The Composers
-
Hailed as “exceptional...[with] a beautiful and powerful voice,” by The Harlem Globe, Carl Adore Alexander is a budding American countertenor known for his captivating performances which incorporate contemporary literature and gems of the past. While at Morehouse College, he was featured frequently as a soloist with the Morehouse College Glee Club and as a member of the Morehouse Quartet. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Music and studied with Dr. Mel Foster. He received his Master’s degree in Voice and Opera Performance from Northwestern University where he studied with W. Stephen Smith.
Alexander has had the pleasure of embodying masterworks such as Britten’s Canticle II: Abraham & Isaac, Pergolessi’s Stabet Mater, Durufle’s Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Bach’s Magnificat, and Vivaldi’s Gloria to name a few. He has championed creating out of the box recitals, such as his acclaimed work, Shelter, that challenged his audience on concepts of the Black psyche and post traumatic slave syndrome.
His community work as an artist continues to focus on telling new stories that give a platform to marginalized voices. Alexander is constantly seeking groundbreaking ways to collaborate with composers and artists to enhance the classical music narrative that showcase (the same) works written by (the same) white men from centuries ago. Instead, Alexander believes that through performance, we can hold a mirror to the world and allow it to see itself, in all its shades and experiences.
-
B.E. (Brittney Elizabeth) Boykin is a native of Alexandria, Virginia and comes from a musical family. At the age of 7, she began piano lessons and continued her studies through high school under the tutelage of Mrs. Alma Sanford. Mrs. Sanford guided her through various competitions, such as the NAACP’s ACT-SO competition where she garnered 1st place for 3 consecutive years in the local competition, as well as being awarded The Washington Post “Music and Dance Award” in the spring of 2007.
Boykin then pursued her classical piano studies at Spelman College under the leadership of Dr. Rachel Chung. After graduating Spelman College in 2011 with a B.A. in Music, Boykin continued her studies at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. During her time at Westminster, she was awarded the R and R Young Composition Prize just a few months shy of graduating with her M.M. in Sacred Music with a concentration in choral studies in May, 2013.
Boykin’s choral piece, “We Sing as One,” was commissioned to celebrate Spelman College’s 133rd Anniversary of its founding at the 2014 Founders Day Convocation. She has also been featured as the conductor/composer-in-residence for the 2017 Harry T. Burleigh Commemorative Spiritual Festival at Tennessee State University. Boykin has been commissioned and collaborated with several organizations, including a number of ACDA divisions, the Minnesota Opera and the Kennedy Center. She obtained her PhD from Georgia State University with an emphasis in Music Education and is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
-
Born to two professional opera singers, Skyler Butenshon found an early love for choral music, piano and theater. While attending California Lutheran University, he wrote for the University Choir and sang alongside Ryan Townsend Strand for three years. Skyler has collaborated with Ryan on his master’s recital which inspired this Letters to Jackie project, as well as the song cycle and album Mending Split Seconds. Skyler has toured with multiple west coast bands including Blind Pilot and The Hackles. He currently works as a news producer for KMUN, a community radio station based in Astoria, Oregon.
-
Hailed by the American Academy of Art & Letters for music that displays “inexhaustible imagination, wit, expressive range and originality,” composer Tom Cipullo’s works are performed regularly throughout the United States and with increasing frequency internationally. The winner of a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2013 Sylvia Goldstein Award from Copland House, and the 2013 Arts & Letters Award from the American Academy, Mr. Cipullo has received commissions from Music of Remembrance, SongFest, Joy in Singing, the Cecilia Chorus, the New York Festival of Song, the Mirror Visions Ensemble, Sequitur, Cantori New York, tenor Paul Sperry, mezzo-soprano Mary Ann Hart, the Five Boroughs Music Festival, pianist Jeanne Golan, soprano Martha Guth, soprano Hope Hudson, the Walt Whitman Project, baritone Jesse Blumberg, and many others. He has received multiple fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and awards from the Liguria Study Center (Bogliasco, Italy), the Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain), the Oberpfaelzer Kuenstlerhaus (Bavaria), and ASCAP. The New York Times has called his music “intriguing and unconventional,” and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has called him “an expert in writing for the voice.” Other honors include the Minneapolis Pops New Orchestral Repertoire Award (2009) for Sparkler, the National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Award (2008) for the song-cycle Of a Certain Age, and the Phyllis Wattis Prize for song composition from the San Francisco Song Festival for Drifts & Shadows (2006).
Mr. Cipullo is the composer of four operas. The most recent, Mayo, was the recipient of the Domenic J. Pellicciotti Prize from the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York at Potsdam in 2018. The opera, set against the background of the eugenics movement in early 20-th century America, is based on the true story of Mayo Buckner and details his life at the Iowa Home for Feeble-Minded Children. Josephine is a monodrama and tour-de-force based on the life of chanteuse /dancer Josephine Baker. Josephine was commissioned and premiered by UrbanArias in Washington D.C. in 2016. After Life, was commissioned by Music of Remembrance and premiered by that organization in Seattle and San Francisco in 2014.
-
I make music for voices, acoustic instruments, and by electroacoustic means. Deeply influenced by the natural world, my music draws on a broad range of subjects and experiences with the belief that music reveals, challenges, and shapes the listener’s understanding of the world. Upcoming projects include collaborating with the The Crossing in a performance and recording of my work, Watersheds, for 24 voices, tenor saxophone, and live electronics.
My music has been performed by Spektral Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble VONK, Bienen Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble, Northwestern Contemporary Music Ensemble, Jeff Siegfried, Jena Gardner, Square Peg Round Hole, Stare at the Sun, Constellation Men’s Ensemble, and F-Plus. I have presented my music at festivals and conferences in the US and in Europe and my work is featured on the SEAMUS electroacoustic miniatures recording series: Re-Caged.
I have been an artist-in-residence with High Concept Labs and the Chicago Park District. My principle teachers include Hans Thomalla, Chris Mercer, Jay Alan Yim, Aaron Travers, Don Freund, John Gibson, Jeffrey Hass, and Ilya Levinson. I studied at Northwestern University, Indiana University, and Columbia College Chicago. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with my family and teach composition and music theory at Appalachian State University.
-
Composer Aaron Helgeson uses transcription, adaptation, and collage to mix contemporary sounds with historical sources like wax cylinders, medieval psalms, and unfinished manuscripts.
Described by Cleveland Classical as "eerily beautiful" and the New York Times as a "virtuoso display of engaging drama”, Helgeson's music has received numerous awards and grants from institutions like the Aaron Copland Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, ASCAP, and American Composers Forum.
In 2016 he received an Ohio Arts Council Award for his Snow Requiem, an "anti-cantata" based on author David Laskin’s book The Children’s Blizzard about the Homestead-era snowstorm of the same name combining original transcriptions of Norwegian-American immigrant folk music with sonifications of weather data using orchestral tone clusters, wordless vocal chorales, and percussive noise.
His recent choral cycle The Book of Never for Grammy Award winning chorus The Crossing, collages ancient hymns from the Novgorod Codex (a medieval book of Russian psalm chant overwritten hundreds of times with heretical sermons by an excommunicated Pagan missionary) with contemporary texts by writers in various states of exile.
Other recent projects include Poems of Sheer Nothingness commissioned by soprano Susan Narucki using fragmented realizations of ancient Occitan troubadour poems, Calls of Close and Away for Imani Winds on 19th-century French hunting calls and 20th-century American military signals, and Echoes of Always for Ensemble Dal Niente assembled from scraps of Baroque opera overtures and bits of Helgeson's own previous music. Recordings of his music are available on Carrier Records, Oberlin Music, Innova Recordings, and New Focus.
Helgeson serves as Associate Professor of Composition and Music Theory at Montclair State University's Cali School of Music, with previous teaching positions at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, he also taught as Assistant Professor of Composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, with other visiting appointments at the Hartt School of Performing Arts, University of Chicago, New York University, and the University of California Washington Center. In addition, he has given lectures and masterclasses at institutions like Northwestern University, Mannes School of Music, Stanford University, and the Internationale Musikinstitut Darmstadt. He holds degrees in music and theater from the University of California San Diego (PhD, MA) and Oberlin College (BMus, BA).
He currently resides in New York.
-
Libby Larsen (b. 1950, Wilmington, Delaware) is one of America’s most performed living composers. She has composed over 500 works including orchestra, opera, vocal and chamber music, symphonic winds and band. Her work is widely recorded.
An advocate for the music and musicians of our time, in 1973 Larsen co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composer’s Forum. Grammy Award winner and former holder of the Papamarkou Chair at John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, Larsen has also held residencies with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony, and the Colorado Symphony. As Artistic Director of the John Duffy Institute for New Opera (2014-2020 ), she guides a faculty of practicing professional artists in nurturing and production of new opera by American Composers. Larsen’s 2017 biography, Libby Larsen: Composing an American Life, Denise Von Glahn, author, is available from the University Illinois Press.
-
Called “a voice for this historic moment” (The Washington Post), baritone Will Liverman continues to bring his compelling performances to audiences nationwide. He will star in the Metropolitan Opera’s reopening production of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones in fall 2021, in addition to reprising his roles in Akhnaten (Horemhab) and The Magic Flute (Papageno) during the Met’s 2021-2022 season.
Following a summer at Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Aspen Music Festival, additional highlights of Will’s 2021-2022 season include the reprise of Fire Shut Up in My Bones with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Spanish Inspirations with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory’s Recital Series, Florence Price's Song to the Dark Virgin with Chicago Sinfonietta, and Jonathan Dove’s Flight with Dallas Opera.
In February 2021, Cedille Records released Will’s Dreams of a New Day: Songs by Black Composers with pianist Paul Sanchez – a collection of works by Damien Sneed, Henry Burleigh, H. Leslie Adams, Robert Owens, Margaret Bonds, and Thomas Kerr, plus a world premiere recording by Shawn E. Okpebholo and Will’s own arrangement of Richard Fariña’s Birmingham Sunday. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart and The New Yorker praised its “clarity, sensitivity, and barely contained heartbreak” while NPR claimed “velvet-voiced baritone Will Liverman is out to make the classical music canon more inclusive”. His album Whither Must I Wander with pianist Jonathan King, out January 2020 on Odradek Records, was named one of the Chicago Tribune’s “best classical recordings of 2020” and BBC Music Magazine praised Will’s “firm, oaky baritone with a sharp interpretive attitude… admirable poise and clarity of intention.”
Will’s recent engagements include performing as the first ever Black Papageno in The Metropolitan Opera’s holiday production of The Magic Flute, in addition to its premiere of Philip Glass’ Akhnaten (Horemhab) and Nico Muhly’s Marnie (Malcolm Fleet). He also recently appeared as Pantalone in The Love of Three Oranges at Opera Philadelphia, as Silvio in Pagliacci at Opera Colorado, as Schaunard in La bohème with Santa Fe Opera, Dallas Opera and Opera Philadelphia; and as The Pilot in The Little Prince with Tulsa Opera. His new opera The Factotum, written together with DJ/recording artist K. Rico, was workshopped by the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Ryan Opera Center in winter 2020. The Factotum, inspired by Rossini's The Barber of Seville, takes place in a present-day Black barbershop in Chicago and combines operatic singing with hip-hop, barbershop, gospel, funk, neo soul, and R&B music.
Will Liverman has performed the leading role of Figaro in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia with Seattle Opera, Virginia Opera, Kentucky Opera, Madison Opera and Utah Opera. He originated the role of Dizzy Gillespie in Charlie Parker’s Yardbird with Opera Philadelphia, in addition to performing the role with English National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Madison Opera, and at the Apollo Theater. Other highlights include the role of Tommy McIntyre in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of Fellow Travelers for its Lyric Unlimited initiative; Papageno in The Magic Flute with Florentine Opera and Central City Opera; his role debut as Marcello in La bohème with Portland Opera; his debut with Seattle Opera as Raimbaud in Le Comte Ory; Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucretia and Beaumarchais in The Ghosts of Versailles with Wolf Trap Opera; Andrew Hanley in the world premiere of Kevin Puts’ The Manchurian Candidate with Minnesota Opera; Sam in The Pirates of Penzance with Atlanta Opera; the Foreman at the Mill in Jenůfa and the Protestant Minister in Menotti’s The Last Savage with Santa Fe Opera.
Expanding into the concert repertoire, Will performed the title role in a concert version of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and was a featured soloist in Brahms’ Requiem with the Las Vegas Philharmonic, in Handel’s Messiah with the Seattle Symphony, in Carmina Burana with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. He was also recently featured in the Sphinx Virtuosi concert at Carnegie Hall, in addition to appearing in Schubert’s Die Winterreise at The Barns at Wolf Trap Opera.
Will is the recipient of the 2020 Marian Anderson Vocal Award, as well as a recipient of a 2019 Richard Tucker Career Grant and Sphinx Medal of Excellence. Will Liverman has received a 2017 3Arts Award, a George London Award, and was recognized as a classical division Luminarts Fellow by the Luminarts Cultural Foundation. In 2015, he won the Stella Maris International Vocal Competition, received the Gerda Lissner Charitable Fund Award, and received a top prize from Opera Index.
Will Liverman concluded his tenure at the prestigious Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2015. He previously was a Young Artist at the Glimmerglass Festival. He holds his Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Wheaton College in Illinois.
-
Erik Pearson is a Minnesota native who has been active in musical theater, opera, concert music and educational theater for the past 20 years. His public career as a composer is somewhat shorter, although he wrote his first piano work at the age of 14. His piece Bethesda, MD: Nov 23, 1963 won first place at Chicago’s inaugural SongSLAM in 2019.
-
Avid vocal composer Matthew Recio recently finished his post as Vanguard emerging opera composer with Chicago Opera Theatre. During his residency he developed operas with librettists Royce Vavrek (2021) and Stephanie Fleischmann (2020). The concert presentation of his work with Royce, “The Puppy Episode” was premiered in March of 2021 through the Chicago Opera Theater and followed with co-production between Opera Columbus and Oberlin Conservatory for the staged premiere. This year he is thrilled to be collaborating with the LYNX project for their amplify series, creating a song cycle with living neurodiverse poets. He will also be featured on the DeCameron Opera Coalition’s holiday project series, representing the Chicago Fringe Opera for a video song project. Recio will be featured on tenor, Ryan Townsend Strand’s song cycle project, Letters to Jackie, a CD project featuring many prominent, living art song composers of our time. He is a resident artist with the West Edge Opera Aperture Program developing his new opera with Stephanie Fleischmann, L’autre Moi. Most recently, he collaborated with Chicago based choir Stare at the Sun on an immersive choral cantata, The Hollow, performed at the Linne Woods forest preserve that explores themes of isolation, depression, emergence and renewal with a libretti by Alejandra Villareal Martinez.This past Spring he was thrilled to present Touch the Water with the Chicago Fringe Opera Series “A City of Works” that featured text by Chicago based writer Anna Gatdula. This collaboration was written for Chicago based artists Keanon Kyles and David Sands. As a performer/composer his collaboration on How We Hush (poetry by Jenna Lanzaro) with tenor Michael Day earned him a winning prize with Fourth Coast Ensemble’s 2021 Chicago SongSlam. He looks forward to a new collaboration with Chicago based librettist Jerre Dye on a new song that will be produced on a new album, 40x40 by Grammy nominated soprano, Laura Strickling, featuring the work of 40 different leading composers of the art song genre. This Fall he will be collaborating on a unique project by Queer In(n) to create a vocal work inspired by the life of trans Chicago icon Mama Gloria. This will feature an adaptive libretto by Dr. Marquese Carter and featuring the talents of upcoming trans singer Jalissa Spell. In addition to his work with COT and West Edge Opera he was selected as the first commissioned composer for the Cincinnati Song Initiative 2018-2019 season. He is a published artist under the Dale Warland Series and the Craig Hella Johnson Series under G. Schirmer/Hal Leonard. As the 2018 Georgina Joshi vocal prize commission winner, Recio received a premiere of his work “In the Desert” for mezzo-soprano and sinfonietta with the Indiana University New Music Ensemble. Recio was recently named the 2017 American Prize winner in choral composition and was a featured composer with Beth Morrison Projects as an operatic composer at the National Sawdust theatre in Brooklyn, New York. The New Voices Opera Company commissioned him for his one-act opera, “In Memoriam” in 2017 (Libretto: Molly Korroch). Recio is a humble winner of the Cincinnati Camerata Competition, two-time winner of the NOTUS Composition Competition, finalist in the Young New Yorker’s Choral Competition, and a finalist in the Morton Gould Awards and BMI Awards. William Stowman's CD, A Timeless Place (Klavier Records Label) features Recio's song cycle Chronology of Storms, with poetry written by Jenna Lanzaro.
With equal passion for instrumental composition, Recio has been represented at the Midwest Composer Symposium, the UNK Music Festival and the Hammer and Nail Dance collaboration. His chamber works received recognition at the IMTA young artist composition competition and the Quartet Nouveau Competition. Recio is a proud alumnus of the IMANI Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, Valencia International Performing Arts Program, Norfolk Chamber Series and Donald Nally’s Grammy award winning choir, “The Crossing”.
A summa cum laude graduate and Charles F. Hockett Scholarship winner of Ithaca College (B.M. Composition), Recio received his doctorate in music composition at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music as a Jacobs fellowship recipient and associate instructor in aural skills. His principal teachers include Dana Wilson, Claude Baker, Aaron Travers, Don Freund, David Dzubay, Eric Ewazen, P.Q. Phan and Sven-David Sandström.
-
Jen Shyu ("Shyu" pronounced "Shoe" in English, Chinese name: 徐秋雁, Pinyin: Xúqiūyàn) is a groundbreaking, multilingual vocalist, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer, 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, 2019 United States Artists Fellow, 2016 Doris Duke Artist, and was voted 2017 Downbeat Critics Poll Rising Star Female Vocalist. Born in Peoria, Illinois, to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrant parents, Shyu is widely regarded for her virtuosic singing and riveting stage presence, carving out her own beyond-category space in the art world. She has performed with or sung the music of such musical innovators as Nicole Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Bobby Previte, Chris Potter, Michael Formanek and David Binney. Shyu has performed her own music on prestigious world stages such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rubin Museum of Art, Ojai Festival, Ringling International Arts Festival, Asia Society, Roulette, Blue Note, Bimhuis, Salihara Theater, National Gugak Center, National Theater of Korea and at festivals worldwide.
A Stanford University graduate in opera with classical violin and ballet training, Shyu had already won many piano competitions and performed the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto (3rd mvmt.) with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra by the age of 13. She speaks 10 languages and has studied traditional music and dance in Cuba, Taiwan, Brazil, China, South Korea, East Timor and Indonesia, conducting extensive research which culminated in her 2014 stage production Solo Rites: Seven Breaths, directed by renowned Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho. Shyu has won commissions and support from NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, MAP Fund, US-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship from Japan-US Friendship Commission and National Endowment for the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works, Exploring the Metropolis, New Music USA, Jazz Gallery, and Roulette, as well as fellowships from the Fulbright Scholar Program, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, Hermitage Artist Retreat, Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Korean Ministry of Sports, Culture, and Tourism.
Shyu has produced seven albums as a leader, including the first female-led and vocalist-led album Pi Recordings has released, Synastry (Pi 2011), with co-bandleader and bassist Mark Dresser. Her critically acclaimed Sounds and Cries of the World (Pi 2015) landed on many best-of-2015 lists, including those of The New York Times, The Nation, and NPR. Her latest album Song of Silver Geese (Pi 2017) is receiving rave reviews and was also included on The New York Times’ Best Albums of 2017.
Even with the acclaim she has received for her recordings, Shyu is just as renowned for her dynamic performances. Ben Ratliff wrote in The New York Times that her concerts are "the most arresting performances I’ve seen over the past five years. It’s not just the meticulous preparation of the work and the range of its reference, but its flexibility: She seems open, instinctual, almost fearless." Her duo performance with Tyshawn Sorey was among The New York Times’ Best Live Jazz Performances of 2017. Larry Blumenfeld wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “her voice, a wonder of technical control and unrestrained emotion, tells a story dotted with well-researched facts and wild poetic allusions. She claims both as her truths.”
Currently based in New York City, Shyu is on the Artistic Advisory Council of Roulette Intermedium and is a member of the We Have Voice Collective, which released its Code of Conduct for the Performing Arts on May 1, 2018. She premiered her latest solo work Nine Doors at National Sawdust June 29, 2017, kicking off a 50-state U.S. tour of “Songs of Our World Now / Songs Everyone Writes Now (SOWN/SEWN),” planting seeds of creativity and threading communities together through art and cultural exchange. Her next solo work, Zero Grasses, premieres October 30, 2019, at National Sawdust as part of John Zorn's Commissioning Series. Jen Shyu is a Steinway Artist.
Her current instruments in performance include piano, violin, Taiwanese moon lute (2 strings), Chinese er hu (2 strings), Japanese biwa (4 strings), Korean gayageum (12 strings), Korean soribuk (drum), and Korean gong called "ggwaenggwari."
-
Inspired by captivating narrative, speculative fiction and making better humans through art, the music of Timothy C. Takach has risen fast in the concert world. Applauded for his melodic lines and rich, intriguing harmonies, Takach has received commissions and premieres from GRAMMY Award-winning ensembles Roomful of Teeth and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the St. Olaf Band, Cantus, U.S. Army Field Band and Soldiers’ Chorus, Lorelei Ensemble, VocalEssence, the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, The Rose Ensemble, and numerous other organizations. His compositions have been performed on A Prairie Home Companion, The Boston Pops holiday tour, nationwide on PBS, many All-State and festival programs and at venues such as the Library of Congress, Kennedy Center and Royal Opera House Muscat.
He is a co-creator of the theatrical production of All is Calm: the Christmas Truce of 1914, by Peter Rothstein. The critically adored show has had over 120 performances since its premiere in 2006. He was also selected for the 2014 Nautilus Music-Theater Composer-Librettist Studio. His choral ballet Unfashioned Creature is an adaptation of Frankenstein and was premiered in 2023 by James Sewell Ballet. In 2018 his oratorio We, the Unknown premiered at the Folly Theatre in Kansas City featuring the Heartland Men’s Chorus, and in 2019 “Su Rahva Koda (The House of Your Kindred)” was premiered by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. 2019 also saw the premiere of Helios, Takach’s new 65’ work for a cappella choir inspired by the solar system. In 2015 Takach placed third for The American Prize for Composition for Wind Ensemble for his piece “Frost Giant.” He was Composer-in-Residence for the Texas Boys Choir from 2019-2021, The Singers–Minnesota Choral Artists from 2018-2023 and is currently a Composer-in-Residence alongside Jocelyn Hagen for True Concord: Voices and Orchestra since 2022.
Takach has frequent work as a composer-in-residence, presenter, conductor, clinician and lecturer for conventions, schools and organizations across the country. He is a full-time composer and lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two sons.
-
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).
A composer featured on a Grammy winning CD by Chanticleer and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Thomas’ impressive body of works “embodies unbridled passion and fierce poetry” (American Academy of Arts and Letters). The New Yorker magazine called her "a true virtuoso composer." Championed by such luminaries as Barenboim, Rostropovich, Boulez, Eschenbach, Salonen, Maazel, Ozawa, and Knussen, she rose early to the top of her profession. The American Academy of Arts and Letters described Thomas as “one of the most recognizable and widely loved figures in American Music."
She is a University Professor of Composition in Music and the College at The University of Chicago. Thomas was the longest-serving Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for conductors Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez (1997-2006). This residency culminated in the premiere of Astral Canticle, one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music. During her residency, Thomas not only premiered nine commissioned orchestral works, but was also central in establishing the thriving MusicNOW series, through which she commissioned and programmed the work of many living composers. For the 2017-2018 concert season, Thomas was the Composer-in-Residence with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra, while Francesco Lecce-Chong served as Music Director and Scott Freck as Executive Director. Thomas was MUSICALIVE Composer-in-Residence with the New Haven Symphony, a national residency program of The League of American Orchestras and Meet the Composer.
Thomas won the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, among many other coveted awards. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Thomas was named the 2016 Chicagoan of the Year.
-
LJ White’s music serves ideals of direct, focused and socially relevant expression, assimilating an unrestricted array of influences through strange and evocative sonorities and rhythms, concise gestures, and apposite forms. He has worked with many of the leading performers in contemporary classical music, including Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble SIGNAL, Ensemble Dal Niente, the JACK Quartet, the Quince Ensemble, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Third Angle Ensemble, Third Coast Percussion, the Spektral Quartet, and members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Recent and forthcoming projects include collaborations with Steven Schick, Sleeping Giant, The Crossing, Chamber Project St. Louis, Mvstermind, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the San Francisco Symphony, Post:Ballet, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s “Live at the Pulitzer” series, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s “Music NOW” series.
White has won the Craig and Janet Swan Prize, the Margaret Blackburn Composition Competition, an Emil and Ruth Beyer Award from the National Federation of Music Clubs, the Dolce Suono Ensemble Young Composer Competition, the North American Saxophone Alliance Composition Competition, and the American Prize, as well as grants from the American Composers Forum and Chamber Music America. He has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Banff Arts Centre, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and his work has been featured at venues and festivals including the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, CULTIVATE at Copland House, the Ecstatic Music Festival, the Resonant Bodies Festival, REDCAT, Omaha Under the Radar, the Breckenridge Music Festival, and the Composers Conference at Wellesley College.
White earned a doctorate in composition from Northwestern University in 2017 and taught from 2017-2020 at Washington University in St. Louis. He is currently the Consortium for Faculty Diversity Visiting Assistant Professor in Music at New College of Florida.