Mark Volker
Professor of Music and Coordinator of Composition Studies
College of Music & Performing Arts
Biography
Professor of Music and Coordinator of Composition Studies, composer Mark Volker is known for his engaging combination of musical styles, utilizing electronic and traditional instrumentations. His highly expressive music invites listeners in with clear but unpredictable sounds.
A winner of the SCI/ASCAP international prize, the ERM Masterworks Award, the Tennessee Music Teacher’s Association Composer of the Year Award, an NEA grant, as well as numerous other grants and commissions, Volker’s music has been performed and recorded by prominent performers around the world, including the Nashville Ballet (for whom he has written two full-length ballets), the Orquesta de Baja California, Chatterbird, Luna Nova, So Percussion, eighth blackbird, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Boston Brass, and the Kiev Philharmonic. His music is regularly featured on major festivals, including those of SCI, ICMC, SEAMUS, Nief Norf, and the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival. Recordings of his works are available on Navona/Parma Records (Young Prometheus), Centaur Records (Elemental Forces), and ERMMedia (Materworks of the New Era, vol. 3).
As a conductor, Mark directs the Belmont University New Music Ensemble, the Nashville Composers Collective, and regularly serves as a guest conductor.
Mark is also an active classical guitarist, specializing in the performance of new music for classical guitar in chamber settings. He has premiered numerous chamber and solo works and performs regularly in a duo with New York City Opera flutist John McMurtery.
Recent projects include an hourlong multi-media cantata commissioned by the Chatterbird Ensemble entitled After the Plague, a mandolin concerto written for Ney Marques, and Cetacean Dialogues, commissioned for the Nature of the Future project and incorporating sounds and images of whales with electric guitar and sound synthesis.
A native of Buffalo, NY, Mark holds degrees from the Ithaca College School of Music (BM), the Cincnnati College-Conservatory of Music (MM), and the University of Chicago (PhD). He has studied composition with Greg Woodward, Dana Wilson, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Darrell Handel, Shulamit Ran, Samuel Adler, and Marta Ptaszynska, electroacoustic music with Howard Sandroff and Mara Helmuth, and classical guitar with Pablo Cohen, Edward Flower, Fred Hand, and John Sawers. Prior to his appointment at Belmont, Mark taught at Colgate University. He now lives in Franklin, TN with his wife Alyssa and two children, Molly and Jacob.