Clint McCallum is a composer, performer, poet, author, and teacher living in Baltimore Maryland, USA. Born in Denver Colorado, Clint grew up as a self-trained musician playing in punk and jazz bands. He studied music composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of music with Randy Coleman and Lewis Nielson. After completing his studies he performed in several experimental music groups. He resumed his studies at the University of California at San Diego under the mentorship of Philippe Manoury and Katharina Rosenberger, where he received the Ph.D in Music Composition. Ever since, he’s been playing in bands, composing music for incredibly sensitive human beings, and using the classroom to nurture a space of creativity and criticality.
Clint’s musical activities are cross-genre and cross-disciplinary. His contemporary classical compositions are influenced by his work in punk, noise, and performance art bands and vice versa. Regardless of his creative role or the intended audience, the ideals of intensity and transformation in-and-through musical experience are consistent motivators. Even when he veers into more conceptual terrain this turn uses aesthetics as a disposable tool for initiating miraculous immanence. His musicological research, published in Journal of Popular Music Studies, is similarly focused on the uncanny becomings we perform while musicing. Indulgently interdisciplinary and yet grounded in classical music theory, Clint’s writing strives to illuminate metamorphic musical experience by describing the music itself. Clint believes in music. Clint questions that belief. Clint makes more music.
Clint's music has been performed in North America, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and Europe. He has collaborated with many renowned artists and ensembles such as Ensemble Ictus (Belgium), Ensemble Nikel (Israel), Ensemble Mosaik (Berlin), ZWERM (Belgium), the Oberlin Conservatory Orchestra (Ohio), the Ohio Ballet (Ohio), Red Fish Blue Fish (San Diego), Gnarwhallaby (Los Angeles), Astralis (New Orleans), and Fonema Consort (Chicago) among others. His music has also been presented at several contemporary music festivals and concert series including the Darmstadt Institute for New Music, Prague's Contempuls Festival, Tzlil Meudcan Festival in Tel Aviv, Opéra de Lille in France, and Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. As a performer, Clint has traveled throughout North and Central America in several bands and experimental music collectives.
Clint McCallum is a composer, performer, poet, author, and teacher living in Baltimore Maryland, USA. He composes emotionally immediate contemporary classical music, performs in a variety of bands, and writes about how we use music to transcend what we were. He is inspired by his students and strives to be reciprocal.