Composers Courtney Bryan, Cindy Cox, and Fang Man to Receive $15,000 Women Composers Commissions

Now in its fifth year, this program – an initiative of the League of American Orchestras, in partnership with American Composers Orchestra and supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation – has provided thirty-four women with career development via EarShot Readings; and thirteen have received commissions since 2014.

Courtney Bryan’s work will be premiered by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and music director Carlos Miguel Prieto in the 2019-20 season. Cindy Cox’s work will be premiered by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in May 2020 and Fang Man’s work by the San Francisco Symphony (performance details for both to be announced).

Read the full press release here.

SELECTED COMPOSERS

Courtney Bryan, a native of New Orleans, LA, is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (New York Times). Her music is in conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and other types of experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. Focusing on bridging the sacred and the secular, Bryan’s compositions explore human emotions through sound, confronting the challenge of notating the feeling of improvisation. Bryan has academic degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM), Rutgers University (MM), and Columbia University (DMA) with advisor George Lewis, and completed an appointment as Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Bryan is currently an Assistant Professor of Music in the Newcomb Department of Music at Tulane University, the composer-in-residence with the Jacksonville Symphony, and serves as a board member of the Musical Arts Society of New Orleans (MASNO), Composers Now, and New Music USA. She was the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. <<READ MORE>>

Transparent yet intricate, Cindy Cox’s compositions synthesize old and new musical designs. The natural world, ecological concerns, and the concept of emergence inspire many of the special harmonies and textural colorations in her works. Cox is active as a pianist and has performed and recorded many of her   own compositions, including the large-scale Hierosgamos and Sylvan Pieces.  A number of her works feature technologies developed at UC Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), such as Pianos and the Etudes for piano sampler keyboards.  Her compositions with text such as Singing the lines, The Other Side of the World, and The Shape of the Shell evolved through collaboration with her husband, poet John Campion.  Together they are currently collaborating on a musical theater project, The Road to Xibalba, based on the ancient Mayan myth of creation The Popol Vuh.<<READ MORE>>

Hailed as “inventive and breathtaking” by the New York Times, Fang Man’s music has been performed worldwide by notable orchestras and ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra New Music Group under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Basel Sinfonietta, Slovak Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, National Orchestre de Lorraine, Minnesota Orchestra, Prism Saxophone Quartet, Dolce Suono Ensemble, Music from China, among others. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Koussevitzky Foundation Commission, an Underwood/ACO Commission, Toru Takemitsu Award (Japan), Opera America Discovery Grant, the National Endowment for the Arts Award, Siemens Berlin Music Foundation Commission, NewMusicUSA Commission, the 47th UWRF Commissioned Composer, USC Provost Grant, Bank of America Gallery Commission, the Darmstadt Stipend-Prize-Award, Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, Frank Huntington Beebe Fellowship, among others.<<READ MORE>>