Colin McAllister, D.M.A

View Colin McAllister's CV

Colin serves as Director of Humanities and an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts where he directs the Sagitta Guitar Ensemble and organizes the Solertia Humanities Speaker Series. His research interests include contemporary music performance and pedagogy, musical modernism, and the apocalyptic paradigm as manifested in varying phenomena—literature, music, and art. He has been awarded the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences Outstanding Awards in both Teaching and Creative works and has served as both Daniels Ethics Fellow and a Faculty Career Fellow with the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the T. Rowe Price Career and Innovation Center.

He pursues an active career as both a guitarist and conductor, with a particular emphasis on repertoire from the late-20th and 21st centuries. He has given over 150 world or U.S. premieres by composers including Christopher Adler, Juan Campoverde, Chaya Czernowin, Franco Donatoni, Brian Ferneyhough, Beat Furrer, Vinko Globokar, Adam Greene, Helmut Lachenmann, Tania León, Rolf Riehm, and Terry Riley. His performances as a guitarist and conductor have been hailed as ‘sparkling...delivered superbly’ (San Francisco Chronicle), ‘ravishing’ (San Diego Union Tribune) and ‘an amazing tour de force’ (San Diego Story), For over a quarter century, he has been a member of the ensemble NOISE, and is a co-founder of the soundON Festival, held annually since 2007 in La Jolla, California. His concert appearances include the Ojai Music Festival, Monday Evening Concerts, New Music Miami, Colorado College Summer Music Festival, San Francisco sfSound, Darmstadt International Music Festival, Festival Hispanoamericano de Guitarra, Dallas Festival of Modern Music, and the Foro Internacional de Música Mexico City. He has performed as a soloist with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs. His recordings can be found on the MicroFest, Summit, Innova, Centaur, Naxos, Albany, Old King Cole, Vienna Modern Masters, Carrier, and Tzadik labels.

Colin is the founder and director of Through a Glass Darkly: Annual Symposium on Apocalyptica, a collaboration between UCCS, Concordia University Montréal, and McGill University, and is on the editorial board of Apocalyptica: Journal for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (Heidelberg University). His most-recent publications are Music in the Apocalyptic Mode (Brill, 2023) and Aeneas in the Underworld (MicroFest Records, 2023). Colin is an Artist Partner with both Taylor Guitars and PRS Guitars.

• D.M.A. in Contemporary Music Performance, University of California, San Diego
• M.A. in Contemporary Music Performance, University of California, San Diego
• M.A. in History, University of Colorado Colorado Springs
• B.S. University of Colorado, Denver

Lower Division

• MUS 1624/2624 - Applied Music: Private Instruction (Guitar)
• MUS 2250 - Jazz and Improvisation Ensemble
• MUS 2850 - Topics in Music History and Research I

Upper Division

• MUS 3052 – Sagitta Guitar Ensemble
• MUS 3624/4624 - Applied Music: Private Instruction (Guitar)
• MUS 3850 - Topics in Music History and Research II
• MUS 4250 - The Business of Music: Entrepreneurship & Creative Enterprise
• MUS 4750 - Contemporary Music: Cultures, Designs and Aesthetics
• HUM 3990 - Visions of Darkness: Apocalypse and Dystopia in Literature, Art & Film

• The Medieval Apocalyptic Tradition: From the Twilight of the Roman Empire to the Dawn of Early Modern Europe, Edited by Lorenzo DiTommaso and Colin McAllister (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2026)
• Aeneas in the Underworld (Los Angeles: MicroFest Records, 2023)
• Dies irae, dies illa: Music in the Apocalyptic Mode  (Leiden: Brill, 2023)
• The Hennessy Six: The Road Less Traveled (Summit Records, 2021)
• The Cambridge Gloss on The Apocalypse (Corpus Christianorum in Translation, Brepols Press, 2020)
• Cambridge Companion to Apocalyptic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
• Playing Guitar Like a Pro: Lead, Solo and Group Performance (The Great Courses, 2018)
• Full Circle – NOISE plays the music of Stuart Saunders Smith (Centaur Records, 2017)
• Learning to Play Guitar: Chords, Scales, and Solos (The Great Courses, 2017)
• Peter Scott Lewis - The Four Cycles (Naxos - American Classics, 2016)
• NOISE plays Burtner (Innova Records, 2013)
• Peter Ivan Edwards - Object Lessons (Albany Records, 2010)
• David Loeb - A Forest of Verses (Vienna Modern Masters, 2009)
• San Diego Composer's Collective - New Music from San Diego (Carrier Records, 2009)
• Christopher Adler - Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze (Innova Records, 2007)
• Derek Keller - Impositions and Consequences (Tzadik Records Composer Series, 2007)
• Fourteenth century Counterpoint: Music of the Chantilly Codex (Québec: Les Productions d'Oz, 2005)
• The Vanguard Guitar: Etudes and Exercises for the Study of Contemporary Music (Québec: Les Productions d'Oz. 2004)
• Solos and Duos for Guitar (Old King Cole Records, 2004)

• Medieval Academy of America
• American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
• Guitar Foundation of America
• Society of Biblical Literature
• Society for Classical Studies