Christopher Stark

Christopher Stark (b. 1980, St. Ignatius, MT) is a composer of contemporary classical music deeply rooted in the American West. Having spent his formative years in rural western Montana, his music is always seeking to capture the expansive energy of this quintessential American landscape. Stark, whose music the New York Times has called “fetching and colorful,” has been awarded prizes and commissions from the Fromm Foundation, Chamber Music America, the Orléans International Piano Competition, and ASCAP, among others. His music has been performed by such ensembles as Alarm Will Sound, American Composers Orchestra, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, FLUX Quartet, New Morse Code, Momenta Quartet, Los Angeles Piano Quartet, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. In 2012, he was a resident composer at Civitella Ranieri, a fifteenth-century castle in Umbria, Italy, and in June of 2016 he was awarded a residency at Copland House. Recent highlights included performances at the 2016 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the 2016 NY Phil Biennial. His score for the feature-length film, “Novitiate,” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2017 and will be theatrically released later this year by Sony Pictures Classics. Stark currently resides in St. Louis with his wife, Jenalie Auth, where he is Assistant Professor of Music Composition at Washington University in St. Louis.

Photograph credit: Fabio Bracarda – metalli – for Civitella Ranieri Foundation