Projects

YouTube interview
“Look Through” video

Program notes:

“Look Through” was initially inspired by a quote from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden: “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” What initially started for me as a lively project meditating on this quote turned into an in-time reaction to the news in America and the rest of the world in the month of May 2020. This piece is dedicated to the many, many people whose eyes I want to look through in order to better understand, support, and learn.

Bio:

Alexis C. Lamb (b. 1993) is a composer, percussionist, and educator who is interested in fostering communities of mindful and genuine music-making, particularly through the medium of storytelling. She is the Education and Publications Director for Arcomusical, a non-profit organization that advocates for the artistic advancement of the Afro-Brazilian berimbau and related musical bows (www.arcomusical.com). Lamb was a recipient of the 2018 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award for Meia, her solo-through-sextet song cycle for berimbau. Lamb’s music for berimbau has been regarded as having “sparkling optimism throughout,” and as “a pleasure in its own right” (I Care If You Listen). Her compositions for berimbau can be found on Innova Recordings and National Sawdust Tracks.
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As a composer, Lamb has received multiple commissions and has collaborated with various individuals and ensembles, including Evan Chapman, Percussia, Zeitgeist, the University of Nebraska Percussion Ensemble, the Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra, and the Northern Illinois University World Steelband. Her music has been performed in North America, South America, Europe, and Africa.
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As a percussionist, Lamb is a core member of Projeto Arcomusical, the berimbau ensemble associated with Arcomusical. Her performance with the berimbau has been hailed as “riveting visually as well as sonically” (Centerline). Lamb is also currently working on a solo project that incorporates spoken word poetry with percussion and electronics. This project is called “The Concord of Discord” and will be premiering the first work in June 2020.
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As an educator, Lamb taught private composition lessons for undergraduate students in fall 2019 as a Teaching Fellow for the Department of Music at Yale University and was a teaching assistant for the graduate hearing and analysis courses in the Yale School of Music. Prior to returning to graduate school, she was the 6-12th grade band director for Meridian CUSD 223 in Stillman Valley, Illinois, for two years. Lamb received the “Recognition of Service” award at the Meridian 223 School Board Meeting in August 2017 and “Teacher of the Week” from Channel 13-WREX News in Rockford, IL in December 2017. She was also the interim percussion instructor for the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra in spring 2016 and created a week-long percussion camp at NIU for 4-12th grade students of varying abilities that has now grown into a faculty-led camp through the NIU Percussion and Steel Pan Studios.
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Lamb earned a Master of Music in Composition at the Yale School of Music. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with two Bachelor of Music degrees in Music Education and Percussion Performance from Northern Illinois University. Her major teachers include Hannah Lash, Martin Bresnick, Gregory Beyer, Michael Mixtacki, Robert Chappell, and David Maki. When not working on music, she can be found playing board games at an overly competitive level, teaching her two cats new tricks, or making walrus tusks out of food/utensils. Her superpower is driving long distances without getting tired.

YouTube interview
“The Vast Hour” video

Program notes:

Text:
The Vast Hour
Genevieve Taggard
From For Eager Lovers

All essences of sweetness from the white
Warm day go up in vapor, when the dark
Comes down. Ascends the tune of meadow-lark,
Ascends the noon-time smell of grass, when night
Takes sunlight from the world, and gives it ease.
Mysterious wings have brushed the air; and light
Float all the ghosts of sense and sound and sight;
The silent hive is echoing the bees.
So stir my thoughts at this slow, solemn time.
Now only is there certainty for me
When all the day’s distilled and understood.
Now light meets darkness: now my tendrils climb
In this vast hour, up the living tree,
Where gloom foregathers, and the stern winds brood.

Bio:

Carlos Bandera is a composer who is fascinated by musical architecture and by the music of the past. His recent music explores these fascinations, often by placing a musical quotation, be it a phrase, scale, or sonority, within dense microtonal textures.

Carlos’s music has been performed in the Faroe Islands, Scotland, Uzbekistan, China, and several spaces in the US, including Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall. He recently received the Underwood Commission from the American Composers Orchestra after his piece Lux in Tenebris was selected for the 2018 Underwood New Music Readings. Also in 2018, he attended CULTIVATE, where his piece Spirare was premiered, and attended Time of Music in Viitasaari, Finland, where he studied with Chaya Czernowin. Carlos has also attended the Fresh Inc Music Festival, where he studied composition with Dan Visconti and also attended the 2015 Wintergreen Summer Music Academy where he studied with Daron Hagen and Gilda Lyons and had his Florestan premiered by members of the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra.

In 2016, Carlos participated in the Peabody Opera Etudes program, leading to the premiere of his one-act chamber opera of church and state, based on the early activism of Madalyn Murray O’Hair. That year he also organized and participated in a workshop between Peabody composers and the Uzbekistan-based contemporary music ensemble, Omnibus Ensemble. Throughout his studies, he assembled many ensembles, ranging from string quartets to choirs, for both performances and recording sessions of his compositions. In 2015, he organized two concerts featuring performances of his Mass for Soloists, SSATB Choir, and String Orchestra with an ensemble of 50 musicians that he assembled, rehearsed, and conducted.

In 2015, Carlos earned his Bachelor of Music degree in Music Theory and Composition from the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University, where he studied with Elizabeth Brown, Dean Drummond, and Marcos Balter. Carlos received his Master of Music degree in Composition in 2017 from The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he participated in masterclasses with Christopher Rouse and Georg Friedrich Haas and studied privately with Kevin Puts.

YouTube Interview
“Light of a Clear Blue Morning” Video

Program notes:

I’ve chosen to arrange Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” for the Dogs of Desire–an optimism anthem if there ever was one! The symphony meets pep band in this celebratory bop. As Parton puts it, “I can see the light of a clear blue morning, and everything’s gonna be alright. It’s gonna be ok.”

Bio:

Annika Socolofsky is a US composer and avant folk vocalist based in Princeton, New Jersey. Her music erupts from the embodied power of the human voice and is communicated through mediums ranging from orchestral and operatic works to unaccompanied folk ballads. Projects for the 2019 – 20 season include several new works for her own voice with Latitude 49, as well as commissions for Ji-Hye Jung, Möbius Percussion, Bryan Hayslett, and one act of MAGDALENE, an opera Annika is a 2020 – 21 Gaudeamus Award Nominee and recipient of a Fromm Foundation Commission, The Cortona Prize, and a BMI Student Composer Award. She has been awarded fellowships to the Blackbird Creative Lab, Banff Centre for the Arts, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, CULTIVATE at Copland House, Brevard Music Center, and the European American Musical Alliance, and has served as Stone Composer Fellow to the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival. Her research focuses on the music of Dolly Parton to create a pedagogical approach to composition that is inclusive of many vocal timbres, inflections, and techniques, evading the age-old false dichotomy of straight tone vs. bel canto vocal style. She is incoming Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Colorado Boulder, and has taught at Carnegie Mellon University and Concordia University Ann Arbor. She holds her PhD in composition from Princeton University and studied at University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon University. Her primary musical mentors have been Evan Chambers, Reza Vali, Kristin Kuster, and Dan Trueman. Annika plays a Norwegian hardanger d’amore fiddle made by Salve Håkedal. www.aksocolofsky.com written by 13 women to be premiered at PROTOTYPE Festival in January 2020. Annika writes extensively for her own voice with chamber ensemble, including composing a growing repertoire of “feminist rager-lullabies” titled Don’t say a word, which serves to confront centuries of damaging lessons taught to young children by retelling old lullaby texts for a new, queer era. Annika has taken Don’t say a word on the road, performing with a number of ensembles including Eighth Blackbird, Albany Symphony Dogs of Desire, Knoxville Symphony, Latitude 49, Mizzou New Music Ensemble, Carnegie Mellon Contemporary Ensemble, Contemporaneous, and Girlnoise.

As a composer, Annika has collaborated with artists such as the Rochester Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, So Percussion, Möbius Percussion, Latitude 49, Music from Copland House, Emissary Quartet, Donald Sinta Quartet, Shepherdess, sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, and shakuhachi grandmaster Riley Lee, and will be writing new works for Quince Ensemble, ~Nois, and the New Works for Percussion Project. Her music has been presented at Carnegie Hall, Bang on a Can, The Italian Society of Contemporary Music, American Music Festival, Northwestern New Music Institute, Strange Beautiful Music Detroit, Listening to Ladies, and the Princeton Sound Kitchen.

YouTube Interview
“Pulp Anthem: Reflected Glory” Video

Program notes:

Pulp Anthem: Reflected Glory is a nurse’s anthem. I refer to it as a Pulp Anthem because I composed it quickly, and because it is meant to be broadly distributed, like the old pulp paperback books of the twentieth century. The poem “Reflected Glory” was written by Margaret Helen Florine, an American nurse, and published in a 1917 collection of her poetry entitled “Songs of a Nurse.” This piece is meant to remind us that the urgent work of nurses has long been in the shadows, but is as vital and important in our current pandemic as it was a century ago.

Bio:

Andre Myers (b.1973) is an artist and instructor of piano, composition and theory based in California’s Inland Empire. He serves on the faculty at the Academy of Universal Arts & Music in Yucaipa. Intense and lyrical, his music mixes narrative drama, poetry, and meditations on color to create work that aspires to moments of honesty, poignancy, and depth. A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Andre has three times been commissioned by the Michigan Philharmonic Orchestra, where he served as composer-in-residence for the Philharmonic’s CLASSical music outreach program. His second commission from the Philharmonic, a musical adaptation of Holling C. Holling’s picture book Paddle to the Sea, has been performed regularly since 2005 as a part of the orchestra’s “Koncert for Kids” series, and the composer has narrated the work for tens of thousands of school children.      

Other recent commissions include Partita for Solo Violin for the celebrated Los Angeles Philharmonic violinist and MacArthur Fellow Vijay Gupta, Cadenza & Aria for international viola soloist Brett Deubner, and Quilting: Poems of Countee Cullen for the acclaimed countertenor Darryl Taylor and Orchestra Santa Monica. His piece BOP! for two flutes and piano, was selected for performance by the MAN Trio as a part of the group’s collaboration with new music presenters Vox Novus, and received its premiere in November 2015 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  

Andre has composed for orchestra, choir, solo and chamber ensembles, as well as for theater and dance. His works have been featured at the Videmus@25 Academic Conference, performed by the symphony orchestras of Albany, Detroit, University of Michigan, Occidental/Cal-Tech, and Santa Monica, featured on Minnesota public radio, and presented in conferences across the United States and in Europe. Honors include the University of Michigan’s Rackham Merit Fellowship and King Spirit Award, the inaugural awarding of the University of Michigan’s Willis Patterson Medal, and an associate artist residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Andre received his B.Mus. in composition from the Eastman School of Music, and his M.Mus. and A.Mus.D. in composition from the University of Michigan. His principal teachers in composition were William Banfield, Warren Benson, Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, David Liptak, Robert Morris, Bright Sheng, William Bolcom, Evan Chambers and Erik Santos. He has served on the faculty at Occidental College, University of Redlands, and Renaissance Arts Academy in Los Angeles. Andre currently lives in Redlands, California with his wife Andrea, their dogs Charlotte & Walter, and their cat, Jean-Paul.

YouTube Interview
“DEAR ABBY” Video

Program notes:

Founded in 1956, Dear Abby is a newspaper column in which readers ask for advice on a variety of topics, including etiquette, relationships, sex, health, and career guidance. A historical survey of Dear Abby and other advice columns paints a distinct portrait of the evolution of societal views on identity. Most expressed misogynistic and heteronormative opinions about gender and sexuality.Columns frequently advised women to obey their husbands, give up their careers, tolerate domestic violence, and always smile. Reading these old columns is telling of society’s limited perception of gender roles and how the definition of gender has evolved. This piece, DEAR ABBY, explores how society often attempts to pigeonhole others into fitting into narrow gender roles that may or may not contradict with their own identity and the internal reactions that one might face as a result.

Bio:

Nina Shekhar (b. 1995) is a composer who explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter to create bold and intensely personal works. Her music has been performed in concert by leading artists including Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, ETHEL, Music from Copland House, soprano Tony Arnold, Third Angle New Music, The New York Virtuoso Singers, Lyris Quartet, Ray-Kallay Duo, New Music Detroit, and Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra and has been featured by Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walt Disney Concert Hall (LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight), National Gallery of Art, National Sawdust, National Flute Association, North American Saxophone Alliance, I Care if You Listen, WNYC/New Sounds and WFMT radio, ScoreFollower, TUTTI Festival, Blackbird Creative Lab, Copland House’s CULTIVATE, Bowdoin International Music Festival, New Music on the Point, New Music Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music, and Detroit REVIVAL Project in collaboration with dance troupe ArtLab J. She has also previously collaborated with the JACK Quartet, and her piece Quirkhead, about O.C.D. and mental illness, is scheduled to be featured in an upcoming PBS documentary chronicling the inaugural Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. Current projects include an orchestra commission for the Albany Symphony, a chamber orchestra commission for 45th Parallel Universe, a new work for world-renowned saxophonist Timothy McAllister, the first ever commission for LA’s HEAR NOW Festival for the Lyris Quartet, a new work for violinist Jennifer Koh for her Alone Together project, and a First Music chamber commission for the New York Youth Symphony to be premiered at Carnegie Hall and Interlochen Center for the Arts. Recent and upcoming performances include numerous performances by multi-Grammy winning super-group Eighth Blackbird on their 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 seasons and a featured performance at National Sawdust sponsored by the Hildegard Competition. Nina is a two-time recipient of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award (2015 and 2019) and the recipient of the 2018 ASCAP Foundation Leonard Bernstein Award, funded by the Bernstein family.

Aside from composing, Nina is a versatile performing artist. As a flutist, she studied with Amy Porter and previously with Holly Clemans. Nina has previously performed in masterclasses given by flutists Claire Chase, Tim Munro, composer/flutist Ian Clarke, and electronic flute duo Flutronix. She has also premiered fellow composers’ works at the Midwest Composers Symposium and the New Music on the Point Summer Festival. As a pianist, she has performed in the Poland International Piano Festival as a soloist with the Lublin Philharmonic and studied under Tomoko Mack and previously Brenda Krachenberg. Nina was selected to perform in the Detroit International Jazz Festival with her jazz band in 2012 and 2013 as lead alto saxophonist.

Nina recently completed composition graduate studies at the University of Southern California, studying with Ted Hearne, Andrew Norman, and Nina Young and serving as an aural skills and composition teaching assistant. She will begin her doctorate in composition at Princeton University beginning Fall 2020. Nina has also given guest lectures at Portland State University and Concordia University. She is currently serving as an inaugural Debut Fellow of the Young Musicians Foundation, mentored by violinist and social activist Vijay Gupta. Nina completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, earning dual degrees in music composition and chemical engineering and graduating summa cum laude. Her previous mentors include Evan Chambers, Bright Sheng, Kristin Kuster, Michael Daugherty, Erik Santos, Gabriela Lena Frank, Derek Bermel, and James Hartway.

YouTube Interview
“Getting Better” Video

Program notes:

“Getting Better” was written throughout the month of May 2020, and serves as something of a journal for that time. As a consequence of the world changing so rapidly throughout those weeks, my intentions changed completely each time I sat down to write. Although it felt impossible to settle on a singular idea to explore, what remained constant was an intention to write a piece that felt close, communal, vulnerable and intimate. The resulting work reflects my attempt to override my own feelings of distance and coldness that come with virtual performance, and I hope it can provide similar comfort to the listener.

Bio:

Jack Frerer (b. 1995) is an Australian-American composer of music for concert, film and dance, as well as a producer and filmmaker based in Manhattan, currently pursuing a B.M. in Composition at The Juilliard School where he studies with John Corigliano and Robert Beaser. His work has been performed by a variety of ensembles around Australia, Europe, Asia and the US, and has won awards including a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Brian Israel Prize from the Society for New Music, and competitions including the Vincent C. LaGuardia Jr. Competition, Red Note, the Lake George Music Festival Competition, the Alba Rosa Viëtor Competition, and both the Juilliard Orchestra and Gena Raps Chamber Music competitions.  He is a Tanglewood composition fellow for 2019, and is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Arapahoe Philharmonic.

As a filmmaker, Jack has created films for The Juilliard School and Quest Magazine, dancers Marcelo Gomes and Julie Kent, as well as music videos for bands and ensembles. He is a co-creator and producer of The Roof, a collaborative film and performance series he created with dancer Liana Kleinman which features New York–based choreographers and composers.

YouTube Interview
“Se Tirar Nem Pôr” Video

Program notes:

“Se Tirar Nem Pôr” is the journey of a song- in this case, a samba, which began as an idea with very basic ingredients ( melody, rhythm and harmony). But, though it started small, it ended up being massively big. Upon realizing it had a life of its own (the song),it left the composers’ mind and went on to become something a lot bigger, not content with being a tiny little thing no longer. It’s an homage to the Dogs and Albany Symphony, I’m so grateful for this long and fruitful collaboration we’ve had and was very touched when asked to be a part of this online project.

Letra: Mauro Aguiar, Clarice Assad

Eu fiz um samba porque tava a fim

Curtinho assim que nem pipi de querubim
Só pra mim
Nem quis mostrar no botequim.

Mas o meu samba não se conformou
Mal despertou, saiu de mim, me abandonou
Disse assim:
“É que eu nasci pra ser um show.”

E desde então não para em casa
Fica só batendo perna por aí
Atrás da fama em que se deitou.

Meu Deus, criei cobra com asa!
“Que que” eu faço com esse aqui
Que diz que é bamba e bandeia?

Queria um samba sem tirar nem por
A cara e a fuça do meu mais molambo amor
Deu ruim!
Ele me fez de trampolim.

De tudo um pouco o samba açambarcou
Quem é que vai guardar de cor um samba assim?
Olha só
Me encalacrou!

Isso que dá criatura
Tu ficar maquinando besteira
Cê queria uma miniatura
Toma agora uma baita carreira a pé…

Volta samba meu
Que por mim já deu!
Meu amor não é tal carnaval.

Fiz um samba assim só de zoeira!
Não era pra ser descomunal.
Era só mais um
Samba bem banal
Desses de quem nada espera.
Quero meu samba sem eira nem beira!
——————————————–
Mas o meu samba não quis voltar não
E ainda tá botando som pelo ladrão
Sem noção
Quer cutucar a imensidão.

Acho que um dia ele me dá razão
E volta a ser meu samba bom de pé no chão
Miudim, só pra mim
Era só mais um, era só mais…

Fiz um samba assim só de zoeira!
Não era pra ter fama nem capital.
Era só mais um
Samba bem comum
Indefectível, todo igual!

Fiz um samba que só faz crescer
Eu por mim, o fim botava aqui.
Sei que pode haver
Obra sem final
pra quem gosta de dar asa à cobra
tem pra caramba, tem samba de sobra.
————————————
Fiz um samba assim só de zoeira!
Não era pra ter fama nem capital.
Era só mais um
Samba bem banal
imperceptível grão de sal!

Fiz um samba que não volta atrás.
Eu por mim, o fim fincava aqui.
Sei que vão surgir
Obras imortais
Tanto faz se eu conseguir.
Mas se a caçamba tem corda demais
Bamba é quem corta essa asa do samba.

Translation by Clarice Assad

“Without Taking Away”

I made a samba just because I wanted

Short like a cherub’s pipi
Just for myself
I didn’t even want to show it at the bar.

But my samba didn’t conform
Barely woke up, left me, abandoned me
And said:
“It’s just that I was born to be a show.”

And since then it doesn’t stop at home
And it lives behind the fame in which he lay.

I wanted a samba without even taking
The face and face of my loveliest love

Come back samba of mine
My love is not such a carnival.
I made a samba just for fun!
It wasn’t supposed to be huge.
It was just another
Samba, very banal
Of those who expect nothing.

Bio:

A powerful communicator renowned for her musical scope and versatility, Brazilian American Clarice Assad is a significant artistic voice in the classical, world music, pop and jazz genres. A Grammy nominated composer, celebrated pianist and inventive vocalist, she is renowned for her evocative colors, rich textures, and diverse stylistic range. As an innovator, her award-winning Voxploration Series on music creation, songwriting and improvisation has been presented throughout the United States, Brazil, Europe and the Middle East. With her artistic talents sought after by artists and organizations worldwide, the multi-talented musician continues to attract new audiences both onstage and off. 

In the recording arena, Ms. Assad has released seven solo albums and appeared on or had her works performed on another 30. Her music is represented on Cedille Records, SONY Masterworks, Nonesuch, Adventure Music, Edge, Telarc, NSS Music, GHA, and CHANDOS Ms. Assad will have four recordings featuring her works released in 2019. 

A prolific Grammy nominated composer with over 70 works to her credit, Clarice Assad’s numerous commissions include works for Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orquestra Sinfônica de São Paulo, Chicago Sinfonietta, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Youth Orchestra, the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, Queen Reef Music Festival and the La Jolla Music Festival, to name a few. Her compositions have been recorded by some of the most prominent names in the classical music, including percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, cellist YoYo Ma, violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and oboist Liang Wang. Assad’s music has been performed by internationally acclaimed orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony, Queensland Symphony, and the Orquestra Sinfônica de São Paulo. Ms. Assad has served as a composer-in-residence for the Albany Symphony, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, New Century Chamber Orchestra, and the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. Her works are published in France (Editions Lemoine), Germany (Trekel), Criadores do Brasil (Brazil) and by Virtual Artists Collective Publishing, (VACP) a publishing company co-founded with poet and philosopher Steve Schroeder. Ms. Assad is currently writing the soundtrack to Devoti Tutti, a documentary by Bernadette Wegenstein, while composing the music for a ballet by award-winning choreographer Shannon Alvis. 

As a performer, Clarice has shared the stage with such artists as Bobby McFerrin, Anat Cohen, Nadia Sirota, Paquito D’Rivera, Tom Harrell, Marilyn Mazur and Mike Marshall, among other outstanding musicians. She has performed at internationally renowned venues and festivals including The Netherlands’ Concertgebow, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Belgium’s Le Palais des Beaux-Arts, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Le Casino de Paris, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Caramoor International Jazz Festival. 

A passionate educator, in 2015 Ms. Assad founded VOXploration, an award-winning, trailblazing program which presents a creative, fun, and accessible approach to music education through meaningful, interactive experiences. Carefully curated to work equally well with participants of any age who have little music education or those having musical backgrounds, VOXploration has received grants and awards from Brazilian foundations such as CAIXA CULTURAL and SESC, as well as American grants from New Music USA and the McKnight Foundation. Ms. Assad has given masterclasses, residencies and workshops throughout the United States, Europe and Middle East. 

Born in Rio de Janiero, Clarice Assad is one of the most widely performed Brazilian concert music composers of her generation. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, amongst them an Aaron Copland Award and several ASCAP awards in composition, Clarice Assad holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Roosevelt University in Chicago, and a Master of Music degree from The University of Michigan School of Music.

YouTube Interview
“Persist” Video

Program notes:
After writing the text for Persist (2020), I realized that it read like a combination of a bedtime story and a call to action. This reflects the way in which the poem and the opening of the piece came to me. I was awake at 3am, my mind racing, trying to sort through the many problems of the world during this time, punctuating each with “everything will be okay.” Listing both our fears and hopes can be cathartic, and to achieve these hopes—safety, health, equality, kindness, progress, and empathy—we must persist. We must support those who need a moment to rest and take care when the burden of change-making feels too great. My hope is that this piece gives strength and light to those who need it. Endless thanks to David Alan Miller and Dogs of Desire for commissioning and premiering Persist.

Text:
I am running
But I am not sure
If I am running to or away.
The way we are,
We are apart,
But we are not alone.
When you cry, also cry out
And our crying will meet
And become shouting,
And this shouting will shake the earth. It will shake small at first and build As we demand new landscapes Expansive enough
To house our dreams.
It begins as a whisper—
Or worse, a death (or many),
Or better, a poem, a chant— Something for the next ones to read To speak,
To shout,
Whether privately to themselves
When the moon is full
And their covers envelope them, Or loudly,
Relentlessly,
Proclaimed to thousands,
Those who seek new homes
For the dreams their mothers Dreamed.

Bio:

The music of composer Gala Flagello (b. 1994) “is both flesh and spirit, intensely psychological without sacrificing concrete musical enjoyment” (Lana Norris, I Care If You Listen). She is also the Festival Director and co-founder of the nonprofit contemporary music festival Connecticut Summerfest. Gala is a recipient of the Edward Diemente Prize for Excellence in Creative Activity (The Hartt School), the Artist Scholarship (Artists for World Peace), and the Dorothy Greenwald Graduate Fellowship (University of Michigan). She is the winner of the 2020 Sinta Quartet Composition Competition, 2020 Michigan Music Teachers Association Commissioned Composer Prize, and the 2017 Dulciana Vocal Ensemble (Dublin, Ireland) Call for New Works.

Gala is enthusiastic about collaborating with performers, educators, and artists of all kinds. She has received two EXCEL Enterprise Grants for her projects Educational New Music for Developing Voices (2017) and The Contemporary Solo Horn (2018). Her piece Self-Talk, which was premiered at National Sawdust in August 2018, will be featured on Vanguard Reed Quintet’s debut album, Red Leaf Collection (release: June 2020). Gala is also a three-time collaborator of DAMET Percussion, writing Precious Metals and Fragile Goods for Natural Beauty, a multimedia touring show that aims to demonstrate humans’ impact on our environment.

Gala holds a Bachelor of Music in Composition degree from The Hartt School, a Master of Music in Composition degree from the University of Michigan, and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Michigan. Her major composition teachers have included Michael Daugherty, Kristin Kuster, Evan Chambers, and Robert Carl, and she has studied horn with Susan Spaulding and David Wakefield. Gala’s works are self-published, with select works published by independent, eco-friendly publisher Just a Theory Press.

YouTube Interview
“Transmuting Ether/ Quarantine-Dreams” Video

Program notes:

Program notes can equally serve to elucidate as well as constrict the potential of music, yet the nature of this music remains relatively clear. The first few weeks of quarantine was both the conclusion of my time at Yale, as well as a new beginning of entering wild dreamscapes. Apparently, the overwhelmingly wild and vivid dreams seemed to be a widespread phenomenon as people began to experience new lives in isolation, harkening back to the sensory deprivation techniques of monastics in search of ecstasy and enlightenment. This work strives to extract many different musical forms from the same, distilled, monistic motif which unites it, in such a way that reflects the sort of delirium of wandering thoughts popping in and out of existence, similar in quantum creation annihilation pairs, when the mind drifts in the waking, hypnagogic stasis –often a byproduct of sleep deprivation.

Bio:

“Paul Mortilla seeks to write engaging music that challenges many of the norms of new music. This is achieved through juxtaposing many different styles as a sort of collage. Paul draws influence from many genres within and outside classical music, from church music to electronic dance music. Paul began composition at the Frost School of Music in Miami, and went on to do a Bachelors of Music at Indiana University. He is currently a graduate student at Yale. Paul received a BMI student composer award in 2016. In 2017, Paul attended Tanglewood Music Festival as a composition fellow. Paul has composed orchestral works, opera, chamber music and electronic music. Paul has also served as a librettist and visual artist for multimedia collaborations.” — American Academy of Arts and Letters

YouTube Interview
“From Ember” Video

Program notes:

From Embers is a meditation, beginning small, then growing and unfolding with compound meters, mimicking the uneven beats of a pumping heart. It expands with a burst of energy, then contracts and returns to its origins.

Bio:

Derrick Spiva Jr. is a composer and musician based in the Los Angeles area who often integrates music practices from different cultural traditions around the world into his work with classical music communities. The Los Angeles Times has described his music as “something to savor” and “enormous fun to listen to.” During his studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and the California Institute of the Arts, music across many cultures became an integral part of his musical vocabulary. Spiva studied classical music with Ian Krouse, Alex Shapiro, Paul Chihara, Randy Gloss, and David Rosenboom while also studying West African music and dance with Kobla Ladzekpo; Persian music theory with Pirayeh Pourafar and Houman Pourmehdi; Balkan music theory with Tzvetanka Varimezova; and tala (rhythmic cycles) in Hindustani classical music with Swapan Chaudhuri and Aashish Khan.

Spiva’s works have been premiered by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Sphinx Virtuoso, Dayton Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Los Angeles Electric 8, the Salastina Music Society, Lyris Quartet, Super Devoiche (Bulgarian Women’s Choir), and Lian Ensemble (Persian Ensemble). Highlights of the 2019-2020 Season include new works for Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Berkeley Symphony.

Spiva has given pre-concert talks and workshops about the use of non-Western music in his compositions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Skirball Cultural Center. He received the New Music USA Award in 2010 and 2011 and was awarded a composer residency with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) through New Music USA’s “Music Alive” program with LACO for the 2015-2016 season. He served as a panelist for the 2019 League of Orchestras Conference, and previously spoke at the 2016 League of Orchestras Conference on the topic of how classical music orchestras can forge stronger relationships with their diverse communities. Spiva serves as Artistic Director of the new music collective and arts organization Bridge to Everywhere.

Spiva is an American who has Ghanaian, Nigerian, British, Irish, and Native American ancestry. His ancestry and identity have led him to claim and develop an “American” aesthetic that incorporates many cultural influences into his work, reflecting the diverse communities he is part of. Spiva passionately believes in music as a doorway into understanding other cultures and different ways of living. Through learning the music of other cultures, the opportunity for dialogue rather than conflict between strangers is opened, and our society can become one with less conflict due to cultural misunderstanding. He is deeply invested in fostering creative and effective collaboration between artists of different disciplines and traditions.