Young Composers Program Faculty

• Jeremy Allen
• Michael Bratt
• Keith Murphy
• Carlos Velez

Jeremy Allen

Jeremy Allen is a Cleveland-based composer committed to restoring a city by enriching its culture and communities through new music and artistic collaborations. Jeremy holds a Master's degree in Composition from the University of Kentucky and a Doctorate in Composition from The Cleveland Institute of Music. He has studied with award-winning composers Joseph Baber, Margaret Brouwer, and Keith Fitch, and has actively participated in seminars and master classes with other well-known composers such as Melinda Wagner, Robert Beaser, Steven Stucky, Joan Tower, Claude Baker, David Rakowski and Tanya León. He has also studied film scoring and sound design with Steven Mark Kohn.

Jeremy has received commissions from numerous organizations including The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, The Canton Symphony Orchestra, Inlet Dance Theatre, Ingenuity Festival, and The Mauthe String Quartet and is a recipient of the Donald Erb Prize in Composition from the Cleveland Institute of Music. His music, which has been featured on public radio and television across the U.S., has been performed by internationally renowned performers and groups such as the Canton Symphony Orchestra, Wilhelmenia Fernandez-Smith, and MOSAIC, and has been called "mesmerizing" and "beguiling" by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Jeremy's music is regularly featured in area public venues such as The Cleveland Sculpture Center, FusionFest, Ingenuity Festival and The Cleveland Public Theatre, often in collaboration with artists, sculptors, filmmakers and dancers. His film music has been commissioned by institutions such as The Cleveland Museum of Natural History and The Lebron James Family Foundation, and his electronic music is currently part of the Cleveland Clinic's Music and the Brain research project.

Mr. Allen has teamed up with award-winning composers Michael Bratt and Mark Nowakowski in founding Multimode Filter, a long-distance electronic composer ensemble dedicated to producing cutting-edge new electronic music and sound design for stage, audio books and film. Mr. Allen is also a composer, performer and founding member of the Board of Directors for FiveOne, Cleveland's own experimental orchestra and champion of music written within the last five years.

Michael Bratt

Michael Bratt (b. 1979) is a Cleveland based composer. Having attended Kent State University, Berklee College of Music, Cleveland State University (BM, MM), and the Cleveland Institute of Music (DMA), he has an extensive background in modern music. He has studied with many award-winning composers such as Keith Fitch, Margaret Brouwer, Paul Schoenfield, Andrew Rindfleisch, and Greg DAlessio. He has also taken master classes with Pulitzer Prize winning composers Bernard Rands, Michael Colgrass, Melinda Wagner and the late Donald Martino. His work is diverse, having written for orchestra, chamber groups, solo instruments, and electronic media. His music has been premiered throughout the United States and internationally in cities such as Stockholm and Vienna among others. Nationally recognized groups such as the Verdehr Trio, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Zeitgeist, and the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo have premiered his compositions. His music has also been featured on Public Radios' Around Noon with Dee Perry as well as WVIZs' television show, Applause.

Michael has received numerous honors including Composer/Fellow for the Canton Symphony Orchestra 2008-2009, regional finalist for the 2008 SCI Student Composer Commission, 2007 Verdehr Trio Composition Contest, honorable mention at the 2007 Minnesota Orchestra Institute, and the 2005 Bain Murray Composition Award among others.

An immense advocate and supporter of modern music, Mr. Bratt is the co-founder and board president of FiveOne, a Cleveland based new music ensemble. Mr. Bratt has also teamed up with award winning composers Mark Nowakowski and Jeremy Allen , in founding Multimode Filter, an electronic composer ensemble dedicated to producing cutting edge electronic music and sound design for concert halls, audio books, video games and film.

His film music can be heard in the independent movies All That You Love Will Be Carried Away and Guys (the former was shown in the 2005 Montreal World Film Festival and the latter won best in show at the 2005 Ohio Indie gathering).

Keith Andrew Murphy

Keith Andrew Murphy's music has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, Opus 21, Trio Eos, the Yale Philharmonia, Concert Artists Guild bassoonist Peter Kolkay, and Indian percussion virtuoso Rohan Krishnamurthy, and many others. He has received awards from ASCAP, Yale University, the University of Chicago, and the European-American Musical Alliance, and was the recipient of an Irving S. Gilmore Emerging Artist Grant and an Arts Fund Grant through the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo. He holds the D.M.A., M.M.A., and M.M. in Composition from the Yale School of Music, and a B.A. in Music (with Honors) from the University of Chicago, and studied composition with Martin Bresnick, Joseph Schwantner, Ezra Laderman, and John Eaton. Dr. Murphy currently teaches music theory at Loyola University of Chicago and composition and musicianship at Music Institute of Chicago.

Dr. Murphy is also an active choral singer, and currently holds professional positions as tenor with Schola Antiqua of Chicago, the Rockefeller Chapel Choir at the University of Chicago, and the Chicago Symphony Chorus, with whom he has performed under the batons of Duain Wolfe, Riccardo Muti, Pierre Boulez, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Bernard Haitink.

Carlos Velez

An artist of various talents, composer/flutist Carlos Velez has dedicated himself to the creation and performance of new music. From 2002-2005, he served as solo flutist for NeXT ens, a group of young professionals dedicated to the commissioning and performance of cutting edge works for electro-acoustic media.

Following his work with NeXT ens., Mr. Velez became a founding member of the Cincinnati Real-Time Composers, a collective of performer-improvisers working toward a pedagogical approach to improvisation for professional musicians and students alike. His compositional activities have culminated in his pursuit of a DMA in composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he is expected to graduate this spring. As a pedagogue in music theory and composition, Mr. Velez is sought after for his clarity of communication, enthusiasm, professionalism, and abounding creativity. His own works represent a tremendous variety of stylistic influences ranging from renaissance polyphony to popular music, and even salsa, techno, spectralism, post-minimalism, and jazz. Mr. Velez is very pleased to be joining his colleagues Michael Bratt and Jeremy Allen for CIM's Young Composer Program this season.

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