Dmitri Tymoczko

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Dmitri Tymoczko is a composer, music theorist, and assistant professor at Princeton University who is interested in contemporary tonal music. As a composer, he writes music that draws on a range of traditions, including impressionism, minimalism, jazz, and rock. As a theorist, he is interested in understanding what makes music sound good. In recent work, he showed that musical chords have a precise geometrical structure and that composers in a range of styles have exploited the non-Euclidean features of this geometry.

In 2005–2006, Tymoczko plans to write a series of pieces, including a piano quintet commissioned for Ursula Oppens and the Pacifica Quartet, a piece for the sax/percussion Yesaroun’ Duo, and a series of electronic works incorporating old “spoken word” recordings. He will also begin work on a book about twentieth-century tonal music.

Tymoczko’s music has won numerous prizes and awards, including a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Eisner Award from the University of California at Berkeley, and fellowships from Tanglewood, the Ernest Bloch Music Festival, Princeton University, and the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory. His music has been performed by the Brentano Quartet, the Network for New Music, the Synergy Vocal Ensemble, and others. His articles have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Boston Review, and Music Theory Spectrum. Tymoczko earned his bachelor’s at Harvard University and his master’s and doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley.