South Carolina Music Teachers Association
Commissioned Composer
Ronald Keith Parks
Ronald Keith Parks, born in Waynesville, North Carolina, USA, is an active composer of a wide variety of genres of music. His diverse output ranges from orchestral music to chamber works to interactive computer music, to commercial music. Recent commissions and new works include After Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing # 995 for the Bechtler Ensemble, Motion for the Out of Bounds Ensemble, dum spiro, spero for the South Carolina Music Teachers Association, THE MAGICIANS SECRET for Loadbang, Building Walls for Jeff McEvoy, Getting Down to Business for the Beo String Quartet, Successions, Park Güell, and Reflections and Lore for the Charlotte Composers Forum, 9 Dreams of Flying for the Charlotte New Music Festival, and many others.
Parks has written for numerous prominent performers and ensembles including the Bechtler Ensemble, the Beo String Quartet, Blue Ridge Chamber Players, Out of Bounds Ensemble, Duo XXI, Red Clay Saxophone Quartet, the Charlotte Civic Orchestra, the NeXT Ens, the North Carolina School of the Arts Orchestra, the International Music Program Chamber Ensemble, the North Carolina School of the Arts String Orchestra, The Georgia Contemporary Ensemble, the Sally Fouse Flute Quartet, the Winthrop Guitar Ensemble, pianist Tomoko Deguchi, the Bradner-Deguchi piano duo, the Winthrop Wind Symphony, guitarist L.H. Dickert, flutist Jill O'Neil, and many others.
His compositions and papers have been selected for inclusion at numerous national and international festivals and conferences including the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Malgrat del Mar International Music Festival, Society of Composers' national and regional conferences, the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States conferences, the International Computer Music Conference, the Electronic Music Midwest Festival, the Spark Festival, the National Flute Association conference, the New West Electroacoustic Music Festival, the Australian Flute Festival, the The Two-Sided Triangle concert series in Essen Germany, the NextWave~ festival in Melbourne Australia, the Earfest and Computer Music at SUNY Stony Brook series, and composers' concert recitals around the world.
Dr. Parks' research into granular sampling, granular synthesis methods, and FFT-based spectral filtering is included in the Amsterdam Catalogue of Csound Computer Instruments and has been featured at International Computer Music Conference, Society for Electronic Music in the United States, Society of Composers, Inc., and various other conferences and professional venues and has been published in various conference proceedings.
His honors and awards include the Aaron Copland Award, the Outstanding Junior Professor Award at Winthrop University, two South Carolina Music Teacher's Association Commissions, Honorable Mentions in the Truman State/MACRO Composition Contest, the Minnesota Composers Forum, and the Shepard Composer of the Year Award, two Giannini Scholarships for Music Composition plus the Chancellor's Award for Excellence at the North Carolina School of the Arts, and three Graeffe Memorial Scholarships for Composition and the Presidential Recognition Award at the University of Florida. His flute quartet “Counterparts” was selected as the set piece for the 11th annual international Australian Flute Festival quartet competition.
Ron's music is available on a variety of labels. Reflections and Lore is available through Albany Records, Torque, for orchestra was released as part of Spellbound: Captivating Works for Orchestra and Large Ensemble on Navona Records. Fractures, for digital media was included on the 2007 International Computer Music Conference proceedings CD. Residual, for digital media was included on the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival's 10 year retrospective CD on the Electronic Music Foundation label (CD 031), Non Divisi and Sul C, both for digital media were included on the 2005 and 2006 60X60 CDs released by Vox Novus, A Matter of Perspective, for violin and cello was released as part of Duo XXI's release Quest: New Music for Violin and Cello (Albany Records ASIN: B0049HBFSG), and VoiceWall was included on the Society of Composers, Inc. Student Chapter CD Volume 1 from the University of Florida.
Dr. Parks earned the Bachelor of Music in composition from the North Carolina School of the Arts, an Masters of Music in composition from the University of Florida, and a Ph.D. in composition from the University at Buffalo. He is currently Professor of Music at Winthrop University where he serves as area coordinator for music composition and music technology, and Director of the Winthrop Computer Music Lab and Studios.
Premiere: “Bygone” for viola, piano, live audio processing, and video.
Program Notes:
The idea for “Bygone came to me immediately after reading the call for submissions. “…create a new work inspired by South Carolina’s abandoned infrastructure, including roads, bridges, rail tracks, and former routes…running through fields and towns that no longer depend upon them, and paths, both known and unknown…” I grew up in the Carolinas and often spent long summer days exploring the outdoors with friends. We frequently ran across abandoned roads, rail tracks, trails, and paths, and would follow them, usually leading to abandoned structures or simply fading into the undergrowth. The opportunity to create a work that would “…look into what it means for form to persist after function has been abandoned…” immediately suggested to me music with video running in parallel streams, following a formal structure of past-present-future.
The composition will be premiered at the SCMTA Annual Conference on Friday, November 6, 2026, at Newberry College.