Christopher Dunn Rankin

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Christopher Dunn-Rankin has been composing since the age of 10, singing since the age of 8, and playing the piano since the age of 4. He is a second-year composition major at Oberlin Conservatory, and is aiming to become a professional composer, as well as a music teacher. He has studied piano with Catherine Aubert, voice with John Huntington and Joy Chen, and composition with Ross Feller, Amelia Kaplan, Lewis Nielson, Jeff Kowalkowski, Michelle McQuade-Dewhirst, Randolph Coleman, and Derek Keller. He has also taken master classes with percussionist Don Williams, men's chorus Chanticleer, and composers Walter Thompson, Tamar Muskal, and Jason Eckhart. He has performed under the baton of Carl St. Clair, music director and principal conductor of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, and John Alexander, music director and conductor of the Pacific Chorale.

Christopher is a member of Collegium Musicum Oberliniense, an early music choir at Oberlin Conservatory.

Background

Beginnings

Christopher Dunn-Rankin was born on December 21, 1986, in Walnut Creek, CA. His family moved to Irvine, CA, when he was 2, and began taking him to a Saturday morning concert series at the local Performing Arts Center. This early exposure began him on his musical journey, beginning with his request, at age 3, to take piano lessons. His first piano lesson was on his 4th birthday.

When Christopher was 10, his family moved to Great Britain for a year, during which time he began composing in an Impressionistic style, heavily informed by the new-age piano music his parents listened to. Upon his return to the United States, he began to use his voice in earnest, becoming a member of the Pacific Chorale Children's Chorus.

Theatrical Influence

An avid theatre-enthusiast, Christopher took part in plays and musicals throughout his middle-school and high-school years, playing such roles as Nathan Detroit (Guys and Dolls), The Bellhop (Lend Me a Tenor), Enjolras (Les Miserables), Oberon (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Ernst Ludwig (Cabaret), and The Beast (Beauty and the Beast). During his first year at Oberlin Conservatory, Christopher continued to take part in theatrical productions, playing Whizzer in Falsettos! and Jonathan in tick... tick... BOOM! Fortunately, unlike the protagonist in Dead Poet's Society, Christopher has never commited suicide. He made his operatic debut in 2007 as Billy in Kurt Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel, and recently performed in Sondheim's "Assassins." This theatrical influence leads him to consider not only aural aspects of his compositions, but also visual aspects, including the clothes his performers wear, how his performers look, how they are positioned on-stage, lighting, movement, and other such considerations.

He has recently completed two operas: "The Nightingale," based on the fairy-tale by Hans Christian Andersen, and "Our Own Lives," a one-act workshop opera, from an original story written by Lydia Gordon.

Christopher worked during his middle-school and high-school years to develop his own compositional voice, but was restricted by his lack of experience to tonal music alone. Upon his first visit to Oberlin Conservatory, he came into contact with atonal music, and began to write in an idiom very much his own, though certainly not without influences.

College Studies

Christopher completed his studies in Music Theory and Aural Skills, and took classes in Medieval and Renaissance Music, Music History, Experimental Music, Composition, Orchestration, as well as Acting, Music Education, and Psychology. He also takes secondary voice lessons.

Musical Influences

Christopher's work is for the most part, strictly speaking, atonal, though he prefers to refer to it as multi-tonal; that is, it makes use of a constantly shifting tonal center to avoid distinctive key areas. However, he does occasionally work in fully tonal idiom. His primary influences include such composers as Bela Bartók, John Corigliano, Adam Guettel, Stephen Sondheim, and Olivier Messiaen.

Characteristics

Christopher's work is characterized primarily by heavy textures, shifting time-signatures, irregular meters, and use of extended techniques, particularly for strings.

His most-frequently used extended techniques are:

- Bartók (snap) pizzicato

- sul ponticello

-sul tasto

- harmonics

- left-hand pizzicato

Works

Compositions (Partial List)

"Songs of Glory," song cycle for virtuoso soprano and pianoforte, text by Walt Whitman

Piano Quartet, "Flatline," for viola, violoncello, contrabass, and pianoforte

"There is Truth to be Found (In the Small Places of the World)," a fantasia in miniature for flute and pianoforte, commissioned by Trevor Patrick Watkin for his recital at Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church on July 14, 2007

"Two Songs from Sara Teasdale," for SSAA Choir, SSA sextet, mezzo-soprano solo; premiered by the Oberlin College Women's Chorale, Dec. 2007.

"The Nightingale," a chamber opera in two acts; libretto by Lydia Gordon, based on the fairy tale "The Emperor and the Nightingale," by Hans Christian Andersen

"Our Own Lives," a chamber opera in one act; libretto by Lydia Gordon; premiered February 7, 2008 at Oberlin College.

Works-In-Progress (Partial List)

"untitled," for solo organ; to be premiered on March 14, 2008 at Oberlin Conservatory

"Lines," for SATB choir (div.), text by Stephen Crane; commissioned by the Oberlin College Choir, Dr. Hugh Floyd directing

"The Little Foundling," an opera in three acts; libretto by Lydia Gordon, based on the fairy tale "The Little Mermaid," by Hans Christian Andersen.

                   Quote: "The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold."
                    --Khalil Gibran