Distinguished Mid-Career Faculty Award for Service

Professor Alan L. Terricciano

Department of Dance

I was born and raised in Connecticut and received my education at Yale University and the Eastman School of Music.  I am currently a Professor on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine, and I have served as chair of the Dance Department since 2001.  For the past 25 years I have been professionally active as both a composer for choreography, and as a pianist focusing on choreographic collaboration.  I am proud to say that I was recently named Orange County’s 2005 Outstanding Individual Artist of the Year by the organization Arts Orange County.  In 2000, I was awarded the Grand Prize in Quebec’s Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur international competition for original composition for choreography with a work entitled Blue Motions for String Quartet.

This past winter, my score for orchestra and voice, Masque, an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Masque of the Red Death," was developed into a theatrical work with the dance department in collaboration with Donald McKayle, Lisa Naugle, Michel Gervais and John Crawford.  In the recent past, I have received several significant commissions.  In June of 2006, I composed and performed the score for the Loretta Livingston and Dancers’ production of Blooming, Re-Joycing a meditation on the Molly Bloom Soliloquy from Joyce’s Ulysses, performed at the Mark Taper auditorium of the Los Angeles Public Library. Also for Ms. Livingston, In June of 2005 I composed and performed the sound score for an evening length installation at the Japan America Theater.  In April of 2005, I completed a commission for the ballet company of the Amsterdam TheaterSchule to choreography by Douglas Becker.  In October, 2003, the Orange Coast Symphony commissioned and premiered my Concerto for Clarinet and Strings.  In November, 2002, Canciones de Fray Serra, for orchestra, premiered with the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra (Illinois).  Another large-scale work, Night Cafe (after Vincent), a commission from the Yale Concert Band, premiered in November of 1998. My first orchestral score, A Tale of the Spider, for narrator and orchestra, was performed by the Minnesota Orchestra in November of 1994, and by the Elmhurst Symphony in March of 1996. Other recent collaborations include work with Donald McKayle, Colin Connor, Jeff Slayton, Mark Haim and Douglas Nielsen.

As a concert performer my current interest is in chamber music.  In the winter of 2005, I performed Brahms' Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano, Hindemith's Sonata for Alto Horn and Piano and premiered an original piano trio, all with colleagues from the music department.  In December of 1999, I performed Frederic Rzewski's 4 North American Ballads for the Piano with the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater at City Center in NYC for the premiere of Donald McKayle's Danger Run.