Gramophone Magazine calls Shawn Crouch (b.1977) a "gifted composer" and the New York Times describes Shawn Crouch's work as music of "gnarling atonal energy". The Miami Herald called his Road from Hiroshima; A Requiem a "staggering achievement, an imaginative, powerful and deeply moving work." Recently Crouch’s Visions and Ecstasies, A Mass was named “Best New Work” by the South Florida Classical Review. Shawn has received grants and awards from such institutions as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The American Prize, ASCAP, BMI, Yale University, Society of Composers Inc., Meet the Composer, NewMusicUSA, and the Percussive Arts Society. He is the inaugural recipient of the Dale Warland Singers Commissioning Award given by Chorus America and the American Composers Forum. Shawn Crouch, composer, has had his works performed and commissioned by ensembles in the United States, Canada and Europe including the Cleveland Orchestra, American Modern Ensemble, The American Guild of Organists, Blow, Cantori New York, California E.A.R. Unit, Chanticleer, Del Sol String Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, the Esoterics, Essential Voices USA, the Lunar Ensemble, Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, Non Sequitur, newEar Contemporary Ensemble, Plexure Trio, Phoenix Chorale, Prism Quartet, Quince Ensemble, San Francisco Choral Artists, Santa Fe Chorale, Seraphic Fire, Splinter Reeds, [Switch~ Ensemble], the Yesaroun' Duo, Variant 6, and Volti.
Shawn Crouch’s music has been recorded by many professional ensembles and commercially released on major record labels. Recently Crouch has released two albums on Acis Productions; a collection of his chamber music titled Chaos Theory and Other Chamber Works, and a collection of his choral music titled The Tracery of Lights. Other recent recording projects include Lullaby from his Paradise recorded by Chanticleer and released on their album On A Clear Day. Essential Voices USA recorded his Where There is Sadness, Joy and Who Would You Be. Volti recorded Paradise, a motet for 12 voices for their album This Is What Happened. His Light of Common Day is recorded by Seraphic Fire on Reincarnations. His Pie Jesu from The Road from Hiroshima appears on Seraphic Fire. His instrumental works City Columns and Adolescent Psychology are on Navona Records. His music is published by ECS Publishing, Hal Leonard, G. Schirmer, Mark Foster, and HoneyRock Publishing.
Shawn Crouch was recently named Executive Artistic Director of IlluminArts. Founded in 2013 to present world-class performances of classical music to Miami's vibrant audiences, IlluminArts collaborates with museums, galleries, and other community organizations to present curated, site-specific programs of music.
Shawn Crouch is currently Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Composition and Theory at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music where he is artistic director of the Ensemble Ibis. Shawn Crouch has served as the Founding Director of Seraphic Fire’s Miami Choral Academy, a tuition-free program that creates a little league-type network of choral ensembles for children in underserved communities of Miami-Dade County and has served on the music faculty at the Walden School for Young Musicians, and the Hunter College Campus School in New York City.
Shawn Crouch has studied composition with Martin Bresnick, Ezra Laderman, Lansing McLoskey and Malcolm Peyton and conducting with Marguerite Brooks and Leo Wanenchak. He has been the Wallace-Readers Digest Composition Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center as well as a composition fellow at the Norfolk Music Festival where he studied with Michael Gandolfi and Augusta Read Thomas. He has served as Composer-In-Residence with the San Francisco Choral Artists and the Arcosanti New Music Festival. Shawn received his B.Mus. in composition from the New England Conservatory with honors and distinction in performance, his M.Mus. in composition from the Yale School of Music, and his D.M.A. in composition from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. Shawn Crouch is a BMI composer.
