Wayne Oquin - Composer

The Nashville Symphony has just released a new CD titled “Organ Concertos” under the American Classics label at Naxos. On this CD is a piece titled “Resilience” by Wayne Oquin that I had the pleasure of hearing live back in February of 2023. To my surprise I was sitting right behind Oquin at the concert and was able to shake his hand afterwards. One thing led to another and in May of that year I was headed towards Lincoln Center Plaza, where Oquin is the Chair of Ear Training at Juilliard, for a meeting with him. It was Jury week at Juilliard and students buzzed anxiously throughout the halls waiting to sum up their semester’s work for their teachers. Oquin met me in the lobby and we took the elevator to the fifth floor where we proceeded to enter the classroom where he does most of his teaching. Read the entire article

“The more appealing contemporary work, however, remains Wayne Oquin's Resilience (2015), a Jacobs commission, with organ and orchestra battling for supremacy in an exhilarating chain of calls and responses spread over 12 action-packed minutes.”

- Geoff Brown
Organ Concertos | BBC Music Magazine

“...The Wayne Oquin work warranted an instant encore. It’s solidly constructed and has an eventful narrative that makes the piece – like Strauss’ Don Juan – great for opening a concert.”

- David Patrick Stearns
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Oquin, watching from the audience near me, was on the edge of his seat. Sometimes when contemporary works are placed at the very start of an evening programme, one feels that it is the perfunctory debt owed to those creatives who have the misfortune to be still alive (the posthumous is sacred), but I did not feel that here. There was passionate engagement on all sides, a vigorous seizure of the meaning of this work.”

- Hilary Stroh
Bachtrack

“Beyond his traditional success, Dr. Oquin is equally renowned for his forward-thinking embrace of technology. Using the Vienna Symphonic Library, he creates strikingly realistic digital renderings of his scores—demonstrating a level of finesse and in-depth knowledge that few can rival. Indeed, no one understands it better.”


- Mark Hiskey, President
ILIO—Exclusive North American Distributor
Vienna Symphonic Library