Featured Composers

Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984) is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. He holds degrees from the Yale School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. Balancing lushness and austerity, immersive textures and telling details, dramatic impact, and interiority, Cerrone’s multi-GRAMMY-nominated music is utterly compelling and uniquely his own.

    Cerrone’s opera, Invisible Cities, a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist, was praised by the Los Angeles Times as “A delicate and beautiful opera…[which] could be, and should be, done anywhere.” In July 2019, New Amsterdam Records released his GRAMMY-nominated sophomore effort, The Pieces that Fall to Earth, a collaboration with the LA-based chamber orchestra, Wild Up, to widespread acclaim. His most recent release, The Arching Path (In a Circle Records), features performances by Timo Andres, Ian Rosenbaum, Lindsay Kesselman, and Mingzhe Wang and was nominated for a 2022 GRAMMY. Cerrone is the winner of the 2015–2016 Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition and will be a fellow at the Laurenz Haus Foundation in Basel, Switzerland in 2022–2023.

Chen Yi
    As a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries, Dr. Chen Yi is a recipient of the Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. She has been Lorena Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of Music and Dance in the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1998. She was elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 2019.

    Born in China, Ms. Chen received bachelor and master degrees from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University in the City of New York. Her composition teachers included Profs. Wu Zu-qiang, Chou Wen-chung, and Mario Davidovsky. She has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Women’s Philharmonic, Chanticleer, and Aptos Creative Arts Center (1993–96) supported by Meet The Composer, and taught on the composition faculty at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University (1996–98). She has also been Distinguished Visiting Professor in China since 2006.

Malaysian composer Hong-Da Chin explores boundaries of different natures and enjoys investigating the tension-release relationship in his music. His musical voice draws inspiration from poetry, novella, and visual arts. Chin was a winner of the Bent Frequency 2022 Call for Scores and a finalist of the ASU Gammage Beyond and ASU Symphony Orchestra Commission Competition in 2018.

    Chin’s music has been performed in the United States, Germany, France, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Austria, Poland, Israel, Mexico, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines and Singapore. The ensembles and performers that have performed his music include the No Exit New Music Ensemble, Ogni Suono Saxophone Duo, Bent Frequency, Patchwork, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Altered Sound Duo among others. His music has been featured at the Spoleto Festival USA, World Saxophone Congress, Asian Composers League Festival and Conference, Society of Composers National Conference, WIU New Music Festival, University of Nebraska at Kearney New Music Festival, Bowling Green New Music Festival, NEOSonic Festival, Threshold Festival, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, Rasquache Artist Residency, Avaloch Farm Institute among others.

    In addition to his work as a composer Chin is an accomplished Chinese flutist specializing in contemporary music. He has performed at venues such as the Carnegie Hall (NYC), Alice Tully Hall (NYC), John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington D.C.), Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), Asia Society (NYC), Phillips Collection (Washington D.C.), Huntington Library (LA), Smithsonian Institution (Washington D.C.), Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park (Chicago), Art Institute of Chicago, and Silesian Theatre (Katowice, Poland). Chin earned a Doctor of Musical Arts from BGSU in December 2017 studying with Marilyn Shrude and Mikel Kuehn. Beyond his musical activities, Chin is an avid badminton player.

Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces. Esmail’s work has been commissioned by ensembles including the Los Angeles Master Chorale,  Kronos Quartet, Imani Winds, Richmond Symphony, Town Music Seattle,  Albany Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta,  River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Girls Chorus, The Elora Festival, Juilliard415, and Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Upcoming seasons include new work for Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Amherst College Choir and Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, and Conspirare.

    Esmail is the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s 2020-2023 Swan Family Artist in Residence, and Seattle Symphony’s 2020-21 Composer-in-Residence.  Previously, she was named a 2019 United States Artist Fellow in Music, and the 2019 Grand Prize Winner of the S & R Foundation’s Washington Award.  Esmail was also a 2017-18 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow. She was the 2012 Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (and subsequent publication of a work by C.F. Peters).

    Esmail holds degrees in composition from The Juilliard School (BM’05) and the Yale School of Music (MM’11, MMA’14, DMA’18). Her primary teachers have included Susan Botti, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Theofanidis and Martin Bresnick, Christopher Rouse and Samuel Adler. She received a Fulbright-Nehru grant to study Hindustani music in India. Her Hindustani music teachers include Srimati Lakshmi Shankar and Gaurav Mazundar, and she currently studies and collaborates with Saili Oak. Her doctoral thesis, entitled Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians explores the methods and challenges of the collaborative process between Hindustani musicians and Western composers.

    Esmail was Composer-in-Residence for Street Symphony (2016-18) and is currently an Artistic Director of Shastra, a non-profit organization that promotes cross-cultural music connecting music traditions of India and the West. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Frazier  (b. 1992) is a Black and Latino composer specializing in acoustic, electronic, and electroacoustic music who is invested in exploring a kind of music that has a connection to a broader history of Black creative artistry. Heavily influenced and inspired by his love of jazz and hip-hop music, Frazier’s compositional style incorporates a dense, expansive tonal language juxtaposed with freer approaches to melody and structural organization often born in the expression of musical improvisation in various forms.

    Beyond composition, Frazier’s interests in music and sound include the unique and personal expression of one’s musical voice, engagement with topics and aesthetics outside one’s musical familiarity or awareness, and the capacity for a music that can be approached by listeners of all backgrounds. Additionally, Frazier has a strong passion for forward-thinking music-making and creativity that acknowledges and embraces one’s cultural identity, especially those of historically underrepresented groups.

    Frazier’s music has been widely performed and presented by groups such as Strings & Hammers, OSSIA New Music, Musica Nova, Trio Alexander, Musique 21, and Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings, and has been featured in venues all around the world. He has also participated as judged for composition competitions such as the America Viola Society’s Maurice Gardner Composition Competition. Frazier earned a master’s degree and PhD in music composition from the Eastman School of Music, where he was also the recipient of numerous awards in composition, including the Howard Hanson Ensemble Prize and the Wayne Brewster Barlow Prize.

Frazier is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition at the Oberlin Conservatory in Oberlin, Ohio.

Jocelyn Hagen composes music that has been described as “simply magical” (Fanfare Magazine) and “dramatic and deeply moving” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul). She is a pioneer in the field of composition, pushing the expectations of musicians and audiences with large-scale multimedia works, electro-acoustic music, dance, opera, and publishing. Her first forays into composition were via songwriting, still very evident in her work. The majority of her compositions are for the voice: solo, chamber and choral. Her melodic music is rhythmically driven and texturally complex, rich in color and deeply heartfelt.

    In 2019, choirs and orchestras across the country are premiering her multimedia symphony The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci that includes video projections created by a team of visual artists, highlighting da Vinci’s spectacular drawings, inventions, and texts. Hagen describes her process of composing for choir, orchestra and film simultaneously in a TedX Talk given at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, now available on YouTube. Her dance opera collaboration with choreographer Penelope Freeh, Test Pilot, received the 2017 American Prize in the musical theater/opera division as well as a Sage Award for “Outstanding Design.” The panel declared the work “a tour de force of originality.”

            In 2013 Hagen released an EP entitled MASHUP, in which she performs Debussy’s “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum” while singing Ed Sheeran’s “The A Team.” She is also one half of the band Nation, an a cappella duo with composer/performer Timothy C. Takach, and together they perform and serve as clinicians for choirs from all over the world.

            Hagen’s commissions include Conspirare, the Minnesota Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, the American Choral Directors Associations of Minnesota, Georgia, Connecticut and Texas, the North Dakota Music Teachers Association, Cantus, the Boston Brass, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the St. Olaf Band, among many others. Her work is independently published through JH Music, as well as through Graphite Publishing, G. Schirmer, Fred Bock Music Publishing, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and Boosey and Hawkes.

Adolphus Hailstork received his doctorate in composition from Michigan State University, where he was a student of H. Owen Reed.  He had previously studied at the Manhattan School of Music, under Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, at the American Institute at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger, and at Howard University with Mark Fax.

Dr. Hailstork has written numerous works for chorus, solo voice, piano, organ, various chamber ensembles, band, orchestra, and opera.

                        Significant performances by major orchestras (Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York) have been led by leading conductors such as James de Priest, Paul Freeman, Daniel Barenboim, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maezel, Jo Ann Falletta and David Lockington. This March, Thomas Wilkins conducted Hailstork’s AN AMERICAN PORT OF CALL with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

    Hailstork’s newest works include THE WORLD CALLED (based on Rita Dove’s poem TESTIMONIAL), a work for soprano, chorus and orchestra commissioned by the Oratorio Society of Virginia (premiered in May 2018) and STILL HOLDING ON (February 2019) an orchestra work commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is currently working on his Fourth Symphony, and A KNEE ON A NECK (tribute to George Floyd) for chorus and orchestra.

Dr. Hailstork resides in Virginia Beach Virginia, and is Professor of Music and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University in Norfolk. 

Pulitzer Prize and three-time Grammy-winner Jennifer Higdon (b. Brooklyn, NY, December 31, 1962) taught herself to play flute at the age of 15 and began formal musical studies at 18, with an even later start in composition at the age of 21. Despite these obstacles, Jennifer has become a major figure in contemporary Classical music. Her works represent a wide range of genres, from orchestral to chamber, to wind ensemble, as well as vocal, choral and opera. Her music has been hailed by Fanfare Magazine as having "the distinction of being at once complex, sophisticated but readily accessible emotionally", with the Times of London citing it as "…traditionally rooted, yet imbued with integrity and freshness." The League of American Orchestras reports that she is one of America's most frequently performed composers.

    Higdon's list of commissioners is extensive and includes The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony, The Atlanta Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Minnesota Orchestra, The Pittsburgh Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, as well such groups as the Tokyo String Quartet, the Lark Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, and the President's Own Marine Band. She has also written works for such artists as baritone Thomas Hampson, pianists Yuja Wang and Gary Graffman, violinists Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Jennifer Koh and Hilary Hahn. Her first opera, Cold Mountain, won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere in 2016; the first American opera to do so in the award's history. Performances of Cold Mountain sold out its premiere run in Santa Fe, North Carolina, and Philadelphia (becoming the third highest selling opera in Opera Philadelphia's history).

    Higdon received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, with the committee citing the work as "a deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity." She has also received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, The Independence Foundation, the NEA, and ASCAP. As winner of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition's American Composers Invitational, Higdon's Secret & Glass Gardens was performed by the semi-finalists during the competition.

    Higdon has been a featured composer at many festivals including Aspen, Tanglewood, Vail, Norfolk, Grand Teton, and Cabrillo. She has served as Composer-in-Residence with several orchestras, including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Fort Worth Symphony. She was honored to serve as the Creative Director of the Boundless Series for the Cincinnati Symphony's 2012-13 season. During the 2016-17 and 2017-18 academic years Higdon served as the prestigious Barr Laureate Scholar at the University of Missouri Kansas City.

    In 2018, Higdon received the Eddie Medora King Award from the Univeristy of Texas, Austin. That same year, she received the prestigious Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University which is awarded to contemporary classical composers of exceptional achievement who have significantly influenced the field of composition.

    Higdon enjoys more than 200 performances a year of her works. Her orchestral work, blue cathedral, is the most performed contemporary orchestral works in the repertoire, more than 600 performances since its premiere in 2000.

    Her works have been recorded on over 70 CDs. Higdon has won three Grammys in her career for Best Contemporary Classical Composition: first for her Percussion Concerto in 2010, in 2018 for her Viola Concerto and in 2020 for her Harp Concerto .

    Dr. Higdon received a Bachelor's Degree in Music from Bowling Green State University, an Artist Diploma from The Curtis Institute of Music, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Hartt School and Bowling Green State University.

Dr. Higdon's music is published exclusively by Lawdon Press.

Ching-chu Hu (b. 1969, Iowa City, Iowa) studied at Yale University, Freiburg Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany, the University of Iowa, and the University of Michigan, where he earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts in composition. His composition teachers included William Bolcom, William Albright, Michael Daugherty, Leslie Bassett, Bright Sheng, Evan Chambers, David Gompper and Richard Hervig. His conducting teachers included Alastair Neale, David Stern, and James Dixon. He also studied piano with Donald Currier, Stéphane Lemelin, and Logan Skelton and bass with Diana Gannett and Eldon Oberecht.

    Honors have included composer-in-residence at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, and guest composer at the American Music Week Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria. He has been a composition fellow at the Aspen and Bowdoin Music Festivals, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He has received performances in various national and international festivals and concerts, including the Alternativa Festival (Center “DOM”) in Moscow and Wigmore Hall in London, England. He wrote the score for The Life and Times of Jimmy B., which was awarded a Directors Guild of America’s East Coast Filmmaker Award. He was the first recipient of the Bayley-Bowen Fellowship, Denison University’s first endowed fellowship for a junior faculty member.

    Recent commissions include works for the Granville (Ohio) Bicentennial Committee, the University of Iowa School of Music’s Centennial celebration, the Greater Columbus Community Orchestra, the Newark Granville Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Children’s Choir and the Chamber Music Connection and the Western Springs School of Talent Education.

    Ensembles performing his work include the Kiev Philharmonic, the National Dance and Opera Orchestra of China, and the University of Iowa Center for New Music. Solo artists include violinists Wolfgang David, Scott Conklin and Gabe Bolkosky, flutists Betty Bang Mather and Tamara Thweatt.

    Ching-chu Hu is [2019] professor of composition and theory and was recently named the Richard Lucier Endowed Professor at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

Nathalie Joachim is a Grammy-nominated flutist, composer, and vocalist. The Brooklyn born Haitian-American artist is hailed for being “a fresh and invigorating cross-cultural voice”. (The Nation). She is co-founder of the critically acclaimed duo, Flutronix,  and comfortably navigates everything from classical to indie-rock, all while advocating for social change and cultural awareness. Her authenticity has gained her the reputation of being “powerful and unpretentious.” (The New York Times)
          
    Ms. Joachim, a United States Artist Fellow, has performed and recorded with an impressive range of today’s most exciting artists and ensembles, including Miguel Zenón, Bryce Dessner, and the International Contemporary Ensemble, and is the former flutist of the contemporary chamber ensemble Eighth Blackbird. As a composer, Joachim is regularly commissioned to write for instrumental and vocal artists, dance, and interdisciplinary theater, often highlighting her unique electroacoustic style. Upcoming premieres include Joachim’s symphonic debut commissioned by St. Louis Symphony and the In Unison Chorus; new large scale chamber works for Roomful of Teeth, So Percussion, and Fuse Ensemble; a micro-chamber opera commissioned by Boston Lyric Opera; and a site-specific performance installation commissioned for Yale University’s Schwarzman Center.

    Joachim’s current touring project, Fanm d’Ayiti, is an evening-length work for flute, voice, string quartet and electronics that celebrates and explores her personal Haitian heritage. Commissioned and developed in residence through St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music series, Fanm d’Ayiti was recorded with Chicago-based ensemble Spektral Quartet. The work, released in 2019 on New Amsterdam Records as Joachim’s first featured solo album, received a Grammy nomination for Best World Music Album, and will make its orchestral debut in 2022 with the Oregon Symphony, where Joachim currently serves as an Artistic Partner.  Other notable projects and collaborations include Discourse, an evening-length performance, community engagement and social change initiative commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts and continuing at additional sites nationally; new works for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Imani Winds, and Duo Noire; as well as solo instrumental works for cellist Seth Parker Woods and violinist Yvonne Lam.

Joachim is an alumnus of The Juilliard School, where she studied flute performance, and The New School, where her focus was audio production and sound design.

Jennifer Jolley (b. 1981) is a composer, blogger, and professor person. She is also a cat lover and part-time creative opera producer. Jennifer’s work draws toward subjects that are political and even provocative. Her collaboration with librettist Kendall A, Prisoner of Conscience, has been described as “the ideal soundtrack and perhaps balm for our current ‘toxic…times’” by Frank J. Oteri of NewMusicBox. Her piece Blue Glacier Decoy, written as a musical response to the Olympic National Park, depicts the Pacific Northwest’s melting glaciers. Her partnership with writer Scott Woods, You Are Not Alone, evokes the fallout of the #MeToo Movement.

                        Jennifer’s works have been performed by ensembles worldwide. She has received commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Quince Ensemble, and many others.

            Jennifer deeply values the relationship between composers and the communities in which they collaborate. She has been composer-in-residence at multiple institutions and promotes composer advocacy through her articles for NewMusicBox & I CARE IF YOU LISTEN. Also, she is on the Executive Council of the Institute for Composer Diversity and the New Music USA Program Council.

            Jennifer received degrees from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. She is now an Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at CUNY Lehman College, and she has been a composition faculty member at Interlochen Arts Camp since 2015. She previously held positions at Texas Tech University and Ohio Wesleyan University

Composer and performer Molly Joyce was recently deemed one of the “most versatile, prolific and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome” by The Washington Post. Her music has additionally been described as “serene power” (New York Times), written to “superb effect” (The Wire), and “unwavering” and “enveloping” (Vulture). Her work is concerned with disability as a creative source. She has an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, and the primary vehicle in her pursuit is her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay which suits her body and engages her disability on a compositional and performative level. Her debut full-length album, Breaking and Entering, featuring toy organ, voice, and electronic sampling of both sources was released in June 2020 on New Amsterdam Records, and has been praised by New Sounds as “a powerful response to something (namely, physical disability of any kind) that is still too often stigmatized, but that Joyce has used as a creative prompt.”

    Molly is a recipient of ASCAP’s Leo Kaplan Award, as part of the Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, grants from New Music USA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Jerome Fund / American Composers Forum, Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, and residencies at AIR Krems an Der Donau, ArtCenter/ South Florida, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, De Link Tilburg, Embassy of Foreign Artists, Grace Farms, Halcyon Arts Lab, Headlands Center for the Arts, Villa Sträuli, Titanik, Surel’s Place, Swatch Art Peace Hotel, The Watermill Center, and Willapa Bay AiR.

    Molly is a graduate of The Juilliard School (graduating with scholastic distinction), Royal Conservatory in The Hague (recipient of the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund Grant), and Yale School of Music. She holds an Advanced Certificate in Disability Studies from CUNY School of Professional Studies and is an alumnus of the National YoungArts Foundation. She has studied with Samuel Adler, Martin Bresnick, Guus Janssen, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli, Martijn Padding, Christopher Theofanidis, and has served on the composition faculty of New York University, Wagner College, and Berklee Online, teaching subjects including Disability and the Arts, Music Technology, Music Theory, and Orchestration.

The music of composer Matthew Kennedy (b. 1987) contains disarming simplicity, often seeking out dark places with an uninhibited wonder and spirit of exploration. His work has been performed on five continents and received critical acclaim including honors and commissions from ASCAP, BMI, Opera on Tap, Boston Musica Viva, Hartford Opera Theater, bassist Robert Black, Dynamic Music Festival at NYU, as well as residencies at Marble House Project (VT), Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL), Hambidge Center (GA), Crosshatch Center for Art and Ecology (MI), The Horned Dorset Artist Colony (NY), Soaring Gardens Artist's Retreat (PA), and the Mayapple Center for the Arts and Humanities (CT). Recent activities include performances and lectures at New Music Gathering (Bowling Green State University and Boston Conservatory), Duke University, University of Virginia, Constantinides New Music Ensemble (LSU), Florida Flute Association, Northwestern University New Music Conference, Fresh Inc. Festival, Tampa Homegrown Concert Series, and the North American Saxophone Alliance International  Conference.

    His works are published through Just a Theory Press. Recently his Theme + 4 Brief Variants (2009, rev. 2015) was selected for publication in NewMusicShelf’s Anthology of New Music: Solo Piano Vol. 1. Recordings of his work have been published by Parma Recordings, Soundset Recordings, and Ink & Coda Journal. 

    Matthew holds degrees from The Hartt School (DMA), Butler University (MM), and Anderson University (BA), where his primary teachers have included Michael Schelle, Robert Carl, Larry Alan Smith, Elizabeth Brown, and Manuel Sosa. Recently his work as digital music engraver has received national recognition, being published in Indiana Theory Review (“Keeping Time in Mozart's Eine kleine Gigue, K.574” by Ira Braus) as well as presented at the 2015 Chicago Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic (“Sacred Spaces: Teaching Children to Create Music” presented by Glen Adsit and Michael Colgrass). Matthew is currently the Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at Heidelberg University and has previously taught at University of South Florida and The Hartt School. He currently resides in Tiffin, Ohio with his wife, studio artist Erin Kennedy, and three children.

Emily Koh (b.1986) is a Singaporean composer+ based in Atlanta, Georgia whose music reimagines everyday experiences by sonically expounding tiny oft-forgotten details, and explores binary states such as extremities/boundaries and activity/stagnation. She especially enjoys collaborating with creatives of other specializations.

     Described as “the future of composing” (The Straits Times, Singapore), Emily is the recipient of awards such as the Copland House Residency Award, Young Artist Award (National Arts Council, Singapore), Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize (Asian Composers League), ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Prix D’Ete (Peabody), and the Macagnoni Prize for Innovative Research (University of Georgia). Her work is supported with commissions, grants and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, National Arts Council (Singapore), Opera America, New Music USA, MacDowell, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, American Composers’ Orchestra, Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, the Paul Abisheganaden Grant for Artistic Excellence (National University of Singapore) and others. Described as “beautifully eerie” (New York Times), and “subtley spicy” (Baltimore Sun), Emily’s music has been performed around the world, and is published by Babel Scores (Europe) and Poco Piu Publishing (worldwide).

Emily is currently Associate Professor of Music Composition at the University of Georgia, USA.

Han Lash
    Hailed by The New York Times as “striking and resourceful…handsomely brooding,” Han Lash’s music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Los Angeles' Walt Disney Concert Hall, Lincoln Center, the Times Center in Manhattan, the Chicago Art Institute, Tanglewood Music Center, Harvard University, The Aspen Music Festival & School, The Chelsea Art Museum, and on the American Opera Project’s stage in New York City. Commissions include The Fromm Foundation, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Chamber Music Northwest, the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, American Composers Orchestra, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, The Naumburg Foundation, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Arditti Quartet, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Colorado Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival and School, among many others.

    Lash has received numerous honors and prizes, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship (2011) and Fellowship (2016) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Foundation Commission, a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, a fellowship from Yaddo Artist Colony, the Naumburg Prize in Composition, the Barnard Rogers Prize in Composition, the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky Prize in Composition, and numerous academic awards. Han Lash's orchestral work Furthermore was selected by the American Composers Orchestra for the 2010 Underwood New Music Readings. Lash's chamber opera, Blood Rose, was presented by New York City Opera’s VOX in the spring of 2011.

    The New York Times music critic Steve Smith praised Lash’s work for the JACK Quartet, Frayed: “Lash’s compact sequence of pale brush strokes, ghostly keening and punchy outbursts was striking and resourceful; you hoped to hear it again…” Esteemed music critic Bruce Hodges lauded Lash’s piece Stalk for solo harp as being “appealing…florid, and introspective.”

            In addition to performances in the USA, Lash’s music is also well known internationally. In April of 2008, Lash's string quartet Four Still was performed in Kiev in the Ukraine’s largest international new music festival, “Musical Premieres of the Season,” curated by Carson Cooman. In the summer of 2010, Han Lash's piece Unclose was premiered by members of Eighth Blackbird at the MusicX festival in Blonay, Switzerland. In 2016, the chamber orchestra work This Ease saw its German premiere and was selected as “audience favorite” in performances by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, conducted by Hermann Bäumer.

    Recent premieres include the multi-movement orchestral work The Voynich Symphony by the New Haven Symphony, Form and Postlude for Chamber Music Northwest, a new Requiem for the Yale Choral Artists, How to Remember Seeds for The Calidore String Quartet, Three Shades Without Angles, for flute, viola and harp, by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Two Movements for violin and piano, commissioned by the Library of Congress for Ensemble Intercontemporain, and a new chamber opera, Beowulf, for Guerilla Opera, as well as several new orchestral works: Chaconnes, for the New York Philharmonic's Biennial, Eating Flowers, for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Nymphs, for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and This Ease, for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as two concerti for harp premiered by the American Composers Orchestra (Concerto No. 1 for Harp and Chamber Orchestra) and the Colorado Music Festival (Concerto No. 2 for Harp and Orchestra), both with Lash as soloist.

    Other recent premieres include God Music Bug Music (2011) with the Minnesota Orchestra, the monodrama Stoned Prince (2013) by loadbang, Subtilior Lamento (2012) with the Da Capo Chamber Players at Carnegie Hall, and Glockenliebe (2012), for three glockenspiels, with Talujon Percussion. Lash's 2011 orchestral work, Hush, was featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's 2013 Brooklyn Festival. In 2016, Lash was honored with a Composer Portrait Concert at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, which included newly commissioned works for pianist Lisa Moore (Six Etudes and a Dream) and loadbang (Music for Eight Lungs).  Lash's Piano Concerto No. 1 “In Pursuit of Flying” was premiered by Jeremy Denk and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; the Atlantic Classical Orchestra debuted Facets of Motion for orchestra, and Music for Nine, Ringing was performed at the Music Academy of the West School and Festival. Paul Appleby and Natalia Katyukova premiered Songs of Imagined Love, a song cycle commissioned by Carnegie Hall, in 2018, and in 2019, Lash's chamber opera, Desire, premiered at Miller Theatre to great acclaim. Lash's Double Concerto for piano and harp was premiered by the Naples Philharmonic, and Forestallings, a musical response to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, was premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Lash’s double harp concerto, The Peril of Dreams was premiered by the Seattle Symphony in November 2021, with the composer as one of the featured soloists. Han Lash's music is published exclusively by Schott Music Corporation (New York).

Anne LeBaron
    A Los Angeles-based experimentalist who is an innovative performer on the harp as well as a composer embracing unusual challenges, Anne LeBaron’s compositions have been performed around the globe. Venues in Italy, Mexico, Sydney, Vienna, Sweden, Kazakhstan, New York, Los Angeles, Italy, and elsewhere have programmed her works for chamber ensemble, orchestra, opera, and chorus, and presented her as a performer. Major awards she has received include the Alpert Award in the Arts, a Fromm Foundation commission, a Guggenheim, a Fulbright, and NEA grants. Her operas celebrate legendary female figures, such as Marie Laveau in Crescent City. She is currently completing LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip, an opera that includes many of the instruments built by Harry Partch. Her newest opera-in-progress, This Lingering Life, examines the notion of karma, with a libretto by Mark Campbell and Chiori Miyagawa. LeBaron teaches in the Experimental Sound Practices and Composition Program at CalArts.

Lei Liang (1972-) is a Chinese composer living in the United States. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, USA, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is currently a "President's Distinguished Professor" and a doctoral tutor at the University of California, San Diego, and served as the head of the music department and the director of composition.

    Liang Lei has won many important world awards in recent years, including the "Rome Award" from the Academy of Rome, the Guggenheim Award, the Sergei Kussavitsky Music Fund Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Award, and the New York Creation Fund Award, and the Lieberson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His saxophone and symphony piece "Xiaoxiang" was a final nominee for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Composition. In 2021, his symphony orchestra work "Thousands of Mountains and Thousands of Rivers" won the highest international composition award - the Gwenmeier Award.

    New York Philharmonic, Boston Modern Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, Taipei Municipal Chinese Orchestra, pianist Chen Bixian, pipa player Wu Man and other famous music groups and performers have commissioned him to create. His works include hundreds of symphonies, national orchestras, concertos, chamber music, national instrumental music, electronic music, chamber opera, and film scores. Record companies such as Naxos released Liang Lei's ten albums. He has edited five books and published more than forty articles in both Chinese and English.

    From 2013 to 2016, Liang Lei was employed by the Qualcomm Institute in California as a composer-in-residence. His Huang Binhong Landscape Album Multimedia Research Project protected and reconstructed precious cultural heritage by researching music and advanced science and technology. In 2018, Liang Lei was named the first research artist by Qualcomm Research Institute. Liang Lei's recent operas deal with the issue of sex slaves on the US-Mexico border and the complex relationship between guns and violence in the US. At the same time, he is working with scientists at the Institute of Oceanography to lead a music team involved in environmental protection through the study of coral reef acoustics. Liang Lei was appointed as a Young Fellow of the Harvard Academicians Association, and was named a "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum. All his works are published by the New York Schott Music Company.

Catherine Likhuta is a Ukrainian-Australian composer, pianist and recording artist. Her music exhibits high emotional charge, programmatic nature, rhythmic complexity and Ukrainian folk elements. Catherine’s pieces have been played extensively around the world, including highly prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage), Glyndebourne Opera House (Organ Room), five International Horn Symposiums and two World Saxophone Congresses, as well as many festivals and conferences. Her works have enjoyed performances by prominent symphony orchestras (such as Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra of the National Radio of Ukraine), chamber ensembles (such as Atlantic Brass Quintet, Ensemble Q, ICE, Lyrebird Brass, NU CORNO and U.S. Army Field Band Horns) and soloists (including former presidents of the North American Saxophone Alliance Griffin Campbell and the International Horn Society Andrew Pelletier). Catherine has held residencies at Tyalgum Music Festival, North Carolina NewMusic Initiative, University of Missouri Kansas City, University of Georgia and other institutions. She is a two-time winner of the International Horn Society Composition Contest (virtuoso division) and a recipient of several awards, including two grants from the Australia Council for the Arts. Her music can be heard on Albany, Cala, Common Tone, Equilibrium and Summit Records. Horn virtuosa Denise Tryon’s album Hope Springs Eternal featuring Catherine’s piece Vivid Dreams was awarded the 2022 American Prize in Instrumental Performance.
    Catherine’s wind band works have been played by dozens of wind ensembles, including prominent groups such as Dallas Winds, Sydney Conservatorium Wind Symphony, University of Georgia Hodgson Wind Ensemble and University of Kentucky Wind Symphony. Her music has enjoyed performances at Australian School Band and Orchestra Festival (Sydney), Australian National Band and Orchestra Conference (Perth), CBDNA Conference (Norman, OK) and Midwest Clinic (Chicago, IL).
    Catherine holds a bachelor's degree in jazz piano from Kyiv Glière Music College, a five-year post-graduate degree in composition from the National Music Academy of Ukraine (Kyiv Conservatory) and a PhD in composition from the University of Queensland. She is an active performer, often playing her own music. She was the soloist on the premiere and the CD recording of Out Loud, her piano concerto commissioned by the Cornell University Wind Ensemble, and the pianist on Adam Unsworth’s CD Snapshots.

David Little is “one of the most imaginative young composers” on the scene (The New Yorker), with “a knack for overturning musical conventions” (The New York Times). His operas Dog Days, JFK, and Vinkensport (librettos by Royce Vavrek), and his GRAMMY®-nominated Soldier Songs have been widely acclaimed, “prov[ing] beyond any doubt that opera has both a relevant present and a bright future” (The New York Times).

    Other recent works include hold my tongue (Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ), the earthen lack (London Sinfonietta / BGSU), Ghostlight—ritual for six players (Eighth Blackbird / The Kennedy Center), AGENCY (Kronos Quartet), and dress in magic amulets, dark, from My feet (The Crossing). Summer 2021 saw the world premiere of The Crocus Palimpsest, a solo cello work for virtuoso Matt Haimovitz, as well as a first look at Act I of Little’s upcoming opera for GRAMMY-winning tenor Karim Sulayman and Alarm Will Sound, based on Garth Greenwell’s celebrated novel What Belongs to You. The full work premieres in 2023. Little is also developing a new work commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater new work program. His new film opera Black Lodge, written with Anne Waldman, starring Timur Bekbosunov and produced by Beth Morrison Projects, is previewed in theaters in fall 2021.    

    Little’s music has been presented by the LA Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, LA Opera, the Park Avenue Armory, Holland Festival, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Oregon Bach Festival, and Opéra de Montréal. He has previously served as Executive Director of MATA and on the board of directors at Chamber Music America, and currently chairs the composition program at Mannes—The New School. From 2014–2017, he was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia and Music-Theatre Group. The founding artistic director of the ensemble Newspeak, his music can be heard on Pentatone, New Amsterdam, Innova, Sono Luminus, Centaur, Bright Shiny Things, and National Sawdust Tracks labels.

David T. Little is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

“A talent the ear wants to follow wherever it goes” (Boston Globe), Gregory Mertl has garnered commissions from the Tanglewood Music Center, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Tarab Cello Ensemble, the Phoenix Symphony, the Big Ten Wind Ensembles, the Ostrava Oboe Festival, Czech Republic, the Hanson Institute, and the Barlow Endowment for a piano concerto for Solungga Liu and the University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble, which was released by Bridge Records in 2017. Of the Bridge release, the American Record Guide has written, “there’s a wealth of compositional ingenuity and detail, but better yet there’s what I might call attention to the human aspect of music–a concern with drama, passion, and psychological complexity alongside any purely technical achievement. That’s what makes me keep listening to it.” Mertl has degrees from Yale University (BA 1991) and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D. 2005) and was a 1998 Tanglewood Composition Fellow, where he worked with Henri Dutilleux and Mauricio Kagel. His most recent works are a four-movement concerto for the French cellist Xavier Phillips and a work for pianist Heather Lanners premiered in early 2020. His current project is a work for guitar and string quartet for guitarist Kenneth Meyer.

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post).

    Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Shift, Change, Turn (2019) commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Coincident Dances (2018) for the Chicago Sinfonietta, and Banner (2014)—written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—for The Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation, which was presented in its UK premiere at the BBC Proms on 7 August 2021.

    Summer 2021 brought a varied slate of premiere performances, including Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for Soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco and Kansas City Symphonies, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (7 August); a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape Festival and Pam Tanowitz Dance, I was waiting for the echo of a better day (8 July); and Passacaglia, a flute quartet for The National Flute Association’s 49th annual convention (13 August).

    Since 1999, Jessie has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string players and has served as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble.

    A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Jessie holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a PhD Candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University. She is Professor of violin and composition at The New School. In May 2021, she began her three-year appointment as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1955, composer Jeffrey Mumford has received numerous fellowships, grants, awards and commissions. Awards include the "Academy Award in Music" from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and an ASCAP Aaron Copland Scholarship. He was also the winner of the inaugural National Black Arts Festival/Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Composition Competition. 

    Other grants have been awarded by the Ohio Arts Council, Meet the Composer, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music Inc., the ASCAP Foundation, and the University of California.     

    Mumford's most notable commissions include those from the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the Library of Congress (co-commission), the BBC Philharmonic, the San Antonio, Chicago & National Symphonies, Washington Performing Arts, the Network for New Music, ‘cellist Mariel Roberts, the Fulcrum Point New Music Project (through New Music USA), Duo Harpverk (Iceland), the Sphinx Consortium, the Cincinnati Symphony, the VERGE Ensemble /National Gallery of Art/Contemporary Music Forum, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Nancy Ruyle Dodge Charitable Trust, the Meet the Composer/Arts Endowment Commissioning Music/USA, Cincinnati radio station WGUC, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, and the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress. 

    His music has been performed extensively, by major orchestras, soloists, and ensembles, both in the United States and abroad, including London, Paris, Reykjavik, Vienna, The Hague, Russia and Lithuania. 
During the past two summers his music was featured at the June in Buffalo Festival, Kneisel Hall, Tanglewood, the Cheltenham Festival (Manchester, UK), the Aava Festival in Finland and the HIMA Festival US in Lakeside, OH. His work was also selected for a workshop at the Marlboro Festival. Mumford has taught at the Washington Conservatory of Music, served as Artist-in-Residence at Bowling Green State University, and served as assistant professor of composition and Composer-in-Residence at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. He is currently Distinguished Professor at Lorain County Community College in Northern Ohio. 

Steven Naylor graduated from Bowling Green State University in 2022, earning undergraduate degrees in performance and composition. A Michigan-native, he graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy in 2017. His piano mentors have included Laura Melton, Thomas Rosenkranz, Michael Coonrod, Catherine McMichael, and Steve Rodriguez; his composition mentors have included Elainie Lillios, Mikel Kuehn, Marilyn Shrude, Christopher Dietz, and Catherine McMichael. Steven has presented seven solo piano and composition recitals, performing music from the Renaissance through the present.

     A fierce advocate for contemporary music, he performed solo works at the 8th International Conference on Music and Minimalism and the 2020 Bowling Green New Music Festival; he also frequently collaborates with living composers. Steven won 1st place in the graduate division of the 2022 Marjorie Conrad Art Song Competition with Carolyn Anderson, soprano; he also won 1st place in the undergraduate division of the 2019 Douglas Wayland Chamber Music Competition with Gretchen Hill, clarinet, and Taylor Francis, flute. His micro-opera Visionary won BGSU’s 2021 Competition in Music Composition. His score to the short film A Study of Weathering and Erosion, directed by Michael Miller, won the award for “Best Original Score” at the 2021 BG University Film Organization Film and Media Award Ceremony. His recent compositions focus on astronomical and ecological themes, and have included works written for the icarus Quartet, the Newphonia Ensemble, and the Heidelberg University Single Reed Ensemble. His debut album, idyll, was released in 2021 and features his own solo piano compositions. Steven is music director at First Presbyterian Church of Perrysburg, OH, a Resident Artist with Toledo Opera, and an engraver for St. James Music Press.

Udi Perlman (b. 1990) is an Israeli-born composer based in Berlin and New Haven, Conn.

    Described as "surprising, rich, and colorful" (Ha’aretz), Udi Perlman’s award-winning music weaves multiple stylistic strands into a “unique voice” (Prime Minister's Composer Award Committee). Combining a deep love of Western classical music, avant-garde sensibilities, and the imprint of the musical traditions he absorbed growing up in Israel, Udi Perlman creates vital, personal works that seize the listener’s imagination and heart with dramatic musical narratives.

    Perlman’s orchestral works have been performed by the Yale Philharmonia, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Festival Orchestra of the European Capital of Culture, Philharmonie der Nationen and Israel Sinfonietta Beer Sheva. He has also received performances by the International Ensemble Modern Academy, Yale Glee Club, Meitar Ensemble, Neon Ensemble, MultiPiano Ensemble, Tremolo Ensemble, Arab-Jewish Youth Orchestra, Syntagma Piano Duo, and members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and the Jerusalem Street Orchestra, among others. Perlman’s works have been performed in Austria, Britain, Germany, Israel, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

    Udi Perlman has been awarded the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Israeli Prime Minister's Composer Award, François Schapira Prize for Composition from the Aviv Competitions, Rena Greenwald Memorial Prize from the Yale School of Music, Honorable Mention from loadbang’s Commission Competition, Klon Award for Young Composers from the Israeli Composers League, 1st Prize at the Israel Conservatory’s National Composition Competition, and 3rd prize from the Hamburger Camerata's International Composer Competition. Perlman’s doctoral thesis, entitled “Composing with Limitations: Representing and Transcending Disability in Hans Abrahamsen’s Left, alone,” won the Friedmann Thesis Prize from the Yale School of Music for “distinguished research, original perspective, in-depth engagement with its subject, and well-crafted presentation.” He received scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, the Siday Fellowship for Musical Creativity, and the Baden-Württemberg-Stipendium. Haaretz newspaper named him in 2021 as one of nine “most promising Israeli contemporary composers”. From 2014 to 2016 he was a composition fellow in Meitar Ensemble's Tedarim Project for Contemporary Music and in 2018 was Composer-in-Residence at Herrenhaus Edenkoben, Germany.

    Currently a doctoral candidate in composition at Yale, Udi Perlman holds degrees from the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin (Artist Diploma) and the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (B.Mus & M.Mus), and has studied with Christopher Theofanidis, Aaron Jay Kernis, David Lang, Martin Bresnick, Jörg Widmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Yinam Leef and Menachem Wissenberg. Seasonally dividing his time between homes in Berlin and New Haven, Udi lives with his wife, literary scholar and translator Shira Miron.

Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of the most important American composers living today. During a career spanning more than 50 years, she has made lasting contributions to musical life in the United States as composer, performer, conductor, and educator. Her works have been commissioned by major ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, including the Emerson, Tokyo, and Muir quartets; soloists Evelyn Glennie, Carol Wincenc, David Shifrin, and John Browning; and the orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., among others.

    In 1990, Tower became the first woman to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for her composition Silver Ladders. She was the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission of 65 orchestras. The Nashville Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin recorded that work, Made in America, with Tambor and Concerto for Orchestra for the Naxos label. The top-selling recording won three 2008 Grammy awards: Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance.

    From 1969 to 1984, she was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her most popular works. Her first orchestral work, Sequoia, quickly entered the repertory. Tower's tremendously popular five Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman have been played by over 500 different ensembles. She is currently Asher Edelman Professor of Music at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972.

    Her composer-residencies with orchestras and festivals include a decade with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Composer of the Year for their 2010-2011 season, as well as the St. Louis Symphony, the Deer Valley Music Festival, and the Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.

    Among her recent premieres: White Water (2012), commissioned by Chamber Music Monterey Bay and premiered by the Daedalus Quartet; Stroke (2011), commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; White Granite (2009), commissioned by St. Timothy's Summer Music Festival, Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, and La Jolla Music Society for SummerFest; Angels (2008), her fourth string quartet, commissioned by Music for Angel Fire and premiered by the Miami String Quartet; Dumbarton Quintet (2008), a piano quintet commissioned by the Dumbarton Oaks Estate (their third commission after Stravinsky and Copland) and premiered by Tower and the Enso String Quartet; Chamber Dance (2006), commissioned, premiered, and toured by Orpheus; and Copperwave (2006), written for the American Brass Quintet and commissioned by The Juilliard School of Music. A Gift (2007), for winds and piano, was commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest and premiered by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS). Other CMS premieres included Trio Cavany (2007) and Simply Purple (2008) for viola, performed by Paul Neubauer

Leah Tracy (b. 1999) is a composer and soprano from NW Ohio, currently based in Denver, CO. Leah draws inspiration from the people around her, often basing her compositions on current events, childhood recollections, powerful stories, and her most meaningful friendships and experiences. She prefers to allow her writing to flow wherever it needs, just as the mind meanders through thoughts and memories. Leah has a special interest in introducing young musicians to contemporary techniques, and often writes with a wide range of ability levels in mind. Her piece sing to us, cedars was recently chosen as a winner of Chicago A Cappella’s HerVoice Competition and will be premiered by Grammy-winning ensemble, Kansas City Chorale in the 2022-23 season. Leah’s music has been performed in Boston, Atlanta, New York City, and throughout the United States. She is also an active performer, having premiered several pieces by up-and-coming composers. She currently sings soprano in the Denver-based contemporary chamber choir, Voices of Light. Leah earned a Bachelor of Music in Composition at Bowling Green State University in 2021. Notable professors and mentors include Drs. Elainie Lillios, Chen Yi, Myra Merritt-Grant, Christopher Dietz, and Mikel Kuehn. She currently serves as Director of Music at Columbine Unitarian Universalist Church in Littleton.