Ryan Muncy is a performer, curator, educator, and arts entrepreneur dedicated to contemporary music. He is the executive director of Ensemble Dal Niente, a Chicago-based contemporary music ensemble and non-profit arts organization, a founding member of Anubis Quartet, a modular saxophone ensemble committed to reshaping the saxophone quartet genre, and has given world premieres of over 100 new works for saxophone. He has performed and/or recorded with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Talea Ensemble, Grant Park Symphony, and Chicago Civic Orchestra Chamber Ensemble, and has appeared as a featured performer at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt (Darmstadt Summer Courses, Germany). Ryan was the 2010 winner of the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists and is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Music degree at Northwestern University where he studies with Frederick L. Hemke.
A fierce advocate of new music, Ryan Muncy has presented world premieres of music by Philippe Leroux, Lee Hyla, Marcos Balter, Mikel Keuhn, Drew Baker, and Marilyn Shrude, amongst others, as well as continental premieres of works by James Dillon, Enno Poppe, Dai Fujikura, Ivan Fedele, Giorgio Netti, and Aaron Cassidy. He has appeared on WQXR Classical Musial Station of NYC, at the Miller Theater at Columbia University, St. Peter’s in Chelsea, as a featured performer on The Tank’s "Ear Heart Music" series in New York City, the Festival Internacional Chihuahua (Mexico) and at the Tonus Vivus Society for Contemporary Music in Canada. Ryan has presented masterclasses and held residencies, both as soloist and with ensembles, at Bowling Green State University, Morehead State University, Ball State University, and Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok). He has performed at World Saxophone Congresses in Montreal and Bangkok.
As a 2003-04 Fulbright Grantee in France, Ryan studied at the Conservatoire National de Région, Cergy-Pontoise, with Jean-Yves Fourmeau, and continued studies in France as a 2006-07 recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Award given by the Fondation des Etats-Unis, completing the Cycle d’Orientation Professionnelle at the Conservatoire National de Région, Boulogne-Billancourt with Jean-Michel Goury. In Paris, he appeared as soloist with orchestra at the Fondation des Etats-Unis and as musician with the contact improvisation dance group "H7" at Le Regard du Cygne.
Ryan holds degrees from Ball State University, where he studied with saxophone with George Wolfe and clarinet with Caroline Hartig, as well as Bowling Green State University, where he was teaching assistant to John Sampen. He appeared on Volume V of America’s Millennium Tribute to Adolphe Sax, which received a first-round Grammy Award nomination, was a finalist in the 2005 William C. Byrd International Young Artist Competition in Flint, Michigan, and winner of the 2005 Lima Symphony Concert Competition (Lima, Ohio). Muncy was winner of the 2000 BSU Concerto Competition, was a School of Music Presser Scholar in 2000, and on multiple occasions appeared as soloist with the Ball State and Kokomo Symphony Orchestras. Originally from the Louisville, Kentucky metropolitan area, Ryan’s formative saxophone and musical studies occurred under the guidance of Louisville-based saxophonist Ron Jones.
copyright © 2011 Ryan Muncy
