Thomas Flippin

Duo Noire’s Quarter Century Soundscape

To provide support to the classical guitar ensemble Duo Noire in their commissioning of a new collection of groundbreaking compositions for guitar duo by some of the leading composers of our generation. The commissioned work(s) will be recorded and released as a full-length album under the American Composer's Forum record label, Innova. Each composition will represent a drastically different compositional aesthetic, ranging from guitars with vocal backing tracks, to purely acoustic, to guitars with electronics, to jazz and classical fusion composers, to film composers. The album will feature new music which strives to seriously reflect the modern world and the diverse musicians and soundscapes of our time.

Duo Noire has a vision for what the classical guitar can be and how it can break away from the past 70 years of traditions in order to speak to a new generation of listeners. Our last album, Night Triptych, was life changing for me and only exists because of the seed money granted from Diller-Quaile and provided by The Clifford-Levy Creativity Grant. It was an "album of the year" in multiple publications and allowed our duo to tour across the country at several of the top classical guitar organizations in the United States. Being able to share that success and experience with my students has been invaluable. Aside from forging new and deeper connections with luminaries in our field, this type of project can help to raise the profile of the Guitar Department, which in turn increases student retention and the recruitment of first-rate guitar faculty. Similar to our previous album, the hope is that these works will get Diller-Quaile mentioned in myriad international press and artist bios at major guitar events, and that some of the composers will go on to win prestigious awards and prominent positions in the music field. Of the three composers we previously commissioned through The Clifford-Levy Creativity Grant, two were later nominated for GRAMMYs and the third just won a MacArthur "genius grant."