Peter Askim

Active as a composer, conductor and bassist, Peter Askim is Founder and Artistic Director of The Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Director of Orchestral Studies at North Carolina State University and conductor of the Raleigh Civic Symphony and Chamber Orchestra. As a conductor, he has led the American Composers Orchestra, Knoxville Symphony and Vermont Symphony, among others, and is known for innovative programming, championing the work of living composers and his advocacy of underrepresented voices in the concert hall. He has conducted premieres by composers such as Christopher Cerrone, Brett Dean, Aaron Jay Kernis, Allison Loggins-Hull, Jessica Meyer, Nico Muhly, Rufus Reid, Christopher Theofanidis, Jeff Scott and Aleksandra Vrebalov, and led the American premiere of Florence Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America. His work was featured on HBO and National Public Radio conducting folk-rock legend Richard Thompson’s soundtrack for The Cold Blue. He has collaborated with such artists as Miranda Cuckson, Matt Haimovitz, Vijay Iyer, Jennifer Koh, Nadia Sirota, Sõ Percussion and Jeffrey Zeigler, and the bluegrass band Balsam Range. As a composer, he has been called a “Modern Master” by The Strad and has had commissions and performances from such groups as the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Honolulu Symphony, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Cantus Ansambl Zagreb and the American Viola Society. With the creation of The Next Festival of Emerging Artists in 2013, Askim founded a festival dedicated to the next generation of performers, composers and choreographers. The Festival encourages young artists to focus on artistic development, entrepreneurial career strategies and the music of living composers. The Next Festival Composer/ Choreographer workshops connect early-career performers, composers and choreographers in an innovative and highly collaborative laboratory for the creation of new works. The Festival has been awarded grants by the Amphion, ASCAP and BMI Foundations, and the Copland Fund for Music.