Kurt Sander is currently associate professor and Department Chair at Northern Kentucky University. His music has been heard at various concerts and festivals throughout the country and in Europe including June-in-Buffalo (1993), the Resolution 2000 New Music Festival, EarTalk ’99 (Greece), the 36th National Conference of the Society of Composers, Inc., and the North American Music Festival in Boca Raton. His works have been played by the Pleven Philharmonic (Bulgaria), Cappella Romana, the Nevsky String Quartet (St. Petersburg), the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Solaris Wind Quintet, Synchronia Ensemble, The New Music Associates, Schola Cantorum, the Cantata Singers of Ottawa, and have been read by the Lydian Quartet, the CORE Ensemble, the Quintet of the Americas, and the Cincinnati Philharmonia.
His music has won recognition in numerous competitions, including first prizes in the Nuvovox Choral Composition Competition, the Ninth Annual Young Composers Competition at Austin Peay State University, and the New Music for Young Performers Composition Competition (Midwest Composers Forum), plus honorable mention in the 1998 ASCAP Morton Gould Grants for Young Composers Competition. He was also a finalist in the Ladislav Kubik 3rd Annual International Composition Competition.
His Orthodox choral works are featured along with the music of Russian composer Gennady Lapaev in new CD recording titled “As Far as the East is from the West: Orthodox Choral Music of Gennady Lapaev and Kurt Sander,” released in 2011.
Active in the field of sacred Orthodox choral music, his research interests include the history and aesthetics of Orthodox liturgical music, the cross disciplinary relationships between theology and Orthodox iconography with music composition, and the work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
He holds degrees in music composition from Northwestern University, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Cleveland State University. Former teachers include Andrew Imbrie, Alan Stout, M. William Karlins, Rudolph Bubalo, and Bain Murray. His music is published by Lawson-Gould, Media Press, and St. Larissa Press.