Ian Krouse
Born in 1956 in Olney, Maryland, composer Ian Krouse has been hailed by Gramophone magazine as “one of the most communicative and intriguing young composers on the music scene today.” Of his well-known Bulerías, Soundboarddescribed his music as “absorbing, brutal, beautiful, and harsh, all at the same time.” He is widely known for his pioneering development of the guitar quartet, of which he has composed eleven to date, including the epic Quartet No. 5 “Labyrinth” (On A Theme of Led Zeppelin), most of which have received multiple recordings and are now featured regularly in the touring repertories of the leading groups of our time. Several of his solo guitar works, most notably Air (In the Irish style), Dror Yikro, and Variations On A Moldavian Hora, have received multiple recordings and are performed regularly by guitarists all over the world.

Though some have described his music as “universalism” or “totalism”, the eminent American composer Richard Danielpour has drawn a comparison between Krouse’s music and that of the great Hungarian composer, Béla Bartók, in that both composers rely heavily upon folk, popular, and world music influences. Though certainly true in Krouse’s case, many of his works also draw much from Renaissance, Baroque and Medieval music.

His most important work is the epic Armenian Requiem, Op. 66, scored for four vocal soloists, string quartet, organ, Armenian instruments, children’s chorus, choir, and orchestra, which received its premiere to general acclaim on 22 April 2015, at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Commissioned by the Lark Musical Society to commemorate the 100th year anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian Requiem is the first ever large-scale concert setting of the traditional Armenian requiem liturgy. The debut recording of the work was released in March 2019 on Naxos (8.559846–47) to considerable acclaim.

In addition to hundreds of performances annually by guitarists and guitar quartets all around the world, his works have been performed or recorded by the Orquesta Escuela Carlos Chávez, (which recently performed and recorded his massive Second Symphony – Fantasía Federico García Lorca), Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Seocho Philharmonia (Seoul, Korea), Ukraine Radio and Television Orchestra, Cairo Symphony Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, UCLA Philharmonia, USC Symphony, Mexico City and Pasadena Chamber Orchestras, the Auréole Trio, Dinosaur Annex, 20th Century Consort, Remix, Debussy Trio, Pacific Serenades, Dilijan Ensemble, May Festival Chorus, and Los Angeles Chamber Singers, to name a few.

Throughout his career he has received many awards and grants, including an AT&T American Encores Grant (for the second performance of an orchestral work), opera development grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and several from the American Composers Forum and Meet the Composer, as well as those from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the Atlantic Richfield Corporation. He has won the BMI Award and the Gaudeamus Festival Prize, was a semi-finalist in the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, and a finalist in both the Barlow Competition and Big Ten Commissioning Project. His works have been recorded and released on the Foghorn, Brain, Chandos, Delos, GHA, GSP, Koch, Lisaddell, Navona, Naxos, RCM, Urtext Digital Classics, and Voces de Iberoamérica labels, among others. He is a Distinguished Professor of music at the Herb Alpert School of Music at the University of California, Los Angeles.