Peter Swendsen Earns Fulbright Fellowship
Will Spend 2006-07 Academic Year in Norway

June 4, 2006 | Peter Vinding Swendsen, the Edgar Shannon Jefferson Fellow in Music at the University of Virginia, has earned a Fulbright Fellowship and will spend the upcoming academic year studying in Norway.

Swendsen is a member of the Jefferson Graduate Fellows entering class of 2002. He is a Ph.D. student (ABD) in Composition and Computer Technologies, where he studies with professors Judith Shatin and C. Matthew Burtner.

Swendsen will be in residence at the NoTAM Computer Music Studios in Oslo. While there he will complete work on his dissertation, a large-scale composition for electroacoustic music and interactive dance entitled "Amplified Whispers and the Artifice of Inaction." He also will pursue several other projects, including one based on field recordings of various Norwegian soundscapes.

He will begin his time overseas by presenting a paper related to his dissertation work at the Second International Conference on Music and Gesture at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England.

In advance of his departure for Norway, Swendsen presented a paper at the International Alliance for Women in Music Congress in Miami and served a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida with composer William Duckworth. Swendsen has recently premiered a commission from saxophonist Michael Straus for alto saxophone, tape, and video, presented and performed at the Biennial Symposium on Art and Technology, and completed the 2006 season with Prospect Dance Group, the company he co-directs in Charlottesville.

A native of Honesdale, Pennsylvania, Swendsen received his MFA from the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music and his BM from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Additional information about his work is available at his website, www.swendsen.net.

The Fulbright Program is the largest U.S. international exchange program, offering opportunities for students, scholars, and professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and teaching in elementary and secondary schools worldwide. It was established in 1946 by the U.S. Congress to "enable the government of the United States to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries."