December 5, 2023
Shin Kim
Shin Kim is a Master student at the Royal Academy of Music, London, with Professor Dr. Rubens Askenar. Prior to that, he was studying at the Korea University of Arts in Seoul with Byungmoo Lee, and for a year was student of Karlheinz Essl at the University of Arts in Vienna. In his work, he distinguishes three major themes: religion, narrative and psychological phenomena, paying great attention to making his music understandable to all audiences.
He is the winner of the George Enescu International Competition 2022 in the symphony music category.
Also, he won the 1 st prize at the concours de Genéve with his work "The song of Oneiroi". In "The song of Oneiroi", he tells the story of the dream world - and tells it to himself as the dreamer - using not words but pronunciation systems from various languages and using microphones to amplify, diversify and spatialise his music. And to make more dreamlike.
December 10, 2023
Jessica Krash
Jessica Krash is a native of Washington, DC and continues to find it an interesting and challenging place to think about worldview in music and art. She was awarded the 2010 “Wammie” for Classical Composer (Washington Area Music Association’s version of a Grammy). Her work has appeared in traditional and experimental concerts and radio in the US, Europe, and Asia, including a work for dancers and saxophones on Washington’s canal in a thunderstorm. Jessica’s 2018 chamber and vocal music CD (Albany Records) was praised by the Wall Street Journal, Gramophone, and Fanfare, was “Recording of the Month” in Voix des Arts, and was named in “10 of the Best New Releases in 2018” by The Daffodil Perspective. Her solo piano CD (Ravello/Capstone Records) was listed by Tim Page in The Washington Post and Detroit News as one of the most interesting recordings of 2006.
January 10, 2024
Curtis Stewart
Praised for “combining omnivory and brilliance” (The New York Times), four-time GRAMMY Award-nominated violinist and composer Curtis Stewart translates stories of American self determination to the concert stage. Tearing down the facade of “classical violinist,” Stewart is in constant pursuit of his musical authenticity, treating art as a battery for realizing citizenship. As a solo violinist, composer, Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra, professor at The Juilliard School, and member of award-winning ensembles PUBLIQuartet and The Mighty Third Rail, he realizes a vision to find personal and powerful connections between styles, cultures and musics. Stewart’s 2023 album of Love., a tribute to his late mother Elektra Kurtis-Stewart, has been nominated under Best Instrumental Solo in the 2024 GRAMMY Awards.
January 5, 2024
Dongryul Lee
Seoul-born Chicago based composer Dongryul Lee (이동렬 [iː doŋ ɾjəɾ], pronouns: he/him) crafts music that entwines the acoustical nature of sounds with clarity, pathos, and reinvented classical expressions. Embracing the joy of rendering ludic permutations or interstellar sonic fables, he aspires to reach the human spirit through epistemic journeys. The dual identities of his backgrounds, a Korean immigrant living in the States, a born Catholic and learned Buddhist thinker, and a composer with a computer science degree, also greatly influence his musical language. He finds inspirations in spiritual, literary, and scientific elements, encompassing a diverse range of topics from Borgesian poetics and Jungian Philosophy to Number Theory, Deep Learning, and Engineering Campanology, oftentimes employing yearlong in-depth interdisciplinary research.
February 2, 2024
Edward Barnes
The composer and/or producer of over 50 works for the stage, concert hall, radio and recordings, EDWARD BARNES is the winner of Guggenheim, NEA and NY Foundation for the Arts fellowships, and the Stephen Sondheim Award for the “creation of innovative musical theater.” He has served as Executive Director of Gotham Chamber Opera, Producing Director of MasterVoices, and Managing Director of American Lyric Theater, and is currently a lecturer at The Juilliard School.
Extraordinarily talented in the realm of dramatic musical ideas. Barnes is obviously sensitive to the poetry and music to be found in commonplace circumstances and knows how to transmute them into a work of art.
- The New York Timesz
Brad Balliet
Feburary 14, 2024
Brad Balliett enjoys being a musical omnivore, focusing equal parts of his career on composing, playing bassoon, and teaching artistry. Brad is principal bassoon of the Princeton Symphony, a member of Signal and Metropolis Ensemble, a founding member and former Artistic Director for Decoda, a member of the composer-collective band Oracle Hysterical, and on faculty at The Peabody Institute, The Juilliard School, and Musicambia.
As a teaching artist, Brad regularly leads composition and song-writing workshops in prisons, schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters. His work with Musicambia has given him the opportunity to guide aspiring composers and performers at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Allendale Correctional Facility, Brooklyn Detention Center, and San Quentin State Prison. With Project: Music Heals Us, Brad has led music history and composition workshops at Radgowski-Corrigan and Bain Correctional Center. With Decoda, Brad has participated in workshops for over six years at Lee Correctional Institute.
Nicolas Benavides
Nicolás Lell Benavides’ (Ben-ah-VEE-des) music has been praised for finding “…a way to sketch complete characters in swift sure lines…” (Anne Midgette, Washington Post) and cooking up a “jaunty score [with] touches of cabaret, musical theater and Latin dance.” (Tim Smith, OPERA NEWS). He has received commissions from groups like The New York Philharmonic/The Juilliard School, Eighth Blackbird, New Century Chamber Orchestra with Daniel Hope, SFCM Orchestra with Edwin Outwater, West Edge Opera, Washington National Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, Music of Remembrance, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Fry Street Quartet, Friction Quartet, and Khemia Ensemble. His music has received support from organizations such as the American Composers Forum, The Barlow Endowment, New Music USA, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
April, 2024
April, 2024
Andrés Soto
Andrés Soto is a Costa Rican composer based in Los Angeles with an active career in both film and concert music. He has written music for several feature films, documentaries, shorts, trailers and video games, as well as numerous concert works that have been performed by orchestras around the world, (including the Nashville Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Utah Symphony, Florida Orchestra), and in 2024 the New York Philharmonic and the Juilliard Pre-College Symphony will jointly premiere an upcoming work as part of a grant from the Sphinx Foundation.
Recent albums include “Doce Musas”, recorded by 12 emerging pianists from his native Costa Rica, and three albums for Universal, including “Champion Beats”, co-written with Grammy-winning producer Alex Hitchens and recorded at Capitol Studios, with tracks that have appeared on ABC, ESPN, Univision, Golf Channel, NBA, Tennis Channel, Fox, and other channels. In 2022 he collaborated with producer/ composer Daniel Rojas by writing incidental music for the celebrated 90th Pageant of the Masters at the Festival of the Arts in Laguna Beach
Javier Farias
Chilean American composer Javier Farias has been awarded First Prize in the Andrés Segovia Composition Competition, International Composing Competition «2 Agosto,» and Michele Pittaluga Composition Competition. In 2014 he was honored with the Fromm Music Foundation Prize at Harvard University for a concerto for two guitars composed for Sérgio and Odair Assad and the YOA Orchestra of the Americas. His catalog consists of works ranging from solo guitar to full guitar ensemble to others featuring or incorporating the guitar into compositions for chamber ensembles, choral music, and orchestral settings, including five guitar concertos, having outstanding musicians such as the guitarist of the band The Police, Andy Summers; bandoneonist of Astor Piazzolla’s sextet, Daniel Binelli; jazz guitarist Mike Stern or classical guitarist Eliot Fisk premiering and recording his music.
His compositions have premiered in lauded venues such as Carnegie Hall, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Instituto Cervantes in New York City, the Kennedy Center, Tsuda Hall in Japan, Meistersaal in Berlin, Troy Music Hall, and by the Organization of American States among others. His music written for guitar has also been included in guitar program repertoire for conservatories including the Conservatoire de Paris, Yale University, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.
May, 2024
Chris Cerrone
Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984, New York) is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. Balancing lushness and austerity, immersive textures and telling details, dramatic impact, and interiority, Cerrone’s multi-GRAMMY-nominated music is utterly compelling and uniquely his own.
Cerrone’s opera, In a Grove (libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann), jointly produced by LA Opera and Pittsburgh Opera, was called “stunning” (Opera News) and “outstanding” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) in its sold-out premiere run directed by Mary Birnbaum in March 2022. Other recent projects include The Year of Silence, based on the story of the same name by Kevin Brockmeier, for the Louisville Symphony and baritone Dashon Burton; A Body, Moving, a brass concerto for the Cincinnati Symphony; Breaks and Breaks, a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony; The Insects Became Magnetic, an orchestral work with electronics for the Los Angeles Philharmonic; The Air Suspended, a piano concerto for Shai Wosner; and Meander, Spiral, Explode, a percussion quartet concerto co-commissioned by Third Coast Percussion, the Chicago Civic Orchestra of the Chicago Symphony and the Britt Festival.
May, 2024
Osnat Netzer
Osnat Netzer /osˈnat ˈnɛtsɛʁ/ is a composer, performer and educator. Osnat creates her compositions collaboratively, tailoring her work to the performer’s sensibilities, physicality and improvisational inclinations. She takes inspiration from cognitive linguistics, and in dialogue with the embodied experience of physical forces, such as potential and kinetic energy, resulting in compositions that are rich in musical languages and connected to the fulsome pursuit for tension and relaxation.
Born in Haifa, Israel, Netzer studied composition and piano at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where her primary composition teacher was Menachem Zur. She came to the United States in 2003 for graduate studies in composition with Robert Cuckson at Mannes school of Music and continued her studies with Lee Hyla at New England Conservatory, where she earned her doctorate in 2011. In 2019, she joined the faculty of DePaul University, where she is now Associate Professor of Composition and Musicianship.
Netzer’s works have been commissioned and performed by Ensemble Dal Niente, ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), Patchwork, mezzo-soprano Lucy Dhegrae, bass David Salsbery Fry, saxophonists Kenneth Radnofsky, Doug O’Connor and Geoffrey Landman, Spektral Quartet, and Winsor Music, among many others, published by Edition Peters and earthsongs, and recorded on Bridge Records and New Focus Recordings.
May, 2024
March, 2024
Jeffrey
Mumford
Born in Washington, D.C. in 1955, composer Jeffrey Mumford has received numerous fellowships, grants, awards and commissions. Awards include the "Academy Award in Music" from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and an ASCAP Aaron Copland Scholarship. He was also the winner of the inaugural National Black Arts Festival/Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Composition Competition. Other grants have been awarded by the Ohio Arts Council, Meet the Composer, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music Inc., the ASCAP Foundation, and the University of California.
Mumford's most notable commissions include those from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the Library of Congress (co-commission), the BBC Philharmonic, the San Antonio, Chicago & National Symphonies, Washington Performing Arts, the Network for New Music among others.
May, 2024
Aleksandra Vrebalov
The 2024 Grawemeyer Music Prize recipient ALEKSANDRA VREBALOV defines her work as an opportunity for healing, service, connection and a celebration of humanness. Her over a hundred works, diverse in aesthetics, genre, and medium, are often inspired by urgent personal concerns and explore themes of identity, place, and belonging.
Living through the wars in former Yugoslavia, Vrebalov has been inspired by the friction between the public and the private side of heroism - like in Beyond Zero: 1914-1918, or her opera The Knock.
ALEKSANDRA VREBALOV’s works – ranging from concert music and opera to music for modern dance and film – have been performed by the Kronos Quartet, Cincinnati and Glimmerglass Opera, Serbian National Theater, English National Ballet, Rambert Dance, Sybarite5, Gottinger Symphonie, ETHEL, Dusan Tynek Dance Company, Ijsbreker, Moravian Philharmonic, Belgrade Philharmonic, and Providence Festival Ballet, among others. Her works have been recorded for Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, Innova, Centaur Records, Vienna Modern Masters, and Ikarus Films.
May, 2024
Larry Bitensky
Known for music described as “extraordinarily sensitive and beautiful” and “speaking directly to the heart,” composer and pianist Larry Bitensky has been hailed for works that are satisfying for performers and communicative to audiences. With their emotional intensity, directness, lyrical and sinuous melodies, and funky, polyrhythmic grooves, his works range from wistfully nostalgic, deeply sad, and evocative, to exuberant, playful, and ecstatic.
Educated at Skidmore College, the New England Conservatory of Music, Ithaca College, and Cornell University, Bitensky’s musical personality is rooted in a range of influences. He often seeks to merge the complex structures and expressive range of the classical masters and the innovations of the 20th-century greats with the melodic and rhythmic invention and improvisatory flow of musical traditions from India, Indonesia, the Islamic and Jewish worlds, jazz, and the Grateful Dead. His travels as part of the College’s study abroad program have also allowed him to explore the musical cultures of Morocco, Spain, Turkey, and Bali
June, 2024
David Fulmer
Winner of the 2019 Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, David Fulmer has garnered numerous international accolades for his bold compositional aesthetic combined with his thrilling performances. A Guggenheim Fellow, and a leader in his generation of composer-performers, the success of his Violin Concerto at Lincoln Center in 2010 earned international attention and resulted in immediate engagement to perform the work with major orchestras and at festivals in the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, and Australia. Fulmer made his European debut performing and recording his concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Matthias Pintscher in 2011. That same year, Fulmer made his debut at Tanglewood appearing with the work. A surge of recent and upcoming commissions include new works for the New York Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Salzburg Foundation, BMI Foundation, Concert Artists Guild, Washington Performing Arts, Kennedy Center, Fromm Music Foundation, Koussevitzky Foundation, and Tanglewood.
June, 2024
Richard Wilson
Richard Wilson, Professor of Music Emeritus, Vassar College, is the composer of three symphonies, six string quartets, and over one hundred other works. His opera, Aethelred the Unready, was given a staged production at New York’s Symphony Space. A recipient of the Roger Sessions Memorial Bogliasco Fellowship as well as an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Richard has previously received the Hinrichsen Award, the Stoeger Prize, the Cleveland Arts Prize, the Burge/Eastman Prize, a Frank Huntington Beebe Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Commissions have come from the Naumburg, Koussevitzky, and Fromm Foundations as well as the San Francisco Symphony, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and the Library of Congress. His orchestral works have been performed by the San Francisco Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the American Symphony, the Jerusalem Symphony, the Pro-Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Orquesta Sinfonica de Colombia, the Residentie Orkest of The Hague, and the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard College, where he studied with Randall Thompson and Robert Moevs, Mr. Wilson has been Composer-in-Residence with the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992. Post his retirement in 2017, after teaching just over fifty years at Vassar, he has remained active as pianist and has added some two dozen new works to his catalog.
June, 2024
Chris Arrell
The music of Chris Arrell celebrates the blurring of lines between human and machine, the natural and the digital, and the popular versus the avant-garde. Praised for its nuance and unconventional beauty (New Music Box, Boston Music Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution), his compositions have led to commissions from the Alte Schmiede (Vienna), Boston Musica Viva, Music at the Anthology (New York), Spivey Hall, Cornell University, and the Fromm Foundation of Harvard University.
Arrell’s invitations include a portrait concert at the Alte Schmiede, selection as the Featured Guest Composer for the Ball State Univ. Festival of New Music, selection as a Composer-in-Residence by the University of Nevada (Las Vegas), selection as the featured guest composer for the Aura New Music Ensemble (Univ. of Texas-Houston), and Walking in Altamira, an extensive collaboration with Collide-O-Scope Music (New York) supported by the Ditson Foundation of Columbia University. Additional recognition for his music includes the Bent Frequency Underscore Prize, the Ettelson Composer Award, the Ossia Music Prize, and honors from the League of Composers/ISCM, the Salvatore Martirano Competition, the MacDowell and ACA colonies, and the Fulbright Hays Foundation.
June, 2024
Sam Nichols
Sam Nichols is a composer who lives and works in Northern California. He has received commissions from a number of ensembles and organizations, including the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Earplay, and the Composers Conference at Wellesley College. He recently won the 2011 Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award for his string quartet, Refuge. He’s also received awards and fellowships from the League of Composers, the University of Illinois (3rd prize, 2010 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Prize), the Composers Conference, and Montalvo Center for the Arts, among others. He’s been involved in a number of electronic music projects, producing several multi-media installations in collaboration with sculptor Robin Hill, and also performing with percussionist Chris Froh.
June, 2024
Daniel Asia
He received a B.A. degree from Hampshire College and a M.M. from the Yale School of Music. His major teachers include Jacob Druckman, Stephen Albert, Gunther Schuller, and Isang Yun in composition, and Arthur Weisberg in conducting. Asia's works ranges from solo pieces to large-scale multi-movement works for orchestra, including five symphonies.
He served on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music as Assistant Professor of Contemporary Music and Wind Ensemble from 1981 to 1986. In 1986–88, a UK Fulbright Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship enabled him to work in London as a visiting lecturer at City University. Since 1988, he has been Professor of Composition and head of the composition department at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He conducts the New York-based contemporary chamber ensemble The Musical Elements, which he co-founded in 1977. Asia founded and directs the American Culture and Ideas Initiative.
As a blogger, Asia contributes articles on music and culture to The Huffington Post. In 2013, he gained notoriety after receiving international responses for an April 25 article entitled "Carter is Dead."