“Memorably explosive” –International Herald Tribune

“A fascinating wedding of intellect and expressivity” –Newsday

“Probes timbral relationships and rhythmic complexities with irrepressible enthusiasm” –Financial Times

“A masterful piece, one of the best heard this year… revels in its sonic splendors” –20th Century Music

“Hard-driving and visceral, but not without moments of quiet, beautiful repose” –Andante.com

Keeril Makan writes music that challenges description and thwarts assumptions about what is beautiful. His commissions include ones from the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Kronos Quartet, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, and Carnegie Hall. He has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, the Gerbode Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, Meet the Composer, and ASCAP. Makan's work has been featured at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco and the MATA Festival in New York, and internationally at the Gaudeamus Festival in the Netherlands, Le Domaine Forget in Canada, and Voix Nouvelles in France. He has collaborated with poet Jena Osman and choreographer Benjamin Levy and frequently works with emerging new music artists such as the Del Sol String Quartet, percussionist David Shively, and soprano Laurie Rubin. His baritone saxophone solo Voice within Voice appears on Brian Sacawa's CD American Voices on Innova. The first CD of his music, In Sound, will be released on the Tzadik label in June 2008 with performances by the Kronos Quartet and Paul Dresher Ensemble. Current projects include commissions from the California EAR Unit and the American Composers Orchestra with electric guitarist Seth Josel.

Trained as a violinist, Makan received degrees in composition and religion from Oberlin. He completed his PhD in composition at the University of California–Berkeley. Outside the US, he spent a year in Helsinki, Finland, at the Sibelius Academy on a Fulbright grant. Having been awarded the George Ladd Prix de Paris from the University of California, he also lived for two years in Paris, France. Makan is Assistant Professor of Music at MIT and makes his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.