David Hier

Honorable Mention in the 2020 John Eaton Memorial Competition
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DAVID HIER (b. 1991) was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, where he studied piano with Bella Asmarian and composition with Larysa Kuzmenko. Hier attended McGill University and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music composition, studying under Jean Lesage and Christoph Neidhöfer. He earned a Ph.D. in music theory at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied under Henry Klumpenhouwer and Zachary Bernstein. He will begin as an adjunct theory professor at William Paterson University in the fall of 2020. His dissertation centers on harmony and phrase structure in Arnold Schoenberg's atonal music.

Hier’s music has been played in Canada and the United States by ensembles, including the Lincoln Trio, the Transmission Ensemble, and the Tetra String Quartet. His Song of the Night for piano trio (2012) placed second in the Sejong Composition Competition. A set of orchestral songs is set to be premiered under conductor Justin Pambianchi in the spring of 2021 in Montreal, Canada.

Hier has given lectures on the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions, and Wolfgang Rihm at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Vienna, Austria, the European Music Analysis Conference, and various regional theory conferences in the US, including the Music Theory Society of New York State.