Hailing from Medan, composer Ken Steven (b.1993) is known for his fusion of Indonesian colours and elements with modern techniques and harmonies. He received his undergraduate degree in church music from The Asian Institute for Liturgy and Music, Philippines, and completed his Master of Music degree from California Baptist University, USA.

Since returning to Indonesia, his creative activity and work have made important contributions to the development of choral music in Indonesia. His music is picking up and starting to make an impact on the international choral music scene.

Currently, he served as the Director of Studies at SMK Methodist Charles Wesley Music Vocational School in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia. He is also the conductor of Medan Community Male Choir, founded in 2015, and has led the choir to achieve many international awards in choral festivals and competitions.

Dawn and Dusk (Fajar dan Senja)

The piece is inspired by this short poem that I wrote.

                  It was quite night – When a glimpse of light slowly gazed upon the sky

                  Awakening the sleeping souls – Joyfully singing – Dancing in the ray of light – And slowly

                  It will descend again from its mighty throne

This piece is an exploration of sounds with the human voice. I intended to capture the magical moments as expressed by the poem itself through the various colors of vocal quality and hand percussion produced by the ensemble.  Based on Indonesian exotic Melayu scale, the music pictures the folk life atmosphere in a vibrant sound experience.  The words have no meaning, rather they are just playful syllables to bring the poem to life.

-Ken Steven

The compositions of ANDREW MAXFIELD—hailed as “rhythmically vital … superbly judged … [and] tender” by Fanfare Magazine—have been performed throughout the U.S. and Europe. A recent winner of the King’s Singer’s New Music Prize (Jury Special Commendation), Andrew has been a Composer Fellow of the National Collegiate Choral Organization and Composer in Residence for Newburyport Choral Society, Southern Virginia University, and Sound of Ages.

Ensembles which have performed Andrew’s music recently include Utah Symphony, Utah Opera, The Choir of Royal Holloway, The Gesualdo Six, USC Thornton Chamber Singers, Emporia Symphony Orchestra, Carroll University Symphonic Band and Choir, Wingate University Singers, Salt Lake Symphony, Utah Philharmonic, The Piedmont Singers, University of Pennsylvania Chamber Choir, and Choral Arts Initiative.

Recent commissions include Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, Center for Latter-day Saint Arts in New York City, and a concert-length score for SALT Contemporary Dance, showcased at Lincoln Center. His album, Celebrating Wendell Berry in Music, was released by Tantara Records and his “well-crafted, approachable” works (George Case, The Boston Cecilia) are published by Walton, Santa Barbara, and Yalecrest.

Andrew learned his craft at BYU, the EAMA–Nadia Boulanger Institute in Paris, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and the University of Bristol (UK), via mentorship with Philip Lasser (Juilliard), John Pickard, Jonathan Bailey Holland, and Marti Epstein. He also holds an MBA in Arts Administration from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Andrew lives with his wife Liz Davis Maxfield—a professional cellist, expert in Irish traditional music, and rock climber—and their two handsome, high-octane boys (plus a hyper puppy) just downhill from Sundance in Provo, Utah.


The door

Andrew Maxfield

Poem by Miroslav Holub, Translated from Czech by Ian Milner

Go and open the door.

                  Maybe outside there’s

                  a tree, or a wood,

                  a garden,

                  or a magic city.

Go and open the door.

                  Maybe a dog’s rummaging.

                  Maybe you’ll see a face,

or an eye,

or the picture

                  of a picture.

Go and open the door:

                  If there’s a fog

                  it will clear.

Go and open the door.

                  Even if there’s only

                  the darkness ticking,

even if there’s only

                  the hollow wind,

                  even if

                                    nothing

                                                      is there,

go and open the door.

At least

there will be

a draft.

"Go," says poet Miroslav Holub, "and open the door." Go where? Open which door? To my ears, Holub's playful text is an invitation—maybe even a good-natured dare—for us to open ourselves to the unknown and unfamiliar. Sure, he teases us with some whimsical imagery—maybe there's a magic city or a rummaging dog on the other side of the door—but he leads us to a profound realization: even if "nothing" is there, it's still worth opening the door, if only to let in the breeze. Even though we live in a hyperconnected era that can bring us into contact with just about anyone or anything, it's easy tacitly to dismiss "unfamiliar" as bad. We do it all the time with "othered" people and ways of living, even "other" countries. To the extent that a certain fearful mania grips so many people these days, let's fight back, if for no other reason than our own sanity and joy, by opening the door! 

Also, there's a certain jauntiness in the text. It's fun, it's mysterious, it's as cheerful as it is urgent. I wanted to mirror those qualities in the shifting moods and colors of the music. There are Gospel- and Appalachia-inspired shouty bits and there quiet, pondering, foggy bits. All in all, the theme of "going" and "opening" guided my design decisions. Finally, given the playful spirit of (the English translation of) Holub's text, I gave myself permission to be playful with the sounds of the words themselves, like stretching and contorting the diphthong "eye" (ah-ee) and playing up the fact that the interior "f" of draught/draft (breeze) actually sounds like a draft if you let it!

-Andrew Maxfield

Shara Nova is a composer, vocalist, musician, and an artist of many gifts currently creating from Detroit, Michigan. Most recently she starred in the Tony Award Winning musical “Illinoise” on Broadway, directed by Justin Peck, co-written by Jackie Sibblies Drury with music by Sufjan Stevens.  Shara has released five albums under the moniker My Brightest Diamond and has composed works for The Crossing, Conspirare, iSing Silicon Valley, yMusic, Brooklyn Rider, Nadia Sirota, Cantus Domus, Nordic Voices, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Roomful of Teeth, Aarhus Symfoni, Oregon Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, American Composers Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra, among others.  She created a choral arrangement for the 2023 Oscars performance of Son Lux’s song “This Is A Life” from the movie “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Shara appeared on the 2017 BGNMF to perform the music of Sarah Kirkland Snider.

Her baroque chamber p’opera “You Us We All” premiered in the US in October 2015 at BAM Next Wave Festival. In 2019, she composed for over 600 musicians along with the Cincinnati Symphony, a piece entitled "Look Around," with director Mark DeChiazza. With co-composer and performer Helga Davis, Nova created a four screen film entitled “Ocean Body,” along with director Mark DeChiazza, which premiered at The Momentary in August 2021, shortly followed by the premiere of “Infinite Movement,” her baroque masque for a 100 musicians, set to text by artist Matthew Ritchie, which premiered at The University of North Texas in November 2021.

Many artists have sought out Nova’s unique vocal work, including David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Suzanne Bocanegra, The Decemberists, Steve Mackey, David Lang, So Percussion, Justin Vernon, Sufjan Stevens, and Tunde Olaniran, as well as Matthew Barney with Jonathan Bepler.  Her singing and compositions are featured on “The Blue Hour” via Nonesuch Records with the string orchestra A Far Cry and co-composers Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Sarah Kirkland Snider and Caroline Shaw.  

Nova is a 2023 Opera America Discovery Grant awardee, Kresge Arts fellow, a Carolina Performing Arts Creative Futures fellow, a Knights Grant recipient, a United States Artists fellow, and a New Music USA recipient.  Three of her projects were nominated for Grammy Awards in 2023.

Pulses from Titration

Shara Nova, music and text

Do you know when we hold hands our pulses find one another?
Did you know when we hold hands our pulses find each other?
Find each other…
When we find each other, our pulses meet 

TITRATION is an hour-long choral song cycle composed by Shara Nova which examines difficult emotions like fear, sorrow, disgust or rage through the lens of the nervous system and utilizes body-centered practices that develop one’s capacity to calm oneself when such emotions arise.  In these times of conflict and crisis, how can we feel more, rather than less?

With simple actions like humming, shaking, holding hands or intentional laughter, the song cycle explores ways that we can soothe our nervous systems, foster a sense of safety, and grow in our capacity to connect with each other.

This music is greatly influenced by the Somatic Abolitionist body of work and practices of Resmaa Menakem.  “Somatic Abolitionism is a living embodied Anti-Racism practice and culture building that requires endurance, agility, resource cultivation, stamina, discernment, self and communal discipline cultivation, embodied racial literacy and humility.  These can be built, day by day, through reps.  These communal life and invitational reps will temper and condition your body, your mind, and your soul to hold the charge of race.”   By exposing a person to distress, then taking a pause to calm the body, one learns to pay close attention to the body sensations experienced and when revisiting the traumatic event, a person gradually becomes better able to process the pain.  

Analogizing the healing techniques, the word “titration” is sung throughout the work, appearing in brief episodes which function as a “pause” between the more intensely emotional songs.  

Additional influence for this work comes from polyvagal theory author Deb Dana, as well as practices by Qi-gong teacher Master Chunyi Lin and Laughter Yoga.

“Pulses is the final sung movement of Titration.  It is followed by a movement of extended, intentional laughter.  The middle section references the trauma sung in the sixth movement, “Emotion Wheel.”

-Shara Nova

Jennifer Lucy Cook is a composer and lyricist based in Los Angeles. Jen specializes in music for the stage and screen, choral work, and pop songwriting. Recent choral commissions include Phoenix Chorale, Cantorum Chamber Choir, and Choral Arts Ensemble in Minnesota. She is the recipient of the Chorus Austin Composition Prize, the Cantus Emerging Composer Award, the HerVoice Female Composer Prize, and the Edwin Fissinger Composition Prize. She is an alumnus of the Johnny Mercer Foundation Writer’s Grove with Goodspeed Musicals, and her theater commissions include Full House Theatre Co., British Youth Musical Theatre, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Her musical recaps of the Bachelor recently went viral on TikTok. She earned a Master’s degree in Musical Theater Writing from Goldsmiths University in London and a Bachelor’s in Media Music from Brigham Young University.

Despite writing music in such a wide range of genres, Jen’s music is united by a keen love for storytelling with song. She prioritizes specific, highly emotional lyrics, melodic earworms, and infectious rhythmic grooves, and conceives every piece fra dramatic, narrative-driven perspective.

They Are Mother

Jennifer Lucy Cook, music and text

What shall I call this force I know
Who do I come to when I wonder
The space that holds me when I’m low
More than a parent, friend, or lover

They are Mover
They are Maker
They are Mother, mm
They are Mother, mm

They are the breath I see in cold
The ready muscle in the sprinter
They are the glitter and the gold
The steady heat lamp in the winter

They are Mover
They are Maker
They are Mother, mm
They are Mother, mm

They nod and know
They need nothing
They’re god and grow
They bleed blessings
They nod and know
They need nothing
They’re god and grow
They bleed blessings

They are solitude
They are multitude
They are gratitude
Gratitude

Laugh lines around the all-seeing eye
And I can lean into the sky
Laugh lines around the all-seeing eye
And I can lean into the sky

What shall I call this force I know
Who do I come to when I wonder

They are Mover
They are Maker
They are Mother, mm
They are Mother, mm
They are Mother, mm
They are Mother, mm

When I was working on the words for this piece, I consulted with my friend Reverend Alex Reegan, who is a trans man and interfaith minister, to create a text that embodies the energy of the feminine divine that is present in any gender. I chose to use they/them pronouns, which capture both the nonbinary and the nonsingular mystery and grandeur of the divine creating force, and by doing so, welcomes everyone into the work.

I wanted to explore the many aspects of the divine; pairing a grounded Mother Nature with a joyous playful being who is capable of laughter, a force that is present in the large and small moments, the noise and the silence, and most importantly, the divine creative spark in each of us. That all-inclusive, loving creative spirit shows up for me in the potential for movement (“the ready muscle in the sprinter”), the pleasures of modern life, (“the steady heat lamp in the winter”), and serves as a reminder not to take myself too seriously (“laugh lines around the all-seeing eye”). In identifying a creator this way, I channel these same qualities into my own life and my own identity, and it’s my hope that the audience for “They Are Mother” finds themselves within it too.

- Jennifer Lucy Cook

Recognized with The American Prizes in both Choral Composition (2014) and Choral Performance (2019, with NOTUS), Dominick DiOrio is an imaginative, enthusiastic, and energetic conductor and composer who has won widespread acclaim for his contributions to American music. He is professor of music and chair of the department in choral conducting at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he joined the faculty in 2012, and where he serves as director of NOTUS, Indiana University’s storied contemporary vocal ensemble.

DiOrio also serves as the fourteenth artistic director and conductor of the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia, one of the most historic choral organizations in the United States. As part of those duties, he regularly prepares the chorus to sing with The Philadelphia Orchestra, including a "near ideal" (The Philadelphia Inquirer) performance of Carmina burana in March 2024 with conductor Fabio Luisi. His artistic vision for the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia has been regularly supported with multiple grants from the William Penn Foundation, the Presser Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

DiOrio’s combined role as a composer-conductor has led to many unique opportunities and collaborations. In April 2024, he had the honor of writing original music for William Shatner, part of a spoken-word performance at IU’s Memorial Stadium moments before the total solar eclipse. DiOrio conducted the collaboration, which featured Mr. Shatner, NOTUS and twenty instrumentalists from the IU Jacobs School of Music. DiOrio’s guest conducting appearances regularly feature his original compositions, including with civic and professional ensembles such as the Choral Arts Society of Washington (SOLARIS), Houston Chamber Choir (I Am), Choral Arts Initiative (All Is), and the Young Naperville Singers (Young Today).

DiOrio’s original music has been hailed for its keenly intelligent, evocative style, which shows “a tour de force of inventive thinking and unique colour” (Gramophone). His over 60 published works have appeared at major venues around the world including the Sydney Opera House, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall—as well as internationally in Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Italy, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the U.K.

He composes for musicians of all ages and experiences and maintains an active writing schedule—completing over 70 commissions in the last decade. Some of his recent commissioning partners include the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and the San Francisco Symphony, the Children’s Chorus of Washington, the Cincinnati Vocal Arts Ensemble & Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, The Choral Arts Society of Washington, “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, and many academic institutions, including Macalester, Oberlin, Princeton, Smith, and the Universities of Michigan, Oregon, and Illinois.

DiOrio’s love for contemporary music is reflected in his conducted repertoire, including such path-breaking works from the 20th and 21st centuries as James MacMillan Seven Last Words, Steve Reich The Desert Music, Alfred Schnittke Requiem, Sarah Kirkland Snider Mass for the Endangered, Joel Thompson Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, and Krzysztof Penderecki St. Luke Passion, which he prepared for the composer in November 2017. Equally at home with music of earlier eras, he has also conducted choral-orchestral performances of Bach Magnificat, Haydn Mass in Time of War, Mozart "Great" C Minor Mass, Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs, and Leonard Bernstein Chichester Psalms, among others.

DiOrio is deeply committed to strengthening the profession by empowering others, and he recently completed a four-year term as president and president-elect of the National Collegiate Choral Organization (2018-22). For his leadership during the pandemic, he was honored with NCCO's inaugural Distinguished Service Award. DiOrio also previously served as chair of ACDA’s Composition Initiatives Standing Committee and as a member of the Board of Directors for Chorus America.

He earned the Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from the Yale School of Music, as well as an M.M.A. and an M.M. in Conducting from Yale and a B.M. in Composition summa cum laude from Ithaca College. He proudly credits his mentors Janet Galván, Simon Carrington, and Marguerite Brooks for serving as model leaders and for making him the person he is today.

A Chain is Broken

Dominick DiOrio

Poem by Khashayar Tonekaboni (pen name Terry Pinaud)

Gham daaram, Maadar                                            I’m sad, Mother
Kojayee, Pédar?                                                           Where are you, Father?
Gharibeh-am keh dar                                                I’m a stranger
Beyneh gharibeh-haast                                            Among strangers

Deerooz, baa ham boodeem                                 Yesterday, we were together
Deerooz, khandeh                                                       Yesterday, there was laughter
Chehreh-ye Maadar, keh feda kardeh                Mother’s countenance and her sacrifice
Khaterehi tanha beyneh sedaahaast                  Are but memories among the voices

Cheh meegooyand?                                                     What are they saying?
Cheh meeporsand?                                                     What are they asking?
Beh cheh meekhandand?                                         What makes them laugh?
Gom-shodeh injaa tanhaast                                    He who is lost is here alone

Do they understand?
A smile and
A nod and
A barrier is crossed

And I see unity
Of ideas, of thoughts that brings
Laughter at laughable things
Together, engendering trust

A new world is at hand
New faces, new expressions
Together in diverse collections
An ocean of love and lust

For freedom stands
Facing me, embracing me
Carrying, chasing me
From maybe to must

Certainty replaces
Trepidation and fear
Friends and lovers are here
Laughing, crying, their faces embossed

With joy, with pain
Still, a chain is broken
And moods are spoken
But with freedom comes a cost

Dear to bear the burden of
Standing on both feet and
Shouting to the world, taking a stand
I am no longer tossed

On the waves of will
Of others.  I’ll speak
For me and mine, no longer meek
And for the globe in whose crust

Is baked the love of all
Sometimes hidden
Some forbidden
But never is Mother thrust

In the dark of hate
For long when all the I’s
Proclaim Earth’s anthem never dies
Singing the stories of each of us.

A Chain is Broken is a musical setting of an original poem, Earth’s Anthem, by Iranian-American author and poet Khashayar Tonekaboni (pen name Terry Pinaud). The poem is a creative reimagining of the poet’s own experience of starting a new life in the United States, after he moved here from Iran to study at Indiana University. In the poem, Tonekaboni writes in both Persian and English, as he illustrates the difficulties associated with finding a new way when he was also gradually learning to understand a new language. As the poem progresses, its initial uncertainty turns to feelings of aspiration, optimism, and joy, even while still recognizing that “with freedom comes a cost.”

The music is also aspirational in its trajectory, moving from the opening murkiness in which a tenor soloist is heard over a foggy confusion of English words to an ever more powerful clarity infused with rhythmic propulsion and drive.

The work was written by DiOrio for NOTUS—the contemporary vocal ensemble at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music—to perform at the 12th World Symposium on Choral Music in Auckland. (Ultimately, the premiere was postponed due to the coronavirus.) The commissioning of the music and the text were both made possible with support from the Indiana University New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Extraordinary Opportunity program.

-Dominick DiOrio

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.

HINDSIGHT is a project from pianist Lara Downes, celebrating the Centennial of the passing of the 19th Amendment.

Featuring a new piano concerto composed for Downes by Paola Prestini, paired with the Piano Concerto in D Minor by pioneering composer Florence Price, HINDSIGHT looks back — with the 20-20 vision of hindsight — at women’s journeys through an American century.

This project is co-commissioned by the Ravinia Festival, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Oregon Bach Festival.

HINDSIGHT recognizes the frailty of progress, and the inevitable balance of struggle and triumph along the way. The 19th Amendment was a decisive step in an ongoing march towards equality, a struggle that secured voting rights for African American women nearly half a century later, and still pursues full economic and social equity for all women in our own time.

Downes performs Florence Price’s soaring and exuberant Piano Concerto in D Minor in tribute to the voices of women of color, whose fight for freedom and equity has been a constant of the American condition - the pioneers whose courage reaches ahead of their own time to lift up future generations in the ongoing struggle for equal rights.

Paola Prestini’s new concerto Hindsight: Let Me See the Sun is about the human impulse to remain hopeful, and what it means to struggle towards clarity and light. Prestini’s own identity informs the language, as an immigrant artist who balances the various impulses and needs within her own spirit. The work is structured as a dialogue between piano and orchestra, at times contentious and at times unified, coalescing at the end into a single whistling line. The simplicity of the last sung line “Let Me See the Sun” represents the optimism and fragility contained in the voices calling out every day in pursuit of multiple forms of equity. Folk music, virtuosity, harsh dissonance and vocal simplicity are infused in the work.

Avner Dorman (he/him/his) writes music of intricate craftsmanship and rigorous technique, expressed with a soulful and singular voice. A native of Israel now living in the United States, Dorman draws on a variety of cultural and historical influences in composing, resulting in music that affects an emotional impact while exploring new territories. His music utilizes an exciting and complex rhythmic vocabulary, as well as unique timbres and colors in orchestral, chamber, and solo settings; many of his compositions have become contemporary staples in the repertoire. Dorman's music is championed by conductors including Zubin Mehta, Christoph Eschenbach, Ricardo Chailly, and Andris Nelsons, and by soloists such as Pinchas Zukerman, Gil Shaham, Martin Grubinger, and Hilary Hahn. 

His music has been championed and commissioned by orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and opera houses such as Badsisches Staastoper Karlsruhe, Theater Dortmund, Theater Bonn, and Deutsche Oper Am Rhein.

Dorman's music has garnered numerous awards and prizes. Most recently, he won the 2018 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, and his debut opera, Wahnfried, was named a finalist in the category of World Premiere at the International Opera Awards. At the age of 25, Dorman became the youngest composer to win Israel's prestigious Prime Minister's Award for his Ellef Symphony. He has earned several international awards from ASCAP, ACUM, and the Asian Composers League. Dorman studied composition with John Corigliano and Josef Bardanashvili, and he holds a doctorate in composition from the Juilliard School.  Dorman currently serves as Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the Sunderman Conservatory of Music at Gettysburg College.

The Fifth Element
When Michaela Barchevitchova suggested that I write a piece exploring the idea of “The Fifth Element” I was intrigued by the notion of an aethereal, intangible element in addition to the accepted four physical elements. Reading about the history of this idea, I found commonalities from around the world, aether in ancient Greece, void in Japanese Buddhism, and references to the human soul and love in other traditions. In Vedantic Hinduism, akasha means the basis and essence of all things in the material world and according to the Samkhya school, akasha is one of the five grand physical elements having the specific property of sound. I particularly connected with the idea of finding a void, a quietness, that enables us to truly listen to the world and truly perceive the world through love and through our soul. Moreover, that sound is the access point to the other elements that seemed particularly real to me, being a composer.

Celebrated as an “...eloquent, poetic voice in contemporary music...” [American Record Guide], Melinda Wagner’s esteemed catalog of works embodies music of exceptional beauty, power, and intelligence. Wagner received widespread attention when her colorful Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. Since then, major works have included Concerto for Trombone, for Joseph Alessi and the New York Philharmonic, a piano concerto, Extremity of Sky, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony for Emanuel Ax, and Little Moonhead, composed for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as part of its popular “New Brandenburgs” project.

Noted for its “...prismatic colors and...lithe sense of mystery...” [Washington Post], Extremity of Sky has been performed by Emanuel Ax with the National Symphony (on tour), the Toronto and Kansas City Symphonies, and the Staatskapelle Berlin.

Championed early on by Daniel Barenboim, Wagner has received three commissions from the Chicago Symphony; the most recent of these, Proceed, Moon, was premiered under the baton of Susanna Mälkki in 2017. Other recent performances have come from the Philadelphia Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the United States Marine Band, BMOP, the American Brass Quintet, the Empyrean Ensemble, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

Among honors Wagner has received is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP. Wagner was given an honorary doctorate from Hamilton College, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Melinda Wagner was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017.

A passionate and inspiring teacher, Melinda Wagner has given master classes at many fine institutions across the United States, including Harvard, Yale, Eastman, Juilliard, and UC Davis. She has held faculty positions at Brandeis University and Smith College, and has served as a mentor at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Atlantic Music Festival, and Yellow Barn. Ms. Wagner currently serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music.

57/7 DASH (2003)
Commissioned by Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops and dedicated to the memory of Philip Hampton, Chairman of the New York Pops Board of Directors.

Dr. Emily Freeman Brown, Director of Orchestral Activities
Eden Treado, Allana Bogan, Bo Young Kang, Master’s Assistant Conductors
Allana Bogan, Orchestra Librarian

Violin I
Autumn Kuntz, co-concertmaster
Mary Jo Johnson, co-concertmaster
Gracie Hayes
Benjamin Christiaansen
Mahlia Proctor
Jessica Pytel
Leah Mellinger
Antonia Suarez Gomez
Jenna Mikuls

Violin II
Federico Orlando*
Alexandra Jones*
Ayanna Grant
Ryley Amos
Yeonsuk Jung
Diego Ortiz
Courtney Spencer
Caylee Farley

Viola
Jaylon Hayes-Keller*
Jake Weil*
Samuel Atkinson
Natalie Holstine
Madison Estep
Zavion Henderson Wimbley
Christopher Cecere
Lexam Andersen
Bryce Kline
Sierra Wood

Cello
Hayley Currin*
Joshua Lyphout*
Joey Miller
Calem Nagy
Jackson Cook
Caitlin Slusarski
James Reed
Dominic Gomez
Aubrey Hemming
Sam Gibb-Randall
Emily Ward
Jacob Burger
Georgia Ray

Bass
Eliana Kornowa*
Natalie Fry*
Daniel Yang
Ryan Spiess

Flute/Piccolo
Emily Fluty*
Halie O’Loughlin*
Kiersten Swihart
Ashey Busch

Oboe/English Horn
Leah Piccirillo*
Michael Berchert*

Clarinet/Bass Clarinet
Justin Brown*
Haley Harrison*
Sebastian Trevino

Bassoon/Contrabassoon
Owen Polkinghorn*
Annie Lombard*
Cruz Stock      

Horn
Nathan Stricker*
Bird Birmingham*
Elena Maria Farmer
Hannah Oprea
Ethan Hupp

Trumpet
Tyrone Williamson*
Brandon Ising*
Matthew Pileski
Ariana Coan

Trombone
Jeremy Ong*
Jackson Kuphal
Arryn Meeker, bs

Tuba
Sakda Pharchumcharna*
Connor Remington*

Percussion/Timpani
Christopher Harris*
Kyle Bergler
Emma Zemancik
Nicholas Bahr
SUBS: Jacob Koch, Evan McCord  

Harp
Holly Maxx
Julie Buzzelli+

Piano/Celeste
Parker Graham Olson

*section principal or co-principal
+Faculty

Dr. Richard Schnipke conductor
Heather Goldman, pianist
Aaron Roos, graduate assistant

Soprano
Kloe Archbold
Brittany Izor
Mackenzie Jones
Aria King
Ellie Lewis
Audrey Martin
Laney Mitchell
Madelyn Shepherd
Amanda Simpson
Kourtney Syrus
Cassidy VanScoy

Alto
Karli Christ
Autumn Crowell
Emily Harmon
Karla Kunk
Alexandra Meade
Isabella Olzak
Julia Posadny
Phoebe Saboley
Ashlyn Slocum
Annie Swanson
Rue Stammen

Tenor
Noah Beasley
Dominic Carlozzi
Malcolm De Souza
Alexander Ebright
Dylan Gheen
Alejo Goenaga
Jake Grafitti
Will Hermanowski
Ethan Martinez
Mike Perry

Bass
Sean Barry
Jaylen Donald
Zac Flasch
Logan Gutierrez
Dylan Haywood
Alec Lee
Zach Ortega
Aaron Roos
Sam Scheele
Matthew Steele
Ben Tittl