ABOUT COLIN
Guitarist Colin McAllister is active as a soloist, chamber musician, and with orchestra. Appearances include the Ojai Music Festival, Monday Evening Concerts, New Music Miami, Colorado College Summer Music Festival, San Francisco sfSound, Darmstadt International Music Festival, Festival Hispanoamericano de Guitarra, Dallas Festival of Modern Music, Foro Internacional de Música Mexico City, PRISMS New Music in Phoenix, Seattle Transport Jazz, Breda Jazz Festival, and the Vail Jazz Festival. He has performed as a soloist with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs. He performs regularly with the Playground Ensemble and the Hennessy 6 jazz sextet.
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A dedicated performer of contemporary repertoire, Colin has given over 150 world or U.S. premieres by composers including Christopher Adler, Chaya Czernowin, Franco Donatoni, Brian Ferneyhough, Beat Furrer, Vinko Globokar, Adam Greene, Helmut Lachenmann, Tania León, Rolf Riehm, and Terry Riley.​ His performances as a guitarist and conductor have been hailed as ‘sparkling...delivered superbly’ (San Francisco Chronicle), ‘ravishing’ (San Diego Union Tribune) and ‘an amazing tour de force’ (San Diego Story), and he has recorded on the MicroFest, Summit, Innova, Centaur, Naxos, Albany, Old King Cole, Vienna Modern Masters, Carrier, and Tzadik labels. His research interests include contemporary music performance and pedagogy, musical modernism, and the apocalyptic paradigm as manifested in varying phenomena—literature, music, and art.​
Colin is the guitarist and conductor for the ensemble NOISE, and a co-founder of the soundON Festival, held annually since 2007 in La Jolla, California. He is the founder and director of Through a Glass Darkly: Annual Symposium on Apocalyptica, a collaboration between UCCS, Concordia University Montréal, and McGill University, and is on the editorial board of Apocalyptica: Journal for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (Heidelberg University). His most-recent publications are Music in the Apocalyptic Mode (Brill, 2023) and Aeneas in the Underworld (MicroFest Records, 2023). He is the author of two best-selling guitar instructional series, produced by The Great Courses—Learning to Play Guitar, and Playing Guitar Like a Pro. He is the director of the Rocky Ridge Summer Guitar Seminar, held each August near Rocky Mountain National Park. Colin is an Artist Partner with both Taylor Guitars and PRS Guitars.
Colin serves as Director of Humanities and an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where he directs the Sagitta Guitar Ensemble and organizes the Solertia Humanities Speaker Series. He has been awarded the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences Outstanding Awards in both teaching and creative works, and has been a Daniels Ethics Fellow and a Faculty Career Fellow with the T. Rowe Price Career and Innovation Center.
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Colin earned both the Master of Arts and Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of California, San Diego, where he studied guitar with Los Romeros and Stuart Fox, interpretation with Bertram Turetzky, and conducting with Harvey Sollberger and Rand Steiger. He also holds a Master of Arts in History from UCCS.
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