Kevin Ernste is a composer, performer, and teacher of composition and electronic music at Cornell University and Director of the Cornell Electroacoustic Music Center. He did graduate work in Music Composition at the Eastman School of Music (MA 2004, PhD 2006) where he studied with Sydney Hodkinson, Augusta Read Thomas, Joseph Schwantner, Robert Morris, and Allan Schindler. Recently he was the Acting Director and lecturer at the Eastman Computer Music Center (Fall 2004), and Co-director of the ImageMovementSound festival 2004.

His recent music includes a work for saxophonist Randall Hall, a piece for viola with electronic sounds for John Graham performed on Mr. Graham's May 2004 China tour (Beijing, Wuhan, Xiamen, Hong Kong), as well as at the Aspen Summer Music Festival, a piece for solo piano and tape narration for Fang-Tzu Liu called Long Path, recently performed in the National Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, a commission celebrating Pulitzer prize winning former Poet Laureate Rita Dove's visit to the University of Rochester's Meliora weekend in October 2004, and a work for chamber orchestra entitled To Linger Still which has received performances under Maestro David Gilbert, and Musica Nova's Brad Lubman.

He is currently composing a number of new works, one for Marimbist Nathaniel Bartlett for 5-octave marimba and percussion ensemble, for Musica Nova (Brad Lubman, 2005), for pianist Thomas Rosenkrantz (piano and toy piano, 2006), guitarist Ken Meyer (gtr. and electronic sounds, 2006), and a feature-length film called "In the Summer of Deer and Butterflies" by Maria Berns.
His awards include a graduate scholarship to the Eastman School of Music, a Whitford L. Huff Award, two Belle Gitelman Awards, a Howard Hanson Ensemble Prize, a McCurdy Prize, an American Music grant, and the Ralph Jackno Scholarship. His music has been performed nationally and internationally, with recent and upcoming concerts in Holland, Taiwan, Singapore, mainland China, Hong Kong, England, Cuba, California, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Virginia, Oregon, New Jersey, and New York, including institutions such as Cornell, Princeton, Syracuse, and others.