Musicatlas
Music
Eric Funk’s catalog contains over 80 works. He has collaborated with the Moscow String Quartet, who premiered his String Quartets Nos. 2 (in memoriam Shostakovich) and 3 ("Homage to Alfred Schnittke"), and with the Moyzes String Quartet (Bratislava), who have recorded Quartet No. 2. His Oboe Concerto, written for Cynthia Green Libby, and his "Sequentia", a song cycle for contralto and chamber ensemble on nine poems by Paul Celan, were premiered in 1994. He recently completed the massive score of "Mandel’shtam: A Valediction to the 20th Century", a work in 5 movements for double chorus and double orchestra with string quartet solo, based on poems by the Russian poet Osip Mandel’shtam, which was commissioned by the Gallatin Performing Arts Center for the grand opening of their new hall in 1999. Symphonies Nos. 3 ("Hradcany", 1995, with clarinet solo) and 4 ("This Eventide Seems Spilt", 1996, in one movement for contralto and orchestra) have recently been recorded by the Prague Radio Symphony and the Warsaw Philharmonic and will soon be in distribution.
Life
Eric Funk was born in Deer Lodge, Montana, in 1949. He studied composition with Tomas Svoboda and Sándor Veress at Portland State University and with Krzysztof Penderecki at Yale University. Since 1985, he has lived in Bozeman, Montana. He is the music director and conductor of the Helena Symphony Orchestra. He also plays jazz and teaches in his private studio and at Montana State University.