Born in Washington, D.C. in 1955, composer Jeffrey Mumford has received numerous fellowships, grants, awards and commissions.
Awards include the "Academy Award in Music" from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and an ASCAP Aaron Copland Scholarship. He was also the winner of the inaugural National Black Arts Festival/Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Composition Competition.
Other grants have been awarded by the Ohio Arts Council, Meet the Composer, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music Inc., the ASCAP Foundation, and the University of California.
Mumford's most notable commissions include those from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the Library of Congress (co-commission), the BBC Philharmonic, the San Antonio, Chicago & National Symphonies, Washington Performing Arts, the Network for New Music, ‘cellist Mariel Roberts, the Fulcrum Point New Music Project (through New Music USA), Duo Harpverk (Iceland), the Sphinx Consortium, the Cincinnati Symphony, the VERGE Ensemble /National Gallery of Art/Contemporary Music Forum, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Nancy Ruyle Dodge Charitable Trust, the Meet the Composer/Arts Endowment Commissioning Music/USA, Cincinnati radio station WGUC, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, and the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress.
His music has been performed extensively, by major orchestras, soloists, and ensembles, both in the United States and abroad, including London, Paris, Reykjavik, Vienna, The Hague, Russia and Lithuania.
Recent and forthcoming performances include the premiere of . . . amid still and floating depths by the Mivos Quartet as part of last season’s Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Noon” to Midnight” new music festival, of fields unfolding . . . echoing depths of resonant light, by ‘cellist Christine Lamprea and the Omaha Symphony, the promise of the far horizon by the Mivos Quartet, . . . . . becoming clear (solo viola) by the Network for New Music, performances of chamber and orchestral work, as part of the June in Buffalo Festival, and of radiances blossoming in expanding air, by ‘cellist Deborah Pae and the Boston based Phoenix Orchestra. As well, noted Italian pianist, Pina Napolitano will include his two Elliott Carter tributes in her European concerts this and next season, and has recorded them as part her recently released CD entitled “Tempo e Tempi” (Odradek Rcords -ODRCD378).
Current projects include brightness dispersed, a concerto for 'cello & string orchestra for Mariel Roberts and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, fleeting cycles of layered air a new work for solo violin for Miranda Cuckson, a new work for solo piano commissioned by pianist Clare Longendyke as part of a project responding to and reimagining Ravel’s piano music, and a CD of recent concerti.
Mumford has taught at the Washington Conservatory of Music, served as Artist-in-Residence at Bowling Green State University, and served as assistant professor of composition and Composer-in-Residence at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. He is currently Distinguished Professor at Lorain County Community College in Northern Ohio.
