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.

Program Note

Birdsong is a stand alone tableau exploring the world of Mem, the main character in my new opera with Brenda Shaugnessy, Sensorium Ex. In this aria, she talks of her dreams for her nonverbal son, Kit, who appears in the electronics. For fixed electronics and live manipulated voice. Version can be done with just fixed electronics.

Listen, Quiet consists of two parts. Listen uses pre-recorded private conversations between a friend and an artist. Through their recorded dialogue, it is slowly revealed that the cyclical nature of emotional pain and organic elements of nature mirror the cyclical happenings of everyday life. The voices, combined with the cellist as narrator and percussionist as the driving life force, journey through a frenzied soundscape to the calm quietude of their surroundings. Quiet is a mother’s hymn of childhood memories. The piece tells a story of magic and the memories that shape us.

Will Hermanowski (b. 2000) is a composer and conductor from Aurora, Ohio. His music captures vivid images and colors from his personal life and other art forms. Will has enjoyed collaborating with ensembles, performers, and composers at the Divergent Music Studio, the Atlantic Music Festival, the Emerging Composers Intensive, and the Saint Mary’s Composition Intensive.

Will was chosen for the Klingler Electroacoustic Residency through the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at Bowling Green State University; he composed Distance for Quince Ensemble. During his undergraduate studies at the College of Wooster, Will met composer Molly Leach. The two of them are currently Artists in Residence at Wild Basin Nature Preserve in Austin, Texas. Will and Molly have explored the nature preserve, capturing live sounds that will be processed to create a fixed media composition. His piece Dance Adjacent was presented on Fred Child’s national radio broadcast, Performance Today. The piece also went on to win first prize in the 2024 Ohio Federation of Music Clubs, was the winner of the Bowling Green Concerto Competition, and was a finalist in the 2024 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards Competition.

Will received a B.M. in Music Composition from the College of Wooster studying composition under Dr. Jack Gallagher and Dr. Daniel Knaggs and conducting under Dr. Lisa Wong. Will achieved his M.M. in Music Composition at Bowling Green State University under the leadership of Dr. Mikel Kuehn, Dr. Christopher Dietz, and accomplished his thesis with Dr. Marilyn Shrude. He is currently working toward an M.M. in Choral Conducting under Dr. Mark Munson and Dr. Richard Schnipke.

Program Note

Dance Adjacent is seen through the eyes of a person on the edge of a dance floor. For some people, dancing and socializing comes naturally. For others, their fear, anxiety, and stress can take over their entire mind and body. That first step into an unfamiliar environment can be overwhelming, but also exhilarating. This feeling can be translated to waiting in line for a rollercoaster. In these moments, butterflies will fill your stomach with excitement and nervousness. Dance Adjacent attempts to capture that feeling.

Adam Har-zvi is a composer and double bassist whose music focuses on rich counterpoint and the intersection between patient lyricism and rhythmic drive. His pieces have been performed by groups such as The Toledo Symphony, The Lansing Symphony, The 21st Century Consort, the Mivos Quartet, and The Wind Ensemble Society of New York City. His music has received awards from the National Federation of Music Clubs, The Ohio Federation of Music Clubs, the International Horn Society and the NJ Arts Collective. He holds degrees from Bowling Green State University, The Cleveland Institute of Music, and UMass Amherst. His compositional catalog includes works for orchestra, wind ensemble, jazz band, vocal, chamber, solo, and electroacoustic works. At Central Piedmont Community College (Charlotte, NC), Har-zviteaches the jazz ensemble, applied bass lessons, and theory/aural skills courses, among others. He additionally serves as Adjunct Professor of Bass at West Liberty University (virtually).

As a bassist, Har-zvi is a member of the chamber quintet, Newphonia, which commissions several pieces annually and gives numerous performances throughout the United States. As part of Newphonia's Newfound Works Initiative, Newphonia collaborates with high school and college composition departments to foster educational opportunities and the creation of new compositions. Newphonia has performed recitals and/or residencies at Western Illinois University, Louisiana State University, Interlochen School for the Arts, and Bowling Green State University. Har-zvi has served as a section member of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra, and performed regularly with the Adrian, Ashland, Mansfield, and Toledo Symphony Orchestras. He has additionally worked as a recording engineer, photographer, videographer, and soccer referee.

He has studied composition under Jeremy Allen, Christopher Dietz, Mikel Kuehn, Elainie Lillios, Salvatore Macchia, Marilyn Shrude and Kate Soper, and double bass under Salvatore Macchia, Bob Rohwer, and Derek Zadinsky.

Program Note

The idea that new music has to pretend to be innovative is a product of Cold War-era macho capitalist nonsense that has carried forward to the present day (e.g. “If our science, technology, and arts are more innovative, we will show those Commies that free market capitalism is superior!”). The concept has stuck around because the STEM and finance sectors have become so deeply entrenched in our arts and educational systems that many composers really believe that the measure of a work is its ability to march us forth into the future.
All that is to say, I have spent my entire compositional life assuming that any blatant major or minor arpeggio has to be disguised. In this piece, I rejected that notion. In Diptych, I used Classical-Romantic stock phrases as legitimate source material. It’s not intended as parody, but as creative reconfiguration. Obviously, this is not a new idea, as neoclassicism is nearly a century old, but newness in any sense has never been the point (and realistically, this isn’t any less “new” than graphic scores or extended technique-based music, which have similarly long histories behind them). I find something very comforting about Classical filler passages: they’re resonant, they’re familiar to performers, and they’re deeply ingrained in my ear since I’ve spent so much time playing and listening to that music. The title of this piece is a reference to both the two-movement structure and the use of neoclassical elements. I wrote it for my very good friends Shannon Lotti, Anthony Marchese, and Stephen Eckert, for whom I imagined each note from start to finish.