THE MUSIC OF FRANK STEMPER has been performed in 23 countries and two-thirds of the United  States — in Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Budapest’s Pannonhalma, Vienna’s Klaviersalon  Englemier, Chicago’s Symphony Center, Bucharest’s Anteil Roman, San Francisco’s Cowell Theater  at Fort Mason, New York City’s Symphony Space, Milwaukee’s Performing Arts Center, etc.  It has been presented at music festivals such as The ISCM (International Society for Contemporary  Music), Spain’s Festival Internacional De Musica Contemporánea, Romania’s Saptamina  Internationala A Muzicii Noi, Austria’s Bregenzer Festspiele, Italy’s Festival Spaziomusica, Toronto’s  Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Music Centre, Mexico’s FESTIVAL DE MARZO and the Primer Foro de Música Nueva, Michigan State University’s Annual Symposium of New Music,  the New Music Chicago Festival; at computer music festivals such as Vladmir Ussachevsky Computer  Music Festival in Los Angeles, IMAGINE II Festival in Memphis, the Lewis Computer Music Festival in  Chicago; and in more academic settings, such as The College Music Society, ASUC and the Society  of Composers, Inc., etc., and at many universities throughout the United States.  

His work has been generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the  Rockefeller Foundation, the Klein Competition Foundation, the American Music Center, four Artist Fellowships and a Governor’s Grant from the Illinois Arts Council, the Ragdale Foundation, Spain’s  Fundación Valparaiso, Austria’s Viktorsberg Composer Institute, the New York Council on the Arts, the California Arts Council, several travel grants from Meet the Composer and MTC—Global  Connections, 27 consecutive ASCAPlus awards, etc. And there have been commissions for new  music – 45 so far – from orchestras, ensembles, soloists, various artistic foundations and new music  societies in Western and Eastern Europe, and throughout the United States. 

Among the many awards for his music are The 1981 Prix de Paris, The Hertz Prize, The Phi Kappa Phi  Award for Artistic Achievement, The Arts In Celebration Commission Prize, The New York Virtuoso  Singers Prize, as well as nominations from the American Academy of Art and Letters, a Grammy  Award, and in 2003 his piano concerto, Secrets of War, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. BLUE13, the recording of Stemper’s complete music for piano, performed by Korean pianist  Junghwa Lee, received a Gold Medal in Global Music’s “Top 10 Albums.” 

Internationally, Frank Stemper has maintained a presence on the world new music scene through a  total of 15 Artist and Teaching residencies — supported by the governments of Romania, Mexico,  Austria, The Netherlands, France, and Spain, and he has served as a Guest Composer at more than 50 international music festivals. In addition, there have been many broadcasts of his orchestral and  chamber music on International Radio Networks throughout the world. 

His teachers were the Distinguished Composer Andrew Imbrie (Ph.D. 1981 University of California  Berkeley), the preeminent Music Theorist David Lewin (M.A. 1978, Stony Brook University), and  Canadian Pianist Robert Silverman (B.MUS 1975, University of British Columbia), and after a two-year  post-doc in France, which included work at the Paris Conservatory (Conservatoire National Supérieur  de Music) and I.R.C.A.M. (L’Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), he was  appointed Composer In Residence at Southern Illinois University, where he taught from 1983 – 2014 and where he is now professor emeritus. 

Although composing new music has been Frank Stemper’s overwhelming focus, as a pianist he has  always stayed busy toggling between performing Modern Music and Main Stream Jazz. In 2008 he  brought both worlds together when he produced a performance of Schönberg’s cycle of 21 songs,  Pierrot Lunaire, with the Altgeld Chamber Players in a local bar — performing the impossible piano  part himself.  

His music is an eclectic blending of the serial composers and jazz performers from the middle 50  years of the 20th Century — his parent’s generation.