Ohio University professor of music awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for composition

Ohio University Professor of Music Composition and Theory Robert McClure has recently been awarded the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for music composition. The award recognizes artists whose work exemplifies their specific discipline and advances the larger artistic community.

“I feel incredibly honored to be awarded with so many other talented and inspiring artists from around the state,” McClure said.

Awarded through an open panel review process focused on the exceptional merit of an artist’s past body of work, the Individual Excellence Award funding gives artists the resources to experiment and explore their art forms, develop skills, and advance their careers.

"Robert's gifts as a composer are vast, including his approach that seeks to uncover song and soundscape in unexpected spaces,” Matthew Shaftel, dean of the College of Fine Arts, said. “The strength and talent of faculty like McClure in OHIO's College of Fine Arts reflect the College's commitment to artistic excellence and to providing our students with the best faculty in the field."  

McClure, who uses music to discover beauty in unconventional places through non-traditional means, has used visual art, poetry, the natural world, neurological and mathematical concepts to influence his compositions. His work as a composer focuses on the intersection of acoustic instruments and voices with electronic music and frequently engages with environmental and technological concepts while collaborating with artists from diverse disciplines and practices.

The two sample musical works he submitted to the Ohio Arts Council centered around themes of global pollution, the replacement of indigenous languages and cultures with those of conquerors, and how we are quickly replacing our humanity with technology.

“The Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Awards give artists the opportunity to be recognized and rewarded for their exemplary artistic achievements,” said OAC Executive Director Donna S. Collins. “Through their art, the individuals selected for these grants have expressed visionary ideas, spoken in a diversity of voices, and explored thought-provoking topics and themes from a variety of viewpoints. We congratulate the Individual Excellence Award recipients and thank them for enriching Ohio’s creative community.”

McClure’s compositions have been featured at festivals including NYCEMF, the Beijing Modern Music Festival, the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium, SEAMUS, IDRS, ISCM, and ICMC. 

In addition to his composition activities, Robert is the host/producer of the ADJ·ective New Music podcast, Lexical Tones, a weekly conversation with a guest composer, performer, and/or artist creating new works of contemporary art/music that focuses on aesthetics, technique, process, meaning, perception, and the musical origins of the featured guest. The podcast can be found on iTunes and Soundcloud.