Andrew Conklin

Prior to joining University of the Pacific in 2018, Andrew Conklin held teaching positions at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and Stony Brook University.

Conklin’s music has garnered recognition from diverse voices spanning the worlds of popular and classical music. He has appeared as a composer and performer throughout the United States and Europe.

Conklin's work has received critical acclaim in blogs such as "Pitchfork" and "The Line of Best Fit" and has been supported by grants from organizations including the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. As a Millay Arts Fellow, Conklin completed two album-length compositions based on Northern California folk music from the late 1930s, which were subsequently released on New Focus Recordings and Bot Cave Records.

Among his current projects is “Site: Yizkor,” an ongoing collaboration with the multimedia artist Maya Ciarrocchi. The project was presented in part at the Bronx Museum of Art in 2020 and was premiered in full in 2022 at the Sichów Educational Foundation and Roza Centre, Poland. A new iteration of the project was presented at the King Manor Museum in Jamaica, Queens, in May 2023. Conklin was also commissioned by the Chutzpah! Festival to compose a string quartet version of the score, which was premiered in 2022 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Additional projects include three works that respond in different ways to the music of Renaissance composer Vicente Lusitano: “Emendemus in Melius” for concert band (premiered in 2024), “Sun Left” for mixed quartet (to be premiered by Hub New Music in 2024), and “Earth Moves” for percussion octet (to be premiered by University of the Pacific’s Percussion Ensemble in 2024).

A versatile musical collaborator, Conklin earned a 2017 Grammy Award nomination for Best Bluegrass Recording for his contributions to “The Hazel and Alice Sessions” (Spruce and Maple Music) as a core band member of Laurie Lewis & The Right Hands. His guitar and bass playing can be heard on record labels such as Six Degrees, Spruce and Maple, Plug Research, City Slang, BAG Productions or Arhoolie. He has contributed as a guitarist to recordings by Ben Goldberg, Meklit Hadero and Michael Rocketship. He has also toured extensively in the United States and Europe as a guitarist and bassist with indie rock bands, bluegrass groups and improvising combos.

As a composer, Conklin has enjoyed fruitful partnerships with musicians from some of today's most inquisitive new music ensembles, including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, Ensemble Mise-En, Spektral Quartet, Ensemble Connect, Tala Rasa Percussion, the Calidore String Quartet, Splinter Reeds, the Microcosmos Quartet, Hub New Music and Earplay.

Conklin also writes about music theory, composition and the pedagogy of music theory and composition. He has published articles and presented papers on these topics in "Music Theory Online,” “NewMusicBox," Pedagogy into Practice, CASMEC, CMEA and the Society of Composers National Conference.

Selected scholarly and creative work:

2024 – “Emendemus in Melius” (Arrangement of Vicente Lusitano’s motet for concert band)

2023 – “Site: Yizkor - King Manor” (Performance at the King Manor Museum, Jamaica, Queens)

2022 – “Site: Yizkor - Poland Tour” (Sichów Educational Foundation; Róża Centre for International and Interdisciplinary Art and Cooperation)

2022 – Paper: “The Guided Tour as a Contextual Listening Assessment” (Pedagogy into Practice Conference).

2021 – Article: “Wanted: Orchestral Scores By Composers Not Named Beethoven” (NewMusicBox)

2021 – Premiere: “I Am Not Prokofiev,” for solo piano (Earplay, First Mondays Concert Series)

2020 – Album Release: “Song Collector” (Bot Cave Records)

2020 – Collaborative multimedia art exhibit: “The Root” (Telephone)

2020 – Guitarist: Ben Goldberg’s Symphony No. 9 (BAG Production Records)

2019 – Article: “Writing Wrong Notes: Chromatic Clashes in the Music of Tune-Yards” (Music Theory Online)

2019 – Premiere: “Site Yizkor” (work in progress) (Center for New Music, San Francisco)

2019 – Album release: “Field Reports” (New Focus Recordings)