Composers

Described as "elegant, beautiful, sophisticated, intense, and crystal clear in emotional intent," the music of Omar Thomas continues to move listeners everywhere it is performed. Born to Guyanese parents in Brooklyn, New York in 1984, Omar moved to Boston in 2006 to pursue a Master of Music in Jazz Composition at the New England Conservatory of Music. He is the protégé of lauded composers and educators Ken Schaphorst and Frank Carlberg, and has studied under multiple Grammy-winning composer and bandleader Maria Schneider. Hailed by Herbie Hancock as showing "great promise as a new voice in the further development of jazz in the future," educator, arranger, and award-winning composer Omar Thomas has created music extensively in the contemporary jazz ensemble idiom. It was while completing his Master of Music Degree that he was appointed the position of Assistant Professor of Harmony at Berklee College of Music at the surprisingly young age of 23. He was awarded the ASCAP Young Jazz Composers Award in 2008, and invited by the ASCAP Association to perform his music in their highly exclusive JaZzCap Showcase, held in New York City. In 2012, Omar was named the Boston Music Award's "Jazz Artist of the Year." He is currently on faculty in the Music Theory department at The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Omar's music has been performed in concert halls the world over. He has been commissioned to create works in both jazz and classical styles. His work has been performed by such diverse groups as the Eastman New Jazz Ensemble, the San Francisco and Boston Gay Mens' Choruses, and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, in addition to a number of the country's top collegiate music ensembles. Omar has had a number of celebrated singers perform over his arrangements, including Stephanie Mills, Yolanda Adams, Nona Hendryx, BeBe Winans, Kenny Lattimore, Marsha Ambrosius, Sheila E., Raul Midon, Leela James, Dionne Warwick, and Chaka Khan. His work is featured on Dianne Reeves's Grammy Award-winning album, "Beautiful Life." Omar's first album, "I AM," debuted at #1 on iTunes Jazz Charts and peaked at #13 on the Billboard Traditional Jazz Albums Chart. His second release, " We Will Know: An LGBT Civil Rigths Piece in Four Movements," has been hailed by Grammy Award-wining drummer, composer, and producer Terri Lyne Carrington as being a "thought provoking, multi-layered masterpiece" which has "put him in the esteemed category of great artists." "We Will Know" was awarded two OUTMusic Awards, including "Album of the Year." For this work, Omar was named the 2014 Lavender Rhino Award recipient by The History Project, acknowledging his work as an up-and-coming activist in the Boston LGBTQ community. Says Terri Lyne: "Omar Thomas will prove to be one of the more important composer/arrangers of his time."

Kate Soper is a composer, performer, and writer whose work explores the integration of drama and rhetoric into musical structure, the slippery continuums of expressivity, intelligibility and sense, and the wonderfully treacherous landscape of the human voice. She has been hailed by The Boston Globe as "a composer of trenchant, sometimes discomfiting, power" and by The New Yorker for her "limpid, exacting vocalism, impetuous theatricality, and mastery of modernist style." A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Soper has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters (The Virgil Thomson and Goddard Lieberson awards and the Charles Ives Scholarship), the Koussevitzky Foundation, Chamber Music America, the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund, the Music Theory Society of New York State, and ASCAP, and has been commissioned by ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, and Yarn/Wire. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Civitella Raineri Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Camargo Foundation, the Macdowell Colony, Tanglewood, Royaumont, and Domaine Forget, among others. Praised by the New York Times for her "lithe voice and riveting presence," Soper performs frequently as a new music soprano. She has been featured as a composer/vocliast on the New York City-based MATA festival and Miller Theatre Composer Portraits series, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW series, and the LA Philharmonic's Green Umbrella Series. As a non-fiction and creative writer, she has been published by Theory and Practice, the Massachusetts Review, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies. Soper is a co-director and performer for Wet Ink, a New York-based new music ensemble dedicated to seeking out adventurous music across aesthetic boundaries. She teaches composition and electronic music at Smith College.

A native of Queens, NY, Jeff Scott started the French horn at age 14, receiving an anonymous gift scholarship to go to the Brooklyn College Preparatory Division. An even greater gift came from his first teacher, Carolyn Clark, who taught the young Mr. Scott for free during his high school years, giving him the opportunity to study music when resources were not available. He received his bachelor’s degree from Manhattan School of Music (studying with David Jolley), and master’s degree from SUNY at Stony Brook (studying with William Purvis). He later continued his horn studies with Scott Brubaker and the late Jerome Ashby. Jeff Scott’s performance credits are many and varied. They include The Lion King orchestra (Broadway, New York) 1997-2005, and the 1994 revival of Showboat (Broadway, New York) 1994-1997. He has been a member of the Alvin Ailey and Dance Theater of Harlem orchestras since 1995 and has performed numerous times under the direction of Wynton Marsalis with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Mr. Scott has also experienced good fortune as a studio musician. He can be heard on movie soundtracks scored by Terrence Blanchard, Tan Dun and on commercial recordings with notable artists such as Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Steve Coleman, Chris Brubeck, Chico O’Farill, Freddy Cole and Jimmy Heath, among others. Additionally, he has toured with artists such as Barbra Streisand and the late Luther Vandross. Jeff Scott’s arranging and composing credits are many, and include scoring the off-Broadway production of Becoming Something, The Canada Lee Story, the staged production of Josephine Baker: A Life of Le Jazz Hot!, and many original works for solo winds as well as wind, brass and jazz ensembles. His works are published by International Opus, Trevco Music, To The Fore Music and self-published at www.MusicbyJeffScott.com . Jeff Scott has been on the horn faculty of the music department at Montclair State University (New Jersey) since 2002

In writing music, Rhian keeps the performer and performance uppermost in her mind. She believes that the performer contributes creatively to the work and that the composer should always offer him/her the space to make this contribution, a particular challenge in notated music. She acknowledges many other influences on her music, particularly those of her rich Welsh literary and musical heritage, the landscape of her present home in mid-Wales overlooking the Dyfi estuary and Cardigan Bay and her long sojourn in the USA. She is interested in all facets of classical music, particularly early music, and American music of all kinds; in her youth she played the oboe in orchestras and the viol and wind instruments in early music groups. She identifies with her female colleagues in a profession still dominated by males, seeing her position, somewhat outside the male tradition, as an exciting one with many challenges and opportunities, not one, as in former times for many women composers, that must be denied. Rhian has written for all kinds of ensembles as well as for solo instruments/voices. Her orchestral works have been premiered by BBCNOW, the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia 21, the Brunel Ensemble, the BT Scottish Ensemble, Sinfonia Adesso and others. Orchestral conductors with whom she has worked include Leonard Slatkin, Tadaaki Otaka, Richard Hickox, Martyn Brabbins, Jac van Steen, Tecwyn Evans, Cayenna Ponchione, George Vass and Holly Mathieson. Vocal music is also an important part of Rhian's output; she has written works for many renowned solo singers and accompanists. In the United States Rhian taught at Washington University St Louis, where she completed a doctorate on 16th-century musica ficta, and the St Louis Conservatory of Music; in Britain at Reading University, City University London (where she supervised DMA students from the Guildhall School and is now Emeritus Professor) and Oxford University where she was a member of the Music Faculty and tutored composition undergraduates at Magdalen College.

Described by Fanfare Magazine as “one of the most talented and intriguing of living composers,” LORI LAITMAN has composed multiple operas and choral works, and hundreds of songs setting texts by classical and contemporary poets, including those who perished in the Holocaust. Her music is widely performed throughout the world and has generated substantial critical acclaim. The Journal of Singing wrote “It is difficult to think of anyone before the public today who equals her exceptional gifts for embracing a poetic text and giving it new and deeper life through music.” In May 2016, Opera Colorado presented the World Premiere of Laitman’s opera The Scarlet Letter, with a libretto by David Mason. Of the subsequent Naxos release, Gramophone Magazine wrote: “The first thing that leaps into one’s ears is the sheer beauty of the music…and her ability to meld words with lyrical, often soaring lines is on abundant display in her…impressive and fervent opera.” It was named a Critic’s Choice by Opera News and one of the top 5 CDs of 2018 by Fanfare Magazine. The Three Feathers, Laitman’s children’s opera with librettist Dana Gioia, is based on a Grimm’s fairy tale, and was commissioned by the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech, where it premiered in October 2014. Seattle Opera commissioned an abridged version which toured schools in Washington state in 2018. The international premiere will be in November 2019 with L'arietta Singapore, and Opera Steamboat will mount a full production in August 2020. Laitman is currently finishing a chamber opera, Uncovered, based on Leah Lax's memoir. A finalist for the 2018 Pellicciotti Opera Prize, it is being commissioned by several universities for a spring 2021 premiere. Laitman continues to receive prestigious commissions, including from the BBC, Opera America, Opera Colorado, Seattle Opera, Grant Park Music Festival, Washington Master Chorale, Music of Remembrance, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Her works have been featured on Thomas Hampson’s Song of America radio series and website and in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. She is a magna cum laude Yale graduate and received her MM from The Yale School of Music. In May 2018, Laitman was the recipient of The Yale School of Music’s Ian Mininberg Alumni Award for Distinguished Service.

Cited in The Washington Post as “one of the top 35 female composers in classical music,” LAURA KAMINSKY’s works are “masterful” San Francisco Classical Voice) and “full of fire as well as ice, contrasting dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection. It is strong stuff.” (American Record Guide). Her opera As One (2014; co-librettists Mark Campbell & Kimberly Reed) is the most widely-produced contemporary opera in the U.S. since the 2016-17 season. Hometown to the World (libretto by Reed; Santa Fe & San Francisco Operas: Opera For All Voices Consortium) premieres in 2020. Currently Composer Mentor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, she is head of composition at the Conservatory of Music Purchase College/SUNY. Kaminsky serves on the boards of Opera America and the Hermitage Artist Retreat.

Jennifer Jolley (b. 1981) is a West Texas-based composer of vocal, orchestral, wind ensemble, chamber, and electronic works. Jennifer's work draws toward subjects that are political and even provocative. Her collaboration with librettist Kendall A, Prisoner of Conscience, has been described as "the ideal soundtrack and perhaps balm for our current 'toxic'…times" by Frank J. Oteri of NewMusicBox. Her piece Blue Glacier Decoy, written as a musical response to the Olympic National Park, depicts the melting glaciers of the Pacific Northwest. Her partnership with writer Scott Woods, You Are Not Alone, evokes the fallout of the #MeToo Movement. Jennifer's works have been performed by ensembles worldwide, including the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Wind Symphony, Dulciana (Dublin, Ireland), Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra (New York, NY), and the SOLI Chamber Ensemble (Alba, Italy residency). She has received commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, University of Texas Wind Ensemble, the Quince Ensemble, and many others. Her music can be found on various albums, including Quince Ensemble's Motherland with New Focus Recordings, Ohio University Wind Symphony's Ampersand and Bowling Green State University Wind Symphony's New Music for Wind Band Vol. 1, both released with Mark Records. Future releases will be with Ablaze Records, Reference Recordings, and PARMA Recordings. Jennifer deeply values the relationship that is created between composers and the communities with whom they collaborate. She has been composer-in-residence at Brevard College, University of Toledo, the Vermont Symphony, the Central Michigan University School of Music, and the Alba Music Festival in Italy. Most recently she was the Composer-in-Residence of the Women Composers Festival of Hartford in 2019. She promotes composer advocacy and the performance of new works through her opera company North American New Opera Workshop, her articles for NewMusicBox, and her work on the Executive Council of the Institute for Composer Diversity and the New Music USA Program Council. Jennifer’s blog—on which she has catalogued more than 100 rejection letters from competitions, festivals, and prizes—is widely read and admired by professional musicians. She is particularly passionate about this project as a composition teacher, and enjoys removing the taboo around “failure” for her students. Jennifer joined the composition faculty of the Texas Tech School of Music in 2018 and has been a member of the composition faculty at Interlochen Arts Camp since 2015.

Juliana has been hailed as “one of our country’s most able and prolific art song composers” (NATS Journal of Singing), whose more than 60 song cycles and works of vocal chamber music have been described as “brilliant” (Washington Post), “beguiling” (Times of London), and “the most genuinely moving music of the afternoon” (Boston Globe). Her music has been heard across America and in dozens of countries around the globe, including performances at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Holywell Music Room in Oxford, the Library of Congress, Ordway Theater, and London’s Wigmore Hall, as well as the London Festival of American Music, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Ojai Music Festival, and Tanglewood Music Center. Special performances include the 2016 Joy in Singing’s Edward T. Cone Composers Concert at New York’s Lincoln Center, a 2015 Holy Week meditation service at London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a 2013 performance at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum as part of Dawn Upshaw’s First Songs project. Hall received a 2015 recording grant from the Sorel Organization, and SongFest awarded her their 2017 Sorel Commission. In 2018 she was the Guest Composer at Stephanie Blythe’s Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar and Resident Composer for CollabFest at the University of North Texas School of Music.

Described as one of the "Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music" by critic Anne Midgette of the Washington Post, Valerie Coleman (B. 1970) is among the world's most played composers living today. Whether it be live or via radio, her compositions are easily recognizable for their inspired style and can be throughout venues, institutions and competitions globally. The Boston Globe describes Coleman as a having a “talent for delineating form and emotion with shifts between ingeniously varied instrumental combinations” and The New York Times observes her compositions as “skillfully wrought, buoyant music”. With works that range from flute sonatas that recount the stories of trafficked humans during Middle Passage and orchestral and chamber works based on nomadic Roma tribes, to scherzos about moonshine in the Mississippi Delta region and motifs based from Morse Code, her body of works have been highly regarded as a deeply relevant contribution to modern music. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Valerie began her music studies at the age of eleven and by the age of fourteen, had written three symphonies and won several local and state performance competitions. She is the founder, creator, and former flutist of the Grammy® nominated Imani Winds, one of the world’s premier chamber music ensembles, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Performance, Chamber Music, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Miami. Through her creations and performances, Valerie has carved a unique path for her artistry, while much of her music is considered to be standard repertoire. She is perhaps best known for UMOJA, a composition that is widely recognized and was listed by Chamber Music America one of the “Top 101 Great American Ensemble Works”. ​Coleman has received commissions from Carnegie Hall, American Composers Orchestra, The Library of Congress, the Collegiate Band Directors National Association, Chamber Music Northwest, Virginia Tech University, Virginia Commonwealth University, National Flute Association, West Michigan Flute Society, Orchestra 2001, The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, The Brooklyn Philharmonic, The Flute/Clarinet Duos Consortium, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Interlochen Arts Academy to name a few. With over two decades of conducting masterclasses, lectures and clinics across the country, Valerie is a highly sought-after clinician and recitalist. Recently, she has immensely enjoyed being the featured guest artist of flute fairs around the country, such as Mid-South, South Carolina, Colorado, New Jersey, and Mid-Atlantic, and was also featured as an artist in residence at Boston University Tanglewood Institute, LunArts Festival, and the National Women's Music Festival. Future appearances include Florida Flute Society, Portland, Seattle, Long Island and North Carolina Flute Fairs, and residencies at Yale, University of North Dakota, Virginia Tech, and many more. With her ensemble, she was recently an artist-in-residence at Mannes College of Music, served on the faculty of Banff Chamber Music Intensive and was a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago. She is regularly featured as a performer and composer within many of the world’s great concert venues, series and conservatories: Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Hall, DaCamera Houston, Boston Celebrity Series, Krannert Center, Wigmore Hall, Montreal Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Paris Jazz Festival, The Juilliard School, The Eastman School, Curtis, Peabody, Mannes, The Colburn School and countless more. She has recorded with Wayne Shorter, Paquito D’Rivera, Jason Moran, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Stefon Harris, Chick Corea and more. She and her ensemble have enjoyed collaborations with Gil Kalish, Paula Robison, Yo-Yo Ma, Anne Marie McDermott, Alexa Still, Ani and Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, Wu Han, Simon Shaheen, Sam Rivers and many more. Her music is frequently “on the air" with National and local Classical radio stations and their affiliates: Sirius XM, NPR’s Performance Today, All Things Considered, and The Ed Gordon Show; WNYC’s Soundcheck, and MPR’s Saint Paul Sunday. She has received awards and/or honors from the National Flute Association, The Herb Alpert Awards, MAPFUND, ASCAP Concert Music Awards, NARAS, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund, Artists International, Wombwell Kentucky Award, and Michelle E. Sahm Memorial Award to name a few. Valerie is known among educators to be a strong advocate and mentoring source for emerging artists and ensembles around the country. In 2011, she created a summer mentorship program in New York City for highly advanced collegiate and post-graduate musicians, called Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival. Now in it’s 9th season, the festival has welcomed musicians from over 100 institutions both national and abroad. ​Her works are published by Theodore Presser, International Opus, and her own company, V Coleman Music. Her music can be heard on labels: Cedille Records, BMG France, Sony Classics, Eone (formerly Koch International Classics) and Naxos.

Composer Ingrid Stölzel (b. 1971) has been described as having “a gift for melody” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “evoking a sense of longing” that creates “a reflective and serene soundscape that makes you want to curl up on your windowsill to re-listen on a rainy day.” (I Care If You Listen) Stölzel’s compositions have been commissioned by leading soloists and ensembles, and performed in concert halls and festivals worldwide, including the Seoul Arts Center, Merkin Concert Hall, Kennedy Center, the Thailand International Composition Festival, Festival Osmose (Belgium), Vox Feminae Festival (Israel), Dot the Line Festival (South Korea), Ritornello Chamber Music Festival (Canada), Festival of New Music at Florida State (USA), Beijing Modern Music Festival (China), Festival of New American Music (USA), and SoundOn Festival of Modern Music (USA). Her music has been recognized in numerous competitions, among them recently the Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer's Award, Red Note Composition Competition, the Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers, and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra Competition. Recordings of her music can be found on various commercial releases including her portrait album “The Gorgeous Nothings” which features her chamber and vocal chamber music. Stölzel was born and raised in Germany and has resided in the United States since 1991. She holds a DMA in composition from the University of Missouri, Conservatory of Music and Dance in Kansas City and a Master of Music in composition from the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, CT. She serves on the composition faculty at the University of Kansas School of Music.

George E. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, Lewis’s other honors include a MacArthur Fellowship (2002), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Walker Fellowship (2011), an Alpert Award in the Arts (1999), and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Lewis studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey. A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis's work in electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, and notated and improvisative forms is documented on more than 150 recordings. His work has been presented by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonia Orchestra, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, Mivos Quartet, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, London Sinfonietta, Spektral Quartet, Talea Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Wet Ink, Ensemble Erik Satie, Eco Ensemble, and others, with commissions from American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Harvestworks, Ensemble Either/Or, Orkestra Futura, Turning Point Ensemble, Studio Dan, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, IRCAM, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and others.

Emma O’Halloran is an Irish composer who freely intertwines acoustic and electronic music. A recent graduate from the doctoral program at Princeton University, O’Halloran has written for folk musicians, chamber ensembles, turntables, laptop orchestra, symphony orchestra, film, and theatre. For her efforts, O’Halloran has been praised by I Care If You Listen editor-in-chief Amanda Cook for writing “some of the most unencumbered, authentic, and joyful music that I have heard in recent years,” and has won numerous competitions, including National Sawdust’s inaugural Hildegard competition and the Next Generation award from Beth Morrison Projects. Current and future projects include a collaborative and interdisciplinary work with LA-based ensemble Wild UP, and an opera called Trade that will be developed, produced and toured by Beth Morrison Projects.

The music of Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964 in New York) is nuanced, majestic, elegant, capricious, lyrical, and colorful — "it is boldly considered music that celebrates the sound of the instruments and reaffirms the vitality of orchestral music." (Philadelphia Inquirer) An influential teacher at Eastman, Northwestern, Tanglewood, and Aspen Music Festival, she is only the 16th person to be designated University Professor at the University of Chicago (one of only seven currently holding the title). Augusta said, "Teaching is a natural extension of my creative process and of my enthusiasm for the music of others." Ms. Thomas studied composition with Oliver Knussen at Tanglewood (1986, 1987, 1989); Jacob Druckman at Yale University (1988); Alan Stout and Bill Karlins at Northwestern University (1983-1987); and at the Royal Academy of Music in London (1989). She was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University (1991-94), and a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College (1990-91). Thomas has also been on the Board of Directors of the American Music Center since 2000, as well as on the boards and advisory boards of several chamber music groups. She was elected Chair of the Board of the American Music Center, a volunteer position that ran from 2005 to 2008. She is University Professor (one of six University Professors) at The University of Chicago. Augusta was MUSICALIVE Composer-in-Residence with the New Haven Symphony, a national residency program of The League of American Orchestras and Meet the Composer. Augusta has been on the Board of the ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) for many years; is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Alice M. Ditson Fund; is on the Board of Trustees of The American Society for the Royal Academy of Music; is a Member of the Conseil Musical de la Foundation Prince Pierre de Monaco; and is on the Eastman School of Music's National Council.

Chou Wen-chung was born in Yantai, China, in 1923, and moved to the United States in 1946. His earliest work, Landscapes, written in 1949, is often cited as the first composition in music history that is independent of either Western or Eastern musical grammar. The piece premiered in 1953 with the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, and launched the young composer onto a career which steadily gained in momentum over the next two decades. His unique canon of work, a contemporary expression of the principles of traditional Chinese aesthetics, has had a momentous impact on the development of modern music in Asia and in post-colonial cultures. He exhorts young composers to study their own cultural heritage and warns: “If you don’t know where you came from, how do you know where you are going?” His students represent an international mix of accomplished composers, including the acclaimed Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Chen Yi and Bright Sheng. His vision for the music of the future, however, extends far beyond the preservation of any particular heritage. He foresees a flourishing of creative output, benefitting from a “confluence” of many cultures, but grounded in an understanding of the history and traditions of each. Chou’s orchestral compositions such as And the Fallen Petals, All in the Spring Wind and Landscapes have been performed by the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestra National (Paris), Japan Philharmonic Symphony (Tokyo) and the Central Philharmonic in Beijing. Chamber works including Echoes from the Gorge, Windswept Peaks, Pien, Yü Ko, Yün, Cursive and Beijing in the Mist have been performed in festivals in Tanglewood, Darmstadt, Venice, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Sapporo. Two retrospective concerts of Chou’s music were held in New York in 1989 and 1993, featuring three prominent East Coast ensembles: Boston Musica Viva, New Music Consort and Speculum Musicae. In 1992, Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra premiered at Carnegie Hall with cellist Janos Starker and in 1996, his String Quartet No. 1 “Clouds” was premiered at Lincoln Center by the Brentano String Quartet. His Eternal Pine series was written between 2008 and 2013. Chou’s accomplishments have been recognized with countless awards in the fields of music, education and international cultural exchange. He is a life member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and in 2001 was named Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) from the Ministry of Culture in France.

Anthony Braxton (born 1945), the Chicago-born composer and multi-instrumentalist, is recognized as one of the most important musicians, educators, and creative thinkers of the past 50 years. He is highly esteemed in the experimental music community for the revolutionary quality of his work and for the mentorship and inspiration he has provided to generations of younger musicians. Drawing upon a disparate mix of influences from John Coltrane to Karlheinz Stockhausen, Braxton has created a unique musical system that celebrates the concept of global creativity and our shared humanity. His work examines core principles of improvisation, structural navigation and ritual engagement - innovation, spirituality, and intellectual investigation. From his early work as a pioneering solo performer in the late 1960s through to his eclectic experiments on Arista Records in the 1970s, his landmark quartet of the 1980s, and more recent endeavors, such as his cycle of Trillium operas and the day-long, installation-based Sonic Genome Project, his vast body of work is unparalleled. His small ensembles of the 1970s through to the present day are considered among the most innovative groups of their respective eras, while his Creative Orchestra Music has brought together the varying streams of American jazz orchestras, marching bands, and experimental practices with the traditions of European concert music in a wholly individual compositional voice. His continuing and evolving current systems of the past 15 years, including Ghost Trance Music, Diamond Curtain Wall Music, Falling River Music, Echo Echo Mirror House Music, and ZIM Music, have served as the artistic incubators for some of the most exciting artists of the current generation. Braxton’s many awards include a 1981 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 1994 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a 2014 NEA Jazz Master Award, and honorary doctorates from Université de Liège (Belgium) and New England Conservatory (USA).

Praised by The Chicago Tribune as “minutely crafted” and “utterly lovely,” The New York Times as “whimsical” and “surreal,” and The Washington Post as “dark and deeply poetic,” the music of composer Marcos Balter (b.1974, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is at once emotionally visceral and intellectually complex, primarily rooted in experimental manipulations of timbre and hyper-dramatization of live performance. Recent performances include a Miller Theater Composer Portrait in 2018 and appearances at Carnegie Hall, Köln Philharmonie, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Wigmore Hall, ArtLab at Harvard University, Lincoln Center, Walt Disney Hall, Teatro Amazonas, Sala São Paulo, Park Avenue Armory, Teatro de Madrid, Bâtiment de Forces Motrices de Genève, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago. Recent festival appearances include those at Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival, Ecstatic Music Festival, Acht Brücken, Aldeburgh Music Festival, Aspen, Frankfurter Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, and Banff Music Festival. Past honors include fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Tanglewood Music Center (Leonard Bernstein Fellow) as well as commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Music Now, Meet the Composer, Fromm Foundation at Harvard, The Holland/America Music Society, The MacArthur Foundation, and the Art Institute of Chicago. His works are published by PSNY (Schott), and commercial recordings of his music are available through New Amsterdam Records, New Focus Recording, Parlour Tapes+, and Navona Records. Highlights in 2019-2020 include guest residencies at Stanford University, Harvard University, University at Buffalo, University of California San Diego, Yellow Barn, and Egelsholm Castle, a new work for countertenor Anthony Roth Constanzo and the Shanghai Quartet commissioned by the Phillips Collection and Chamber Music America, a new work for cellist Jay Campbell and pianist Conor Hanick commissioned by the 92Y, the release of flutist Claire Chase’s live recording of “Pan” at Meyer Sound Studio, and performances by the JACK Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Constelation Chor, nois saxophone quartet, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony’s Soundbox Series, and others. Recent collaborators include the rock band Deerhoof, dj King Britt and Alarm Will Sound, yMusic and Paul Simon, Orquestra Experimental da Amazonas Filarmonica, American Contemporary Music Ensemble, American Composers Orchestra, and conductors Susanna Malkki, Steven Schick, and Karina Canellakis. Having previously taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Northwestern University, Lawrence University, Columbia University, and Columbia College Chicago, he is currently an Associate Professor of Music Composition at Montclair State University and a guest scholar at the University of Pennsylvania (Fall 2019). He currently lives in New York City.

Lauren Bernofsky’s music has been performed across the United States as well as internationally in major venues from Carnegie Hall to Grieg Hall in Bergen, Norway. Her works are published by Theodore Presser, Alfred, Carl Fischer, Boosey & Hawkes, FJH, Hal Leonard, Grand Mesa, Balquhidder, and Fatrock Ink. She holds degrees from the Hartt School, New England Conservatory, and Boston University, where she earned a doctorate in composition. Her music can be heard on the Polarfonia, Emeritus, MSR Classics, Blue Griffin, Summit, and Albany labels. She has taught at Boston University, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, The Peabody Institute, and Interlochen. She conducts at regional festivals and serves as a clinician at schools, festivals, and national conferences.

Stacy Garrop’s music is centered on dramatic and lyrical storytelling. The sharing of stories is a defining element of our humanity; we strive to share with others the experiences and concepts that we find compelling. Stacy shares stories by taking audiences on sonic journeys – some simple and beautiful, while others are complicated and dark – depending on the needs and dramatic shape of the story. Stacy is the first Emerging Opera Composer of Chicago Opera Theater’s new Vanguard Initiative for 2018-2020, during which she is composing two chamber operas with Chicago librettist Jerre Dye. She recently completed a 3-year composer-in-residence position with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, funded by New Music USA and the League of American Orchestras. Theodore Presser Company publishes her chamber and orchestral works; she self-publishes her choral pieces under Inkjar Publishing Company. Stacy is a Cedille Records artist with pieces currently on ten CDs; her works are also commercially available on ten additional labels.

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, language, and social justice, placing her squarely as one of the most relevant interpreters of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post). Jessie was born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1980s during a time when the neighborhood was at a major turning point in its history. Artists gravitated to the hotbed of artistic experimentation and community development. Her parents – her father a musician, her mother a theater artist and storyteller – were engaged in the activities of the neighborhood and regularly brought Jessie to rallies, performances, and parties where neighbors, activists, and artists gathered to celebrate and support the movements of the time. It is from this unique experience that Jessie has created a life that merges composing, performance, education, and advocacy.