Ann Arbor-based composer and saxophonist Corey Dundee composes music he describes as “rhythmic ridiculousness written in a quasi-atonal yet esoterically functional harmonic language.” Critics have essentially said as much in far less flowery English, characterizing his sonic aesthetic as “trippy dream music” (casual university acquaintance) and “falling down a black rabbit hole” (six-year-old concert-goer in Norfolk, CT). Recently named Honorable Mention for MTNA’s 2018 Distinguished Composer of the Year award, Corey was also a Finalist for the 2018 Cortona Prize, as well as a recipient of Chamber Music America's coveted Classical Commissioning Grant in 2016. He has undertaken an Artist Residency at the Kimmel Harding Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, and his music has been commissioned by performers and ensembles including saxophonist Timothy McAllister, the Akropolis Reed Quintet, Chamber Music Tulsa, Front Porch, the Michigan Music Teachers Association, the Spatial Forces Duo, the Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble, and the Taos Chamber Music Group.

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As a performer, Corey is the tenor saxophonist of Kenari Quartet, a First-Place Laureate Ensemble of the inaugural M-Prize Chamber Arts competition and 2018 Protégé Project Artists at the Chamber Music Northwest festival in Portland, OR. Independently, Corey has appeared as featured soloist with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, the Interlochen Philharmonic, and the UNC School of the Arts Symphony Orchestra. In April of 2012, he performed on stage with singer-songwriter Ben Folds at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC for Arts Advocacy Day 2012. Corey can be heard on NPR’s Telarc-label CD titled “From the Top at the Pops,” performing the third movement of Russell Peck’s The Upward Stream tenor saxophone concerto with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra.

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Corey is currently a Regents Fellow and Graduate Student Instructor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he has achieved candidacy for the DMA Composition degree. He previously earned an MM Composition degree from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, in addition to BM degrees in Composition and Saxophone Performance from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Corey has studied composition with Evan Chambers, Kristin Kuster, Bright Sheng, Donald Crockett, Ted Hearne, Samuel Adler, Don Freund, and Claude Baker, and his primary saxophone instructors have included Otis Murphy, Taimur Sullivan, and Timothy McAllister. Outside of composing and performing, Corey’s interests include photography, snowboarding, and hip-hop dance.

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Learn more at www.coreydundee.com

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