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Abstract
A native of Houston, TX, Wayne Oquin is chair of ear training/musicianship at the Juilliard
School, where he has worked since 2008. He holds a bachelor of music from Texas State
University and a master of music and doctor of musical arts from the Juilliard School.
While a student at Juilliard, Oquin studied composition with Milton Babbitt and Samuel
Adler, and served as a teaching fellow for Mary Anthony Cox. He also won the Richard F.
French Prize for best doctoral dissertation, the Juilliard Inner-Arts Award, the Palmer Dixon
Prize, and was the first recipient of the Arthur Friedman Award for his orchestral composition
An Unbroken Chain to Infinity.
The Danish National Symphony, the Munich Philharmonic, the Pacific Symphony, the
King's Singers, and Marc-Andre Hamelin have all commissioned and performed Oquin's music.
In the 2017-2018 season, the Philadelphia Orchestra (Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor, and Paul
Jacobs, organ) performed his quasi-organ concerto Resilience six times, including on their
season-opening performance and on tour in Europe. Other projects include an orchestral version
of Tower Ascending, commissioned by the Pacific Symphony (Carl St. Clair, conductor) and
Horizon, a twenty-minute piece for band, commissioned by Texas State University (Caroline
Beatty, conductor).
In addition to Song for Silent Voices, Oquin has contributed significant music to wind
literature, including Flashback, A Solemn Place, Tower Ascending, and Affirmation. He has won
the National Band Association's William D. Revelli Award twice for Affirmation (2014) and
Song for Silent Voices (2018). In 2016, the United States Air Force awarded him the
Commander's Medal of Excellence.