In Spring 2024, Marco Fusi and I spent a day in the CCRMA Stage recording our feedback improvisations, with Marco performing on the violin, viola d’amore, and the FeedBox, a feedback interface which I created for Marco with longtime collaborator Kostyantyn Leonenko. This was the culmination of our feedback improvisation practice developed over the course of five years, including an extended residency at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) ; this residency allowed us to integrate Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) techniques into our practice, using the specific placement of virtual sources in tandem with our transducer-driven feedback instruments. These recordings will be released on a CD entitled Proximity, Distance on Sideband Records in Spring 2025.
As the CD has not yet been released as of this writing, no one has heard this work yet—other than the team of people recording and mastering it—prior to this brief excerpt being diffused, with one exception. During my residency as a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, I had the great pleasure of having regular exchanges with scholar, musician, Disability advocate and all-around radical thinker Jonathan Sterne, and in the course of our conversations, shared some of this work with him; this brief edit was inspired by those exchanges, and is thus dedicated to him.
NOTRGIR refers to a type of Armenian calligraphy—cursive with a wavy interpretation that served as a means of communication within the diaspora in past centuries. To me, it represents the beauty of manipulating and improvising with the curves of letters, creating ornamentation and flow. The script can become wider or narrower, dynamic or soft, always imbued with a specific energy. I use heterophonic textures and rhythmic structures to highlight the idea of linearity and embellishment, and I aim to transmit a “paleo” feel through rhythm, gestures and scalar elements. — Artur Akshelyan
As a kid, I dreamed of being a bird. To me, they were truly free: soaring across the sky, singing, looking down at us from the treetops, nesting anywhere they liked. As I got older, I was fascinated by the stories of their epic migrations. I imagine that though the departure and arrival points of these migrations are probably similar, each journey must be unique; when one rests, how close to the flock one flies, and the weather must make each trip unique. My hope is that flightpath provides a similar experience, where one knows the points of departure and arrival, but is free to shape their individual journey.
In the vale of blue marl by the sea cold and waiting
Where e blooms with verdigris ere age should make it so
And the sun streams in burnt, flickering ribbons with the moon in tow;
Two eyes can yet be found, doomed to leer forever haunting
Those odd, quivering tides of nameless hunger unending.
Geological time scales are so inconceivably vast that I find them genuinely imposing, and even unsettling. If we attempt to find coherence in eons by superimposing human time scales onto geologic ones, strange distortions of perception are suggested—such as experiencing countless centuries in the span of a mere breath. Perhaps, instead of thinking and acting with a self-aware slowness; our sense, or pace, of self would feel unchanged while time seemingly raced around us. Whilst reviewing sketches made by an early geologist, William Smith, I came across references to blue marl, a type of sedimentary soil. Marl was historically used in agriculture to reduce soil acidity, much as liming is employed today. I found myself imagining a vale where all things are tethered to geologic time; a place of rampant decay beneath the spinning cosmos. This piece is meant to evoke, in its brevity, the quickness of a timelapse; but in its content, the layered strata of earth, and the implications of a patterned infinity. In the Vale of Blue Marl was commissioned by The Boston New Music Initiative for the 2025 “Postcard Commissions”; a series of pop-up concerts in the greater Boston area.
There was no light.
It was a flower, grown in the unleashed night.
Redder than red and not of the earth.
My people are older than all peoples—
scattered to the four winds.
We will see each other again.
In the Dark Night is inspired by the Haiku by the famous Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho.
闇の夜や 巣をまどはして 鳴く鵆
Yo no yami ya/ Su wo madowashite/ Naku chidori
In the dark night,
Losing sight of the nest,
The plover crys.
The music tries to capture the sound and scenes that’s depicted in the Haiku. The composition divides into three parts and explores the different timbre of flute.
An electronic rendition of a soundtrack from a childhood dream. I remember many of the colors, spaces and sounds from the dreams of my childhood, even if most of the story lines have faded away. After reading a poem about "The House That Jack Built" I had a dream about the construction process. In my dream, Jack was building an abnormally tall house so he could reach out from his attic window and shake hands with God. The upper floors of Jack's house had shingles the colors of salmon and lime and were surrounded by cirrus clouds in a cerulean blue sky. I remember Jack's face in profile, as if painted by Giotto. I observed construction from the air, so I must have been flying. I overcame gravity, but in the end Jack's house did not. I awoke from this dream and was convinced I heard and saw a UFO outside my bedroom window. But then...was I really awake? To be sure, I tried very hard to wake up again.
Flutterer is a playful exploration of the flute’s expressive range, inviting listeners into a world of lighthearted fantasy. The piece dances through unexpected twists and turns, weaving through fluttering runs. Inspired by lighthearted daydreams, Flutterer celebrates the flute’s lively character and imaginative gestures.
When at my orchard she arrived, the blossom was fresh falling.
The sun at the horizon slept, a drifter peevish lolling.
Oh why so late? I said to her. The last sun on the rushes,
my bells fog-muted, birds in grasses hiding in their stashes,
my leas all languish faintly scented waters overcast
and over ferry moorings shade all pastimes barren passed.
See I am set to cast off to some distant island greenery
and raise the flags upon the mast rig white sails filled in finery.
I waited for you back in spring...
The horizon boomed bright blues.
I stretched the sun’s rays into strings,
your voice to catch, a ruse.
So pray do tell, where were you even?
In far-flung lands and reaches where?
So pray do tell, in whose spring living?
Who did so tousle your dark hair?
Where did the hot nights sing to you through windows open wide?
My soul forlornly yearned in its cold silence petri2ed.
And now! I would not reminisce,
all set to leave all to dismiss,
off to sail ready and now this,
why in my grove to wane you’d please?
You’ve no sun here ablaze around no mountains with wild whoops resound.
For us no meadows fragrant wait, no songs about our coastline sound,
To cast off lone I am all set
to autumn’s fabled voice hark, care
to find a New Realm and domain...
Celebrate is an acousmatic miniature that derives its sonic palette from a range of vibrant and dynamic sounds traditionally associated with festive occasions. It was composed in honor of the Boston New Music Initiative’s (BNMI) 15th anniversary, serving as a tribute to the organization's ongoing commitment to the promotion and performance of contemporary music.
Bomb Cyclone (2023) was written in response to the several consecutive atmospheric rivers which overwhelmed the San Francisco Bay Area in early 2023. When cold and warm air masses collide, air pressure declines rapidly and a storm is created in a process called bombogenesis. As anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions warm the atmosphere, the air’s higher water content has given rise to a class of fast-acting storms known colloquially as bomb cyclones. Without intervention, they will only continue to grow in severity and frequency. I wrote this piece to explore the feelings of dread and hopelessness I and many other young people experience in the face of the climate crisis, and unearth moments of hope from the wreckage.
Silk and Jades is an interactive piece designed to immerse the audience in an experience beyond the typical concert to connect the performers and the audience, making music a shared experience. The performance combines traditional instruments with contemporary techniques. Instrumentalists will mix conventional playing methods with traditional ones, emulating instruments to create a varied soundscape. The audience will not merely be observers but participants. Throughout the performance, the musicians will invite the audience to join in, breaking the fourth wall and creating a collaborative atmosphere.
Composers-mothers have been vastly underrepresented in the history of music of the past and present. The nature of female physicality and intensity of professional activity that is necessary to sustain one's composition career force women-composers to choose between childbirth and dedication to their profession. Mothers are so rare among the living composers that the examples of them are rather exceptions. Thus, ironically, roughly all music we know that was inspired by parenthood or/and young children was composed by men. The lack of mothers in this field led to the huge gap in representation that does not fairly reflect the reality of our world.
Mother Tales were inspired by the motherhood routine, much of which consists of puŴing the child to sleep and playing. The first movement is a lullaby that starts Šom humming and then turns into mother's thoughts, both excitement and fear of the future unknown mixed with tenderness and vulnerability this liŴle world embodies. The second movement, perpetual delight, plays with tiny, tinkly, twinkly, raŴly, and shakery toys that become a world of discoveries for a new curious mind. Mother Tales are composed for the wonderful duo - Sunmi Chang and Clara Yang and premiered at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in April 2022. The duo will release the recording of the piece on Navona.
one-five is a micro-commission from the Boston New Music Initiative, Inc. to celebrate their fifteenth anniversary. As such, the piece uses the numbers 1, 5, and 15 to dictate many elements of the piece, including the number of pitches heard, number of attacks, and the pitch material itself. Permutations of the pitch materials include pitch-class numbers 1 and 5 (D-flat and F), scale degrees 1 and 5 of the D-flat major scale (D-flat and A-flat), and scale degrees 1 and 5 of the C major scale (C and G). Pitch material is also derived from the BNMI acronym:
B for “Boston”
“New” is transformed to “Nu” and is represented by C, by using Ut, the original solfege syllable for Do.
“Music” is represented by E-fat, for meh, the solfege syllable for scale degree 3 in C minor.
And “Initiative” is represented by E, for mi, the solfege syllable for scale degree 3 in C Major.
(A/E)mber explores the connection between fire and the gemstone amber, drawing on both visual similarities and mythological associations. The energy of fire inspires the music—its flickering intensity combines with the shimmering qualities of amber. The piece erupts through fiery bursts of music, and flows through delicate crystalline textures.
‘Lumen’, as the title implies, explores the contrast between darkness and light. My intention was to use the rich sonic possibilities of the bass flute to construct a soundscape in which light and darkness are metaphors for timbral properties — from shimmering brightness to subdued textures.
Patricia Alessandrini is a composer/sound artist, electronics performer, instrument builder and researcher. Her interactive, intermedial and theatrical compositions have been presented in the Americas, Asia and Australia, and in more than 15 European countries, at festivals such as Archipel, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Electric Spring, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Heidelberger Frühling, Gaudeamus, Mostly Mozart, Musica Strasbourg, rainy days, Ruhrtriennale, Salzburg Biennale, TimeSpans, Wien Modern and Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik.
She studied at the Conservatorio di Bologna, Conservatoire de Strasbourg and IRCAM, and holds PhDs from Princeton University and the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC). She is a Professor of Artistic Research at the HEMU – Haute École de Musique, HES-SO Haute école spécialisée de Suisse occidentale, and previously taught Composition at Stanford University, Sonic Arts at Goldsmiths College, University of London and Composition with Technology at Bangor University. She has been awarded Guggenheim (2022) and Radcliffe (2024) fellowships. She serves on the advisory boards of ShareMusic & Performing Arts, a Swedish knowledge center for inclusion, and the Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music (PRiSM) in the UK, and currently performs research on inclusive multimodal and immersive experience, feminist paradigms of technology, soft robotics and automata more generally.
Her published works are available from BabelScores.
Artur Akshelyan
Armenian-born composer Artur Akshelyan Artur Akshelyan explores experience through dynamism and lyricism, intersected with memory and multicultural impact. His works have been presented by leading ensembles including Ensemble Modern Lemanic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Trio Saeitenwind, the Arditti Quartet, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Ensemble Divertimento, Ensemble Maja, and the Basel Symphony Orchestra, among others.
He has received commissions from a range of respected institutions and ensembles including the Boston New Music Initiative, Radio France (Paris), Ensemble Contrechamps (Geneva), the Orpheus Competition (Switzerland), the Dilijan Chamber Music Series (USA), and Festival Flagey (Brussels) among others.
His music has earned several international honors, including Second Prize at the Basel Composition Competition, the Grand Prix at the Geneva Composition Competition, Honorable Mention from Gaudeamus Muziekweek. Most recently, he was awarded the 12th Annual Commissioning Competition by the Boston New Music Initiative and won the Left Coast Composition Contest among others.
As a conductor, he has collaborated with Ensemble Assonance. He has taught at the American University of Armenia and the Yerevan State Conservatory. Since 2023, he moved to the United States and is currently a doctoral candidate at Florida State University.
Described as “a force multiplier with more talents than time” (PATRON Magazine), “with a special gift for taking the personal and making it universal” (Beth Morrison), Anuj Bhutani is a quickly emerging composer, performer, vocalist, and producer whose “alternately celestial and dark” music (John Schaefer, WNYC New Sounds) often features visceral grooves; ethereal, meditative spaces; a combination of acoustic instruments and electronics, narrative depth, and genre-fluidity. As a first-generation Indian-American, Bhutani’s work is focused on liminal spaces, and as such is often highly interdisciplinary, engaging with theater, dance, and film while drawing on his musical background in classical, emo/screamo, ambient, singer/songwriter, and electronic music, resulting in genre- and culturally-fluid pieces that firmly situate the listener between multiple musical worlds at once.
His work has been presented by Beth Morrison Projects and LA Performance Practice, and at venues including National Sawdust, So Laboratories, the Banff Centre, Tuesdays @ Monk Space, Unwound Sound, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Oracle Egg, USC’s Visions + Voices series, and more.
He’s won Chamber Music America’s Classical Commissioning Grant, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, 1st prize in Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble’s Emerging Composer Competition, Verdigris Ensemble’s ION Composer Competition, Warren County Summer Music School’s Promising Young Composer Competition, Blank House Media’s Recording Competition, Nief-Norf International Call for Scores, 3rd prize in the American Prize in Choral Composition and The Choral Project's Composition Competition, and was a Finalist for the Bowdoin College Marion Brown Prize, Third Coast Percussion’s Creative Currents, and in the VOCES8 and Red Note Composition Competitions. He’s been selected for American Composer’s Orchestra’s Earshot, NewAm Composer’s Lab, Banff Centre’s Evolution: Classical, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival’s New Music Workshop at Yale School of Music, Albany Symphony’s Orchestrating for the 21st Century Workshop, RED NOTE Festival Composition Workshop, the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, residencies at Loghaven, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Atlantic Center for the Arts (#188 with Judd Greenstein, #191 with Missy Mazzoli), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the IRCAM Forum, ISCM World Music Days, multiple SCI conferences, SEAMUS conference, Impulse New Music Festival, Nick Photinos’ “1:2:1” program, the Hear Now Festival, and New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival.
His work has been commissioned or performed by Ashley Bathgate, USC Thornton Symphony, Talla Rouge, Khemia Ensemble, 240 Northern, Raleigh Civic Symphony, Metropolis Ensemble, Extended Music Collective, Verdant Vibes, Allen Philharmonic, Andrew Tholl of Wild Up, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Lauren Cauley Kalal of Switch~ ensemble, Inversion Ensemble, Daisy Press, the William Paterson University Percussion Ensemble, and more.
He earned his master’s degree at University of Southern California where he was awarded Outstanding Graduate in Composition and his bachelor’s degree at University of North Texas. His previous teachers have included Andrew Norman, Ted Hearne, Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother), Joseph Klein, Andrew May, Sungji Hong, Drew Schnurr, and UNT Composer-in-Residence Bruce Broughton. He also holds a BA in Psychology from UT Austin.
Composer SJR Caldwell is fascinated with writing music which gives audiences immersive experiences. Inspired by popular avant-garde movements, Caldwell has sought to combine the accessible and the unfamiliar. Whether for full orchestra, chamber ensemble, soloist, electronics, or anything in between, Caldwell’s music welcomes performer engagement and repeated listening. Emotional sensitivity stems from research on the psychology of listening, while machine-like rhythms and noisy settings arise from experiments in glitch art and computer science. Caldwell often creates artwork, animation, and poetry to transform his music into engrossing multimedia works. No matter the current study, Caldwell is keen to find the next far-flung topic to incorporate into his ever-expanding fabric of music.
Caldwell’s eclectic interests are reflected in his educational background: he received a bachelor’s of science in biomedical engineering from The University of Akron in 2016, a master’s of music in composition from The University of Toledo in 2018, and a doctor of musical arts in music composition from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023. During his school years, Caldwell acted as composer and sound designer for three University of Toledo theater productions, and enjoyed working with fellow musicians to organize countless successful concerts and premieres.
With a reading by The Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, a premiere by the Illinois Modern Ensemble, and a commissioned work by the Khroma and Soma Quartets, Caldwell has found success in ensemble writing. Currently based in Boston, Caldwell serves on the board of the organization New Music Mosaic (NMM), which is designed to lower barriers between composers and performers. The Boston Cohort of NMM recently premiered Caldwell’s piece Curious and Illimitable for five-piece ensemble with artwork and spoken word.
A native of Stafford, Virginia, Melika M. Fitzhugh (A.B. Harvard-Radcliffe, M.M. Longy School of Music of Bard College) studied conducting and composition with Thomas G. Everett, Beverly Taylor, James Yannatos, Julian Pellicano, Roger Marsh, Jeff Stadelman, and, most recently, John Howell Morrison and Osnat Netzer. Mel's compositions have been performed internationally by the PHACE Ensemble (Austria), Quarteto Larianna (Brazil), the Brouwer Trio (Spain), Sarah Jeffery (Nederland, Sweden), Sylvia Hinz (Germany), the Radcliffe Choral Society (US), Berit Strong (US), John Tyson (US), Miyuki Tsurutani (Japan/US), and Aldo Abreu (Venezuela/US).
Mel was a 2021 Bang on a Can Fellow, the 2020 winner of the PatsyLu Prize for IAWM’s Search for New Music, the 2014 winner of the Longy orchestral composition competition, and has performed with the Radcliffe Choral Society, Coro Allegro, the Harvard Wind Ensemble, the Village Circle Band, and WACSAC. The artist, who has composed music for film and stage, was a member of Just In Time Composers and Players and is currently a member of world/early music ensembles Quilisma Consort and Urban Myth, in addition to playing bass guitar with symphonic metal/progressive band Illusion’s End, the ambient rock band Rose Cabal and the Balkan folk dance band Balkan Fields.
Peter Gilbert writes: “I love the feeling of being enveloped in a musical experience, of disappearing into sound. I search for musical moments that can conjure up secret passageways to transcendence—that we performers, collaborators, listeners can conjure together.”
Peter Gilbert's work combines traditional instrumental writing with elements of improvisation, live-performed electronics, and other media in works for the concert hall as well as for multi-media theater, film, and installation. In his words, he attempts to “become enveloped in a musical experience, disappearing into sound.”
Gilbert has held artist residencies with numerous institutions in Europe and the US including ZKM | Institut für Akustik und Musik, Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany), and the Aaron Copland House and festivals such as the Tage Aktueller Musik, Nürnberg (Germany) and the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival. Accolades and commissions have come from the Barlow Foundation, New Music USA, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Kennedy Center Education, NRW Fonds Neues Musiktheater, the Russolo Foundation, the Look & Listen Festival, the Third Practice Festival, the Washington International Composers Competition, Stadtstheater Darmstadt, the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, and Theater Russelsheim.
Gilbert taught at Harvard University, Wellesley College, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and was co-founder of the Young Composers Program at CIM and its Co-Directer from 2003-2010. Since 2010 he has taught composition at the University of New Mexico. Gilbert's second portrait album for New Focus Recordings was named a Best of 2021 by Sequenza21. His work as a composer, performer and producer can also be heard on Innova Recordings, GM Recordings, Sono Luminus, Affeto, Centaur, and at http://petergilbert.net.
Chia-Yu Hsu Chiayu is an active composer of contemporary concert music. She has been interested in deriving inspirations from different materials, such as poems, myths, and images. Particularly, however, it is the combination of Chinese elements and western techniques that is a hallmark of her music. Her career has been burgeoning with a remarkable number of commissions.
Since December 2022, Chiayu’s work, City Renaissance, has been included in PBS’s series, Songs about Buildings and Moods, and aired nationwide. In July 2022, her EC Sketches was performed by the Orchestra internazionale di Roma at Festival Federico Cesi in Trevi, Italy and also at the femfestival in Florence, Italy in November 2021. Her choral work, To A Lost Year, waspremiered by the San Francisco Choral Society in May 2022. In August 2021, Bien was premiered at the Utah Arts Festival. Urban Sketches was performed by the Ensemble 20/21 at the Curtis Institute of Music in February 2020. Her Shan Ko was performed by FSU Orchestra at the FSU 2019 Festival of New Music. In September 2018, her pieces, Confluence Fanfare and Confluence Landscape were premiered at the grand opening of the Pablo Center at the Confluence. Her Land of Blugold was premiered for the celebration of the centennial at UW-Eau Claire in October 2016. In October 2014, her Sparkle was recorded for the NPR Performance Today for the celebration of the opening of Lenfest Hall at the Curtis.
Chiayu has received numerous awards and honors for her compositional endeavors. In 2021, she was the first prize winner at the Fem Festival in Italy for her EC Sketches. In 2021 and 2022, she received commissions from the Utah Arts Festival and the San Francisco Chorale Society because of winning their composition competitions. In 2016, Chiayu received the Lakond prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2013, Journey to the West, was the winner of the IAWM Search for New Music and she won two more awards from IAWM in 2016 and 2019. Shui Diao Ge To, composed for the 2004 Milestones Festival, received a 2005 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award. In 1999, her Dinkey Bird won the Maxfield Parrish composition contest and was the subject of a feature in Philadelphia Inquirer. She has also received the first prize in the National Taiwan Academy of Art Composition Competition, the Charlotte Civic Orchestra Composition Competition, the Philip Slates Memorial Composition Contest, the Prism Quartet Student Commission Award, the Renée B. Fisher Foundation Composer Award, the William Klenz Prize, the Sorel Organization’s 2nd International Composition Competition, music+culture 2009 International Competition for Composers, the 2010 Sorel Organization recording grant, the KH Tan Composition Competition, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Zodiac trio, Kaleidoscopes and Elevate ensembles, Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer’s Awards, and the Copland House Residency Award.
Born in Banciao, Taiwan, Chiayu is an associate professor of composition at UW-Eau Claire. She has received her Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music, Master’s degree and Artist Diploma from Yale School of Music, and Ph.D. from Duke University. She has been in different residencies in the United States and Europe, including Yaddo, Wildacres Retreat, the Camargo Foundation, and Dora Maar House. She has studied at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Aspen Music Festival, American Conservatory (Fontainebleau), and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Her teachers have included Jennifer Higdon, Martin Bresnick, Roberto Sierra, Ezra Laderman, David Loeb, Anthony Kelley, Jeffrey Mumford, Donald Crockett, Jonathan Berger, Christopher Rouse, Robert Beaser, Joseph Schwantner, Joan Tower, Marco Stroppa, Scott Lindroth, and Stephen Jaffe.
Her recent projects include a solo organ work for the Curtis Institute’s centennial celebration, a viola concerto for Chippewa Fall Symphony Orchestra, and a piano concerto for Anna Shelest. While not composing, Chiayu enjoys reading, playing sports, watching movies, and spending time with friends.
Stephen Mallon is a composer, vocalist, video editor and digital artist with a background in architecture and theater design. His early exposure to choral music as boy soprano turned into a lifelong passion. Many of his choral compositions are settings of his own poems. In addition to writing for choral and instrumental ensembles, he has created experimental music and art noise using found sounds, digital synthesis, pattern generators and home-made instruments.
His awards include the 2023 ACDA Composition Focus Prize: First Prize for Treble Choir, the 2023 American Prize: Finalist Honorable Mention for Composers of Instrumental Chamber Music and the 2023 American Prize: Finalist Honorable Mention for Virtual Performance. He lives in southeastern Pennsylvania where he sings with Bucks County Choral Society and Cordus Mundi, an 8 voice male a cappella ensemble that has premiered several of his compositions.
Karola Obermueller composes in search of the unknown, with layers upon layers of obscured material buried deep beneath a surface that is sometimes sumptuous, sometimes bristling with rhythmic energy. Her unique voice began forming in collages of sound made with tape recorders as a child and evolved later with composition degrees from the Meistersinger-Konservatorium Nürnberg, the Hochschule für Musik Saar, and the University Mozarteum Salzburg. Her sense of rhythm and form was forever changed by studying Carnatic and Hindustani classical music in Chennai and Delhi, India.
A Ph.D. at Harvard University brought her to the US where she taught at Wellesley College and at the University of New Mexico, co-directing the composition area and the annual John Donald Robb Composers’ Symposium music festival, before joining the Department of Music at UC San Diego. She also lives and works part of the year in Europe and has been a visiting artist at ZKM, Deutsche Akademie Rom, Centro Tedesco di studi Veneziani, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Leipzig Gewandhaus and Hanns Eisler House, and IRCAM as well as serving as a resident composer for new music festivals at Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg, Conservatorio Piccinni di Bari (Italy), University Mozarteum Salzburg, Festival Virtuosi Century XXI, Recife (Brazil), Samobor Music Festival Croatia, and others. Obermüller frequently serves as an adjudicator for competitions such as the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Hochschulwettbewerb, the Femfestival, and the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse.
Her music, often political, always dramatic, includes operas for Staatstheater Nürnberg, Theater Bielefeld, Theater Bonn, Theater Heidelberg, and Stuttgart’s Musik der Jahrhunderte. The emotional juxtapositions of story suspended in a tableau architecture that one finds in her operas can be heard in her concert works as well which include commissions from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Music Foundation, New Music USA, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Saarländischer Rundfunk, and numerous renowned soloists and ensembles.
Obermüller works with lauded contemporary music ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), Arditti Quartet, Neue Vocalsolisten, Ekmeles, MusikFabrik, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, E-MEX Ensemble, Iridium Quartet, New Thread Quartet, Soli fan tutti, Pegnitzschäfer Klangkonzepte, Ensemble Adapter, New Mexico Contemporary Ensemble, ensemble phorminx, sonic.art saxophone quartet, Splinter Reeds, Gewandhaus-Ensemble Avantgarde, and AsianArt Ensemble. She has received numerous awards including the Heidelberger Künstlerinnenpreis, Darmstädter Musikpreis, the New York Musicians Club Prize, the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award, the Bavarian Youth Prize for Composition (awarded by Zubin Mehta), the John Green Prize for Excellence in Music Composition, and the 1st Prize of the “New Note” International Composers Competition Croatia.
Recordings of several of Obermüller’s works have been released on CD including Jacqueline Leclair’s solo CD (New Focus Recordings, Music for English Horn Alone, FCR272), a record by harpsichordist Luca Quintavalle (Brilliant Classics 96476: Mousikē—the art of the muses), a CD with the Voices of the Pearl project (Volume 3), and a disk by Duo Harmonium d’art et Pianoforte (forthcoming on dreyer-gaido). Having been selected by the German Music Council to be a part of the Contemporary Music Edition, the first portrait CD of her music was released by WERGO in 2018 and a second CD is forthcoming on New Focus Recordings.
Greg Parth
Greg Parth is the winner of the 2022 Canadian Music Centre Emerging Composer Competition. He won first place in the 2023 SOCAN Foundation Young Composers Awards (Large Ensemble) and first place in Music Composition at the Alberta Music Festival. He participated in the Young Composers Project with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, attended the Winnipeg New Music Festival Composers Institute, and completed the Jean Coulthard Readings and Mentorship program with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. His works have been performed by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Greg earned his Level 10 Piano Certificate from the Royal Conservatory of Music. He currently studies with Jeffrey Ryan and formerly studied with John Estacio and John McPherson.
Czech-American composer Beth Ratay is a versatile musician who is able to craft music using a wide variety of styles and techniques. From music possessed of a quiet, understated grace, to music based on mathematical concepts, to emotive and hilarious opera, Ratay's music is engaging, charming and beautiful.
Dr. Ratay received her Doctor of Musical Arts in World Music Composition from the University of California, Santa Cruz and has had works performed around the world by ensembles such as Earplay, West Edge Opera, Coalescence Percussion Duo, the Phoenix Symphony Chorus, Ninth Planet, The Hartford Opera Theater, and the Oregon Bach Festival Composer’s Ensemble. Her studies on the relationship of text to music in the work of Leoš Janáček and symmetric or layered musical structures in the music of Harrison Birtwistle strongly inform her own compositions. Ratay is a vigorous supporter of new music as the President of the Boston New Music Initiative.
Dr. Ratay also enjoys teaching, and currently teaches theory and composition at the University of New Mexico as well as educational outreach with the Active Learning Through Opera (ALTO) and Opera Storytellers program with the Santa Fe Opera. She has previously taught at Bunker Hill Community College, Roxbury Community College, Hartnell College, Gavilan College, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Beth currently lives with her amazing family including one husband, two sons, and two cats in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Leah Reid is a composer, sound artist, researcher, and educator, whose works range from opera, chamber, and vocal music, to acousmatic, electroacoustic works, and interactive sound installations.
Winner of a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, Reid has also won the American Prize, first prizes in the International “New Vision” Composition Competition, the KLANG! International Electroacoustic Composition Competition, and Musicworks’ Electronic Music Competition, Sound of the Year’s Composed with Sound Award, IAWM’s Pauline Oliveros Award, and second prizes in the Iannis Xenakis International Electronic Music Competition and the International Destellos Competition. She has received fellowships from the Copland House, Hambidge Center, MacDowell, VCCA, Ucross Foundation, and Yaddo.
Her compositions have been presented at festivals, conferences, and in major venues throughout the world, including Aveiro_Síntese (Portugal), BEAST FEaST (England), Espacios Sonoros (Argentina), EviMus (Germany), ICMC (USA & Chile), IRCAM’s ManiFeste (France), LA Philharmonic's Noon to Midnight (USA), the Matera Intermedia Festival (Italy), NYCEMF (USA), Série de Música de Câmara (Brazil), the SCI National Conference (USA), the SMC Conference (Germany), the Tilde New Music Festival (Australia), and WOCMAT (Taiwan), among many others.
She is currently an Assistant Professor of Music Composition at the University of Virginia and BNMI’s artistic director.
Quinn Rosenberg (b. 2004) is a composer and improviser from the San Francisco Bay Area interested in exploring natural interconnection and queerness through sound and performance. They are inspired by timbral intricacies of instruments and nontraditional techniques for immersive storytelling. An enthusiastic collaborator, they often work with aleatoric and improvisatory elements to create breathing, flexible pieces.
Quinn’s work Bomb Cyclone (2023) was recently selected by the Boston New Music Initiative for their historically underrepresented gender call for scores and was published online by the contemporary music channel Score Follower. They have interned at the Ojai Music Festival and attended the Longy Divergent Studio where they workshopped a piece for loadbang. They recently completed solo cello piece reach, recede (2024) for close friend and collaborator Lily Stern.
Now based in Boston, Quinn pursues a Bachelor of Music in composition with Dr. Kati Agócs at the New England Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Arts in environmental studies at Tufts University through a dual-degree program. Quinn is affiliated with the performing rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI).
Described as having 'idioms of Hollywood film music and Broadway musicals' (The Straits Times, 2023) which 'emanated a variety of aromatic incenses' (pianofortephilia, 2022), US-based Singaporean composer and double bassist Edmund Song is a re-imaginer of Eastern Traditional music with a Western flair.
Edmund began his career as an engraver and copyist for ensembles before becoming an arranger and orchestrator, collaborating with numerous international singers such as Nathan Hartono, Rahimah Rahim, Joanna Dong, and Derrick Hoh. He then ventured into music production and game music, working with 24 Gigakus (Sichuan) and Game Soul Technology (Taiwan) respectively. His recent compositional collaborations include works for Hub New Music, PRISM Quartet, and HyperCube Ensemble, Standing Wave Ensemble, as well as being awarded the Leslie Bassett Graduate Award at Alba Music Festival 2023. In 2023, Edmund will collaborate with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago fellows to feature his film score "The Smart Dog" in concert. Additionally, Edmund will curate the Jacobs School of Music's first student-organised "film score in concert" at Auer Hall, showcasing his film scores and rarely-seen-live Foley presentations.
As a double bassist, Edmund was selected as one of five soloists in the 17th Annual Pirastro Strings Elite Soloists Program in 2020. He also won first prize in the solo division (U-25) of the 2019 Singapore International Double Bass Music Festival and was the sole winner of the 2019 Lan Yang International Double Bass Orchestral Contest. In May 2019, Edmund premiered the symphonic orchestral version of Eric Watson's Double Bass Concerto at the Victoria Concert Hall in Singapore. In 2016, he was the founding double bassist of Singapore's first professional chamber orchestra, re:Sound Collective, and in 2018, he became the founding musician of Singapore's first professional Baroque Ensemble, Red Dot Baroque. Currently, Red Dot Baroque is the Ensemble-in-Residence at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore. In 2019, Edmund founded BASS around Asia, a Singaporean-Taiwanese Double Bass Quintet, and tours with his chamber mates between Singapore and Taiwan to promote the double bass and its compositions. Edmund also performs upright bass with the award-winning Indian pop contemporary and jazz ensemble, Brahmastra. In the US, Edmund has collaborated on multiple occasions with the Bloomington Bach Cantata projects alongside the Historical Performance faculty of the Jacobs School of Music.
Before leaving for the US, Edmund served as the President and General Manager of the Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra (ACSO), which has been promoting multicultural performances with Asian traditional instruments through a symphonic setting, featuring local composers and artists since 2016. With music directors Adrian Chiang and Dedric Wong, Edmund has produced concerts ranging from traditional staged performances to film score concerts, digital streaming events, and orchestral collaborations with dance and beatbox artists. Due to the orchestra's unique instrumentation, which includes an additional Asian ethnic section integrated into the symphony orchestra, Edmund has been advocating for and assisting composers in understanding how to write for and integrate Asian instruments into their compositions.
Edmund is currently studying at the Jacobs School of Music in the US, focusing on media scoring with Larry Groupe, composition with PQ Phan and Annie Gosfield, and double bass with Kurt Muroki. Edmund graduated from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music and is currently the appointed Composer-in-Residence of the Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra.
Liliya Ugay (1990; Tashkent, Uzbekistan) is a composer and pianist whose work focuses on exploration of immigrant experience, female physicality, and motherhood routine, often through storytelling and drawing inspiration from material tools, such as folk instruments and children's toys, capturing "curiosity, awkwardness, and wonder to play" (Modern Notebook). Her music has been described as "evocative" (Washington Post), "assertive, steely... [then] lovely and supple writing" (Wall Street Journal), "fluid and theatrical, with lancing atonal gestures brushing up against folk-sounding materials... creative decisions all serve clear, expressive purposes — the music makes its case with immediacy" (The Art Fuse), as well as “vivid, yet ultimately enigmatic” (South Florida Classical Review); praised as "exquisite and heartwarming" (Navona) music that "tugs at our heart strings" (OperaGene), and her orchestration skills labeled as "strong" (DC Theatre Scene) and "with range of colors and textures [that] is really striking" (Boston Classical Radio). Among performers of her works were Yale Philharmonia, Nashville and Albany Symphonies, American Composers Orchestra, New England Philharmonic, Raleigh Civic Symphony, The Next Festival of Emerging Artists; ensembles such as Aspen Contemporary Music Ensemble, Borealis wind quintet, icarus Quartet, Victory Players, Unheard-Of//Ensemble, Music from Copland House, Molinari Quartet, Ensemble Flageolet, ensemble vim, Antico Moderno, Omnibus, Convergence; soloists such as Paul Neubauer, Andrea Lam, Noël Wan, Sunmi Chang, Clara Yang, Melvin Chen, Robert Fleitz, Min Kwon. Her works were featured at Aspen, Norfolk, Chelsea, Darmstadt, New York Electroacoustic and Chicago Electroacoustic festivals, American Composers Festival, MIFA, Boston New Music Initiative, CAMPGround, Convergence, and Venice Biennale, at the venues including John Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Merkin Hall, Steinway Hall New York, Pablo Casals Symphony Hall, and in the places such as Mission Concepción (UNESCO World Heritage site) and Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. Ugay’s operatic collaborations include Washington National Opera and American Lyric Theater, for which she was a commissioned composer-in-residence; most recently, she has worked with activist opera company White Snake Projects on the virtual opera "Fractured Mosaics" uncovering the experiences of Asian-Americans, and the series "Let's Celebrate" creating an opera about Nowruz - Persian New Year. Recordings of Liliya’s music were featured and produced by NPR, New England Public Media, Parma/Navona, and many classical music stations such as WGBH, PBS, WSMR. Named “2024 Distinguished Composer of the Year” by the Music Teachers National Association, Liliya has received recognitions from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, Yale University, International Alliance of Women in Music, as well as grants from Opera America and National Endowment of the Arts.
Since 2019 Liliya serves on the composition faculty at Florida State University, where she directs FSU New Music Ensemble Polymorphia, which, to this date, presented 18 programs featuring over 100 compositions by living composers, in addition to special concerts such as Music by Korean Women Composers and Silenced Voices series. Ugay holds master and doctorate degrees from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Aaron Kernis, Martin Bresnick, Boris Berman, Christopher Theofanidis, and David Lang. Above all, Liliya is a dedicated mother of a 6-year-old Julian who loves making sounds and practicing violin, inspiring his mother every day.
The music of Evan Williams draws from a wide range of influences, both musical and cultural. His work reflects inspirations from the Baroque, Romanticism, Modernism, Minimalism, contemporary popular music, and everything in between. Williams’ music has been performed across the country and internationally in Canada, Italy, and Switzerland. His work has been performed by members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Fifth House Ensemble, Splinter Reeds, the Verb Ballets, and at festivals such as Fresh Inc, N_SEME, SEAMUS, Studio 300, the New Music Gathering, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, the New York City Electronic Music Festival, and the Midwest Composers Symposium. He has been commissioned by notable performers and ensembles including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Lawrence University Symphony Orchestra, the V3NTO Brass Trio, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, Patchwork Duo, and a consortium led by Andy Hall for his baritone saxophone concerto Wild Velvet. He has also received readings by the JACK Quartet, Oasis Saxophone Quartet, and the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, among others. His work can be found on recordings by The Namaste Ensemble's "No Borders Quartet," Levels, and an upcoming recording by soprano Katherine Jolly and pianist Emily Yap Chua.
Williams has received awards and recognition from the National Federation of Music Clubs, ASCAP, Fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and in 2018, was chosen as the Detroit Symphony’s inaugural African-American Classical Roots Composer-in-Residence. Originally from the Chicago suburbs, Williams completed his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition with a cognate in Orchestral Conducting at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. There, he studied with Michael Fiday, Mara Helmuth, and Douglas Knehans, and served as a teaching assistant in electronic music. He holds a Masters degree from Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, OH), and a Bachelors from the Conservatory of Music at Lawrence University (Appleton, WI). His other primary teachers have been Asha Srinivasan, Joanne Metcalf, Christopher Dietz, Mikel Kuehn, and Marilyn Shrude. He has also received instruction in festivals, masterclasses, and lessons from composers Julia Wolfe, Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, David Maslanka, Libby Larson, Evan Chambers, Stacy Garrop, Dan Visconti, and others.
As a conductor, Williams and has led performances with the Lawrence University Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble, numerous chamber ensembles, at the 2012 New Music Festival at BGSU, with Café MoMus (CCM’s contemporary chamber ensemble), and with members of the International Contemporary Ensemble. He has also trained at the Bard Conductors Institute and the Band Conducting and Pedagogy Clinic at the University of Michigan.
Williams serves as Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Instrumental Activities at Rhodes College, where he teaches composition, music technology, and is music director of the Rhodes Orchestra. He previously held teaching positions at Lawrence University, Bennington College, and at The Walden School’s Young Musicians Program.
Brady Wolff is a Kansas City-native composer whose work serves as a personal diary, capturing his fascination with our world through morphing bodies of sound, intense rhythmic activity, and influence from mathematical processes. Often dark and cerebral in nature, Brady’s music combines a deep historical fluency with modern perspectives to create works that engage with themes of climate change, queer identity, and neurodiversity. Influenced by his experiences with Tourette syndrome, much of Brady’s music contemplates themes of discomfort, tension, and control, manifesting as stark and ephemeral mood changes.
Brady’s music has been performed by artists and groups such as Lindsay Kesselman, and the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, and he has been featured at the Estivales de Lods, International Double Reed Society Conference, Emerging Composers Intensive, and Sewanee Music Festival. He has also been honored by ASCAP, The Presser Foundation, The Missouri Composer’s Project, Marker and Pioneer International Cultural Exchange Center, and FOCAM.
Recent projects include Chocolate Tidal Waves, an introspective work reflecting on growing up, Abstractions After Abstractions, a solo marimba work poking fun at the “abstractness” of music and art, and Shadow Bands, a work for string trio based on the phenomenon preceding totality of a solar eclipse.
A devoted educator, Brady combines his dedication to inclusivity and self-expression through teaching approaches that empower students to uncover their unique artistic voices. One of his current projects, entitled Xenharmonia, uses Max to create environments allowing student ensembles to experiment with alternative tuning systems. Brady serves on the Board of Directors of the Festival for Creative Pianists, and its publishing imprint, Abundant Silence. Brady also holds a B.M. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in both music composition and theory, and will begin pursuing his M.M. at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music next fall. He counts among his mentors Piyawat Louilarpprasert, Chen Yi, Yotam Haber, and Paul Rudy.
Brady’s favorite song is “Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene” by Hozier. When not composing, Brady enjoys reading, scuba diving, and tending to his large collection of houseplants.
Zhichang Lin
Zhichang Lin was born in China in 1999. He is now studying a Master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Morgan Hayes after he finished undergraduate degree at the Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou, China.
During his previous composition studies, he embraced the integration of Chinese culture within the contemporary context. Hebo, a selected piece for the World Famous Music Institution Exchange Performance Season in Shenyang, tells an ancient Chinese myth about a god of the river and primarily explores cello solo techniques, using a musical language that mix atonal pitch with pentatonic sets.
Recently, Zhichang’s compositional interests have shifted towards exploring material transformation and reforming while seeking an overall aesthetic that balances variety and repetition in music. His work A Musical Depiction of Respective echoes an artwork by British artist Richard Hamilton, diving into the musical transcription of Richard’s stylistic graphical features—points and lines in his works. This piece was successfully premiered at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.
In terms of the experimental aspects of music, Zhichang is particularly interested in constructing a concrete, specific image of an instrument by developing a series of unconventional performing techniques and exploring multiple timbre combinations. His work Without Words delves into the exploration of human voice and acoustic sounds, treating the soprano as a mechanical instrument, using only basic and primitive pronunciations as text that organically blend with the entire instrumental ensemble.
Zhichang is currently working on new pieces and projects that continue to expand the boundaries of his own aesthetic and technical perspectives of composition.
