Colin McAllister, D.M.A

View Colin McAllister's CV

Colin McAllister is Director of Humanities and an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where he directs the Sagitta Guitar Ensemble, organizes the Solertia Humanities Speaker Series, and is a Faculty Career Fellow with the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the T. Rowe Price Career and Innovation Center. 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), and he has recorded on the MicroFest, Summit, Innova, Centaur, Naxos, Albany, Old King Cole, Vienna Modern Masters, Carrier, and Tzadik labels. His research interests include contemporary music performance and pedagogy, musical modernism, and the apocalyptic paradigm as manifested in varying phenomena—literature, music, and art.

Colin is the guitarist and conductor for the ensemble NOISE, and a co-founder of the soundON Festival, held annually since 2007 in La Jolla, California. He performs regularly with guitarists Derek Keller and Wayne Wilkinson, and leads his own jazz quartet, which can be heard monthly in various venues in Colorado Springs. He can be heard frequently with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs, the Playground Ensemble, and the Hennessy 6. He is the founder and director of Through a Glass Darkly: Annual Symposium on Apocalyptica, a collaboration between UCCS, Concordia University Montréal, McGill University, and Colorado College. His most-recent publications are Music in the Apocalyptic Mode (Brill, 2023) and Aeneas in the Underworld (MicroFest Records, 2023). He is the author of two best-selling guitar instructional series, produced by The Great Courses—Learning to Play Guitar, and Playing Guitar Like a Pro. Colin is endorsed by PRS Guitars and is an Artist Partner with Taylor Guitars.

Colin earned both the M.A. and D.M.A. at the University of California, San Diego, where he studied guitar with Los Romeros and Stuart Fox, interpretation with Bertram Turetzky, and conducting with Harvey Sollberger and Rand Steiger. He also holds an M.A. in History from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.

• 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 4750 - Contemporary Music: Cultures, Designs and Aesthetics
• MUS 4960 - The Business of Music: Entrepreneurship & Creative Enterprise
• HUM 3990 - Visions of Darkness: Apocalypse and Dystopia in Literature, Art & Film
• HUM 3990 - Monsters of Myth from Dune to the Odyssey

• 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