Marcos Balter

Life and Professional Career

Balter began his music studies at age five at the Conservatório Musical Heitor Villa-Lobos, and was admitted to the Conservatório Brasileiro de Música at age eleven. During his late teenage years, Balter studied privately with composer Almeida Prado and pianist Linda Bustani. He moved to the United States in 1996 to study music composition at Texas Christian University and later on at Northwestern University. His main composition teachers were Augusta Read Thomas, Amy Williams, and Jay Alan Yim.

His works have been programmed by prominent music organizations including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra MusicNOW Series, New World Symphony, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and the Fromm Music Series at Harvard University. Past honors include commissions from Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, the Fromm Music Foundation, and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Tanglewood Music Center (Leonard Bernstein Fellowship), Lawrence University, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.

He currently lives in New York City, and is an Associate Professor of Music Theory/Composition at Montclair State University. He was the Director of Music Composition Studies at Columbia College Chicago from 2009 to 2014, Visiting Professor of Composition at the University of Pittsburgh in 2008-09, and Visiting Professor at Northwestern University in 2010.

Musical Style

Balter's eclectic and unique compositional voice draws from several sources ranging from Spectral Music to Postminimalism, with a special emphasis on unusual sound colors and complex rhythmic patterns. His music often blurs the boundaries between Modernism and Post-Modernism, and is embraced by a wide array of musical trends. His works frequently explore the individualistic qualities of the performers for whom they are written. To that extent, his particularly close relationship with artists like the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, and violist Nadia Sirota have decidedly shaped his musical language into what critics describe as "a fiercely imaginative palette of instrumental and vocal sounds rare in today's dour, post-classical new music" (The Chicago Tribune), "surrealistic" (The New York Times), and "a virtuosic equilibrium of colliding particles" (Boston Globe).

His catalogue includes works for solo instruments, electroacoustic music, chamber music, and orchestral works.