Teacher Spotlight: Colin McAllister

Guitarist Colin McAllister enjoys a rich musical life as a soloist, chamber musician, conductor and educator. Since 2012, he has served as the Coordinator of the Music Program and Lecturer in Music and Humanities at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. A former student of Los Romeros and Stuart Fox, he also studied conducting with Harvey Sollberger and Rand Steiger at the University of California, San Diego, where he earned his Doctor of Musical Arts. He is recognized as a leading interpreter of new works and has worked with many composers including Christopher Adler, Matthew Burtner, Chaya Czernowin, Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, Pamela Madsen and Tristan Murail.

Past performance highlights include appearances throughout North America and Europe including the Monday Evening Concerts, New Music Miami, San Francisco sfSound, Darmstadt International Music Festival, Festival Hispanoamericano de Guitarra, Dallas Festival of Modern Music, Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez in Mexico City, Tijuana Innovadora, Seattle Transport Jazz, Bohem Ragtime Festival, Breda Jazz Festival, Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras (CMMAS), San Diego Opera, Colorado Symphony and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

His repertoire spans the gamut of historical periods and styles: from the late fourteenth-century polyphony of the ars subtilior to recent modernist works as well as jazz. He is frequently in demand as a chamber musician and has worked with many groups including NOISE, soundSCAPE, Peak FreQuency, Art of Élan and the Veronika String Quartet. In addition to music, Colin is currently pursuing the M. A. in History at UCCS. His research interests are centered on early Medieval latin apocalyptic, and he is currently working on a translation of and critical commentary on an early tenth-century gloss on the Apocalypse of St. John found in a manuscript at Cambridge University Library.

Colin has recorded for the Innova, Albany, Old King Cole, Vienna Modern Masters, Carrier and Tzadik record labels. He has two publications with Productions d’OZ: The Vanguard Guitar and Fourteenth Century Counterpoint: Music of the Chantilly Codex. The Vanguard Guitar was praised by Soundboard magazine as “a great success…not only a primer of modern techniques, but also a library of current performance practices.”

The current season includes chamber performances with the McAllister-Keller Duo, Art of Élan, Taos Chamber Music Group, Peak FreQuency and the Toronto Messiaen Ensemble; new music festivals in La Jolla and Fairbanks, Alaska; a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra; multiple engagements with the Jazz Orchestra of the Springs and the Trilix Jazz Trio; and a paper presentation at the Notions of the Apocalyptic in the Humanities conference in Danville, Illinois.