Christopher Dietz, director
Skylar Diehl, flute
Haley Harrison, clarinet
Ana Leach, trombone
Chris Harris and Jacob Kendall, percussion
Abigail Petersen and Sissi Fu, piano
Elijah Stewart, electric guiar
Jessica Pytel, violin
Thomas Johnston, bass
Anthony Marchese, Hayley Currin, Joshua Lyphout, Joey Miller, Jackson Cook, Dominic Gomez, and James Reed, cello

Dan Piccolo, director
Zion Bateman, Anthony Douglas, Matthew Graves, Jacob Kendall, Liam Lockhart, Kathryn Mahoney, Mason Marquette, Evan McCord, Alex Minniear, Frank Sanzo

“Young and Gifted, Meet the rebel Thai composer taking music to unheard heights” (CNN News Worlds Report, Karla Cripps)

Originally from Bangkok, Piyawat Louilarpprasert is a Thai composer, multimedia performer, and curator who works with the interweave of music composition, visual art, and sound installation. Piyawat’s music explores possibilities of creating the amalgamation of sonic and visual arts, including integrating multimedia and music, deconstructing instruments’ mechanism and physicality with sound production method, and involving Thai traditional music elements in new compositions.

With performances spanning over 30 countries across Asia, Europe, and United States, Piyawat has received commissions and awards, including the Fromm Foundation Commission, Harvard University (Boston), the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Commission (DE), British Council Grant Prize (UK), 100th year commission of Donaueschinger Musiktage (DE), KulturKontakt Residency by the Austrian Federal Chancellery (Austria), Best Music Award International Computer Music Conference (Shenzhen), Impuls Composer Commission (Graz), Artist in residence of Südwestrundfunk (SWR) Experimental Studio (Freiburg). Recently, Piyawat and his ensemble Tacet(i) are the recipient of the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Ensemble Prize in 2024-25. In this Spring, Piyawat will have Finnish premiere of his Ptera for orchestra and sound objects with Helsinki Philharmonic at the Musica nova Helsinki, see more: www.piyawatmusic.com

Piyawat is currently an Assistant Professor of Composition at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) and an Artistic Curator at IntAct Festival (Thailand).

"Swarm, Swamp, Swag" explores the complex landscape of human cognition through sound, where our behaviors become the central musical material. In my imagination, human thought and action are vast, often fragmented, and seemingly chaotic—ideas swarm, people get swamped or stuck, and at times, we swag or drift aimlessly. This piece reflects those characteristics, embracing the fussiness, fragmentation, and ambiguity that define our mental processes.

When composing for the band, I approached the music as a collection of data points—familiar musical fragments typically found in band music, yet here, they are intertwined in a swarmy, swampy manner. The inclusion of phones in the performance isn't just a nod to modern life; it challenges the traditional concert experience where phones are usually forbidden. By integrating these everyday devices, the piece blurs the lines between the ritual of concert-going and the chaotic, interactive nature of contemporary life. In addition, to just add one more layer of experiencing this piece, the sounds of phones attempt the culture of “recording”, where in this performance, you will hear the mess of sounds qualities from many phones, where it was actually recorded live from the band.

"Swarm, Swamp, Swag" creates a performative situation that mirrors our uncertain and ever-shifting perceptions. The result is an immersive experience where sound, action, and interaction converge, reflecting the swarming, swamping, and swagging nature of human cognition.

Many thanks and hugs to my friend, great conductor, and commissioner, Kenneth Thompson, who supported me whatever crazy ideas I have. Huge thanks to BGSU Wind Symphony in advance for the premiere and big hug and thanks to my friend, curator, Kurt Doles for curating the festival at the 45th Annual Bowling Green New Music Festival.

Christopher Dietz composes music inspired by a wide variety of sources, both real and conceptual. Poetry, sound as sculpture and color, how toddlers play, deep time and the cosmos, rhythm as geometry, religion and politics, animal behavior, and the music of others are a few of the subjects that have informed his musical imagination. A similarly diverse approach to the creation of each new piece has resulted in a collection of works distinct in their surface features yet bound together by a common vitality, nuanced palette, and a commitment to engaging with others.

In recent years, Christopher’s works have been premiered in Bangkok, Ghent (Belgium), London, Auvillar (France), Montreal, Ottawa, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington, Houston, Phoenix and Salt Lake City, among others. His music has been performed by numerous contemporary ensembles including Alarm Will Sound, Decoda, Ensemble Échappé, NODUS,  Arx Duo, The Orchestra of the League of Composers, Ogni Suono, Duo Scorpio, The McCormick Percussion Group, The Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, The East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, The Chicago Ensemble, Trio Kavak, Palomar, TACTUS Ensemble, Dark in the Song, The Color Field Ensemble, as well as traditional ensembles such as L’Orchestre de la Francophonie, The San Jose Chamber Orchestra, The Beau Soir Trio, The Orange County Symphony, The Toledo Symphony, the University of Michigan Symphonic Band and additional university ensembles across the United States. 

His work has been featured at new music festivals such the Civic Orchestra of Chicago's New Music Workshop, NUNC!, soundSCAPE (Italy), The Etchings Festival of Contemporary Music (France), The Queens New Music Festival, New Music on the Point, Florida State's Biennial Festival, Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, Tutti Festival of New Music and the MusicX Festival, among others.

Residencies at MacDowell, Copland House, Canada’s Banff Centre, The Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France), the VCCA, and the Blue Mountain Center have been important milestones in the development of Christopher's compositional voice. Recognition of his work has come from honors and awards including ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, The Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions and Composer Institute, The Riverside Symphony Composer Reading Project (NYC), The Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, Random Access Music, The Utah Arts Festival’s Orchestral Commission Prize as well as several academic awards, grants and scholarships. Christopher's music has been released on New Focus, AMP, Navona, American Modern, and Cambria Records. 

Christopher holds a Ph.D. in composition and theory from the University of Michigan where he studied with William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, Michael Daugherty, Betsy Jolas, and Andrew Mead. In addition, he holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music where he worked with Nils Vigeland and Giampaolo Bracali and the University of Wisconsin where his teachers included Stephen Dembski and Joel Naumann. He has been on the faculty at Hillsdale College and the Oberlin Conservatory. Christopher is an associate professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Irrational Exuberance
Irrational exuberance is a phrase coined in the 1990s to describe a feedback loop of price speculation. It implies that exuberance is a feeling best experienced rationally. That is probably correct but is it a lot less fun.

Joel Puckett is a composer leaving both audiences and the press buzzing. His music has been described as, “soaringly lyrical” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), “Puccini-esque” (Wall Street Journal), and “containing a density within a clarity, polyphony within the simple and – most importantly – beautiful and seemingly spiritual.” (Audiophile Audition). Parterre Box recently proclaimed, “Puckett should be a household name” and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns mused, “if the name Joel Puckett isn’t etched into your brain, it should be.” In 2011 NPR Music listed him as one of the top 100 composers under 40 in the world.

Hailed as “visionary” (Washington Post) and “an astonishingly original voice” (Philadelphia Inquirer), his music is performed by the leading artists of our day and is consistently recognized by organizations such as the American Composers Forum, BMI, Chorus America, National Public Radio, and the American Bandmasters Association.

Puckett’s music attracts diverse performers and listeners through its emotional energy and commitment. Melding tradition with innovation, his distinctive style grows from his power to create transcendent experiences using charismatic musical language.

The Fix, a grand opera commissioned by Minnesota Opera, premiered in the March 2019 to packed houses, enthusiastic audiences, and largely effusive praise. With a libretto by Academy Award and Tony Award winner, Eric Simonson, the work depicts the rise and fall of the 1919 Chicago White Sox. It is a tragedy ripe with power, romance and redemption, set against the backdrop of America’s favorite pastime. Puckett’s earlier commissions have been premiered and performed worldwide, to exuberant critical acclaim.

His double concerto for clarinet, flute and orchestra, Concerto Duo, was premiered by the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra in 2012, when Puckett was Composer-in- Residence with soloists Anthony McGill and Demarre McGill. The Chicago Tribune’s John von Rhein praised the piece, saying that it, “soar[ed] in intertwining dialogues, jazzy and lyrical, with shimmering waves of post-minimalism.”

His flute concerto, The Shadow of Sirius, premiered in 2010 and has received more than 200 performances and been recorded multiple times, including 2015’s Naxos Surround Sound disc, “Shadow of Sirius,” which received a 2016 Grammy Nomination. Currently the Chair of Music Theory, Ear Training, and Piano Skills at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore where he has received a 2022 Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award, the 2022 Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award, and the 2021 Peabody Conservatory Student Affairs Mental Health Ally Award, Puckett presents workshops nationwide and frequently serves as an adjudicator at competitions for rising composers. His music is represented worldwide by Bill Holab Music.

I wake in the dark and remember

W. S. Merwin’s poetry has been a constant in my adult life. His words bring me comfort in times of anxiety, smiles in times of happiness, and comfort in times of grief. 2020-2021 brought dicult times for all of us, and I once again found myself turning to Merwin’s words.

I rarely know exactly what his poetry means, but I love how they make me feel. It was no dierent for the poem that inspired my viola concerto, I wake in the dark and remember. As I was writing, I rolled over the imagery in my mind: “wake in the dark and remember,” “listening to the black hour,” “you are asleep beside me while around us the trees full of night lean,” etc. etc. These images are so vivid and clear yet they lack any strict narrative, so my imagination became free to run wild and see the sounds the words inspire.

The concerto is in two movements but played without a break.

I wake in the dark and remember was commissioned by an international consortium of Universities led by Damon Talley and the Louisiana State University. It is dedicated with great admiration and gratitude to the extraordinary violist Kimberly Sparr, who gave the premiere.

Below is the W.S. Merwin poem that inspired this concerto. Please take a moment to read these words and listen to the sounds they provoke in your own imagination.

W.S. Merwin Rain Travel

I wake in the dark and remember
it is the morning when I must start
by myself on the journey
I lie listening to the black hour
before dawn and you are
still asleep beside me while
around us the trees of night lean
hushed in their dream that bears
us up asleep and awake then I hear
drops falling one by one into the sightless leaves and I do not know when they began but
all at once there is no sound but rain
and the stream below us roaring
away into the rushing darkness

From !e Essential W.S. Merwin, courtesy Copper Canyon Press, copyright W.W. Merwin, 2019.

Composer Paola Prestini has cultivated a uniquely expansive and humanistic musical voice, through pieces that transcend genre and discipline, and projects whose global impact reverberates beyond the walls of the concert hall. Far more than just notes on a page, Prestini's works give voice to those whom society has silenced, and offer a platform for the causes that are most vital to us all. Prestini has been named one of the Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music by the Washington Post, one of the top 100 Composers in the World by National Public Radio, and one of the Top 30 Professionals of the Year by Musical America. As Co-Founder of National Sawdust, she has collaborated with luminaries like poet Robin Coste Lewis, visual artists Julie Mehretu and Nick Cave, and musical legends David Byrne, Philip Glass and Renée Fleming, and her works have been performed throughout the world with leading institutions like the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Dallas Opera, London's Barbican Center, Mexico's Bellas Artes, and many more.

Kurt Doles has served as the Director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music and the Bowling Green New Music Festival since 2011. He received his training as a composer and clarinetist at the University of Illinois and the University of Oregon, and is a proud BGSU alumni (MM, '99). His music frequently probes the darker, quieter areas of human experience, and freqently takes its inspiration from both natural and unnatural landscapes.

A Hymn: winter light was written for a recording project with the (now late) legendary new music pedal steel guitar player and instrument builder Chas Smith. Like several of my works, this was inspired by the frigid winter vistas of northwest Wyoming. After its premiere in 2003, the rather eccentric instrumentation I employed led me to believe it was a work that would languish on a shelf until the heat death of the universe. Many thanks to Chris Dietz and the New Music Ensemble for bringing this one back to life.

Irish composer Emma O’Halloran is interested in joy, wonder, hope, and connection, and her music is driven by a desire to capture the magic of what it means to be human. Freely intertwining acoustic and electronic music, Emma has written for folk musicians, chamber ensembles, turntables, laptop orchestra, symphony orchestra, opera, and theatre, and her work has been described as “intensely beautiful” (Washington Post) and “unencumbered, authentic, and joyful” (I Care If You Listen).

Known for her unique ability to fuse elements of pop, rock, and electronic music while exploring the colours and textures of acoustic instruments, her work has found a wide audience and has been featured at various music festivals such as Classical NEXT, PODIUM Esslingen, New Music Dublin, Tokyo’s Born Creative Festival, and Bang on a Can LOUD Weekend. Additionally, her music has been performed by Crash Ensemble, Friction Quartet, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, ensemble reflektor, PRISM Quartet, and the Irish National Symphony Orchestra, amongst others.

In recent years, Emma’s passion for storytelling has led her to explore multidisciplinary projects such as soundwalks and opera. She has written works for Irish National Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Beth Morrison Projects, and her recent operas, TRADE and Mary Motorhead, received rave reviews from their performances at LA Opera and New York’s PROTOTYPE Festival with the LA Times calling her “a kind of modern-day Monteverdi”.

Emma loves working with people of all ages to explore and create music, and she has served as a mentor for various composition programmes in Ireland and the United States. In 2021, in partnership with the Irish National Concert Hall, she founded the Creative Lab, an award-winning mentorship programme for young composers from traditionally underrepresented groups in music composition.

Emma holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University and is currently working as a freelance composer. Current and future projects include works for PRISM Quartet, a saxophone concerto, and a new opera with Naomi Louisa O’Connell.

Endless Deeps (2015) is commissioned and first performed by Wild Rumpus at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, May 2015