“The more constraints one imposes,
    the more one frees one’s self.”
    — Igor Stravinsky

Margaret E. Collins is an award winning composer whose recent focus has been the integration of non-western instruments into ensembles with western orchestral instruments. Meg earned a PhD in Music composition from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, for her dissertation “Melting the Boundaries: The integration of ethnic instruments into western art music.” She composed eight works featuring seven different ethnic instruments: the Chinese xiao, the Native American flute, the Persian tar, the Persian santoor, the Irish uilleann pipes, and the high D and low D Irish tin whistles.

Since earning her doctorate, Meg presented a paper entitled “Contemporary Composition for Xiao” at the International Shakuhachi Festival Conference in Prague, and the paper was published in the journal, Živá hudba 2021/Living Music 2021. She recently finished a work for solo bass clarinet called, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, and a composition for Native American flute, piano, and percussion, called The Peaceful Wanderer. One for Sorrow, Two for Joy was premiered in Perugia, Italy in April 2022.

Currently, Meg is Director of the World Music Ensemble, Professor of Women in Music, and Independent Study Aural Skiills Instructor at Adelphi University, and teaches World Music History and Western European Music History at Fairfield University.

Her song for treble chorus, flute and piano, maggie and milly and molly and may, was awarded First Prize in the Berkshire Children's Chorus Composition Competition.

A recipient of the Masterworks Prize, The Shepherd and the Night Sky, for soprano solo, mixed chorus, flute and piano was recorded by members of the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chamber Choir Kyiv. The Smith College Chamber Singers performed her piece for women's a cappella chorus, Hestia's Loom, while on tour in Budapest and Prague. Prayer for Peace, for a cappella mixed chorus, was awarded the Distinction of Honors by the Waging Peace Through Singing Competition. Meg's string quintet, Before and After the End, was a Finalist in the American Romanian Team for the Arts competition, and it was performed in Romania by members of the Black Sea Philharmonic.

Meg’s formal music education began at the age of sixteen with a scholarship to the preparatory division of the Mannes College of Music. She graduated from Smith College cum laude, with the special distinction of High Honors in Music for her thesis,” On the Horizontal and Vertical in Selected Works by Schoenberg and Webern.” In 1990 and 1991 she resided in Hong Kong, where she studied Chinese flutes and folk music at the Yuet Wah Music School, and western flute privately with Timothy Wilson, of the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Meg received her Master's Degree in Music Composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music, City University of New York, where she studied under Thea Musgrave.

A lifelong chorister, Meg founded the Adesso Choral Society, a chamber chorus dedicated to presenting new works for women's chorus. She directed the chorus for ten years, ending her time with them on June 8, 2014 with a Ten Year Anniversary Concert.

Meg has taught flute, piano, and music theory for more than twenty-five years. She especially enjoys teaching “late beginners” (it’s never too late!).

 Meg was formally known as Margaret Collins Stoop.