Ethan Gans-Morse is a composer, teacher, conductor, and performer of both contemporary and period music. His works have been read and performed by numerous ensembles, including the Portland Vocal Consort, the Artaria Quartet, the American Creators Ensemble, the Quartetto Indaco, the Fireworks Ensemble, and the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, and his music has been presented and premiered at numerous concert series, including the Music Today Festival, the Vanguard Concert Series, the Oregon Composers Forum, the highSCORE Festival (Pavia, Italy, 2011), the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium (Eugene, Oregon 2009), the Ashland Winter Fine Arts Festival (Ashland, Oregon 2006), and the Instrumenta Oaxaca Festival (Oaxaca, Mexico, 2005). As the founder, artistic director, and conductor of the Ambrosia Ensemble, a mixed vocal/instrumental chamber ensemble dedicated to premiering new works of a sacred, introspective, or philosophical nature, Ethan combines his love of Renaissance and Baroque music with his passion for new, socially relevant works of art that inspire a sense of the preciousness of life and the interconnection between the human and the Divine.
In addition to composing richly polyphonic works that revitalize Renaissance and Baroque contrapuntal traditions, Ethan has composed for a wide range of styles and ensembles, including vocal, choral, orchestral, chamber, electronic, and solo works. His compositional diversity is evident in each year of his output. In the course of 2009, he was commissioned to compose the main title theme for the first annual Streamy Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, California, an original concert/dance piece in the style of Tango Nuevo, and a choral work that was read by the Revalia Men’s Choir of Estonia and selected as the winner of the Portland Vocal Consort Young Artist Composition Contest.
Ethan has performed as a concert pianist, church pianist, and accompanist in Maine, Minnesota, and Oregon. From 2004 to 2006, he resided for two years in southern Mexico, where he worked as a Professor of Linguistics at the Universidad Regional del Sureste and the Universidad Autonoma Benito Juarez. In April, 2006, he played an exclusive solo recital in the historic chapel at the Na Bolom Museum in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas.
