Behzad Ranjbaran is known for music which is both evocative and colorful, and also strong in structural integrity and form. He frequently draws inspiration from his cultural roots and Persian heritage in form or subject matter, as exemplified by the tone poems of the “Persian Trilogy”, or the interpretation of sounds and styles in works such as the Violin Concerto and Songs of Eternity. Ranjbaran’s music has been performed all over the world, including South Korea, where Awakening (commissioned by Sejong Soloists) premiered at the Great Mountains Music Festival as a celebration of peace. His music has been performed by soloists such as Joshua Bell, Renée Fleming, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Yo-Yo Ma, and conductors including Charles Dutoit, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Marin Alsop, Robert Spano, Gerard Schwarz, JoAnn Falletta, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, David Robertson, and many more. He has also served as composer in residence for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s summer season at Saratoga, the Fort Worth Symphony, and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Born on July 1, 1955 in Tehran, Iran, Mr. Ranjbaran is the recipient of the Rudolf Nissim Award for his Violin Concerto. His musical education started early when he entered the Tehran Music Conservatory at the age of nine. He came to the United States in 1974 to attend Indiana University and received his doctorate in composition from The Juilliard School, where he currently serves on the faculty.

Gwyneth Walker

Naji Hakim

Naji Subhy Paul Irénée HAKIM was born in Beirut , 31 October, 1955. He studied with Jean Langlais (organ), Evelyne Aïello (conducting), and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris - classes of Roger Boutry (harmony), Jean-Claude Henry (counterpoint), Marcel Bitsch (fugue), Rolande Falcinelli (organ), Jacques Castérède (analysis) and Serge Nigg (orchestration), where he was awarded seven first prizes. He is a licentiate teacher in organ from Trinity College of Music in London and won ten first prizes at international organ and composition competitions. In 1991 he was awarded the Prix André Caplet from the Académie des Beaux-Arts and in 2009 the Premier Prix du Concours de Musique Sacrée de la Cathédrale de Monaco. At first organist of the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, Paris from 1985 until 1993, he then became organist of l'église de la Trinité, in succession to Olivier Messiaen (1993-2008). He was professor of musical analysis at the Conservatoire National de Région de Boulogne-Billancourt (1988-2019). He is visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, London, graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris, member of the Consociatio Internationalis Musicae Sacrae in Rome and Doctor honoris causa of the Pontifical University Saint-Esprit of Kaslik, Lebanon. In 2007, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI awarded Naji Hakim The Augustae crucis insigne pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, for his excellent commitment and work for the benefit of the Church and the Holy Father. His works include instrumental music (organ, flute, bassoon, horn, trumpet, harp, guitar, violin, piano), symphonic music (Les Noces de l'Agneau, Hymne de l'Univers, Ouverture Libanaise, Påskeblomst, Augsburger Symphonie, five organ concertos, a violin concerto, a piano concerto), and vocal music (oratorio Saul de Tarse, cantata Phèdre, Magnificat and four masses). Naji Hakim is married to Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet, organist, composer and musicologist. They have two children: Katia-Sofía, poet, pianist and musicologist, and Jean-Paul, lawyer, pianist and composer.

Ruth Watson Henderson

Melinda Wagner

Nancy Galbraith

Nancy Galbraith (b.1951) resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, where she is Chair of Composition at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music, and holds the Vira I Heinz Professorship of Music endowed chair. In a career that spans four decades, her music has earned praise for its rich harmonic texture, rhythmic vitality, emotional and spiritual depth, and wide range of expression. Her works have been directed by some of the world's finest conductors, including Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Mariss Jansons, Keith Lockhart, Donald Runnicles and Robert Page. Her compositions are featured on numerous recordings, including nine anthologies. With major contributions to the repertoires of symphony orchestras, concert choirs, wind ensembles, chamber ensembles, electroacoustic ensembles, and soloists, Galbraith plays a leading role in defining the sound of contemporary classical music.

Federico García-Castells

Susan Kander

The music of Susan Kander has been heard throughout the United States and in cities around the world, including London, Paris, Mexico City, Lima, Birmingham, Vancouver, Cape Town, St. Petersburg and Guangzhou. Kander has received numerous commissions from notable ensembles and organizations, including the National Symphony Orchestra, Southampton Chamber Music Festival, the Copland Fund, the Kansas City Chorale, the Columbia Foundation, and a variety of instrumentalists and ensembles. In the opera world, she has received commissions from Opera Minnesota, Opera Theater of St. Louis, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and Columbus Opera. Her chamber opera The News from Poems was given a concert reading in April 2016 at the National Opera Center featuring Keith Phares, Katherine Pracht, and John Taylor Ward. In 2012, Minnesota Opera and Lyric Opera of Kansas City co-commissioned an adaptation of the seminal dystopian novel The Giver by Lois Lowry; the 85-minute chamber opera received its third production in January 2015 at Tulsa Opera. Knight Arts, St. Paul, called it a “remarkable new work…. Her instrumental scoring is atmospheric and unobtrusive…but the vocals take priority… This adaptation is a sophisticated and subtle work, in terms of both music and story.” A chamber orchestration for She Never Lost a Passenger, about Harriet Tubman and black abolitionist William Still (1996) was commissioned by Erie Opera Company in 2015, and premiered by Lyric Opera of Kansas City in 2016. Miranda’s Waltz for narrator and orchestra, commissioned/premiered in 2009 by the National Symphony Orchestra, was programmed and live-streamed around the world in May 2017 from Melbourne by the Australian Discovery Orchestra. Regarding her 2009 solo bassoon commission The Lunch Counter, Fanfare Magazine wrote: “Kander’s Lunch Counter alone is so fascinating that it is worth the price of the recording.” Her 2013 work Hermestänze, for violin and piano, commissioned by Jacob Ashworth, violinist and Artistic Director of the ensemble Cantata Profana (also her son), is a rare example of a large-scale dramatic cycle written for the violin. It is the title work on the eponymous CD which features Ashworth and members of Cantata Profana performing three of Kander's violin-centric works. She is especially proud to have had her Solo Sonata for violin-viola-violin (included on the MSR release) performed in the Composers’ Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, by commissioner Yuval Waldman during their White Nights festival. Kander received her B.A. in Music at Harvard in 1979 and was a playwright until “coming home to music” in the mid-1990’s. In 2015, after composing busily for twenty-years, she decided to blow things up by finally attending graduate school in composition. She studied with Du Yun and Huang Ruo at Purchase Conservatory, re-arranging the furniture in her mind and earning her M.M. in Composition in 2017. Those two years produced a bouquet of new works for both orchestra and chamber ensemble. Her works can be found on Soundcloud and Youtube. She is a Fellow of the MacDowell Colony. Her music has been recorded on the MSR, Navona and Loose Cans labels. www.susankander.net

Ruth Watson Henderson was the recipient of many scholarships and awards while studying piano 1937–45 with Viggo Kihl and 1945–52 with Alberto Guerrero at the Toronto Conservatory of Music (Royal Conservatory of Music). She continued her studies 1952–4 with Hans Neumann in New York on scholarship from the Mannes College of Music. Her composition teachers included Oscar Morawetz, Richard Johnston, and Samuel Dolin. After her professional debut in Toronto in 1952 she was active as a concert pianist appearing frequently as soloist with Canadian orchestras and regularly on CBC radio. In 1956 she won the grand prize of the CBC's Opportunity Knocks. She taught and was an organist‑choirmaster 1957–61 in Winnipeg and 1962‐8 in Kitchener, Ontario, returning thereafter to Toronto. Henderson began composing while accompanist of the Festival Singers 1968–79 and since then has been a prolific composer, writing more than eighty pieces for the choral repertory alone. Her harmonies often draw from modal or impressionistic influences and her rhythms closely follow the text she is setting. Many of her compositions continue to be popular in Canada and around the world, where she is often requested to accompany or adjudicate at festivals and competitions. Best known as a composer of choral music, Henderson has also written for organ, piano, string orchestra, and for winds, brass and percussion. Her Chromatic Partita for Organ was a prizewinner at the International Competition for Women Composers in Mannheim, Germany, in 1989. She has received commissions from the Alliance for Canadian New Music Projects (Through the Eyes of Children), the Guelph Spring Festival (The Ballad of St George), the Oriana Singers (Toronto) (Songs of the Nativity), the Toronto Children's Chorus (The Last Straw, featuring tenor Ben Heppner), the Amadeus Choir of Scarborough (Voices of the Earth), and the Elora Festival (Five Ontario Folk Songs), among others. Henderson's more recent commissions include works for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Contemporary Showcase in 1995; the 2002 national convention of the American Guild of Organists (Darkness to Light); the Mount Royal Kantorei (Magnificat); and Chorus Niagara's fortieth anniversary in 2003 (Voice of Niagara). Upcoming commissions include a work for the Bach Elgar Choir of Hamilton, combined with the Hamilton Children's Chorus.

Chen Yi

Chen Yi

Miguel del Águila

Miguel del Águila

Three-time Grammy-nominated American composer Miguel del Aguila is among the most distinctive and highly regarded composers of his generation, with over 120 works that couple drama and driving rhythm with nostalgic nods to his South American roots. His music, recorded in 45 CDs, has been hailed as “brilliant and witty” (The New York Times), “sonically dazzling” (Los Angeles Times), and “exquisitely imaginative” (Fanfare). Aguila has been commissioned or performed by over 100 orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the symphonies of Toronto, Nashville, Seattle, Albany, San Antonio, Long Beach, and Virginia, and the Welsh BBC; the Philharmonic Orchestras of Heidelberg, Kiev and Odessa; the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester, and the Sinfónica Nacional and Filarmónica de México; by ensembles such as Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Windscape, New Juilliard Ensemble, Camerata de las Americas, Imani Winds, Fifth House Ensemble, and the Pacifica and Verona Quartets. He has collaborated with conductors such as JoAnn Falletta, Giancarlo Guerrero, Marin Alsop, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Gerard Schwarz, David Alan Miller, Lukas Foss, Eckart Preu, and Ken Masur; and with soloists Manuel Barrueco and Richard Stoltzman among many others. He has received a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award and both a Music Alive Award and a Magnum Opus/Kathryn Gould Award from New Music USA. He was Lancaster Symphony’s 2009 Composer of the Year, and has won grants from the Copland and Argosy Foundations. Born in Uruguay in 1957, Aguila received musical training there, and at the conservatories of San Francisco and Vienna. After winning acclaim as pianist and composer in Vienna, he re-established himself in the U.S. in 1989 with a program of piano music at Carnegie Recital Hall and the premiere of Hexen by the Brooklyn Philharmonic conducted by Lukas Foss. He returned to California in 1992; soon thereafter the LA Times called him “one of the West Coast’s most promising young composers”. A sought-after lecturer, curator and educator, Aguila is a frequent competition jurist and guest composer. He is 2020 Composer in Residence with Orchestra de las Americas and with Festival Alfredo de Saint Malo. His music is published by Peermusic Classical and Theodore Presser, and is self-published

Faye-Ellen Silverman

Melanie Thorne

Huang Ruo

Artistic Style Huang Ruo has been lauded by the New Yorker as “one of the world’s leading young composers” and by the New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz. As a member of the new generation of Chinese composers, his goal is not just to mix both Western and Eastern elements, but also to create a seamless, organic integration. Huang Ruo’s diverse compositional works span from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, multi-media, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film. Performers Huang Ruo’s music has been premiered and performed by orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Kiel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic, ensembles and quartets such as Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, Remix Ensemble, Quatuor Diotima, and Ethel Quartet and conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Michael Tilson Thomas, James Conlon, Marin Alsop, Dennis Russell Davies, Ed Spanjaard, Peter Rundel, Alexander Liebreich, Xian Zhang, and Ilan Volkov. Operas Huang Ruo’s opera Dr. Sun Yat-Sen had its American premiere at the Santa Fe Opera in 2014 and will receive its Canadian premiere by the Vancouver Opera for its future season. His opera Paradise Interrupted received its world premiere at the Spoleto Festival USA in 2015 and was performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2016, before going on tour to Asia and Europe. In addition, his works were shown at Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera and Opera Hong Kong. Residencies Huang Ruo was the first composer-in-residence of Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam. He is also in residence at the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan. Education Huang Ruo was born in Hainan Island, China in 1976 – the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended. His father, who is also a composer, began teaching him composition and piano when he was six years old. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, when China was opening its gate to the Western world, he received both traditional and Western education at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. As a result of the dramatic cultural and economic changes in China following the Cultural Revolution, his education expanded from Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutoslawski, to include the Beatles, rock and roll, heavy metal, and jazz. Huang Ruo was able to absorb all of these newly allowed Western influences equally. After winning the Henry Mancini Award at the 1995 International Film and Music Festival in Switzerland, Huang Ruo moved to the United States to further his education. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in composition from the Juilliard School. Huang Ruo as a Teacher and Conductor Huang Ruo is currently on the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music at the New School in NY. He is the artistic director and conductor of Ensemble FIRE (Future In REverse), and was selected as a Young Leader Fellow by the National Committee on United States–China Relations in 2006.

Stacy Garrop

Augusta Read-Thomas