Max Grafe
Max Grafe writes music characterized by “jagged declamations and muffled filigree” (Gramophone) with the aim of exploring the untapped dramatic and narrative potential of modernist musical vocabularies. Max’s music has been commissioned and programmed by a wide range of ensembles—including the New York Philharmonic, the New York New Music Ensemble, Quince Ensemble, ensembleNEWSRQ, and Duo Entre-Nous—and has been featured at numerous music festivals across the country, including the Tanglewood Music Center, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and RED NOTE New Music Festival. Current and upcoming projects include collaborations with Hypercube, saxophonist Don-Paul Kahl, and pianist Benjamin Hochman. Max is a founding member of New York-based composer collective ICEBERG New Music, which recently presented its eighth annual season in collaboration with Vicky Chow and Alice Teyssier. Max’s music appears on commercial recordings by the New York Philharmonic, Quince Ensemble, Duo Entre-Nous, pianists Jenny Lin and Mika Sasaki, and harpist Emily Levin.
Max has received several of the most prestigious awards available to emerging American composers, including a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a William Schuman Prize from BMI, two consecutive Palmer Dixon Prizes from the Juilliard School, and a Morton Gould Young Composer Award from ASCAP. He is the winner of the 2023 RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Competition and the 2023 Roy Minoff Composition Competition from Kent State University.
Max is a member of the music faculties at Montclair State University and the Kaufman Music Center, and the current Composer in Residence at Kinhaven Music School. He received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Juilliard School in 2018, a Master of Music degree from Juilliard in 2013 and a Bachelor of Music degree from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in 2011. Further studies have taken place at Mannes College of Music, the Freie Universität Berlin, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Tanglewood Music Center. Max’s music is available through the American Composers Alliance.
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