RYAN GALLAGHER is in his first year of graduate studies at Cornell University, where his teachers include Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra. He received his Bachelor’s of Music degree from The Juilliard School in 2007, where he studied with Christopher Rouse. A native of Wooster, Ohio, his first composition teacher was his father, Jack Gallagher of The College of Wooster. Other teachers include Samuel Adler at the Bowdoin International Music Festival and the Freie Universität Berlin, Martin Bresnick at the Norfolk Contemporary Music Workshop, George Tsontakis at the Aspen Music School, and Richard Cornell at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. In addition, he has studied privately with Stephen Jaffe.
His orchestral work Marathon was premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra in May 2007 and was awarded the Arthur Friedman Award for outstanding orchestral composition at The Juilliard School. Other awards include four ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers Awards (2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007), winner of the 2006 New York Federation of Music Club’s Brian Israel Prize, winner of the 2003 Natalie and Murray S. Katz Young Composers Competition, and Second Prize in the 2003 Hartt School of Music Young Composer Awards.
In the 2005-06 school year, he was the inaugural Wet Ink composer for the Metropolis Ensemble of New York City. This position included teaching a class about music creativity to students at New York City’s PS 11 in conjunction with the Ensemble’s Youth Works program. In addition, he was commissioned to write a piece for the Metropolis Ensemble’s October 2006 concert for chorus and chamber ensemble.
Performances of his music include those by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, eighth blackbird, Society for New Music, Collage new music ensemble, the Contemporary Youth Orchestra of Cleveland, and the Nevsky String Quartet.