Anthony Brandt is a Professor of Composition and Theory at the Shepherd School and Artistic Director of the contemporary music ensemble Musiqa, winner of two Adventurous Programming Awards from Chamber Music America and ASCAP.  His compositions includes two chamber operas, and works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, voice, choir, dance, television, theater, and art installations.  His honors include a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress, and grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Houston Arts Alliance, and the MacDowell and Djerassi Arts Colonies.  He and neuroscientist David Eagleman have co-authored The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World (Catapult, 2017). Dr. Brandt has also co-authored several papers on music cognition and a chapter on music’s role in early language acquisition in the upcoming Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology.  Dr. Brandt has organized three international conferences on Exploring the Mind through Music at Rice.