Black Hills State University

Students will have daily one-on-one composition lessons with our composition staff and at the conclusion of the music academy have a fully formed piece of music for either string quartet or wind quintet. Students will work and collaborate directly with the professional musicians of the SDSO who will give a public performance of their completed compositions.

Theodore Wiprud is a composer, educator, arts leader, father, and outdoorsman.  He often explores different musical cultures in his own music, most often Korean traditional music, known as gugak.  Some of his major works include a Sinfonietta (2016), premiered by the South Dakota Symphony; a Violin Concerto (Katrina), composed for Ittai Shapira and released with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic on Champs Hill Records; a one-act opera, My Last Duchess, with libretto by Tom Dulack based on poetry by Robert Browning; a dramatic song cycle created with poet Emma Stace Darling, called Girl on Fire; and a number of pieces featuring gugak instruments like p’iri, gayageum, and haegeum. Many of his works explore spiritual experience, like the orchestral works Hosannas of the Second Heaven and Grail.  Other works respond to American literature, including American Journal, based on Robert Hayden’s poem, and A Georgia Song, a setting of Maya Angelou.

Mr. Wiprud is widely known for having served as Vice President, Education, at the New York Philharmonic from 2004-2018, and as host of the iconic Young People’s Concerts.  He is Co-Chair of the New York City Arts in Education Roundtable and a consultant in education and music.