Howie Kenty
Assistant Professor of Studio Composition
Howie Kenty is a Brooklyn-based composer and performer, occasionally known by his musical alter-ego, Hwarg. His music, called “remarkable” with “astonishing poetic power” by the International Compendium Prix Ars Electronica, is stylistically diverse, encompassing ideas from contemporary classical, electronic, rock, and ambient genres, and well as sound art, political issues, visual and theatrical elements, and much in between. Throughout all of his creations runs the idea that the experience of a piece is more than listening to the music; there is a wholeness of vision and an awareness of environment that attempts to fully draw the audience into his works.
More About Me
Besides regularly composing and performing his own music, Howie is half of the hybrid opera duo Ju-eh+Hwarg, whose The Living Dying Opera has been called “a profoundly entertaining, interactive night of operatic fun” and “a uniquely 21st Century operatic experience that pushes boundaries while getting to the core of what opera is all about.” (New York Music Daily; CutCommon). He plays guitar and composes in the progressive rock group The Benzene Ring, whose album Crossing the Divide has been hailed as “a true masterpiece” and a “gorgeous piece of experimental rock/metal” (Recyclable Sounds; Progarchy). Howie earned his MM in Music Composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music and PhD in Music Composition from Stony Brook University, and is a lecturer at Purchase College’s Studio Composition program, as well as a faculty member of the Kaufman Music Center, teaching composition, music technology, theory, and more.