Shawn Brogan Allison’s music has been described as “playful and inventive” (Chicago Sun-Times), “smartly crafted,” “lyrical, otherworldly,” “quirky,” and “intriguing” (Chicago Classical Review). The Chicago-based composer and saxophonist has been commissioned by the American Composers Forum, Cantus, Esoterics (Seattle), Cornell Chorale, Ithaca College Men’s Chorus, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, and St. Olaf Band. He won the 2009 Polyphonos competition (U.S. Composer category), a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Tanglewood Fellowship, the 2004 Jerome Commissioning competition, and second prize in the 2009 Cello-Riss competition (Norway). Upcoming projects include a meditation on American national identity called Three Colors, for symphonic band, to be premiered by the St. Olaf Band in the spring of 2011; a piece inspired by fluid and particle dynamics called Currents for two saxophones, percussion, and piano for a premiere by Primary Colors; and a song cycle dealing with urban experience for bass and ensemble for a premiere by Alan Dunbar with the Pacifica Quartet and eighth blackbird in May of 2012.

Shawn has been involved in the administration of several new music groups. He recently served as the steering committee leader of the Chicago Composers Forum, and was a founding board member of the Ithaca, NY-based new music group Tabula Rasa.  Shawn was the University of Chicago’s composition chair for the annual Midwest Graduate Music Consortium. As a saxophonist, Shawn has performed with the MAVerick Ensemble, Ensemble X, the CCCP (Cornell Contemporary Chamber Players), Tabula Rasa, the Empire Saxophone Quartet, and the University of Chicago’s New Music Ensemble, and can occasionally be heard leading the Klezmer band at K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Congregation in Chicago. As a member of the New Heritage Saxophone Quartet, he was a semi-finalist at the Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition, and performed in a variety of national venues, including the 2003 World Saxophone Congress. Shawn has given world- and US-premiere performances of many works, including pieces by David Lang and Jacob ter Veldhuis. He has performed as a soloist with the Cornell Wind Ensemble and the St. Olaf Band, and was a saxophone instructor at Cornell University and Ithaca College. As a composer/performer, he recently began working on a series of pieces simply titled “Improvisations” for solo saxophone, which explore the nebulous and bi-directional relationship between improvisation and composition; he performed the first piece in the series at the 2009 Bowdoin International Music Festival.

Shawn grew up in Newport News, Virginia, where he began his musical education as a saxophonist, studying with James Conley and Dennis Zeisler. He holds degrees in composition and saxophone performance from St. Olaf College (B.M.) and Ithaca College (M.M.), where his primary teachers were Dana Wilson, Timothy Mahr, and Peter Hamlin. A Javits Fellow, he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition at the University of Chicago, where he has studied composition with Shulamit Ran and Marta Ptaszynska, orchestration with Cliff Colnot, and theory with Steven Rings, Lawrence Zbikowski, and Thomas Christensen.