Andrew Conklin

Andrew Conklin (b. 1984) is Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory, and Program Director for Composition at University of the Pacific. His music has garnered recognition from diverse voices spanning the worlds of popular and classical music, and he has appeared as a composer and performer throughout the United States and Europe.

Conklin’s work has received critical acclaim in media such as Pitchfork and The Line of Best Fit and has been supported by grants from organizations including the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. As a fellow at Millay Arts, Conklin worked on a large-scale composition project based on Northern California folk music from the late 1930s, a project that yielded a pair of album-length compositions released on New Focus Recordings and Bot Cave Records. Site: Yizkor, Conklin’s collaborative project with the multimedia artist Maya Ciarrocchi, was premiered at the Sichów Educational Foundation and Roza Centre, Poland, after workshops in New York and San Francisco. More recent productions of Site: Yizkor have been commissioned by the King Manor Museum (NY) and the Chutzpah! Festival (Vancouver, BC).

A versatile musical collaborator, Conklin earned a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Recording for his contributions to The Hazel and Alice Sessions (Spruce and Maple Music) as a core band member of Laurie Lewis & The Right Hands. His guitar and bass playing can be heard on record labels such as Six Degrees, Spruce and Maple, Plug Research, City Slang, BAG Productions or Arhoolie, and he has toured extensively in the United States and Europe as a guitarist and bassist with indie rock bands, bluegrass groups, and improvising combos.