Thomas Kotcheff
Thomas Kotcheff is an American composer and pianist who currently resides in Los Angeles. He is a winner of a 2016 Charles Ives Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a 2015 Presser Foundation Music Award.Biography
Kotcheff was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and raised in Los Angeles, California. He began taking piano lessons at the age of 4 and in 2006 he graduated from Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. In 2010 Kotcheff completed a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and then attended USC Thornton School of Music from 2010 to 2019 where he received a Masters of Master of Music and a Doctor of Music in Music Composition. He has studied composition with Stephen Hartke, Donald Crockett, Frank Ticheli, and Steven Stucky, and piano with Benjamin Pasternack and Stewart L. Gordon.
Kotcheff currently serves as Ear Training and Music Theory Faculty at the Colburn School He is a teaching artist at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Composer Fellowship Program. Kotcheff has held residencies at Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's National Composers Intensive, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, The Studios of Key West, and The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.
Kotcheff is a founding member of the new music piano duo HOCKET with Sarah Gibson. He serves as a content contributor to 91.5 KUSC and is a livestream broadcast host for the Ojai Music Festival.Selected works
Orchestral
- go and for orchestra
Large ensemble
- gone/gone/gone beyond/gone beyond beyond for 10 musicians
Chamber
- and through and through and through for string octet
- 5ERVO for percussion duo
- unbegun for string quartet
- and more and more and more and this for two pianos and two percussion
- then and then and then this for cello and percussion
- wgah'nagl fhtagn piano four-hands & toy piano
- go in in in in & in for five cellos
- not only that one but that one & that too for percussion quartet
- scratch cradle for string quartet
- Part and Parcel for percussion quartet
- death, hocket, and roll for two toy pianos
- bang Z for bass clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, and cello
- gone into night are all the eyes for violin, cello, and piano
- that in shadow or moonlight rises for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, classical guitar, violin, cello, and bass
- hammer/ring for two vibraphones and two marimbas
Solo
- vacuum packed for violin
- Etude I. Poorless Wheat Dogs for piano
Vocal
- Ceceilia Speaks for soprano and piano
Selected awards and grants
- 2018 New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission
- 2016 Charles Ives Prize American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 2015 Presser Foundation Graduate Music Award
- 2015 BMI Foundation Student Composer Award
- 2014 Aspen Music Festival Hermitage Prize
Film
Kotcheff provided the score to the 2019 independent film "The Planters."