David Fulmer

Faces of Awilda for ensemble with large-scale percussion section, re: Awilda by Jaume Plensa

A leader in his generation of composer-performers, David Fulmer (*1981) has garnered numerous international accolades for his bold compositional aesthetic and thrilling performances as composer, violinist, and conductor.

The success of his award-winning Violin Concerto at Lincoln Center in 2010 earned international attention and resulted in immediate engagement to perform the work with major orchestras and at festivals in the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, and Australia. Fulmer made his European debut performing and recording his concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Matthias Pintscher in 2011. That same year, Fulmer made his debut at Tanglewood appearing with the work.

David Fulmer

A surge of new commissions include the Salzburg Foundation for the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Heidelberg Festival for the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and violinist Stefan Jackiw, RTÉ National Symphony of Ireland and clarinettist Carol McGonnell, Carnegie Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, and a commission from BMI for a new work for cellist Jay Campbell and his Carnegie Hall debut recital. Fulmer’s work will be premiered this upcoming season by the New York Philharmonic on their inaugural Biennial CONTACT! concert series. Fulmer’s hour-long cycle for saxophone and ensemble, On Night, composed for saxophonist Eliot Gattegno, has been featured in numerous music festivals worldwide – most recently at the Slowind Festival with the Slovenian Philharmonic – and will be commercially released this summer with the Argento Ensemble and the composer conducting on the Tzadik label.

This season, Fulmer was the recipient of both the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Carlos Surinach Commissioning Award from BMI. He is the first American ever to receive Grand Prize at the International Edvard Grieg Competition for Composers, which he was awarded in 2010. He also has received the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the BMI Composer Award, and the Charles Ives Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Other honours and awards include a special citation from the Minister of Education of Brazil for Fulmer’s series of lectures on music, the Hannah Komanoff Scholarship in Composition (2006-07), the Dorothy Hill Klotzman Grant from The Juilliard School (2005), and the highly coveted George Whitefield Chadwick Gold Medal from the New England Conservatory (2004). Fulmer recently graduated from The Juilliard School where he received his doctorate, having studied composition with Milton Babbitt and violin with Robert Mann. In 2009, he was appointed to the faculty of Columbia University.

Fulmer appears regularly and records often with the premiere new music ensembles including the Argento New Music Project, Speculum Musicae, the Group for Contemporary Music, the New York New Music Ensemble, and also with the Second Instrumental Unit, an ensemble that he co-founded and directs. He has appeared recently on the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center, Live from Lincoln Center broadcasts, and the Center’s annual festivals.

In addition to academic and performing engagements, he regularly presents lectures on myriad musical topics around the globe, with recent appearances at the Philadelphia Modern Languages Association Conference; International Society of the Arts, Mathematics, and Architecture (Germany); BRIDGES International Mathematics Conference (Maryland); Banff Centre; Hildegard Von Bingen Society.