Career As Composer
Armstrong composes for a wide variety of ensembles in various styles and genres. His compositions include 1 symphony, 5 concertos, 6 qunitets, 7 quartets, 2 trios, 5 duos, and 21 solo pieces.
Armstrong has received many awards for his compositions: in 1999 his Chicken Sonata was awarded the first prize by the Music Teachers' Association of California, in 2000, Five Elements won him another first prize from the same association. In 2001, Armstrong received a $10,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. Armstrong has received 6 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards from the ASCAP Foundation in New York, including the prestigious Charlotte V. Bergen award for Struwwelpeter: Character Pieces for viola and piano.
Many of his ensemble works were performed professionally: his first symphony Celebration was performed by the Pacific Symphony in March 2000; a string quartet commissioned by the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig in honour of Alfred Brendel’s 80th birthday was premiered by the Szymanowski String Quartet in 2011; the piano trio Stop laughing, we're rehearsing! was recorded with Andrej Bielow and Adrian Brendel for GENUIN in 2012.
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