Christopher Stark

Christopher Stark

​Associate Professor of Composition
(On leave Spring '25)
DMA, Cornell
MM, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music
research interests:
  • Composition
  • 20th-century Theory and Analysis
  • Electronic Music

contact info:

mailing address:

  • Washington University
    CB 1032
    One Brookings Drive
    St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

​Christopher Stark is a composer of contemporary classical music whose area of expertise is the combination of acoustic and electronic instruments and techniques. 

Christopher Stark, whose music The New York Times has called, "fetching and colorful," has been awarded prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation, Chamber Music America, the Barlow Endowment, and the Fromm Foundation at Harvard. Named a "Rising Star" by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, his music and arrangements have been performed by ensembles such as the Detroit Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, and members of the St. Louis Symphony. In 2012, he was in residence at Civitella Ranieri, a fifteenth-century castle in Italy, and in June of 2016 he was in residence at the Copland House. Recent highlights included performances at the 2016 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the 2016 NY Phil Biennial. In 2018, he lived in Bergen, Norway where he worked with musicians from the BIT20 Ensemble; and in 2020, he was a resident artist at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy as the Aaron Copland Fellow in Music. His film score for the feature-length film Novitiate premiered at Sundance in January 2017 and was theatrically released by Sony Pictures Classics. His debut CD, Seasonal Music, was released in 2019 on Bridge Records.