Ford Fourqurean
Ford Fourqurean
Ford Fourqurean strives to bring together communities through contemporary music. He is in demand as both a freelancer and as a guest artist and clinician at universities and institutions throughout the United States. He serves as artistic director of Unheard-of//Ensemble along with many other projects connecting contemporary music with diverse audiences.
Ford regularly performs across New York City at venues ranging from National Sawdust, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Roulette, and Spectrum to DIY spaces and house concerts. During the 2019-20 season, he is performing guest artist workshops with Unheard-of//Ensemble at Cornell, collaborating with ICEBERG composers collective, performing in Pittsburgh as part of Alia Musica Pittsburgh’s concert series, and touring Texas.
In past seasons Unheard-of, Ford has lectured and worked with students of the Sibelius Academy, Manhattan School of Music, and Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music among many others. Known for their “scintillating and evocative” performance (Steve Smith, National Sawdust Log), Unheard-of has collaborated on over 50 new works for their instrumentation and performed/lectured at over 20 universities and colleges across the United States. He currently serves as Executive Director of the inaugural Collaborative Composition Workshop hosted at Stony Brook University, overseeing all aspects of the festival as well as being ensemble faculty with Unheard-of.
Ford is a member of Amalgama and one half of Spark Duo with trumpeter Kate Amrine. As a freelancer, he has worked with contemporary groups of all styles. He toured the Midwest in 2018 with Tenth Intervention visiting Denison University, Alia Musica Pittsburgh’s Contemporary Festival, and the Johnstone series in Columbus, Ohio. In past seasons, he has worked with Fresh Squeezed Opera, Curiosity Cabinet (guest residency at Queens College), and the Uptown Philharmonic.
He was a Future Music Lab Fellow working with Mari Kimura at Atlantic Music Festival in 2018, a 2017 fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival at Mass MOCA, and was the Contemporary Ensemble clarinet fellow for the Atlantic Music Festival in 2016. Ford has also presented his research on Elliott Carter’s Clarinet Quintet at Clarinet Fest, Madrid as finalist of the 2015 International Clarinet Association Research Competition. He has also earned recognition as one of six national winners of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi’s Marcus L. Urann Fellowship.
Also an avid composer, Ford has studied with Reiko Füting, Todd Reynolds, and Fred Cohen, and vocal composition with Susan Botti. He worked as studio manager and assistant in MSM’s Contemporary Performance Program coordinating electronics for contemporary recitals. He recently performed Project M, his new initiative developing new works for clarinet and MUGIC motion sensor, at Oh My Ears! Festival in Phoenix, Arizona.
Ford is completing a Doctorate of Musical Arts at Stony Brook University as a Teaching Assistant and Assistant Director of the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players. He holds a Master of Music degree from Manhattan School of Music’s Contemporary Performance Program where he worked with David Krakauer and Alan R. Kay.
For more on Ford, visit www.fordfourqurean.com/