Composer/clarinettist/Associate Music Director of Paraorchestra

Carter Callison has enjoyed a varied career that has spanned several different music mediums.  A native of Asheville, North Carolina, he began studying music at a young age and developed a passion for composing and playing the double bass. 

As a composer, he is constantly producing practice-based research in the form of original compositions.  Ensembles that have performed his works include the BBC Singers, Ensemble Erasme, the Manson Ensemble, Spitalfields Winter & Summer Festivals, the Bristol School of Animation as well as collaborations with Vanderbilt and Roehampton University.  Recent projects include recording his bass concerto Laniakea and Clarinet Concerto Lucid Dreaming at La Verrerie and the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris (CRR de Paris) in France.  

In addition to his composing endeavors, he has enjoyed performing double bass throughout Europe and America and is proficient playing in styles from the baroque to the avant-garde.  Recent performances include chamber music engagements with the London Symphony Orchestra Sound Hub and the Pythagoras Ensemble in England and Germany.

His teaching background has been shaped by a number of different elements over the past decade. As the Manson Composition Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music (2012-14), Carter coached, conducted and recorded ensembles for undergrad and graduate students, as well as organized concerts, performances and exams.  He also worked as a double bass teacher deputy at the Royal College of Music JD (2007-8) where he taught individual and group lessons.  While studying composition at the Royal Academy of Music (MMus 2012), he successfully completed his Licentiate of the RAM teaching certification (LRAM), which instilled a solid foundational knowledge of the principles of teaching. He has also studied theory pedagogy and taught music theory to undergraduate students.

In addition to composing, performing and teaching, Carter is an active audio producer/editor and has recorded numerous ensembles.  His use of MIDI and audio sampling libraries, such as the Vienna Symphonic Cube, has become a creative medium that he frequently uses in his composition process.  He is familiar with the latest DAW applications and is a proponent of the synthesis of modern music and technology.  

As a researcher, Carter has dedicated much of his time to studying scordatura and its affects on composition and performance practice.  His research has not only resulted in the creation of new composition techniques inspired from using scordatura, but led to the invention of scordatura pedals, which change the tuning of a string instrument while performing.  A prototype scordatura pedal was made after raising $8,030 through a Kickstarter campaign. The invention was subsequently featured in the Febuary 2014 issue of The Strad magazine.

Carter holds degrees from the Royal Academy of Music (MMus 2012), Manhattan School of Music (B.M. Composition and Double Bass, 2009) and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (High School Diploma, Double Bass 2005).

In October 2016, Carter submitted his PhD to the Royal Academy of Music and is awaiting examination in early February 2017.

Clarinettist
Contrabass clarinet soloist
New music specialist
Composer
Azalea Ensemble Director

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