Award-winning composer David Francis Urrows (b. Honolulu, Hawai’i, 1957) studied with major figures in twentieth-century music, including Pulitzer Prize recipient David del Tredici, with the dean of American choral music Randall Thompson, as well as with British composer Kenneth Leighton, and notable Italian composer Girolamo Arrigo, among others. Works of his many genres—choral pieces, orchestral works, compositions for vocal and instrumental soloists, music for chamber ensembles, and scores for the theater—have been performed in the United States, Europe, Great Britain and Asia. He served on the teaching faculties of Hong Kong Baptist University and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, as well as Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, and Eastern Mediterranean University. Noted for his lyrical and introspective melodic voice, he won the Reiner Prize for Composition in 1978 for his String Quartet, the Malloy Miller Prize in 1985 for Three Vailima Episodes for soprano and string orchestra, and the National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song competition with his song cycle, A New England Almanack, in 1987. Urrows’ recent works have included Prelude and a Psalm of Francis Thompson (2007), Paroles pour musique (peut-être) (2013), the oratorio, The Martyrdom of St. Cecilia (2015), and the song cycle, Der Tanz der Götter (2018). He is currently composing a missa brevis to mark the 300 th anniversary of the founding of the Xitang Church in Beijing. He has also been active as a musicologist and
broadcaster. A list of his major works can be found at: