Composers

Elaine Hugh-Jones songs have recently been performed in recital by Roderick Williams, Elizabeth Watts, James Gilchrist and Diana Moore. In 2015 her songs made their Royal Opera House debut, performed in a lunchtime concert by mezzo-soprano, Fiona Kimm with David Cyrus at the piano. Her songs are finding an increasing audience, as singers become aware of her unique talents in setting poetry to music. She is particularly drawn to 20th century poets including Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen and Walter de la Mare, but has also made very memorable settings of Shakespeare and American 19th century poets. Elaine has recently added settings of poems by A E Housman and Yeats to her list of works. Elaine was born in London and grew by the Solway Firth, near Carlisle. She has enjoyed a busy career as a pianist, composer and teacher. Her keyboard training was with Dr. F. W. Wadeley, Harold Craxton and Julius Isserlis. In the post-war years, Elaine was an official accompanist for radio and television programmes with the BBC, work which she combined with teaching at Derby High School, where she was appointed Director of Music in 1949. From 1956 to 83, she continued her radio (and latterly, television) work for the BBC in Birmingham whilst teaching at Kidderminster High School from 1955, and from 1963 at Malvern Girls' College and then at Malvern College. Elaine Hugh-Jones has developed her work as a composer mostly over the last 30 years. The emphasis of her creativity has been in the vocal and choral category, in which there are to be found song-cycles, songs, choral music and a number of instrumental pieces, as well as songs with instrumental accompaniments. Much of her work has been broadcast by the BBC radio networks. She received lessons in composition from Lennox Berkeley and orchestration from John Joubert.

Widely performed throughout the country, the music of American composer Gwyneth Walker is beloved by performers and audiences alike for its energy, beauty, reverence, drama, and humor. Dr. Gwyneth Walker (b. 1947) is a graduate of Brown University and the Hartt School of Music. She holds B.A., M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in Music Composition. A former faculty member of the Oberlin College Conservatory, she resigned from academic employment in 1982 in order to pursue a career as a full-time composer. For nearly 30 years, she lived on a dairy farm in Braintree, Vermont. She now divides her time between her childhood hometown of New Canaan, Connecticut and the musical community of Randolph, Vermont. Gwyneth Walker is a proud resident of New England. She was the recipient of the 2000 "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Vermont Arts Council and the 2018 "Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award" from Choral Arts New England. In 2020, her alma mater, the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford, presented her with the Hartt Alumni Award. A composer since age two, Gwyneth Walker has always placed great value on active collaboration with musicians. Over the decades, she has traveled to many states to work with instrumental and choral ensembles, soloists, and educational institutions as they rehearse and perform her music. A number of these visits have developed into ongoing relationships. In 2018, Walker was named Composer-in-Residence for the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra in Petoskey, Michigan. Walker's catalog includes over 350 commissioned works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, and solo voice. A special interest has been dramatic works that combine music with readings, acting, and movement. The music of Gwyneth Walker is published by E.C. Schirmer (choral/vocal/instrumental music) and Lauren Keiser Music (orchestral/instrumental music).

London-born Anna Clyne is a GRAMMY-nominated composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music. Described as a “composer of uncommon gifts and unusual methods” in a New York Times profile and as “fearless” by NPR, Clyne’s work often includes collaborations with cutting-edge choreographers, visual artists, filmmakers, and musicians. Upcoming premieres include Stride, a new work for string orchestra inspired by Beethoven's Sonata Pathétique for the Australian Composers Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Lausanne Orchestra and River Oaks Chamber Orchestra; Color Field a new work inspired by the artwork of Mark Rothko for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; and Overflow, a new work for wind ensemble inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. This fall sees the release of Clyne's Mythologies, a portrait album featuring the works Masquerade, This Midnight Hour, The Seamstress, Night Ferry, and <<rewind<<, recorded live by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with soloists Jennifer Koh and Irene Buckley and conductors Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton, and André de Ridder. Other recent premieres include Sound and Fury, performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Pekka Kuusisto in Edinburgh; Breathing Statues, a new string quartet for the Calidore String Quartet; Shorthand for solo cello and string quintet premiered by The Knights at Caramoor in New York; her Rumi-inspired cello concerto, DANCE, premiered with Inbal Segev at the 2019 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, led by Cristian Măcelaru; and Restless Oceans with the Taki Concordia Orchestra and Marin Alsop at the Opening Ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Clyne served as composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, L’Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, and Berkeley Symphony. Clyne currently serves as The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Associate Composer through the 2021-2022 season, with a series of works commissioned over three years, and as the mentor composer for Orchestra of St Luke's DeGaetano Composer Institute. Her music is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes. boosey.com/clyne Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.

Kats-Chernin, who was born on 4 November 1957 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as the younger of two daughters of a physician and an engineer, grew up from the age of four in the Russian regional capital of Yaroslavl. She devoted herself since earliest childhood to piano playing. She received instrumental instruction at music school, and later also composition lessons at the Sobinov Conservatory in Yaroslavl. At the age of fourteen, she passed the entrance examination at Moscow’s Gnessin Academy of Music and was one of nine candidates accepted from among 600 applicants. During her training there, her family decided to follow Kats-Chernin’s aunt and uncle, who had emigrated with their family to Australia, and so in 1975, at the age of seventeen, she settled in Sydney, where she continued her studies at the Conservatory of Music with Richard Toop (composition) and Gordon Watson (piano), among others. She received her diploma in 1979, whereby she was the first graduate to be granted a double degree as pianist and composer; for her concert exam, she played her own piano concerto, which also won her the Frank Hutchens Scholarship for Composition of the Music Teachers’ Association of New South Wales. By means of a DAAD scholarship, she came to Germany, where she studied with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover from 1980 to 1982 and lived for nearly fourteen years. Kats-Chernin wrote many works for theater and ballet. Her collaborations with director Andrea Berth and choreographer Reinhild Hoffmann led to productions at Vienna’s Burgtheater, at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, and the municipal theaters in Hamburg and Berlin. A close collaboration developed with Ensemble Modern, for whom Kats-Chernin composed the piece Clocks, which was premiered in late 1993, attracted great international attention, and subsequently played by many ensembles, as was the Concertino with solo violin (1994). Shortly before this, in 1993, she composed her first large-scale orchestral work, Retonica, a commission from the Australian Music Centre. Starting around this time, Kats-Chernin underwent a fundamental turn away from modernistic, noise-like musical language to a more accessible tonal style as, for example, in Zoom and Zip (1998). Since then, her music can be described as a personal amalgam of different influences; these include elements of minimal music, dance-like music, classical models, for example from Russian music or the Baroque, as well as Jewish and other folk music traditions. Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes

Faye-Ellen Silverman began her music studies before the age of four at the Dalcroze School of Music in New York City. She first achieved national recognition by winning the Parents League Competition, judged by Leopold Stokowski, at the age of 13. She played her winning composition in Carnegie Hall (main hall) - her professional piano debut - and also appeared on the Sonny Fox Wonderama TV program. She holds a BA from Barnard, cum laude and honors in music, and an AM from Harvard and a DMA from Columbia, both in music composition. She spent her junior year of college at Mannes College. Her teachers have included Otto Luening, William Sydeman, Leon Kirchner, Lukas Foss, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and Jack Beeson. Seesaw Music, a division of Subito Music, publishes about 100 of her compositions. She became a published composer at age 24 and an ASCAP member at age 25. Stories for Our Time is recorded on MSR Classics; Zigzags is available on two recordings, one on Crystal Records (Velvet Brown) and the other on a CD available from record outlets (Joanna Ross Hersey); Taming the Furies is available on Capstone, and Passing Fancies, Restless Winds, and Speaking Alone are on New World Recordings. Two entire CDs of her chamber works are on Albany Records. The first, Manhattan Stories, has Translations, Dialogue, Dialogue Continued; Taming the Furies (second recording of this work), Love Songs, and Left Behind. The second CD, Transatlantic Tales, a co-production with the German-Danish guitarist Volkmar Zimmermann, contains Processional, 3 Guitars, In Shadow, Wilde’s World, Danish Delights, and Pregnant Pauses. Oboe-sthenics, her first recording, was released on Finnadar-Atlantic. The LP is out of print, but can still be found. Silverman's awards include the selection of her Oboe-sthenics to represent the United States at the International Rostrum of Composers/UNESCO, resulting in international radio broadcasts; winning the Indiana State [Orchestral] Composition Contest, resulting in a performance by the Indianapolis Symphony; a Governor's Citation; and having September 30, 1982 named Faye-Ellen Silverman Day in Baltimore by Mayor Donald Schaeffer. Additionally, she has been the recipient of the National League of American Pen Women’s biennial music award, yearly Standard Awards from ASCAP (now known as ASCAPlus) from 1983-2015, several Meet the Composer grants, and an American Music Center grant. She has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Le Moulin å Nef (France), a resident scholar at the Villa Serbelloni of the Rockefeller Foundation (Italy), a resident artist at the Fundación Valparaíso (Spain - where she received Ayuntamiento de Mojacar Artist-in-Residence Grant), a Composers' Conference Fellow, a Yaddo Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. She is currently a Founding Board Member of the International Women's Brass Conference (for which she has served as composer-in-residence), a Board member of New York Women Composers, and a founding member of Music Under Construction, a composers’ collective. (ABI). She is currently on the faculties of Juilliard and New York University and teaches privately. Prior teaching experience includes New York University (School of Professional Studies, the Mannes School of Music (College of Performing Arts, The New School), Eugene Lang College (The New School), the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College, several branches of the City University of New York and Columbia University. Silverman has lectured in Europe and throughout the United States, often as a visiting composer. European engagements have included lectures at Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw sponsored by the Maestro Foundation (April 2014), and a lecture to members of the Lithuanian Composers Union and composition students from the Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy followed by pre-concert talks and a radio interview (May 2009), sponsored by the U.S. State Department, and guest composer at Donne in Musica (4th International festival) held in Fiuggi, Italy (September 1999). In the United Staes, she has been a visiting composer at the Aspen Music Festival, Capital University, Edinboro University Indiana State University, the International Women’s Brass Conference, the Philadelphia Arts Alliance, Southern Methodist University, SUCO at Oneonta (1st Festival of Women Composers), Tidewater Festival, University of North Texas, University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, to cite a few examples.

Described as "especially glorious... ethereal" by Whole Note, "mesmerizing," by critic Tim Smith, and "a highlight of the concert" by the Boston Musical Intelligencer, the music of Canadian composer Tawnie Olson draws inspiration from politics, spirituality, the natural world, and the musicians for whom she composes. She is the winner of a 2019 Copland House Residency Award, the 2018 Barlow Prize and the 2015 Iron Composer Competition, and her Three Songs on Poems by Lorri Neilsen Glenn took second prize in the 2018 NATS Art Song Competition. In 2018 she was the Composer-in-Residence of the Women Composers Festival of Hartford, an American Composers Forum BandQuest Composer-in-Residence at E.C. Adams School in Guilford, CT, and received a 2018 Connecticut Artist Fellowship. In 2017, she received an OPERA America Discovery Grant to develop a new work about Hildegard of Bingen and Eleanor of Aquitaine with re:Naissance Opera (libretto by Roberta Barker), and a Canada Council for the Arts Professional Development Grant to study field recording at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Her opera Sanctuary and Storm is a finalist in the 2020-2021 National Opera Association Dominick Argento Chamber Opera Composition Competition. Olson has been commissioned by the Canadian Art Song Project, Third Practice/New Music USA, the Canada Council for the Arts, Mount Holyoke College/The Women’s Philharmonic, the Blue Water Chamber Orchestra, Ithaca College, the American Composers Forum, and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music’s Robert Baker Commissioning Fund, among others. Recent projects include Beloved of the Sky, commissioned by the Barlow Foundation for Seraphic Fire, The Crossing, and the BYU Singers, the chamber opera Sanctuary and Storm (libretto by Roberta Barker), co-commissioned by the Women Composers Festival of Hartford and the Canada Council for the Arts for re:Naissance Opera, Composition en rouge, bleu et jaune, commissioned by Pentaèdre Woodwind Quintet, Supreme, commissioned by saxophonist Carrie Koffman, That's one small step..., for SATB, string quartet, and percussion, co-commissioned by the Virginia Choral Society and the Alexandria Choral Society, Pop!, for concert band, commissioned by the American Composers Forum, Reformation, for SATB, mezzo-soprano and tenor soloists, brass quartet, and organ, commissioned by the University Church in Yale for the UCY Chapel Choir, and Magnificat, commissioned by Karen Clute for the Elm City Girls Choir and Yale Schola Cantorum. Olson's music is performed on five continents; it can also be heard on recordings by percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum, Parthenia viol consort (with bass-baritone Dashon Burton), the Yale Schola Cantorum and Elm City Girls Choir, bassoonist Rachael Elliott, the Canadian Chamber Choir, Chronos Vocal Ensemble, soprano Magali Simard-Galdès, clarinetist Shawn Earle, oboist Catherine Lee, and Shawn Mativetsky, McGill University professor of tabla and percussion. Her scores are available from the Canadian Music Centre, Galaxy Music, Hal Leonard's BandQuest and Mark Foster series, and E.C. Schirmer. Olson holds a doctorate in music composition from the University of Toronto, a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music, an Artist Diploma from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Calgary.

Of French nationality, Ida Gotkovsky grew upin a family of musicians. Her studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris won her numerous first prizes. Ida Gotkovsky is known for a broad range of works, amongst which chamber music, symphonic works, instrumental, vocal and lyric pieces are widely represented. Since the beginning of her career, the character and form of her works have won her many prizes, including : Prix Lily Boulanger - Prix Blumenthal - Premier Prix du Référendum Pasdeloup - Prix International de Divonnes les Bains - Médaille de la Ville de Paris - Grand Prix Musical de la Ville de Paris - three prizes from the Institut de France - Golden Rose (U.SA.), etc… Her fame quickly spread, and Ida Gotkovsky was asked first to join, later to preside over, numerous international juries. Meantime, her works were being performed in Europe, the United States, the U.S.S.R, Japon, Asia, Australia ... She was named Professor of Composition in Texas. AIl her works are commissioned by the State or by foreign countries.

Education University of Missouri-Kansas City 2007 — 2010 DMA, Music Composition University of Missouri-Kansas City 2005 — 2007 MM (Master of Music), Music Composition Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico 1997 — 2003 Bachelor of Music, Composicion

Kristin Shafel Omiccioli, a native of Madison, WI, holds composition degrees (M.M., B.M.) from the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance. Kristin's compositions have been performed at national and regional new music festivals and conferences in Missouri, Wisconsin, Texas, Oklahoma, New York, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, and Oregon. During her time at UMKC, Kristin also focused on double bass performance and arts administration. She was a student leader and performer in many of the Conservatory's student organizations and ensembles, including Musica Nova, Composers' Guild, the Conservatory Student Association, the orchestras, and Wind Symphony. Her composition instructors were James Mobberley, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, and Chen Yi, and her bass instructor was Sue Stubbs. Formerly a guitarist, Kristin performed with big bands and her own jazz combo in Madison, WI, having studied jazz guitar and theory with Roger Brotherhood in Madison and jazz voice and theory with Hal Melia in Kansas City at UMKC. Kristin enjoys being active in the performing arts community. She has volunteered with the Chamber Music Society of Kansas City and Charlotte Street Foundation, and has played in the bass section of the Northland Symphony Orchestra, among others. Kristin currently serves as principal bass for the Kansas City Civic Orchestra and Heritage Philharmonic, and is a section bassist for Kinnor Philharmonic. She joined the writing staff of KCMetropolis.org in February 2010 and has been KCM’s executive editor since July 2011. Read her blog at mylittleheartmelodies.wordpress.com .

In works of various dimensions, YAO Chen seeks paths toward transcendence. His music, always ritual in nature, eschews contemporary vogues and instead aims at a timelessness and an otherness that exists beyond the standard categories – music for the moment, but also music for then and music for what lies ahead. Whether his work is brittle or forceful, or often both in coexistence, melancholy and a sense of wonder are recurring characteristics, as is an internationalist orientation grounded in a quest for maximal musical meaning. His perceptions on musical time, timbre, intonation, pulsation, and expression are always at frontiers: between the old and the new, between the East and the West, between irrational mysticism and rational logic. While devoting himself mainly to the field of contemporary art music, YAO also experiments with other genres, writing music for films and theatre productions. Cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary concepts permeate his creative inspiration and compositional output, presenting his understanding of the value of new music in enlivening global cultures. His creative vision and aesthetic pursuit have resulted in his many compositions, such as Two Poems for orchestra, the instrumental theatre piece Paramita, the three-act environmental theatre piece Playing the Opera on Pipa: Romance of the Western Chamber, and many Chinese-Western mixed instrumental works including Tsanglang…Tsanglang for flute, zheng and viola, Yearning for zheng and double bass, Jun for pipa and double bass. These pieces not only demonstrate his talent in navigating situations covering a wide emotional spectrum and dramaturgical elements in music writing, but also reveal his versatility in structuring musical forms that embrace mixed instruments, musical languages and styles. In recent years, his music has received a significant amount of recognition in many distinguished international arenas. His music has been performed by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (Grammy winner), Orchestre National de Lorraine, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, China Philharmonic，ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Pacifica String Quartet (Grammy Winner), Quatuor Diotima, eighth blackbird (Grammy winner), Tang Quartet, Civitas Ensemble (from Chicago Symphony Orchestra), Camerata Woodwind Quintet, Quintet of the Americas, New Fromm Players, Earplay Ensemble, Israel Contemporary Players, Conundrum, Wild Rumpus New Music Collective, TianYing Chinese Ensemble, Beijing New Music Ensemble, etc. YAO has collaborated with countless artists, including conductors Cliff Colnot, Jacques Mercier,Rei Hotoda, Chen Lin, and Lio Kuokman, violin virtuoso Siow Lee-Chin and He Wei, viola virtuoso Yunjie(Jay) Liu, Xu Peijun and Veit Hertemstein double bassists DaXun Zhang, Michael Cameron and Chen Han-Jui, sopranos Tony Arnold and Allison Angelo, flutists Denis Bouriakov and Clara Novakova, pianist Nareh Arghamanyan, bayan-players Luo Han and Stanislav Venglevski, harpist Nicolas Tulliez, Chinese pipa-players Yang Wei and Lan Weiwei, marimba virtuoso Wen-Chen Lin, Chinese bamboo flutist Zhang Weiliang, zheng player Yu-Chen Wang, Kun Opera singer Lu Jia and Xiao Xiangping.

Adolphus Hailstork received his doctorate in composition from Michigan State University, where he was a student of H. Owen Reed. He had previously studied at the Manhattan School of Music, under Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, at the American Institute at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger, and at Howard University with Mark Fax. Dr. Hailstork has written numerous works for chorus, solo voice, piano, organ, various chamber ensembles, band, orchestra, and opera. Among his early compositions are: CELEBRATION, recorded by the Detroit Symphony in 1976; OUT OF THE DEPTHS (1977), and AMERICAN GUERNICA (1983), are two band works which won national competitions. CONSORT PIECE (1995) commissioned by the Norfolk (Va.) Chamber Ensemble, was awarded first prize by the University of Delaware Festival of Contemporary Music. Significant performances by major orchestras (Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York) have been led by leading conductors such as James de Priest, Paul Freeman, Daniel Barenboim, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maezel, Jo Ann Falletta and David Lockington. In March 2019 , Thomas Wilkins conducted Hailstork’s AN AMERICAN PORT OF CALL with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The composer’s second symphony (commissioned by the Detroit Symphony, and second opera, JOSHUA’S BOOTS (commissioned by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the Kansas City Lyric Opera) were both premiered in 1999. Hailstork’s second and third symphonies were recorded by the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra (David Lockington) and were released by Naxos. Another Naxos recording, AN AMERICAN PORT OF CALL (Virginia Symphony Orchestra) was released in spring 2012. Recent commissions include RISE FOR FREEDOM, an opera about the Underground Railroad, premiered in the fall of 2007 by the Cincinnati Opera Company, SET ME ON A ROCK (re: Hurricane Katrina), for chorus and orchestra, commissioned by the Houston Choral Society (2008), and the choral ballet, THE GIFT OF THE MAGI, for treble chorus and orchestra, (2009). In the fall of 2011, ZORA, WE’RE CALLING YOU, a work for speaker and orchestra was premiered by the Orlando Symphony. I SPEAK OF PEACE commissioned by the Bismarck Symphony (Beverly Everett, conductor) in honor of (and featuring the words of) President John F. Kennedy was premiered in November of 2013.

Thai Composer Narong Prangcharoen’s success as a composer was recently confirmed by his receiving the prestigious 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship and the Barlow Prize. Other awards include the Music Alive, the 20th Annual American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Commission, the American Composers Orchestra Audience Choice Award, the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award, the Alexander Zemlinsky International Composition Competition Prize, the 18th ACL Yoshiro IRINO Memorial Composition Award, the Pacific Symphony’s American Composers Competition Prize, and the Annapolis Charter 300 International Composers Competition Prize. In his native country, Mr. Prangcharoen was recipient of the Silapathorn Award, naming him a “Thailand Contemporary National Artist”. Mr. Prangcharoen has, thus, established an international reputation and is recognized as one of Asia’s leading composers. He has received encouragement and praise from a number of important contemporary composers, such as Paul Chihara, Zhou Long, Augusta Read Thomas, and Yehudi Wyner. John Corigliano has called Prangcharoen’s music “contemporary and accessible,” and Chen Yi has written that it is “colorful and powerful.” The press has also recognized Mr. Prangcharoen’s uniqueness as a composer. The Chicago Sun Times called his music “absolutely captivating”, and, of the October 2012 Carnegie Hall debut by the American Composers Orchestra of “Migrations of Lost Souls”, New York Times critic, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote, it is “an atmospheric work that weaves some of the spiritual and vernacular sounds of Mr. Prangcharoen’s native Thailand into a skillfully orchestrated tapestry [with] moments of ethereal beauty.” Mr. Prangcharoen’s music has been performed in Asia, America, Australia, and Europe by many renowned ensembles such as the American Composers Orchestra, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic, the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the China NCPA Orchestra, the German National Theater Orchestra, the Grant Park Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, under many well-known conductors, such Carl St. Clair, Steven D. Davis, Carlos Kalmer, Jose-Luis Novo, Mikhail Pletnev, and Osmo Vänskä. His music has also been presented at many important music festivals and venues, such as the Grant Park Music Festival, the Asia: the 21st Century Orchestra Project, the MoMA Music Festival, the Maverick Concerts: “Music in the Wood”, the Beijing Modern Music Festival, the Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, the Le Poisson Rouge, and the Carnegie Hall by distinguished performers such as, among others, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Imani Winds, saxophonist John Sampen, and pianist Bennett Lerner. Mr. Prangcharoen received his DMA from University of Missouri-Kansas City, where his primary teacher was Chen Yi. In addition to working as a freelance composer, he is currently teaching at the Community Music and Dance Academy of the Conservatory of Music, University of Missouri in Kansas City. He is the founder of the Thailand International Composition Festival, now entering its tenth year. Prangcharoen is now a composer in residence for the Pacific Symphony in Orange County, California for the next three seasons. His works are published exclusively by Theodore Presser Company.

Stephen Yip was born in Hong Kong and now living in U.S.A. He received his doctor of musical arts (D.M.A.) at Rice University and bachelor of fine arts (B.F.A.) at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. He has attended major music festivals including: Wellesley Composers Conference, Aspen Music Festival, International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt, Asian Composers’ League, ISCM World Music Days, Chinese Composers’ Festival, Music X, June in Buffalo, IMPULS Ensemble Akademie, California E.A.R. Unit Composer Seminar, the 13th International Summer Program, Czech Republic, International Composers’ Workshop, Luxembourg, the International Summer Course for New Music, Darmstadt, Germany, Wellesley Composers’ Conference. Residencies include: the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Nebraska, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts , Yaddo Colony, NY and the MacDowell Colony, NH. Yip’s works have been performed in the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, Israel, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Philippines. He has received several composition prizes, included “Earplay”, “Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award”, “Taiwan Music Center International Composition Prize”, “Robert Avalon Interantional Prize”, “Singapore International Composition Competition for Chinese Orchestra”, “Haifa International Composition Prize”, First International EPICMUSIC Composition Prize, Italy, International Biennial composition competition, the Debussy Trio Music Foundation, Molinari Quartet’s Third International Composition Competition, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Emerging, the ALEA III composition Competition, the fourth NACUSA Texas Composition Competition, the International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition 2010, by the National Academy of Music, Thessaloniki, Greece, and the 2010 Alvarez Chamber Orchestra Freestyle Composition Competition, London, England . His works have been performed by major ensembles and players such as Alarm Will Sound, Earplay New Music, Mivos String Quartet, New York New Music Ensemble, Great Noise Ensemble, North South Consonance, Brno Philharmonc Orchestra, inFLUX Duo, Windpipe Chinese Orchestra, Little Giant Chinese Orchestra, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, St. Paul Chambr Orchestra, Curious Chamber Players, TIMF Ensemble, Ensemble El Perro Andaluz, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Singapore Chinese Orchestra, Avanti, Ensemble Kochi, Moscow New Music Ensemble, etc. Yip’s works are recorded in the ERM-Media, PARMA, Capstone, North South recording, Ablaze records, ATMA Classique, and Beauport Classical labels. Yip is a member of the SCI, NACUSA, and ASCAP. Currently, he is on the music faculty at Houston Community College and works as a freelance composer.

Born on 23 September 1955, Xiaogang Ye is regarded as one of China’s leading contemporary composers. From 1978 until 1983, he studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in China and after graduation he was appointed Resident Composer and Lecturer at the Central Conservatory of Music in China. From 1987 he studied at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester in New York. Amongst his former teachers are Minxin Du, Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, Louis Andriessen and Alexander Goehr. Since 1993, Ye has divided his time between Beijing and Exton, Pennsylvania. Ye is entrusted with cultural tasks as member of the Chinese Parliament, and he is presently Vice Chairman of China's Musicians' Association, Vice President of the Central Conservatory of Music, and Founder and Artistic Director of Beijing Modern Music Festival, the biggest contemporary music festival in the Far East. He has received numerous prizes and awards, among others the 1982 Alexander Tcherepnin prize, the 1986 Japan Dance Star Ballet prize, and awards from the Urban Council of Hong Kong (1987-94), the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra (1992), the China Cultural Promotion Society (1993), the Li Foundation, San Francisco (1994) and the Chinese National Symphony Orchestra (1996). In 2013 Ye was awarded with the China Arts Award. He was a fellow of the Metropolitan Life Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts in 1996, and of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2012. Ye’s oeuvre comprises symphonic works, a range of chamber music, stage works and film music, and much of his music bears a connection to Chinese culture and tradition. In The Song of the Earth for soprano and orchestra, premiered in January 2005, Ye uses the original Chinese texts on which Mahler based his symphonic work of the same name. The work has received performances in New York (Avery Fisher Hall), Munich (Philharmonie), Berlin (Konzerthaus), Venice, Rome and Lucerne. In the Macau Bridge Suite No. 2 (2001) and Four Poems of Lingnan (2011), which were recorded by the Macau Orchestra in 2014, Ye also refers to old Chinese legends and texts. The composer’s deep attachment to the nature and Buddhist religion is shown especially in composition series such as the “Tibet Series”: In Twilight of the Himalayas (2013) he gives his impressions of traveling through Tibet and Nepal. Within the “Tropic Plants Series”, each work is named after a tropical plant and characterizes the homeland of the southern Chinese composer. In August 2008, Ye's piano concerto Starry Sky was premiered during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing by Lang Lang. Accompanied by dance and light shows the live broadcast was watched by 3 billion people worldwide. Ye was the first Chinese composer to sign with Schott Music. For three decades his works have drawn attention both in Eastern Asia and in the West, being played by international orchestras and ensembles including the Munich Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and Ensemble Modern.

Chinese composer Dr. Xinyan Li has been acclaimed as "a formidable composer" and "a rare and very special talent". Her music has been featured at Aspen Music Festival, Sveriges Radio (Sweden), National Center for the Performing Arts (China), 44th and 45th International Double Reed Society Conference (Japan and U.S.), The 13th Thailand International Composition Festival (Thailand), The 89th Music Mountain Festival, LunArt Festival, Composers Now Festival, 19th Nordic International Bassoon Symposium (Norway), Septembre musical de l'Orne (France), Carnegie Hall, Gamle Logen (Norway), Beijing Modern Music Festival (China), The Music of Now Marathon at Symphony Space, Seal Bay Festival, Shanghai Oriental Art Center (China), 5ème concours international de musique de chambre-Lyon (France), The 11th Annual International Chamber Music Festival (China), Clarinet Symposium at the University of Maryland, Nevada Encounters of New Music, Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall (China) and SCI National Conference etc. Dr. Li's music were performed by American Composers Orchestra, Members of Eighth Blackbird, PRISM Quartet, Cassatt String Quartet, Bergen Woodwind Quintet, Music From China, Principal musicians of Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, Montreal, Bergen Orchestras and Orchestre National de France, Quintet of the Americas, Lieurance Woodwind Quintet, bassoonists Per Hannevold, Jeffrey Lyman, Quintette K, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Principal Woodwind Quintet, Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet, UW-Madison Contemporary Ensemble, AACA Orchestra, UMKC Orchestra, among others. Dr. Xinyan Li has been invited as the visiting composer by Aspen Music Festival in 2007 and 2015, where her woodwind quintet Mo Suo's Burial Ceremony and sextet Mongolian Impressions were performed. Her awards and honors include American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, IDRS Conference Schwob Prize in Composition, LunArt Festival Call for Scores, Tsang-Houei Hsu International Music Composition Award, 2016 Beijing Modern Music Festival China-U.S. Composers Project Certificate of Excellence, TEMPO New Music Ensemble Call for Scores, and grant from National Endowment for the Arts as well as New York State Council on the Arts grant for individual artist. Dr. Xinyan Li received her Doctoral degree in Composition at University of Missouri-Kansas City where she studied with professors Chen Yi, James Mobberley, Zhou Long and Paul Rudy. She earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Composition and Music Theory at the China Conservatory of Music in Beijing where she studied with professors Jin Xiang and Yang Tongba. Dr. Li has taught composition and music theory at the China Conservatory of Music, New York Philharmonic Orchestra's Very Young Composers Program and University of Missouri-Kansas City. She has given lectures at Grieg Academy in Bergen University in Norway, and Adelphi University in New York.

Born in London, Bushra El-Turk has written over 50 works for the concert hall, the stage, film, TV and live art performance. Her work is often defined by the integration of musics and musicians from different cultural traditions, and the compulsion to highlight and challenge socio-cultural issues. Her works blur written and improvisational elements, forebearing the influence of her Lebanese roots all the while leaning towards the theatrical, creating works that are '...ironic...', '...arresting...' and of 'limitless imagination'. Selected by the BBC as one of the most inspiring 100 Women of today, Bushra he has written works for the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Orchestre National de Lorraine, Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, the Latvian Radio Choir and Atlas Ensemble, amongst others, and in 2018 has had her BBC Proms debut. Performances have been at venues including Lincoln Center, Deutsche Oper Haus, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Bridgewater Hall, Southbank Centre and Barbican. 2019 saw the world premiere of Tmesis for Symphony Orchestra, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Dubai Opera House at the BBC Proms Opening night, a commission by the London Symphony Orchestra to write ‘Tuqus’ for multi-ability orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, a London Sinfonietta commission and a piece for Studio Dan, commissioned by the MusikProtokol festival in Gratz. Bushra is currently writing an opera based on Nawal El-Saadawi's novel Woman at Point Zero which will be premiered in April 2021 (details to be announced), has just finished writing a piece for the Hezarfen Ensemble to be premiered at the Bristol New Music Festival, and various other exciting works to be announced soon. Bushra is artistic director and leader of Ensemble Zar, which is a fresh and fearless cross-genre ensemble, and is published by Composers Edition.

The world-renowned artist and UNESCO Global Goodwill Ambassador Tan Dun, has made an indelible mark on the world's music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions. A winner of today's most prestigious honors including the Grammy Award, Oscar/Academy Award, Grawemeyer Award, Bach Prize, Shostakovich Award, and most recently Italy’s Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, Tan Dun's music has been played throughout the world by leading orchestras, opera houses, international festivals, and on radio and television. This past year, Tan Dun conducted the grand opening celebration of Disneyland Shanghai which was broadcast to a record-breaking audience worldwide. As a conductor of innovative programs around the world, Tan Dun has led the China tours of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. His current season includes leading the NDR Radiophilharmonie in a five-city tour in Germany, as well as engagements with the London Symphony Orchestra and at the Venice Biennale. Tan Dun currently serves as the Honorary Artistic Director of the China National Symphony Orchestra. Next season, he will also conduct Orchestre National de Lyon in their tour to China. Tan Dun has led the world's most esteemed orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Münchner Philharmoniker, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, among others. Tan Dun’s individual voice has been heard widely by international audiences. His first Internet Symphony, which was commissioned by Google/YouTube, has reached over 23 million people online. His Organic Music Trilogy of Water, Paper and Ceramic has frequented major concert halls and festivals. Paper Concerto was premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the opening of the Walt Disney Hall. His multimedia work, The Map, premiered by YoYo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has toured more than 30 countries worldwide. Its manuscript has been collected by the Carnegie Hall Composers Gallery. His Orchestral Theatre IV: The Gate was premiered by Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra and crosses the cultural boundaries of Peking Opera, Western Opera and puppet theatre traditions. Other important premieres include Four Secret Roads of Marco Polo for the Berlin Philharmonic, Piano Concerto “The Fire” for Lang Lang and the New York Philharmonic. In recent seasons, his percussion concerto, The Tears of Nature, for soloist Martin Grubinger premiered in 2012 with the NDR Symphony 2 Orchestra and Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women Symphony for 13 Microfilms, Harp and Orchestra was co-commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. As a visual artist, Tan Dun’s work has been featured at the opening of the China Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. Other solo exhibitions include the New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Beijing’s Chambers Fine Art Gallery, and Shanghai Gallery of Art. Most recently, Tan Dun conducted The Juilliard Orchestra in the world premiere of his Symphony of Colors: Terracotta for the opening of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s epic exhibition The Age of Empires. As a global cultural leader, Tan Dun uses his creativity to raise awareness of environmental issues and to protect cultural diversity. In 2010, as “Cultural Ambassador to the World” for the World EXPO Shanghai, Tan Dun envisioned, curated and composed two special site-specific performances that perform year-round and have since become cultural representations of Shanghai: Peony Pavilion, a Chinese opera set in a Ming Dynasty garden and his Water Heavens string quartet which promotes water conservation and environmental awareness. Tan Dun was also commissioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to write the Logo Music and Award Ceremony Music for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Tan Dun currently serves as Honorary Chair of Carnegie Hall’s China Advisory Council, and has previously served as Creative Chair of the 2014 Philadelphia Orchestra China Tour, Associate Composer/Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony, and Artistic Director of the Festival Water Crossing Fire held at the Barbican Centre. Tan Dun records for Sony Classical, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Opus Arte and Naxos. His recordings have garnered many accolades, including a Grammy Award (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and nomination (The First Emperor; Marco Polo; Pipa Concerto), Japan’s Recording Academy Awards for Best Contemporary Music CD (Water Passion after St. Matthew) and the BBC’s Best Orchestral Album (Death and Fire). Tan Dun’s music is published by G. Schirmer, Inc and represented worldwide by the Music Sales Group of Classical Companies.

Bright Sheng is respected as one of the leading composers of our time, whose stage, orchestral, chamber and vocal works are performed regularly by the greatest performing arts institutions throughout North America, Europe and Asia. A MacArthur fellow and proclaimed by the foundation as “an innovative composer who merges diverse musical customs in works that transcend conventional aesthetic boundaries”, Sheng has created an oeuvre that is not only with Asian influence but also with strong synthesis of Western musical tradition which makes his work distinctive and original. Sheng himself admits: “I consider myself both 100% American and 100% Asian.” In September of 2016, in a co-production with the Hong Kong Arts Festival, with sold-out runs at both places, the San Francisco Opera premiered Sheng’s commissioned opera Dream of The Red Chamber featuring a libretto by David Henry Hwang and Sheng, based on a beloved Chinese novel by the eighteenth century writer Cao Xueqin. In September he conducts a three-city tour of the production in China. In addition to composing, Sheng enjoys an active career as a conductor and concert pianist, and frequently acts as music advisor and artistic director to orchestras and festivals. He is currently the Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor at University of Michigan, and the Y. K. Pao Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where, in 2011, he founded and has been serving as the Artistic Director of The Intimacy of Creativity—The Bright Sheng Partnership: Composers Meet Performers in Hong Kong. He was born on December 6th, 1955, in Shanghai, and moved to New York in l982 where he pursued his graduate works and studied composition and conducting privately with his mentor Leonard Bernstein. Bright Sheng's music is exclusively published by G. Schirmer, Inc. and eleven exclusive CDs. Please follow www.brightsheng.com

The composer Charlotte Bray has emerged as a distinctive and outstanding talent of her generation. Exhibiting uninhibited ambition and desire to communicate, her music is exhilarating, inherently vivid, and richly expressive with lyrical intensity. Born in High Wycombe in 1982, Bray graduated from Birmingham Conservatoire with First Class Honours, having studied composition with Joe Cutler. She completed a Masters in Advanced Composition with Distinction from the Royal College of Music studying with Mark-Anthony Turnage and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Royal College of Music scholarship, The Countess of Munster Musical Trust and the RVW Trust. She went on to participate in the Britten-Pears Contemporary Composition Course with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Magnus Lindberg, and was awarded a scholarship to study at the Tanglewood Music Centre with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read-Thomas. Bray has been championed by numerous world-class ensembles and orchestras, including the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London Sinfonietta, Britten Sinfonia, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, London Symphony Orchestra, the CBSO Youth Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and large-scale pieces for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Her work has featured at the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Tanglewood, Aix-en-Provence, Verbier, West Cork and the Copenhagen Summer Festival. Several renowned conductors have performed her work and these include Sir Mark Elder, Oliver Knussen, Sakari Oramo, Daniel Harding and Jessica Cottis. Recent premieres include: triple concerto Germinate (May 2019), Sitkovetsky Trio and the Philharmonia, Investec International Music Festival; Red Swans Floating (June 2019), notabu.ensemble and Spectra Ensemble, Tonhalle Düsseldorf; Bring Me All Your Dreams (June 2019), Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Aldeburgh Festival; Reflections In Time (May 2018), London Sinfonietta; Mid-Oceaned (viola and cello, May 2018), Ralf Ehlers and Lucas Fels (Arditti Quartet), Hepner Foundation; In Black Light (July 2018), Tabea Zimmerman, Aix-en-Provence Festival. Bray’s second recording (October 2018), a disc of chamber works on the Richard Thomas Classical label, was recorded at the Sendesaal in Bremen, Germany, with the Amaryllis Quartet, the Mariani Piano Quartet and pianist Huw Watkins, supported by PRS Foundation’s Composer Fund. At the Speed of Stillness, Bray’s debut recording on NMC Records was released in October 2014. Her work features also in several discs including Tecchlers Cello by Guy Johnston (Kings College Cambridge 2017), Oberon Celebrates Shakespeare by the Oberon Trio (Avi-music and SWR 2016) and Upheld by Stillness by the choral ensemble Ora, (Harmonia Mundi, released February 2016). In recognition of achievements and growing reputation, Bray was selected as a MacDowell Colony Norton Stevens Fellow (2015-16). She was interviewed as part of BBC Radio 3’s Composers’ Room series 2015. Bray is an Honorary Member of Birmingham Conservatoire and was named as their Alumni of the Year 2014 in the field of Excellence in Sport or the Arts. She was a winner of the Lili Boulanger Prize and a Critics’ Circle Award for Exceptional Young Talent (2014). Listed in The Evening Standard’s Most Influential Londoners (2011). Bray was awarded the 2010 Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize and appointed as apprentice Composer-in-Residence with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Sound and Music (2009/10). She was the inaugural Composer-in-Residence with Oxford Lieder Festival (2011) and Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival (2015). Residencies include the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire (2013 and 2015), the Liguria Study Centre in Bogliasco (2013), and Aldeburgh Music (2010 and 2015).

Takuma Itoh spent his early childhood in Japan before moving to Northern California where he grew up. His music has been described as "brashly youthful and fresh" (New York Times). Featured amongst one of "100 Composers Under 40" on NPR Music and WQXR, he has been the recipient of such awards and commissions as: the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Music Alive: New Partnerships grant with the Tucson Symphony, the Barlow Endowment, the Chamber Music America Classical Commission, the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize, six ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Leo Kaplan Award, the American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, the Symphony in C Young Composer Competition, the New York Youth Symphony First Music, The New York Virtuoso Singers, Maui Arts & Cultural Center, and the Renée B Fisher Foundation. In 2018, Itoh was instrumental in creating an innovative education program, Symphony of the Hawaiian Birds, which brought over 8,000 young students to hear new orchestral compositions alongside original animations while raising awareness of Hawaii's many endangered forest bird species. Itoh's music has been performed by the Albany Symphony, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Ensemble Échappé, Ossia New Music, the New York Youth Symphony, Symphony in C, the Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra (Poland), the Shanghai Quartet, the St. Lawrence Quartet, the Cassatt Quartet, the Momenta Quartet, Invoke Quartet, Sara Davis Buechner, Jeffrey Jacob, Joseph Lin, Ignace Jang, Syzygy Ensemble (Australia), H2 Quartet, Kyo-Shin-An Arts, the Music from Copland House, the Varied Trio, Kojiro Umezaki, HUB New Music Ensemble, Duo Yumeno, Post-Haste Reed Duo, Pro Musica Nipponia, and Linda Chatterton. In addition, his works can be heard on Albany and Blue Griffin Records, and is published by Theodore Presser, Resolute Music, and Murphy Music Press. In 2015, Itoh scored the music for the short film "Salesi" directed by Garin Nugroho and Vilsoni Hereniko that was featured at the Honolulu Film Festival. Itoh has been a fellow at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, Cabrillo Composer Workshop, Wellesley Composers Conference, Copland House CULTIVATE, Pacific Music Festival and the Aspen Music Festival. He holds degrees from Cornell University, University of Michigan, and Rice University. His past teachers include Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, Shih-Hui Chen, Anthony Brandt, Pierre Jalbert, and Karim Al-Zand. Since 2012, Itoh has been teaching at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa where he serves as an Associate Professor of Music.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir (b. 1977) is an Icelandic composer whose “seemingly boundless textural imagination” (NY Times) and “striking” (Guardian) sound world has made her “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music” (NPR). “Never less than fascinating” (Gramophone), her music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by harmonies and lyrical material, and tends to evoke “a sense of place and personality” (NY Times) through a distinctive “combination of power and intimacy” (Gramophone). It is written as an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities, in particular structural ones, like proportion and flow. Anna’s works have been nominated and awarded on many occasions - most notably, her “confident and distinctive handling of the orchestra” (Gramophone) has garnered her the prestigious Nordic Council Music Prize, the New York Philharmonic's Kravis Emerging Composer Award, and Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award and Martin E. Segal Award. Anna’s music is frequently performed internationally and has been performed by orchestras and ensembles such as the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, London's Philharmonia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Yarn/Wire, The Crossing, the Bavarian Radio Choir, Münchener Kammerorchester, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, Avanti Chamber Ensemble, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, CAPUT Ensemble, Oslo Philharmonic, and Either/Or Ensemble. In April 2018, Esa-Pekka Salonen lead the New York Philharmonic in the premiere of Anna’s work METACOSMOS, which was commissioned by the orchestra, and the work received its European premiere with the Berlin Philharmonic in January 2019, conducted by Alan Gilbert. METACOSMOS received its UK premiere at the BBC Proms 2019. Anna’s latest orchestral work - the large-scale AION - was commissioned by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and premiered in May 2019, conducted by Anna-Maria Helsing. Anna is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been featured at several major venues and music festivals, including portrait concerts at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival in NYC, the Composer Portraits Series at NYC's Miller Theatre, the Leading International Composers series at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Big Ears Festival, Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn's National Sawdust, London's Spitalfields Music Festival, Münchener Kammerorchester's Nachtmusic der Moderne series, and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra's Point Festival. Other venues include the BBC Proms, ISCM World Music Days, Nordic Music Days, Ultima Festival, Lucerne Summer Festival, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Tectonics, Helsinki's Musica Nova Festival, and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Anna holds a PhD (2011) from the University of California in San Diego. She regularly teaches and gives presentations on composition, in academic settings, as part of residencies, and in private lessons. In spring 2019, she was Composer-in-Residence at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She is currently based in the London area.

Chinary Ung is often associated with that group of Asian-born composers whose music incorporates aspects of eastern musical characteristics into a western classical music setting. Aside from specific cultural and generational distinctions, the principal difference between Ung's work and theirs is that for many years he was prevented from engaging directly with the source of his cultural heritage as his native country was being torn apart by the scourge of the Khmer Rouge. Indeed, as the people and culture of Cambodia were being systematically destroyed, Ung took it upon himself to rescue some facet of the traditional music he had known as a child, reconstituting Cambodian musical traditions through his performances on the roneat-ek -- the Cambodian xylophone. This project reflects the qualities of responsibility and of hopefulness that are so strongly a part of Ung's personality. Ung's Cambodian roots are woven into the fabric of his identity, but the musical aspects are, as a result of his peculiar circumstance, keenly related to memory. For many years -- through the late 1980's -- Ung's music had a plaintive character in its modally-inflected, melodic behaviors, as if he were reaching back to another time uncorrupted by political tumult. Ung's work of this period established him as a major figure in American music, winning citations from virtually every major musical arts institution in his adopted country. He was the first American composer to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award, for Inner Voices. That work, along with the Spirals series indicates a self-referential artistic project where one seeks spiritual strength and inspiration through meditation and quiet contemplation, traits of Buddhist spiritual exercises. The Spirals series in particular shows an affinity for the connection between pieces. The creative impetus draws from many sources -- such as dreams -- and there is a distinct pictorial and spiritual basis to Ung's music. Aura, a large work for two sopranos and chamber ensemble written in 2005, refers to the multicolored aura surrounding the Buddha's head. The work's extensive amplification draws the listener into the performance space, as if invited into the healing light of the Buddha. Rain of Tears, a concerto for chamber orchestra composed in 2006, commemorates the victims of natural disasters in Bandeh Aceh and New Orleans. Its many variants on rising and falling figures present a staggering interpretation of wave imagery. In this work, Ung invokes the Buddhist concept of Shunyata, which he describes as spiritual openness, in order to inspire four distinct statements of compassion. Ung's extensive orchestral catalog has been commissioned and performed by major orchestras throughout the United States and abroad, including those in Philadelphia, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Tokyo, Sydney, Basel, as well as the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the American Composers Orchestra. Boston Modern Orchestra Project released a recording of Ung's orchestral music in 2015. Ung's work has been commissioned by the Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ford, Koussevitsky, Joyce, and Barlow Foundations. In 2014 he was given the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award by the New York-based Asian Cultural Council. Ung recently participated in the Pacific Rim Festival at University of California Santa Cruz, where his work entitled Singing Inside Aura III, for Amplified Singing Violist and Korean Traditional Orchestra, received performances at both UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. This piece, commissioned by the Gugak Center, is projected to receive another performance in Seoul, Korea, December 2017. Additionally, the National Endowment of the Arts has extended support for the forthcoming Therigatha Inside Aura, dedicated to the peacemakers of tomorrow. This spring, Chapman University will present a Chinary Ung Portrait Concert at the new Musco Center for the Arts, and he begins his residence at Scripps College in March 2018, where Therigatha Inside Aura will be performed and recorded. By any measure, Chinary Ung is an astonishingly prolific composer, yet his focus is rarely turned inward. Indeed, one notes in his activities as a cultural leader and educator a profound sense of responsibility to a broader cultural and societal context. In the years since the holocaust Ung has worked with numerous institutions and individuals who share his dedication toward preserving Cambodian culture and forging cultural exchanges between Asia and the West, such as The Asian Cultural Council. He was President of the Khmer Studies Institute in the U.S.A. between 1980-1985, and was an advisor for the Killing Fields Memorial and Cambodian Heritage Museum of Chicago and a member of the Cambodian-Thai cultural committee. As an educator, Ung has taught courses in Southeast Asian music and he has instructed generations of young composers at several institutions in the United States, and now, through a series of residencies, in Asia as well. In this regard he follows the example of his mentor, Chou Wen-chung. He holds appointments at University of California, San Diego, where he is Distinguished Professor of Music, and at Chapman University, where he is a Presidential Fellow and Senior Composer in Residence. For the 2017-2018 academic year he is the Karel Husa Visiting Professor in Composition at Ithaca College. He and his wife Susan direct the Nirmita Composers Institute each summer, with the goal of providing compositional direction and opportunity to musicians from Southeast Asia. His music is featured on recordings released on Bridge, CAMBRIA, CRI, New World, Argo, and oodiscs, among others. Chinary Ung's compositions are published exclusively by C.F. Peters Corporation and they are registered under BMI.

Canadian-born, Scotland-based composer Emily Doolittle grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia and was educated at Dalhousie, Indiana University, Princeton University, and the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague, where she studied with Louis Andriessen with the support a Fulbright fellowship. From 2008-2015 she was an Associate Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. She now lives in Glasgow, UK, where she is an Athenaeum Research Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Doolittle enjoys writing for both traditional and less standard instrumentation, and has been commissioned by such ensembles and soloists as Symphony Nova Scotia, the Vancouver Island Symphony, Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal), the New York Youth Symphony, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal, the Motion Ensemble (Canada), the Paragon Ensemble (Glasgow), soprano Suzie LeBlanc, viola da gambist Karin Preslmayer, and alphornist Mike Cumberland. Upcoming projects include a chamber opera called Jan Tait and the Bear, which will be performed in Glasgow by Ensemble Thing in October, 2016, and a concerto for Canadian bassoonist Nadina Mackie Jackson. An ongoing interest for Doolittle is the relationship between music and sounds from the natural world, particularly bird and other animal songs. She has explored this in a number of compositions, as well as in her doctoral dissertation at Princeton and in interdisciplinary birdsong research with biologists and ornithologists. In 2011 she was composer-in-residence at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, where she collaborated with ornithologist Henrik Brumm in researching the song of the musician wren and presented a concert of her birdsong-related works, performed by members of the Bavarian State Opera. Other recurrent interests include folklore, musical story-telling, and making music for and with children. These interests are combined in her piece Songs of Seals, based on Scottish folklore and written in collaboration with Gaelic poet Rody Gorman, for the Voice Factory Youth Choir and the Paragon Ensemble (Glasgow), which was premiered in the fall of 2011 in Glasgow and Skye. Doolittle has received a number of awards for her music, including the 2012 Theodore Front Prize for A Short, Slow Life (commissioned by Suzie Leblanc and Symphony Nova Scotia), two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, and the Bearn’s Prize. Her work has been supported by grants and commissions from the Artist Trust (Seattle), the Eric Stokes Fund, The Culture and Animals Foundation, ASCAP, the Canada Council, the Nova Scotia Arts Council, FIRST Music, the Montreal Arts Council, and the Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec, and with artist residencies at MacDowell, Ucross, Blue Mountain Center, Banff, and the Center for Contemporary Art in Glasgow.

For more than three decades the works of Roberto Sierra have been part of the repertoire of many of the leading orchestras, ensembles and festivals in the USA and Europe. At the inaugural concert of the 2002 world renowned Proms in London, his Fandangos was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a concert that was broadcast by both the BBC Radio and Television throughout the UK and Europe. Many of the major American and European orchestras and international ensembles have commissioned and performed his works. Among those ensembles are the orchestras of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, New Mexico, Houston, Minnesota, Dallas, Detroit, San Antonio and Phoenix, as well as the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, the Spanish orchestras of Madrid, Galicia, Castilla y León, Barcelona, Continuum, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Opus One, and others. Commissioned works include: Concerto for Orchestra for the centennial celebrations of the Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and the Philadelphia Orchestra; Concerto for Saxophones and Orchestra commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for James Carter; Fandangos and Missa Latina commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC; Sinfonía No. 3 "La Salsa", commissioned by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra; Danzas Concertantes for guitar and orchestra commissioned by the Orquesta de Castilla y León; Double Concerto for violin and viola co-commissioned by the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia Orchestras; Bongo+ commissioned by the Juilliard School in celebration of the 100th anniversary; Songs from the Diaspora commissioned by Music Accord for Heidi Grant Murphy, Kevin Murphy and the St. Lawrence String Quartet; and Concierto de Cámara co-commissioned by the the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest and Stanford Lively Arts. In 2017 he was awarded the Tomás Luis de Victoria Prize, the highest honor given in Spain to a composer of Spanish or Latin American origin. In 2003 he was awarded the Academy Award in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award states: "Roberto Sierra writes brilliant music, mixing fresh and personal melodic lines with sparkling harmonies and striking rhythms. . ." His Sinfonía No. 1, a work commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, won the 2004 Kenneth Davenport Competition for Orchestral Works. In 2007 the Serge and Olga Koussevitzky International Recording Award (KIRA) was awarded to Albany Records for the recording of his composition Sinfonía No. 3 “La Salsa”. Roberto Sierra has served as Composer-In-Residence with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and New Mexico Symphony. In 2010 he was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Roberto Sierra's Music may be heard on CD's by Naxos, EMI, UMG’s EMARCY, New World Records, Albany Records, Koch, New Albion, Koss Classics, BMG, Fleur de Son and other labels. In 2011 UMG’s EMARCY label released Caribbean Rhapsody featuring the Concierto for Saxophones and Orchestra commissioned and premiered by the DSO with James Carter. In 2004 EMI Classics released his two guitar concertos Folias and Concierto Barroco with Manuel Barrueco as soloist (released on Koch in the USA in 2005). Sierra has been nominated twice for a Grammy under best contemporary composition category, first in 2009 Missa Latina (Naxos), and in 2014 for his Sinfonia No. 4 (Naxos). In addition his Variations on a Souvenir (ALbany) and Trio No. 4 (Centaur) were nominated for Latin Grammys in 2009 and 2015. Roberto Sierra was born in 1953 in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, and studied composition both in Puerto Rico and Europe, where one his teachers was György Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg, Germany. The works of Roberto Sierra are published principally by Subito Music Publishing (ASCAP).