Allen McCullough

Music Appreciation

Allen McCullough is an active composer and pedagogue, teaching in the Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance at Purdue University.  With an undergraduate degree in music from Brown University, he also holds one Master’s degree in Composition from the Manhattan School of Music, where his primary study was with Giampaolo Bracali, along with a second Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Composition from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with James Primosch, Jay Reise, and Anna Weesner. 

He has composed extensively for the piano, for voice, and has several entries in the string quartet genre, alongside works for full orchestra, including a concerto for piano and orchestra, and a symphony in five movements.  He has been commissioned by the Tippecanoe Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Yellow Springs, the Eakins Vocal Consort of Philadelphia, and the Lotte Lehman Foundation (among others), and has procured or participated in grants from the Indiana Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, Mercer University, and Purdue University.  Recent honors include selection for drift – vol.34 of the Society of Composers, Inc. new music CD series; selection for inclusion in the scores library for the American Viola Society for his Sonata for Viola and Piano (c.2019); selection as a finalist for the National Association of the Teachers of Singing (NATS) Song Cycle competition for The Blue Symphony song cycle (c.2014); inclusion in RMN Classical’s album Modern Music for Piano 3; and – most recently – selection for his Preludes 2-4 (c.2011) to be included in  RMN Classical’s album Modern Music for Piano 4, to be released in 2022, and to be added to the Sound and Music Archive of the British Library. 

He has collaborated with internationally recognized artists and ensembles, including Yekwon Sunwoo – pianist and 2017 Van Cliburn gold medalist; Josef Spacek – violin soloist and concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra; Jennifer O’Loughlin – American soprano acclaimed for her leading opera roles and recitals in Europe, America, and Japan; and the Aeolus, Harlem, and Daedalus String Quartets, among other notable artists and ensembles. 

He resides in West Lafayette, IN (USA) with his wife, Karen, and their four daughters.