January 25, 2019

Charles Peck, a ’10 alum of the Music Industry program at Drexel University, is the recipient of the 2019 Young Alumni Emerging Leader Award. The Alumni Awards recognize some of Drexel’s most exceptional students and graduates. The Young Alumni Emerging Leader Award is presented to an alumnus of the last ten years who is making an impact within his or her community or in his or her profession since graduation. Peck’s prolific career in such a short amount of time since graduation earned him top nomination for this award, in addition to his pursuance of doctoral studies which will ensure that he continues to advance both personally and make significant contributions to his chosen field.

Charles Peck is a composer whose work has been called “daring” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “spell-binding” (Rappahannock News), and “substantial, personal, genuine” (Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music). His music, spanning a range of chamber and large ensembles, has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony, the Albany Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Symphony in C, the JACK Quartet, Sandbox Percussion, the Locrian Chamber Players, percussionist Ji Hye Jung, clarinetist Derek Bermel, and pianist Holly Roadfeldt. He has also been named a winner of composition competitions with the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the New York Youth Symphony, the Lake George Music Festival, the Boston New Music Initiative, the Salvatore Martirano Memorial Award, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the National Federation of Music Clubs, Frame Dance, and Symphony in C, among others. Recently, Peck has received grants from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the McKnight Foundation, the American Composers Forum, and the Cornell Council for the Arts. And his music been featured at a variety of venues and festivals, including Carnegie Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, the Cabrillo Festival, the Mizzou International Composers Festival, the Civic Orchestra New Music Workshop, the Minnesota Orchestra’s Composer Institute, the Beijing Modern Music Festival, the Mise-En Music Festival, the American Music Festival, the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, and the New Music Gathering. Peck currently teaches at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and is a doctoral candidate at Cornell University where he earned the Otto R. Stahl Memorial Award in composition. He received his Master’s in Music from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. There, he was named the winner of the Composition Competition and was awarded the Scott Huston Award for composition. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Music Industry from Drexel University.