bio
Nicholas Landrum (he/him) is a composer and performer whose work focuses on visceral personal narratives, the human voice, and electronic production. His works have been commissioned, performed, and licensed by the Minnesota Orchestra, loadbang, Musica Nova Orchestra, North Coast Winds, Wintergreen Music Festival, and the historic Tenth and First Presbyterian Churches of Philadelphia. Nicholas’s compositions have won numerous awards, including the Dean’s Prize in composition from Indiana University, the Kuttner String Quartet Competition, the Ruth and Raymond Young Award for New Music, recognition by the Society of Composers, Inc. National Conference, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, as well as fellowships with MusicaNova Orchestra, and the Red Note Music festival.
Nicholas currently splits his time between projects in New York and Minneapolis as a composer, electronic artist, and vocalist. Most recently, Nicholas’s hour-long composition for solo violin “slow flow” was premiered in Minneapolis’s Orchestra Hall. Nicholas holds degrees in composition, theory, and electronic music from Indiana University (DM), Cleveland Institute of Music (MM), and Westminster Choir College (BM). He has served on the faculty of the University of Akron, Cleveland Institute of Music’s Young Composer Program, and he currently maintains a private composition studio in Minneapolis. In his short time as an educator, his students have been accepted to top composition programs across the country, and have won awards from BMI, Downbeat Magazine, and ASCAP.
As a vocalist, Nicholas has been active as a bass-baritone soloist and chorister for over fifteen years. He has premiered countless works by young composers, and performed as a professional chorister with the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Staatskapelle Dresden, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and New Jersey Symphony, under the baton of world class conductors including Pierre Boulez, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, David Robertson, and Michael Tilson Thomas.
Having begun his musical journey playing guitar from a very early age, Nicholas has always had an affinity for pop and punk music, writing for and performing in bands during his teenage years. In addition to his endeavors in the concert hall, Nicholas also regularly performs and releases music with his indie-pop duo “my idle little fingers”, whose music can be found on all major streaming platforms.