composer

Eric Moe (1954- ), composer of what The NY Times calls "music of winning exuberance", has received numerous grants and awards for his work, including the Lakond Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship; commissions from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Fromm Foundation, the Koussevitzky Foundation, and Meet-the-Composer USA; fellowships from the Wellesley Composer's Conference and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Bellagio, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, the Montana Artists Refuge, and the American Dance Festival.

Most recently, his "one-woman opera" Tri-Stan was hailed by The New York Times as "a blockbuster" and "a tour de force"; "the evening's biggest event", a work of "inspired weight" that "subversively inscribe[s] classical music into pop culture". The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette titled its review, "Moe's Marvelous Tri-Stan Pokes Fun at Pop and High Art", and concluded, "For an audience, it is one of those rare works that transcends the cultural divide while still being rooted in both sides." The work will soon be available on compact disc.

His Sonnets to Orpheus, featured on the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2000, is currently available on a Koch International Classics CD which also includes his Siren Songs. Another all-Moe CD, Kicking and Screaming, has recently been released by Albany Records, joining his recent Up & At 'Em on the same label. Compact disc recordings of other works are available from Centaur (On the Tip of My Tongue: Chamber and Electroacoustic Music of Eric Moe; Lions Gate Trio: Four American Trios), New World, and others.

As a pianist and keyboard player, Moe has performed works by hundreds of composers, from Anthony Davis to Stefan Wolpe. His playing can be heard on the Koch, CRI, Mode, and AK/Coburg labels in the music of John Cage, Roger Zahab, Marc-Antonio Consoli, Mathew Rosenblum, and Felix Draeseke. His solo recording The Waltz Project Revisited - New Waltzes for Piano, a CD of waltzes for piano by two generations of American composers, has just been released; Gramophone magazine says in its review of the CD, "Moe's command of the varied styles is nothing short of remarkable." A founding member of the San Francisco-based EARPLAY ensemble, he currently co-directs the Music on the Edge new music concert series in Pittsburgh.

Moe was educated at the University of California at Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.) and at Princeton University (A.B.) He is currently Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh, where he directs the graduate program in composition and the department's electroacoustic music studio.

Performances

Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | October 7, 2023
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | May 22, 2009
Moonshine Room at Club Café | March 11, 2008
Moonshine Room at Club Café | February 5, 2008
Moonshine Room at Club Café | February 7, 2006
Bellefield Hall Auditorium at University of Pittsburgh | January 28, 2006
Moonshine Room at Club Café | January 11, 2005

News and Press

[CD Review] Audiophile Audition reviews Eric Moe: Kick & Ride

Composer, pianist, teacher Eric Moe is a busy man. Not only does he compose, quite often on commission; teach composition and theory at the University of Pittsburgh; and occasionally lend his keyboard talent to the cause of other composers, he is also codirector of the Music on the Edge, a new-music series that brings many of the leading lights of contemporary music to the city.

Audiophile Audition Full review
[CD Review] Q2 Music Album of the Week - Eric Moe: Kick & Ride

Warning: Consuming Kick & Ride (the Boston Modern Orchestra Project's newest recording that features three drum-heavy works by Eric Moe) while in anything even hinting at a bad mood could lead to broken mugs at Starbucks, holes in apartment walls or shoving matches on a downtown 6 train platform.

WQXR Full review
[News Coverage] CD Releases from the Department of Music

2011 was a very fruitful year for recording projects by members of the Department of Music. Eric Moe, Nathan Davis, Bryan Wright, Donna Amato, and IonSound Project all released new CDs.

Boston Modern Orchestra Project released a CD of music by composition professor Eric Moe on the new BMOP Sound label. Kick and Ride takes its title from the Moe's concerto for Drum Set and Orchestra with Robert Schulz as soloist. The CD also contains earlier Moe works Superhero and Eight Point Turn.

University of Pittsburgh Full review
[Concert Review] Premieres and a farewell for BMOP

It seems odd to call a program with five brand new orchestral pieces commonplace. But somehow it seems apt when talking about the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, a group for whom the unexpected has become almost predictable. The five premieres on Friday’s concert spoke in vastly disparate languages, each of which BMOP’s fine orchestra and music director Gil Rose brought off as though it was a well-honed specialty.

The Boston Globe Full review
[CD Review] Performance of "Saints" so good it was sinful

The concert began with a composition set At Suma Beach, but a summa of a different kind highlighted this Pitt Music on the Edge event at Bellefield Hall in Oakland.

Guest composer Lee Hyla’s Lives of the Saints, a work for solo voice and chamber ensemble, not only took theology as its subject, but also amounted to a virtual musical treatise.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Full review