Michael Laurello is an American composer and pianist. He has written for ensembles and soloists such as Sō Percussion (Brooklyn, NY), Sandbox Percussion (Brooklyn, NY), the Yale Percussion Group, the Yale Philharmonia, Sound Icon (Boston, MA), the 15.19ensemble (Pavia, Italy), NotaRiotous/The Boston Microtonal Society, guitarist Flavio Virzì, soprano Sarah Pelletier, pianist/composer John McDonald, and clarinetist and linguist/music theorist Ray Jackendoff. Upcoming collaborations include an evening-length work for the Triplepoint Trio (New Haven, CT), made possible through an artist residency at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute (Summer 2015).
Laurello is an Artist Diploma candidate in composition at the Yale School of Music, where he received the Jacob Druckman Scholarship and the Rena Greenwald Memorial Scholarship for 2014-15. His primary composition teachers at Yale are David Lang, Martin Bresnick, and Christopher Theofanidis. He holds an M.A. in composition from Tufts University, where he studied under John McDonald, and a B.Mus. in music synthesis (electronic production and design) from the Berklee College of Music. Recent honors include a commission from the American Composers Forum and an Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation (Boston, MA). He has attended composition festivals at highSCORE (Pavia, Italy) and Etchings (Auvillar, France).

In addition to his work as a composer and performer, Laurello is a recording engineer and a teaching fellow at Yale.

Big Things – excerpt:

In the Composer’s Own Words:
When I started writing Promises in September of 2014, I imagined the orchestra as an enormous machine relentlessly chugging away to accomplish some sort of task, or moving towards a goal of some kind. But, even as I got a little deeper into composing the piece, I still wasn’t sure what the goal was. Should the music grow bigger? Should it get smaller and smaller? Should it push so hard that it breaks apart? Eventually one of my teachers said to me: “This music seems like it’s promising something. You just have to decide whether or not it’s going to break its promise.” This made me think not only about the concept of a musical promise, but also about some of the promises that I’ve kept and those that I’ve broken in my life. The music started to represent something more personal and profound, and I composed the bulk of the piece with these thoughts in mind. In the end, I don’t know whether the piece keeps its promise, but I like to think it does.

Emily Cooley (b. 1990) is a composer of orchestral, chamber, and vocal music that ranges from delicate intensity to a pulsing, energetic sound described as “dramatic, forceful and filled with reverberation” (Sioux City Journal). In 2015, Emily was awarded a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her music has received additional awards and recognition from the National Federation of Music Clubs, Tribeca New Music, ASCAP, the Renée B. Fisher Foundation, and others.

Emily has received commissions and performances from ensembles including the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, the JACK Quartet, the Fifth House Ensemble, and Music from Copland House. She has been a fellow at the Norfolk New Music Workshop, the Wellesley Composers Conference, CULTIVATE at Copland House, and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.

A native of Milwaukee, WI, Emily is a recent graduate of the USC Thornton School of Music and Yale University, where she was awarded the Louis Sudler Prize for excellence in the creative arts. Past teachers include Stephen Hartke, Donald Crockett, Andrew Norman, Kathryn Alexander, and John K. Boyle. Emily currently holds the Milton L. Rock Composition Fellowship at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studies with David Ludwig.

 Now is the Time (excerpt):

In the Composer’s Own Words:
Lately I’ve become interested in writing pieces that consist of only one section, usually in the form of a long, slow build of density and variety in sound. This piece takes that model: there are no delineated sections and no transitions, just the goal of reaching the ending and revealing the core of this music’s material. Different layers weave in and out of the orchestral texture, with the clarinets leading the more lyrical nature of the piece, the percussionist activating a sound ‘object’ that acts as an on/off switch for certain musical events, and the piano and second violins playing out a ritualistic pattern of bell-like chords.

One of the inspirations for this piece is the work of California artist Andres Amador, whose sand murals flourish into massive and stunning images, but are inevitably washed away by the ocean.

Ryan Carter‘s music has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the National Flute Association, the MATA Festival, the Metropolis Ensemble, Present Music, The Milwaukee Children’s Choir, and the Calder Quartet, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the American Composers Forum, and Meet the Composer. Ryan has collaborated with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Nieuw Ensemble, the JACK Quartet, the Mivos Quartet, Quartetto Maurice, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, Transit, NOW Ensemble, and many others. Awards include the Lee Ettelson Award, the Aaron Copland Award, the Left Coast Composition Contest, the National Association of Composers/USA Composer’s Competition, and the Publikumspreis at the Heidelberg Spring Festival. Ryan was also a finalist for the 2005 Gaudeamus Prize and was chosen as one of NPR and Q2’s favorite “100 Composers Under 40.” In addition to composing acoustic music, Ryan is an avid computer musician and programmer. His iMonkeypants app (available for download on the App Store) is an album of algorithmically generated, listener-interactive electronica. Ryan holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BMus), Stony Brook University (MA), and New York University (PhD).

Competing Demands – excerpt (Alexandria Le, piano):

 

In the Composer’s Own Words:
This year seems to be passing quickly. I was thinking of composing a piece about time compressing, and then I watched an interview with Richard Hoffmann, my former teacher who had come to Los Angeles in the 1940s to study privately with Arnold Schoenberg and who became his amanuensis and a close friend of the Schoenberg family. In his interview, Richard told a story of Schoenberg at the end of his life, when he could no longer walk down the stairs of his house and spent all day sitting in his room. There was a clock on the wall in front of him, and one day he asked Richard to put the clock behind him because he didn’t want to know how slowly time was passing.

Igor Santos (b.1985) is a Brazilian-American composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic concert music. His works have been performed by groups such as eighth blackbird, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Spektral Quartet and The Florida Orchestra.

Igor is currently Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition at the University of Chicago. He received his Master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied under Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez. At Eastman he was an active member of the Ossia New Music group, assisting in organizing and promoting concerts of contemporary music. He received his B.M. in composition from the University of South Florida, where he was active as board member and pianist for the USF Composer’s Consortium. Igor is currently studying under Shulamit Ran, Marta Ptaszynska, Augusta Read Thomas and Anthony Cheung. Additional studies include workshops and festivals such as ManiFeste, Synthetis, Fontainebleau, and Brevard Music Center.

Quiet Rooms (excerpt):

In the Composer’s Own Words:
ploy, pivot (2014) is the first work in a series of pieces of mine that attempt to create a narratological structure using the superposition of music with completely different characters. This is clear, for instance, in the harp solo music, which is always punctuated and interrupted by other abrasive, stubborn gestures. Other instances of interruption govern and organize most of the rhetoric in the music – either by cancelling or triggering different textures, layers and affects.

The piece was originally written for a reading session at the University of Chicago, under conductor Cliff Colnot.

Jules Pegram (b. 1991) writes music modern in its sensibility and sophisticated in its craft, yet full of shimmering colors, boundless energy, and​ a​n unbridled lyricism that make it refreshingly accessible. His kaleidoscopic sound-world is influenced by everything from contemporary concert music and the rigors of modernism to film and television scores, show tunes, urban environments, popular culture, and the natural world.  In 2013, Pegram’s orchestral work Neon Nights was selected as the winning composition in both the Marilyn K. Glick and Symphony in C Young Composers Competition​s​, resulting in performances by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and New Jersey’s Symphony in C, respectively.

Other awards include recognition as a Finalist in the 2012 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Competition as well as in the 3rd International Frank Ticheli Composition Contest, the Presser Foundation’s Undergraduate Scholar Award, the Sadye J. Moss Endowed Music Composition Prize, selection in both the University of Southern California New Music for Orchestra and Indiana State University’s “Music Now” competitions, and “Honorable Mention” in the Donald Sinta Quartet’s National Composition Competition. He was also a recipient of the USC Discovery Scholars prize and was named an Outstanding Graduate of the USC Thornton School of Music’s Department of Composition.

Pegram is pursuing the Master of Music in Composition at the University of Michigan, where he has studied with Michael Daugherty and Bright Sheng. Pegram received the Bachelor of Music in Composition (summa cum laude) from the University of Southern California, where he studied with Oscar nominee Bruce Broughton, Frank Ticheli, Morten Lauridsen, Stephen Hartke, Donald Crockett, Erica Muhl, and USC Trojan Marching Band arranger Tony Fox. He studied classical piano with Alin Melik-Adamyan and jazz piano with Yellowjackets keyboardist Russell Ferrante.

Shadows of the Studio (excerpts – Univ. of Michigan, Elim Chan, cond.):

 

In the Composer’s Own Words:

Shadows of the Studio for Orchestra is my musical tribute to the glory days of Hollywood’s “studio system,” a factory-like production setup that allowed for the efficient, speedy creation and distribution of quality motion pictures, thousands of which are now considered cinema classics.  This landmark era of filmmaking spanned from the rise of the major studios in the 1920s up until the studio system’s ultimate demise in the 1950s.  During that illustrious period, movie moguls like Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer fame served as helms of production at their respective studios, reigning over a vast filmic empire the likes of which will surely never be seen again.

As Shadows of the Studio begins, we walk through an old studio’s massive iron gates and into an abandoned soundstage, dust-filled and full of movie relics from days gone by.  Out of this dark, funereal texture, the music suddenly starts to build, the studio roars back to life, and we are transported back to the glory days of Hollywood, circa 1940. Once the ratchety sounds of a film projector click us into full gear, a lush, sweeping theme enters, something akin to what one might have heard in a classic Hollywood film noir score. As the composition continues, we take an evening flight through the Hollywood Hills, with filmmakers below still hard at work on the set, spotlights flickering outside a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and of course that legendary white sign beaming off in the distance.  Eventually the music reaches epic proportions, and Tinseltown is at last restored to its former glory. But this grandiose reimagining of a lost era is little more than a dream, and after an explosive climax the piece gradually fades out to its ghostly conclusion, sending the studio back into the shadows of the past.

Born in Togliatti, an industrial city on the Volga River in Russia, Polina Nazaykinskaya studied piano, violin and flute as a child, and as a teenager at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory she concentrated on violin and composition. She came to the U.S. to attend the Yale School of Music, where she completed a master’s degree in composition and theory and artist diploma in composition, working with Christopher Theofanidis and Ezra Laderman. She is now is pursuing a doctorate degree in composition at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, studying with Tania León.

Polina has won numerous awards including the Charles Ives Scholarship at The American Academy of Arts and Letters and has garnered performances by ensembles including the Minnesota Orchestra, the Russian National Orchestra, the Hermitage Orchestra and Chorus, the Yale Philharmonia Orchestra, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Russia, the Omsk
Philharmonic Orchestra, the St. Olaf Philharmonia and the Juventas New Music Ensemble, where her chamber opera, The Magic Mirror, drew considerable attention for its elegance and rich, intricate score.

Trombone Concerto (excerpt):

In The Composer’s Own Words
Rhythms and sounds can reveal the power of the invisible world. Turning the pages of the Nature’s Book of Life, one may re-discover a sense of mystery that is part and parcel of our existence. Learning to see the words that have not been written down gives one the ability to perceive the contours of light and darkness more clearly and understand the wind that
brings change. The difference between a deeper communication with the forces of nature and a method of divination disappears as future and the past become intertwined.

David Hertzberg (b.1990) is swiftly garnering recognition, with recent seasons seeing performances at the festivals of Aspen, Tanglewood, and Santa Fe, and on the stages of Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall (Opera News, The New York Times).

Highlights of his 2014-2015 season include premieres of new works for Young Concert Artists and the PRISM Quartet, with performances at Merkin Hall and Symphony Space, as well as performances at the Kennedy Center, a feature on APM’s Performance Today, a performance at Hong Kong’s The Intimacy of Creativity festival, and a reading with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Other upcoming projects include a large-scale concert work for Gotham Chamber Opera, to be premiered on their 2015-2016 season in New York.

Recent engagements include works for sopranos Julia Bullock and Jennifer Zetlan, pianists Ursula Oppens and Steven Lin, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Curtis Orchestra, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the Flux Quartet, the Dover Quartet, and the New Fromm Players.

Recent distinctions include those from Gotham Chamber Opera, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Composers Forum, Copland House, Yaddo, Tanglewood, ASCAP, BMI, and Young Concert Artists, where he currently serves as Composer-In-Residence.

David began his musical studies at the Colburn School in Los Angeles and received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees with Scholastic Distinction from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Samuel Adler. At his commencement, he was awarded the John Erskine Prize for outstanding artistic achievement throughout the course of his studies. He is currently pursuing an Artist Diploma at The Curtis Institute of Music, where he holds the Anthony B. Creamer III fellowship.

Nympharum, a cantata for high soprano and orchestra
performed by Jennifer Zetlan and the Juilliard Orchestra (2011)

In The Composer’s Own Words:
In the opening stanzas of The Auroras of Autumn (from which my work’s title is drawn), Stevens uses the image of a serpent thrashing after having shed its skin, glimmering and flashing as if possessed, as a metaphor for the majestic beauty of the Northern Lights. I found this idea, of something primordial, that is at once terrifying and arrestingly beautiful, to be a very poignant one, and one ripe for musical expression. With Spectre of the Spheres I sought to create something that moves and breathes like the unfettered Aurora, with a reckless vitality, inexorably, and of its own mystical accord.

Yuanyuan (Kay) HE began learning piano at age 5. At age 15, she began studying composition at the affiliated middle school of Shenyang Conservatory of China. As a double major undergraduate, Kay He studied with Tang Jianping in composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing (CCOM), and with Zhang Xiaofu at the Conservatory’s Center for Electroacoustic Music of China (CEMC). The winner of the Snow Scholarship, Kay He completed her Master’s degree in composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). While at UMKC, she studied under Dr. Zhou Long, Dr. Chen Yi, Dr. Paul Rudy and Dr. James Mobberley. Besides music, she also learned to paint at the UMKC Department of Art and Fine Arts. She is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in composition (DMA) at the University of Texas at Austin, studying under Dr. Dan Welcher, Dr. Russell Pinkston, Dr. Donald Grantham, and Dr. Yevgeniy Sharlat.

As a young composer, Kay has won many composition awards in the U.S. and abroad. Her piece On the Threshold of a Drizzly Reality was selected for 2014 performances at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Athens, Greece, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and the Root Signals music festival in Jacksonville, Florida; her piano trio Shadow of Dewdrops was selected for Gamma UT music festival in 2014; the orchestra piece Legends of Old Peking won the Seattle Symphony’s Celebrate Asia Composition in 2012; Dying Away won the 2011 DuoSolo Emerging Composer Competition; Destiny of the Sputnik was chosen in the 2011 Beijing Modern Music Festival Young Composers Project, and many other pieces have won awards or competitions in other parts of the world.

 Soliloquy Wings:

In the Composer’s Own Words:

Passeig de Grácia for orchestra is dedicated to my parents, who both gave me and taught me to appreciate life. The inspiration for this piece came during my solo trip to Barcelona. While wandering around the famous Passeig de Grácia (Passage de Grácia), I was impressed by the city, the so-called “The Great Enchantress.” The city is like a warm breeze from the Mediterranean Sea intertwined with a passionate and artistic spirit. Barcelona is the city that tells the whole world how it once made a fascinating dream come true. Antoni Gaudí was the dream shaper who filled the real world with gleaming colors, swirling sparks, and painted dreams. He used his magic to ignite the starry sky, embrace us, and fulfill our deepest dreams. These dreams are the remains of his time, floating along with the passion of art. Magic oozes from Barcelona. Mirth saturates in every lonely soul.

The orchestra is the medium to express my feeling of this glamorous city, and Gaudi, one of the greatest artists. This is my enchanting, dazzling, and passionate dream come true.

David “Clay” Mettens (b.1990) is currently a masters composition student at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. A native of Covington, KY, he completed his undergraduate studies at the University of South Carolina with a degree in music composition and a clarinet performance certificate. He has been a recipient of the McNair Scholarship; 2012 John and Lucretia Herr Composition Award (USC); the 2012 Cantey Award for Excellence; the 2013 Arthur M. Fraser Award, and the 2013 LeDare Robinson Undergraduate Award for Academic Excellence.

Clay has studied composition with John Fitz Rogers and Fang Man, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, David Liptak, Robert Morris, Robert Aldridge, David Dzubay and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, and computer music with Allan Schindler. His orchestra piece “Sleeping I am carried…” was the winner of Eastman’s 2014 Wayne Brewster Barlow Composition Prize, and received a premiere with the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra in October 2014. He was a finalist for the 2011, 2013, and 2014 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards and a regional finalist for the 2012 SCI/ASCAP Student Commission Competition. He has attended the Brevard Music Center and New Music on the Point Chamber Music Festival.Performances include the Elon University Wind Ensemble; Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music; numerous ensembles and computer music at Eastman including the Eastman Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra, the Eastman Wind Orchestra; the Brevard Sinfonia; and the USC Wind Ensemble.

David Mettens – Sleeping I am carried… (excerpt)

Program Notes:

“Sleeping I am carried…” is based on a melodic fragment from Alban Berg’s Mombert setting “Schlafend trägt man mich,” Op. 2, no. 2. I scatter references to this melody throughout, but perhaps most noticeable is the poetic connection between Mombert’s imagery and the atmosphere and form of my piece. In a dream, Mombert’s speaker traverses a great distance to return home, passing over a landscape whose rough outlines and blurry forms appear only in peripheral vision. My piece transports the listener through a hazy sonic landscape of overlapping musical ideas. One idea emerges and comes into focus, only to disappear again, as another comes to the fore. Wispy lines in the strings and flutes wind around each other, and rumbles ascend from the depths of the orchestra. In a moment of clarity near the end, Berg’s vocal line appears complete as the bass line of a radiant chorale. This subsides, and the piece comes to rest on an extended melody in the strings, concluding with a final evaporation of the dream world.