long Island Composer Alliance, New York Newsday, and the New York State Martin Luther King Jr. Commission. At the age of 16, the native Long-Islander received a scholarship to attend Oberlin Conservatory of Music where she studied composition and the piano. Okoye travelled to London to work with Pulitzer Prize nominee, Ronald Senator, during the Fall of 1990. The following year, she received funding from the Ford-Mellon Foundation for ground breaking research on Black women composers, through which she authored A Finding Aid for the Works of Black Women Composers and began a collection of works by Black women composers for the Oberlin College Conservatory Library. Okoye's compositions can be described as a collage of American, West African, and European musical traditions. In her score, The Genesis, she uses the orchestra to imitate a talking drum ensemble, while elements of pop and funk were used in RUTH an orchestral choreopoem. Traditional folk dances inspired her latest work, Spanish Songs for Tenor and String Orchestra. The composer's unifying musical message has been well received by diverse audiences. Outside of the concert hall premieres of her symphonic works, Okoye has also collaborated with choreo-graphers at inner-city churches for community-oriented events. Additionally, she presents lectures on her own music and the compositions of other African-American composers, and gives inspirational talks to youths. After
receiving her bachelor's degree in music composition in May of 1993, Okoye
was awarded a Trustees Minority Fellowship at Rutgers University where
she is currently pursuing her doctorate in composition under the tutelege
of composer, Noel DaCosta. |
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