DELVYN CASE
Delvyn Case is a composer, conductor, scholar, performer, concert producer, and educator based in the Boston area. His music has been performed by over 80 orchestras in the US, UK, Canada and Europe; by legendary clarinetist Richard Stoltzman; the Borromeo Quartet, the Grammy-winning quintet Chestnut Brass Company; The New York Virtuoso Singers; and Grammy-nominees The Hermitage Trio and Charles Abramovic.
Raised in Maine, he attended Greely High School and the USM summer music camp as a euphonium player. He studied piano with Elizabeth Manduca and composition privately with Elliott Schwartz. His first composition was premiered by the Portland Symphony Youth Wind Ensemble under the direction of Peter Martin, in 1991 he received a Maine Young Composers’ Fellowship to study at the Bowdon Summer Music Festival. That year he was named Northeast Division winner of the MNTA student composition competition.
After graduating from Greely, Delvyn Case studied earned a B.A. summa cum laude in music at Yale, then completed his Ph.D. in musical composition at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently Associate Professor of Music at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, where he conducts the Great Woods Symphony Orchestra.
For the past 15 years Delvyn Case has maintained a robust connection with the musical life of Maine. His two Maine-themed chamber works, commissioned by the Portland Symphony Orchestra for their KinderKonzert program, have been heard by over 10,000 children at libraries, museums, and schools through the state. The PSO also frequently performs his holiday overture “Rocket Sleigh” on its “Magic of Christmas” concerts. His music has been heard at the Back Cove Festival of Contemporary Music, the Seal Bay Festival, and the Sebago-Long Lake Festival, and has been performed by the Portland Piano Trio and the Bayside Trio. In 2018 he founded Seven Seasons, Maine’s only professional new-music ensemble, which has premiered several works by Maine composers. For several years he produced a free classical music concert as part of the annual Yarmouth Clam Festival.
His current project is a song cycle for Grammy-nominated tenor Nicholas Phan. In 2021 his new semi-dramatic sacred work “The Binding of Isaac According to the Elohist” will be premiered at the national conference of the American Academy of Religion.
Composer/conductor Delvyn Case (b. 1974) holds degrees from Yale (B.A. summa cum laude) and the University of Pennsylvania (A.M.), where he is currently completing his doctorate in composition as a William Penn Fellow. His composition teachers have included Ezra Laderman, Steven Mackey, David Rakowski, Sebastian Currier, Elliott Schwartz, J ames Primosch, and Jay Reise. He studied piano and composition with Liz Manduca from the age of seven to seventeen.
Mr. Case has received honors and fellowships from numerous organizations, including BMI, The Society of Composers, The MacDowell Colony, The Chicago Ensemble, The College Music Society, the Music Teachers’ National Association, and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1999, the extensive second movement of his sacred vocal work No Secret Hidden was a finalist for the Orvis International Prize in Vocal Composition. He also was a recipient of numerous honors as a Yale undergraduate, including a commission by the Yale Symphony Orchestra as well as the Bach Society prize as the most outstanding musician of his class.
Also active as a conductor, Mr. Case has served as Music Director and Conductor of the Penn Chamber Music Society and the Yale Bach Society Orchestra and Chorus. A specialist in contemporary music, he has conducted orchestral and chamber works by Harbsion, Sheng, Adams, Kernis, Corigliano, and many others.
Nine young composers, ranging in age from 19 to 25, have been named winners in the 48th Annual BMI Student Composer Awards, and Delvyn Case was one on them. The BMI Student Composer Awards recognize superior creative talent and winners receive scholarship grants to be applied toward their musical education. More than 500 manuscripts were submitted to the competition from throughout the Western Hemisphere in 2000, and all works were judged under pseudonyms. Cash awards totaled $20,000.