(This composer has multiple commissions - click here to view all)

Title: 
Commission: 2018
Completed: 2021
Instrumentation: 
Premiere Location: 
Premiere Ensemble: 
Notes: 

Title: Hidden Spring
Commission: 2002
Completed: 2004
Instrumentation: chamber ensemble
Premiere Location: 
Premiere Ensemble: Cygnus Ensemble
Notes: Dedicated to Cygnus

Title: After Blue
Commission: 1995
Completed: 1998
Instrumentation: chamber ensemble
Premiere Location: Merkin Hall, NYC
Premiere Ensemble: New Millenium Ensemble
Notes: Dedicated to the New Millennium Ensemble.

Mr. Festinger’s works have been commissioned by the Jerome Foundation, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Barlow Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the Argosy Foundation, the Music Teachers National Association, the Hoff-Bartelson Music School, the Ross McKee Foundation, Volti, the Ringling College of Art and Design, the University of Manitoba, and the American Composers Forum. He has received recording awards from the Aaron Copland Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, the American Composers Forum Subito Program, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He has been a resident artist at the Camargo Foundation, the Edward MacDowell Colony, Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ucross Foundation, the Liguria Study Center for Arts and Letters in Bogliasco, Italy, the Rockefeller Foundation Conference and Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, the Centre International d’Accueil et d’Échanges des Récollets in Paris, the Aaron Copland House, the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Bayern, Germany, the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France, and the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China. A recipient of the George Ladd Grand Prix de Paris, he has been a fellow at the Wellesley Composers Conference and the June in Buffalo Festival, Composer in Residence several times at the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, and has received both the Walter Hinrichsen Award and an Academy Recording Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Mr. Festinger earned a Ph.D. in composition at the University of California in Berkeley where he studied with Andrew Imbrie. Before turning to composing he led his own groups as a jazz performer, and later founded the acclaimed contemporary music ensemble Earplay. He has taught at the University of California in Berkeley and Davis, at Dartmouth College, and since 1990 has been a professor of music at San Francisco State University, where he is also Artistic Director of the Morrison Artists Concert Series. His music is published by C.F. Peters, and recorded on the Bridge, Centaur, CRI and CRS labels. Bridge records released a CD of his works in February of 2008, and another new CD of works performed by the New York New Music Ensemble was released in 2014 on the Naxos International label.