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John Wykoff

John Wykoff is a Chancellor’s Fellow in music composition at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He also teaches music theory at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, where he earned his M.A.

John’s music has been performed by such groups as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Second Instrumental Unit, and the Cygnus Ensemble. In 2006, John was awarded the George Perle Prize in Composition, a distinction all the more meaningful to him because he has a keen interest in Perle’s music.

John’s wife Evangeline is an organist. They are members of the Presbyterian Church in America.

An explosion is heard, lights flash, and the soldiers in the battle fly in all directions

War and Peace is not like other operas. It is thoroughly cinematic, which is no surprise, considering that Prokofiev had experience in filmmaking and scoring. Most operas, especially twentieth-century operas, carry the audience deeper and deeper into the minds of its principal characters.

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Classical music—that small corner of the record store—plays the past, present, and future in a hundred ways. Whether for nylon strings or CPUs, it is a thrilling and eclectic universe. John Wykoff is a Chancellor’s Fellow in music composition at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.