Noel Zahler, DMA
Dean and Professor
J.R. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performaing Arts
Texas Tech University

Noel Zahler is a well-known composer and an administrator who has led colleges of arts, communications and design; schools of visual and performing arts, schools of music, interdisciplinary programs and departments, at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Minnesota, Long Island University, and Connecticut College. His entrepreneurial expertise has been sought in the creation of collaborations and partnerships throughout the arts and business world. He has earned degrees from Columbia University (DMA), Princeton University (MFA), L'Accademia Musicale Chigiana (Certificato di Perfezionamento), Siena, Italy, and C.U.N.Y. Queens College (BA/MA).

Zahler is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including a National Endowment for the Arts Consortium Commission, a Fulbright/Hayes Fellowship to Italy, two MacDowell Colony Fellowships, an Aaron Copland Foundation Grant in support of recording, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant (perception), a National Science Foundation grant (Decoding the Human Conducting Gesture), a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Individual Artists Grant, and a Connecticut Public Television (CPTV) prize for the sound score to the computer-realized video Gothic Tempest. A fellow of the Associated Kyoto Program, Dr. Zahler also has been granted an Italian National Research Council Award, New York State Council for the Arts grant in support of recordings and a National Endowment for the Humanities Scholarship.

His compositions include a wide range of vocal and instrumental works, as well as electroacoustic, interactive and multimedia works. His compositions are published by Associated Music Publishers (G. Schirmer, Inc.), American Composers Edition, and APNM music publishers. Recordings of his music: Regions I, Four Songs of Departure, and Harlequin are available on the OPUS ONE record label. Agarttha, is available on the Capstone label, Trio for violin and piano, and Concerto for clarinet, chamber orchestra and interactive computer are available on Albany Records. L'espace entre nous is recorded on the SIMAX label and Le miroir de l'ombre is available on Urlicht Audio Visual. Internationally acclaimed ensembles have performed Zahler's compositions, including the American Composers Orchestra, the Manhattan Sinfonietta, the Arden Trio, the Charleston String Quartet, the Meridian String Quartet, the League of Composers/ISCM, and University of Iowa Center for
New Music, the New York Piano Quartet, as well as other groups and individuals throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.

A frequent collaborator with artists, architects, mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists, Dr. Zahler is the co-author of three computer software programs including the Artificially Intelligent Computer Performer, Score Follow and Music Matrix, as well as numerous co-authored articles.

Zahler's writings on and about music include three articles in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, six articles in the New Grove Dictionary of Music in the United States, a critical edition of Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question (Peer Southern Music Publishers), and numerous articles on music theory and composition, artificial intelligence and music, and computer music. He is listed in Who's Who in Music, Who's Who in the United States and Who's Who in the World. Currently, Dr. Zahler is Dean of the Talkington College of Visual and Performing Arts at Texas Tech University.