Ryan Homsey

Ryan Homsey is a versatile, award-winning American composer, equally at home writing for instrumental and choral ensembles, theater, dance, and film. His background in classical, electroacoustic, and popular music draws inspiration from his history as a professional ballet dancer.

Homsey’s works have been performed by JACK Quartet, PUBLIQuartet, Access Contemporary Music, ensemble mise-en, Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra’s Music to You String Quartet, Boston New Music Initiative, and the Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra at such venues as the Taipei Cultural Center, the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, HERE Arts, and National Sawdust.

Commissions and awards have come from the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, New York Children’s Aid Chorus, New Haven Oratorio Choir, and Skidmore College’s Dance Department. As a recipient of American Composers Forum’s Live Music for Dance grant, he composed a multi-movement work entitled Recurrent Stages for The Minnesota Ballet. The short film documenting this critically acclaimed collaboration was nominated for an Upper Midwest Emmy Award.

The feature documentary film that Homsey scored entitled Merchant Ivory — produced by Modernist Films — is the definitive presentation of the partnership, both professional and personal, of Oscar-winning director James Ivory and legendary producer Ismail Merchant.

He has studied with Allyson Bellink, Justin Dello Joio, Alice Parker, and Julia Wolfe with additional studies with Libby Larsen and David Evan Thomas as part of Source Song Festival. His music is published by Water Willow Music and GIA Publications.

Homsey holds a B.M. from SUNY Purchase College’s Conservatory of Music — where he also subsequently taught as a lecturer for 15 years — and an M.M. from New York University.