Photo © E'Narda McCalister

Composer Paul Osterfield was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1973. Spending his formative years in Northeast Ohio, he composed and performed as a cellist throughout middle school and high school, in addition to studying violin, piano and conducting. His early efforts as a composer were recognized in 1990, when the United States Copyright Office and the Library of Congress awarded Osterfield first prize in their Young Creators' Contest. The following year, that winning work was performed by the Cleveland Orchestra on their Family Key Concert Series.

Since then, Osterfield's compositions have continued to receive performances both internationally and throughout the United States. Recent European premieres are Peter Sheppard Skaerved's performance of Twenty-Four Caprices for Solo Violin at the Cambridge Summer Music Festival and the University of Nebraska Kearney Trio's performance of Beneath the Veiled Light at the World Saxophone Congress in Slovenia. Osterfield's music has been performed throughout the United States by ensembles including the Great Noise Ensemble, the Blakemore Trio, neoPhonia New Music Ensemble, wind ensembles at the College of Wooster, Capital University, Otterbein University, the University of Georgia, Arkansas State University, and Middle Tennessee State University, and four premieres by the Stones River Chamber Players. Osterfield has been a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and has won Middle Tennessee State University's Outstanding Creative Arts Faculty Award, an Individual Artist Grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission, and awards from BMI, ASCAP, and the National Federation of Music Clubs. Osterfield's works are available on the Albany, Equilibrium, Ravello, and Navona labels. Of Osterfield's orchestral work Monadnock, Audiophile Audition's critic Daniel Coombs writes: "Osterfield has a very colorful and sensual style of orchestrating that would remind some of that of his teachers....This is really a dramatic and impressive work."

Also maintaining an active career as an educator, Osterfield is Professor of Music at Middle Tennessee State University, where he teaches music composition and theory. He has given composition seminars and master classes at colleges and universities throughout the southern United States. Having earned degrees from Cornell University (D.M.A.), Indiana University (M.M.), and the Cleveland Institute of Music (B.M.), Paul Osterfield's primary composition teachers have been Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, Eugene O'Brien, Frederick Fox, and Donald Erb.

Music of Paul Osterfield

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