April 17, 2024 7:30pm

Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University 

presents

Caballito Negro + Friends

Birds, Bees, Electric Fish

with Sarah Tiedemann, flute and Christopher Whyte, percussion

Music Recital Hall

Southern Oregon University

Ashland, Oregon

PROGRAM

A Cracticus Fancie (2017) | Tessa Brinckman (b. 1963)

Tessa Brinckman, piccolo

Fixed audio by Tessa Brinckman

meditation for metal pipes (2021) | Emma O’Halloran (b. 1985)

Terry Longshore

video by Miles Inada, Terry Longshore, Christopher Lucas, and Sean O’Skea

Bloom (2019) | Roshanne Etezady (b. 1973)

Christopher Whyte, vibraphone

Pray (2010) | Allison Loggins-Hull (b. 1982)

Sarah Tiedemann, flute

Cuando hablan los árboles (2024) | Samuel Torres (b. 1976)

Caballito Negro

Intermission

Birds, Bees, Electric Fish (2023) | Juri Seo (b. 1981)

1. Birds

2. Bees

3. Electric Fish

Caballito Negro: Tessa Brinckman, flutes; Terry Longshore, percussion

Sarah Tiedemann, flutes

Christopher Whyte, percussion

West Coast Premiere

Program Notes:

The text of A Cracticus Fancie comes from a New Zealand poem, The Magpies, by Denis Glover (1912-1980). Skillfully wrought like an Irish ballad, this poem is well loved by young and old New Zealanders, with its tragic-comic depiction of the Depression era and the New Zealand landscape. Glover was one of the most influential figures in 20th Century New Zealand literature, a founder of the legendary Caxton Press, a decorated naval veteran and boxer. The voice heard in the audio is that of the poet, recorded at Radio New Zealand.

A Cracticus Fancie was inspired by five vignettes:

1. A First Nations traditional story in Australia says that cracticus tibicen (no relation to the European magpie) helped prise earth and sky apart, using twigs, saving the people from perpetual darkness. Colonists later brought this bird to New Zealand.

2. Denis was a close friend of composer Tessa Brinckman’s family, which includes renowned writer, A.R.D. Fairburn. Denis would visit her grandparents in Hamilton, a mischievous raconteur sitting at the kitchen table.

3. The story goes that Denis was driving a long distance, stopping to pee by the roadside. He saw a group of magpies nearby, and the poem was born. In this piece the composer imagined this meeting from the point of view of a magpie, who is aware of him, and the historical threads that weave birds and people together. All the fixed audio sounds other than the recorded poem are sourced from field recordings.

4. The Magpie is also a famous Irish folk song.

5. The Great Depression in the 1930s almost destroyed farming, which was central to New

Zealand's way of life.

meditation for metal pipes by Emma O’Halloran was a work that I co-commissioned as part of the “Everybody Hits” project organized by Adam Groh. Written for “reverb-drenched percussion quintet,” the piece is performed on 15 just-tuned metal pipes, three per player. When the SOU Percussion Ensemble performed the piece in 2021, I fell in love with its rich sonic world and melodic beauty.

I was starting to plan my balance | flow solo show program at that time, and had the idea to create a solo version of meditation, with four of the parts prerecorded, spatialized in the stereo field, and drenched in reverb. I then had the idea to record video of each of the four players, and to shoot those recordings in a cathedral to visually suggest the reverb present in that type of environment. I happened to be meeting with another favorite collaborator, SOU Digital Film Professor Chistopher Lucas, and described the project to him. He asked if I had ever heard of Unreal Engine and I said, “no.” Chris described this 3D computer graphics environment creation software to me, and said that Miles Inada and SOU Theatre Arts Professor of Scenic Design Sean O’Skea had been working with it. Chris said, “Sean could build you a cathedral!”

The next thing I knew the four of us were meeting and beginning to plan the creation of the version of meditation you are experiencing today, with four of me set in four different “reverb-suggestive” virtual environments: a cave, the NYC Time Square Subway Station, a factory, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland - a hat’s off to Emma. I had the pleasure of visiting St. Patrick’s this past October, and also visiting Emma while in Ireland. When I showed her some of Sean’s early renderings, she pointed to where she sang as a child in St. Patrick’s!

This collaboration with Chris, Miles, and Sean has been a delight – each of us bringing our own areas of expertise to the project and working on it together for several months. I am thrilled with the outcome, and excited to share this new version of meditation for metal pipes with you!

Bloom—In June, 2019, meteorologists took note of a “massive blob showing up on the National Weather Service’s radar.”1 They were shocked to realize that the weather itself didn’t reflect the conditions the radar indicated. In fact, the “blob” on the radar was not caused by a rainstorm in the vicinity; rather, the radar was detecting a massive cloud of ladybugs, measuring approximately 80 square miles, and flying at about 8000 feet.

As I later learned, it’s not uncommon for ladybugs to gather in large swarms, known as “blooms,” particularly during the spring. It’s been my experience that one ladybug, maybe two, elicits a response along the lines of “oh, how cute!” However, when I encounter a “micro- swarm” of, say, a dozen, I respond more like Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock’s The Birds. When I think about encountering a full bloom of ladybugs, to say nothing of an 80-square-mile swarm – well, suffice to say, it sets my teeth on edge to consider it.

In this piece, I was thinking about hundreds, even thousands, of tiny, little delicate things that, taken on their own, might seem sweetly harmless, but swarmed together en masse, they transcend their individuality and become part of something much bigger, something awe- inspiring, and maybe a little unnerving.

Bloom was composed in July, 2019, for my friend Jonathan Ovalle.

Pray (2010) came from a need of serious reflection and patience and is meant to be like an improvisation, spontaneous at each performance. The rhythm and time is very free, and though the piece is fully notated, the performer does not have to play in an exacting way, aside from a few rhythmic 4/4 sections. The electronic track is a combination of organ sounds, whispers, flute harmonics, and Islamic chanting, with much of the inspiration deriving from the sounds of various places of worship.

Birds, Bees, Electric Fish—Umwelt, the German word for environment, is used in biology to denote the perceptual world as experienced by a specific organism. I encountered the term in Ed Yong’s recent book An Immense World, but it has been in use since its introduction in 1909 by the German biologist Jakob von Uexküll. While our perception is limited to our own Umwelt, delineated by the limits of human perceptual capacity, we can imagine other animals’ Umwelten by studying their physiology and behaviors. The attempt at this impossible task of exiting the self-centered perception is a deeply human endeavor that may help recontextualize our relationship with other organisms and with the living world.

To compose the work, I began by selecting three organisms I found particularly interesting: birds, bees, and electric fish. How do birds hear their own songs? What goes on in the mind of a bee in a colony? And what does it feel like to be a fish feeling its three-dimensional surrounding via an electrical sensation on its skin?

In the first movement, “Birds,” the audience is invited to listen like a bird and become a bird via music. While it is impossible to reside in two Umwelten simultaneously, the continuum between listening as a bird and listening as a human can be suggested in music. Many experimental data show that birds listen faster, capable of differentiating minute variations that escape the human ear. In the article “What Birds Really Listen for in Birdsong (It’s Not What You Think)” in Scien8fic American, Adam Fishbein introduces experiments involving Indigo Buntings. The buntings sing in paired syllables, which appears to be the most salient feature of their songs to humans. However, recent experiments show that the buntings are mainly interested in fine detail, more so than the paired nature of their songs. To explore this phenomenon, I began by slowing down a song of Indigo Bunting to 1⁄2, 1⁄3, and 1⁄4 of its original speed and transcribing them. They were modified to fit my musical instincts along the way. The various temporal versions of the song unfold in an imaginary sonic forest, ending with the slowest rendering in an attempt to enter the mind of a bird.

While the birds are omen considered individually, the bees are omen regarded as a collective organism in a hive. Lars Chittka’s A Mind of a Bee introduces some fascinating views not only on how bees come to collective decisions and learn from each other but also on what might go on in a single bee’s mind. Do they feel optimism, pleasure, or pain? The first part of the second movement, “Bees,” is a sonification of hexagons, laid out in a pitch map derived from Euler’s Tonnetz. The ensemble collectively explores the pitch space, unfolding harmonies in a fractal-like process. Perhaps it’s not too far-fetched to think that the mind of a human filling a chromatic space may be similar to the mind of a bee trying to maximize the space within its hive. The second part of the movement is inspired by the bee dance. (The bees are known to wiggle and rotate to communicate with other bees about the location of potential food sources or a new home.) I composed two contrasting melodies—symbolizing two bees dancing—that gradually form a consensus. Once the process is complete, there is a dance party. (It’s sort of a fugue.) I had to speculate that the bees feel something akin to joy in agreement. The hexagon motif returns at the end while the ensemble scatters for the finale.

Sonically representing the electric fish’s perception of the epidermic electroreceptors proved harder to conceive. The 1988 article “Electric Fish Measure Distance in the Dark” by Gerhard von Der Emde et al. in Nature Magazine shares some interesting findings: objects farther away are perceived on the larger surface area of the skin (opposite of our retinal perception), and the gradients of the edges provide the fish with an idea of the objects’ shapes. I decided to adopt a more intuitive approach and paint five sonic scenes surrounding the audience. The diverse sound waves with distinct timbres originating from various locations activate the eardrums, creating an illusion of epidermic perception. The audience is encouraged to mentally map their surroundings replete with diverse vibrating objects.

The translations of senses become more abstract as the piece unfolds; from birds to bees and to electric fish, various senses—auditory, visual, kinetic, and tactile—are alluded to through sounds only. Ironically, my attempt to enter the minds of other beings necessitated a heightened sense of humanity, as I strove to imagine their diverse non-human senses through a lens of familiarity and empathy. It involved hearing birds slower, imbuing them with lyricism; imagining the serene and joyful minds of bees; and experiencing a sense of touch and sight through the act of listening. (J.S.)

Bios:

Bi-coastal duo Caballito Negro is known for its creative and compelling performances, generating an ecstatic blend of modern and traditional aesthetics. Multi-flutist Tessa Brinckman and multi-percussionist Terry Longshore draw their name (“dark little horse”) from Federico García Lorca’s poem, Canción de Jinete (1860). They collaborate with visionary artists, using an arsenal of instruments to push the artistic experience to new heights, and always in the spirit of duende.

Heralded for their “wildly personal, intercultural, modern music…vivid, expressive music that could be performed anywhere” (Oregon Arts Watch), the duo melds narratives, images, and themes in imaginative curations. Caballito Negro envisions true cultural exchange through innovative projects with local, regional, and international artists. Their first recording, the EP Songlines (2016), was praised for its “absolutely gorgeous tone”, “understated virtuosity” (Joshua Cheek) and being “expertly produced and played” (NFA Quarterly), featuring the music of William Kraft, David P. Jones and Ivan Trevino.

Numerous music collaborations, commissions and arrangements include the work of artists such as the “mad-scientist-of-music” Mark Applebaum, oud-master Ronnie Malley, percussionist Ivan Trevino, opera composer Bongani Ndodana Breen, former LA Philharmonic composer-in-residence William Kraft, and Princeton composer Juri Seo.

Caballito Negro also composes as a duo, synthesizing their eclectic musical dialects. Their work as resident artists has been featured at the Ashland Independent Film Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Festival of New American Music, Britt Music & Arts Festival, as well as in many university, theater, and house concerts in the U.S. They share years of musical and life experience, in giving joint masterclasses to explore questions of intercultural exchange and hybrid forms.

Projects in 2024 include premiere performances in NYC, Baltimore, Princeton and Oregon, of Birds, Bees, Electric Fish, a newly commissioned work (and significant addition to the flute and percussion repertoire) from Juri Seo. The duo led this commission consortium in 2023, with 32 international participants. Caballito Negro is the recipient of both a grant from Chamber Music America’s Artistic Projects program (funded through the generosity of The Howard Gilman Foundation) and from UMEZ, for the NYC portion of the tour in October 2024. The duo will also release their single Bare White Bones, composed by Wally Gunn, and present new works written for them by Composers Concordance in NYC.

Interdisciplinary flutist/composer Tessa Brinckman has been praised for her “chameleon-like gifts” and “virtuoso elegance” (Gramophone), an “excellent…flutist” (Willamette Week) and “highlight of Portland” (New Music Box), who “play(s) her instrument with great beauty and eloquence” (Music Matters New Zealand). Originally from New Zealand, she has premiered well over a hundred new works (commissioning almost thirty), with many acclaimed classical music ensembles, concert series, musicians and composers across the globe. Now based in New York City since 2022, she enjoys creating and performing unique work that honors synesthesia, dialect, innate meter and collaboration, often on geo-political themes in a surrealist spirit.

She performs internationally as an orchestral, chamber, soloist and resident artist, in numerous and wildly diverse productions, from the Oregon Symphony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL), Waikato and Canterbury Universities (New Zealand), Festival of New American Music (CA), CCRMA (Stanford, CA), Hermanus Whale Festival (South Africa), Goodman Theater (Chicago), Britt Festival Orchestra (OR), Wuzhen Theatre Festival (China), to Poisson Rouge and Roulette (New York City).

Playing flute, piccolo, alto, bass, contrabass and baroque flutes, and miscellaneous keyboards, she also co-directs the ever-polymathic bi-coastal duo, Caballito Negro, with percussionist Terry Longshore, commissioning significant new work for flute and percussion. Her composition team for Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman’s White Snake was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award (2014). Her experimental video (with Jane Rigler), Women in Parallel Empires (2021), exploring the moon, extraction, and “Empire”, and the animation The Gorgon Cycles (2023) (created with Miles Inada and Devyn McConachie) depicting Medusa’s rise in the Anthropocene, have won 22 film festival awards for music scoring, animation and experimental film. She has served on the music faculties of colleges such as Southern Oregon University, and teaches international workshops and masterclasses that address flute culture, music-making and artist activism.

Tessa’s current projects include her critically acclaimed album release, Take Wing, Roll Back (New Focus Recordings), that embodies her personal and artistic connections to New Zealand, USA, South Africa and France; releasing several of her scores for various flutes and mixed media; guest artist collaborations in NYC (including concerts at Le Poisson Rouge and Roulette)  and other new music concerts across the US; with recent support from Bethany Arts Community Interdisciplinary Residency, New York Women Composers Seed Money Grant, Manhattan Arts Grant and Chamber Music America (funded through the generosity of The Howard Gilman Foundation).

Terry Longshore is a percussionist whose genre-crossing work exhibits the artistry of the concert stage, the spontaneity of jazz, and the energy of a rock club. Based in Ashland, Oregon, he maintains an energetic career as a performer, composer, and educator. Blue Sky Music writes, “Longshore’s understated virtuosity is percussion poetry at its best.”

Whether collaborating with artists of diverse media, composing live music for dance and theatre, or premiering works by today’s most ground-breaking composers, Terry Longshore brings a dynamic voice to every musical encounter. He is the artistic director of Knock on Wood Percussion, and the co-artistic director of several ensembles: flute and percussion duo Caballito Negro with Tessa Brinckman, percussion duo Skin & Bones with Brett Reed, and Left Edge Collective with David Bithell. He is also Principal Percussionist of the Rogue Valley Symphony and performs actively as a member of the Portland Percussion Group, Flamenco Pacifico, and Dúo Flamenco, and was a founding member of Conundrum, Sonoluminescence, and red fish blue fish. He has appeared at numerous festivals and concert series including the Bang on a Can Long Play Festival (Brooklyn) and Bang on a Can Marathons (NYC), the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, the Britt Music & Arts Festival, Makrokosmos Project (Portland), the Transplanted Roots International Percussion Symposia (Montreal, Guanajuato, and San Diego), Musik i Väst Festival (Sweden), the Cabrillo Music Festival, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Festival of New American Music, the Northwest Percussion Festival, The Oregon Fringe Festival, Center for New Music (San Francisco), and numerous times at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC). His compositions for percussion have been performed at festivals and competitions throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Longshore is currently touring his solo program, “balance | flow – an intermedia percussion experience” featuring the music of Mark Applebaum, Erik Griswold, Yaz Lancaster, Joe W. Moore III, Emma O’Halloran, Phong Tran, Nick Zammuto, and mackxswell and Terry Longshore and with visual creations by Miles Inada, Terry Longshore, Christopher Lucas, Sean O’Skea, and Nick Zammuto.

Longshore has premiered over 100 compositions for solo percussion, percussion ensemble, chamber ensemble, symphony orchestra, and the theatre. In 2023 he premiered Teddy Abrams’ Mammoth with Yo-Yo Ma and the Louisville Orchestra in the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky. With nearly 100 tracks on Spotify and other music platforms, his recordings include multiple CDs for composer Mark Applebaum on the innova and Tzadik labels, the percussion music of Iannis Xenakis on Mode Recordings, music of percussion maverick William Kraft on Albany, and Michael Gordon’s Natural History on Cantaloupe Music. He also champions new solo and chamber works for percussion by commissioning, organizing, and participating in consortium commissions from a diverse body of composers. His composition Trap Hat with his son, mackxswell, is featured as the theme music to Jefferson Public Radio’s The Jefferson Exchange. Terry Longshore is a Marimba One Vibe Artist, and an Artist Endorser for Black Swamp Percussion, Zildjian Cymbals, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Remo Drumheads, Gon Bops Percussion, and Beato Bags.

As Professor of Music, Artist in Residence, and Director of Percussion Studies at Southern Oregon University, he directs Left Edge Percussion and the SOU Percussion Ensemble and in addition to the the percussion curriculum has taught courses including Recreational & Empowerment Drumming, Business of Music, Art & Music of the 20th Century to Present, and Music of the World. He is a trained HealthRHYTHMS facilitator, and has facilitated Recreational & Empowerment Drumming workshops and classes for hundreds of participants, including at the Interlochen Arts Academy and Portland Summer Percussion Academy.

Terry Longshore holds bachelor’s degrees from the California State University at Fresno (Business Administration – Computer Applications and Systems) and Sacramento (Music – Percussion Performance) and master’s and doctoral degrees in Contemporary Music Performance from the University of California, San Diego. His education includes significant study of Spanish flamenco and the classical music of India, including study at the Ali Akbar College of Music. His teachers include Steven Schick, Daniel Kennedy, Ronald Holloway, David Glyde, Chuck Flores, Swapan Chaudhuri, and Kartik Seshadri. He enjoys hiking, fly fishing, cycling, and especially traveling the world with his wife Jennifer and hanging out with his children, Madeleine and Maxwell.

Sarah Tiedemann currently serves as Artistic Director and flutist of Third Angle New Music and as a member of the Oregon Ballet Theatre Orchestra. She has performed across North America, Europe, Australia, and China with groups including the Swedish Radio Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Norrköping Symphony, Oregon Symphony, and Boise Philharmonic, and at festivals including Chamber Music Northwest, the Britt Festival, the Astoria Music Festival, and the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP). 

A contemporary music specialist, Sarah has appeared with Third Angle, Cascadia Composers, Northwest New Music, and Boston’s Callithumpian Consort. Her world premiere performance of Derek Jacoby’s Flute Concerto was broadcast internationally on WGBH’s Art of the States. She was recently featured on Third Angle’s album Alone, Dancing: Music of South Asian-American Composers. In 2021 she joined forces with violist Wendy Richman and harpist Sophie Baird-Daniel to form the trio Three Musicians Tonal Landscaping, performing works of the late-20th and 21st centuries.

Also a skilled educator and arts administrator, she previously served as Executive Director of Young Musicians & Artists (YMA) summer arts camp and as Marketing Director at Chamber Music Northwest. She is a faculty member at Lewis & Clark College and previously taught at the International Youth Music Camp in Chengdu, China, Portland State University, and Willamette University.

Ms. Tiedemann graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin Conservatory and a Master of Music degree with Honors in Performance and Academics from the New England Conservatory. A national winner of the U.S. Department of Education’s Jacob K. Javits Fellowship in Performance, she went on to pursue postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, funded by a generous award from the American-Scandinavian Foundation. Her past teachers include Jeanne Baxtresser, Michel Debost, John Heiss, Karen Gifford, and Tobias Carron. She currently resides in Milwaukie, Oregon with her husband and two cats.

Called “hypnotic, enthralling…dynamic” (Oregon ArtsWatch), Christopher Whyte (b. 1983) is known for his wide-ranging artistry as a percussionist, timpanist, collaborator, composer, and educator. He has presented recitals, concerts, and masterclasses internationally in Asia, Europe, Canada and throughout the United States. 

As an original member of the Portland Percussion Group, he is dedicated to fostering percussion performance through dynamic concerts, engaging collaborations, and the creation of new music. Through their call for scores project, the Portland Percussion Group has provided the impetus for over sixty new works for percussion chamber ensemble. In October 2020, the quartet made its European debut performing a full-length concert at the GAIDA Festival of Contemporary Music in Vilinus, Lithuania in addition to collaborating on Steve Reich’s iconic Drumming with the Colin Currie Quartet. 

He is a founding member and resident faculty of the International Percussion Institute, a summer percussion performance and research institute, marimba competition, and composers workshop held annually in Aberdeen, Scotland. Recent projects of the Institute include a collaboration with British composer Joe Duddell and the Sound Festival to develop new works through shared experiences between young composers and Institute percussionists. Whyte also performs as percussionist with Third Angle New Music Ensemble, collaborating with a wide range of musicians and composers to advance the development and performance of new music. He has collaborated closely with composers Gabriela Lena Frank, Pauline Oliveros, Sarah Hennies, William Kraft, Allen Strange, Stephen Taylor, Michael Johanson, Mendel Lee, and Angélica Negrón, among others as an active commissioner of new music for percussion. 

He regularly performs with the Oregon Symphony, including on their Grammy-nominated recordings Spirit of the American Range and Aspects of America: the Pulitzer Edition, as well as with the Portland Opera Orchestra, Oregon Ballet Theater, 45th Parallel Music, fEARnoMusic, The Bach Cantata Choir, Portland Symphonic Choir, and the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus. Additional performance credits include the Vancouver Symphony, Oregon Bach Festival, Astoria Music Festival, Atlantic Symphony, New Bedford Symphony, Eugene Symphony, Newport Symphony, ALEA III contemporary music ensemble, and the Boston Civic Symphony. He most recently appeared as concerto soloist with the Missoula Symphony, performing Pascal Le Boeuf’s Triple Concerto, and has performed with arx duo in performances of Dominic Marcott’s Harmonic Canon. Whyte recently released “Cold Stability,” his debut solo recording on New Focus Recordings, featuring works by Lou Harrison, Sarah Hennies, Toshio Hosokawa, and an original composition for percussion and electronics, commissioned by Third Angle New Music and inspired by the process of winemaking so intertwined in the life of Oregon’s Willamette Valley. 

A dedicated teacher, Whyte is currently Percussion Area Coordinator at Portland State University, and has served on the faculty of Western Oregon University. He serves as the director of the Portland Summer Percussion Academy, a week-long educational gathering of high school percussionists focused on a broad range of western and non-western percussion instruments. The Academy annually brings together students and faculty from around the United States. Whyte has served as a member of the Percussive Arts Society Percussion Ensemble Committee and University Percussion Pedagogy Committee, and is currently President of the Oregon Chapter of the PAS. He has performed or presented at the Other Minds Festival of Contemporary Music, Connecticut Summerfest, New Music Gathering, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, the College Music Society (CMS), Northwest region NAfME conference, The Midwest Clinic, nienteForte Festival, Oregon Music Educators Association Conference (OMEA), the PICA Festival, New York’s Fringe Festival, and Music for All National Chamber Music Festival.

Whyte holds degrees from the University of Oregon (B.M., M.M.), and Boston University (D.M.A.)  and his former teachers include the late Charles Dowd and Boston Symphony Principal Timpanist Timothy Genis. He is a Yamaha Performing Artist, and proudly endorses Vic Firth Drumsticks, Remo Drum Heads, Zildjian Cymbals, and Black Swamp Percussion Instruments. His compositions are published with Tapspace, MSC, Matrix, and Bachovich publishing. 

Chris lives in Newberg, Oregon with his wife Charlotte and their son Forrest.

Irish composer Emma O’Halloran is interested in joy, wonder, hope, and connection, and her music is driven by a desire to capture the magic of what it means to be human. Freely intertwining acoustic and electronic music, Emma has written for folk musicians, chamber ensembles, turntables, laptop orchestra, symphony orchestra, opera, and theatre, and her work has been described as “intensely beautiful” (Washington Post) and “unencumbered, authentic, and joyful” (I Care If You Listen).

Known for her unique ability to fuse elements of pop, rock, and electronic music while exploring the colours and textures of acoustic instruments, her work has found a wide audience and has been featured at various music festivals such as Classical NEXT, PODIUM Esslingen, New Music Dublin, Tokyo’s Born Creative Festival, and Bang on a Can LOUD Weekend. Additionally, her music has been performed by Crash Ensemble, Friction Quartet, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, ensemble reflektor, PRISM Quartet, and the Irish National Symphony Orchestra, amongst others.

In recent years, Emma’s passion for storytelling has led her to explore multidisciplinary projects such as soundwalks and opera. She has written works for Irish National Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Beth Morrison Projects, and her recent operas, TRADE and Mary Motorhead, received rave reviews from their performances at LA Opera and New York’s PROTOTYPE Festival with the LA Times calling her “a kind of modern-day Monteverdi”.

Emma loves working with people of all ages to explore and create music, and she has served as a mentor for various composition programmes in Ireland and the United States. In 2021, in partnership with the Irish National Concert Hall, she founded the Creative Lab, an award-winning mentorship programme for young composers from traditionally underrepresented groups in music composition.

Emma holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University and is currently working as a freelance composer. Current and future projects include works for Friction Quartet, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, a saxophone concerto, and a new opera with Naomi Louisa O’Connell.

As a young musician, Roshanne Etezady studied piano and flute, and developed an interest in many different styles of music, from the musicals of Steven Sondheim to the 1980's power ballads and Europop of her teenage years. One fateful evening evening in 1986, she saw Philip Glass and his ensemble perform as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live. This event marked the beginning of her interest in contemporary classical music, as well as her interest in being a composer herself.

Since then, Etezady's works have been commissioned by the Albany Symphony, Dartmouth Symphony, eighth blackbird, Music at the Anthology, and the PRISM Saxophone Quartet. She has been a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Performers and ensembles including Rêlache, Amadinda Percussion Ensemble, Ensemble De Ereprijs, and the Dogs of Desire have performed Etezady's music throughout the United States and Europe. Roshanne Etezady's music has earned recognition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Korean Society of 21st Century Music, the Jacob K. Javits Foundation, Meet the Composer, and ASCAP.

An active teacher, Etezady has taught at the Interlochen Arts Camp, Yale University, Saint Mary's College, and the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. She has given masterclasses at Holy Cross College, the Juilliard School, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.

Etezady holds academic degrees from Northwestern University and Yale University, and she has worked intensively with numerous composers, including William Bolcom, Martin Bresnick, Michael Daugherty, and Ned Rorem. She completed her doctorate at the University of Michigan in March, 2005.

Allison Loggins-Hull is a “powerhouse” (The Washington Post) flutist, composer, and producer whose work defies classification and has been described as “evocative” by The Wall Street Journal. She has been associated with acts across the spectrum of popular and classical music including Flutronix, Hans Zimmer, Lizzo, Imani Winds, Alarm Will Sound, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Alicia Hall Moran, and Jason Moran. Her music is resonant with social and political themes of the current moment, encompassing motherhood, Blackness, and cultural identity. Loggins-Hull and Nathalie Joachim co-founded the critically acclaimed duo Flutronix, which has been praised by The Wall Street Journal for being able “to redefine the instrument” and for “redefining the flute and modernizing its sound by hauling it squarely into the world of popular music” (MTV).

Beginning with the 2022-2023 season, and continuing for three seasons, Loggins-Hull is the Cleveland Orchestra’s eleventh Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow. In addition to several Cleveland Orchestra commissions, including an expanded arrangement of her composition Can You See? in the 2022-23 season, Loggins-Hull’s work will be centered around the narratives and history of Cleveland, through chamber music performances and composition workshops with students. During the 2022-23 season, Loggins-Hull performs with Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran at the Mississippi Museum of Art, with ETHEL at the Brooklyn Public Library, and on an East Coast tour with Flutronix and Third Coast Percussion. As a composer, she has eight world premieres, a U.S. premiere, and a New York premiere this season, including 7th Ave. S for the Cygnus Ensemble at New York City’s The Village Trip; the world premiere of her Persist at the Brooklyn Public Library; Love Always with Toshi Reagon and Alarm Will Sound at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center; a world premiere performed by yMusic at Carnegie Hall; Chasing Balance premiered at Toronto’s Koerner Hall, UCSB Arts & Lectures, Carnegie Hall as part of cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s FRAGMENTS; and a world premiere for Castle of Our Skins at Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

Last season, Loggins-Hull joined the Bang on a Can All-Stars for their People’s Commissioning Fund concert and performed Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran’s Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration at Cal Performances in Berkeley. Her compositions were performed by the LA Phil and San Francisco Symphony, and she premiered two projects with Flutronix: Black Being at the Arts Club of Chicago and Cincinnati Symphony and Discourse with Carolina Performing Arts. The New Jersey Symphony premiered Can You See? and her commissioning project Diametrically Composed – composed with fellow composers/mothers Alicia Hall Moran, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Jessica Meyer – received its long-awaited premiere at Bryant Park in New York City. 

Highlights of Loggins-Hull’s performances include concerts at The Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, World Cafe Live, and many other major venues and festivals around the world. She has composed for Flutronix, Julia Bullock, and many others, and has been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carolina Performing Arts and The Library of Congress. In support of her work, Loggins-Hull has been awarded grants from New Music USA, and a fellowship at The Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood, Florida.

With Flutronix, she has released two full studio albums (Flutronix and 2.0), a live album (Live From the Attucks Theatre), an EP (City of Breath) and is signed to Village Again Records in Japan. As a member of The Re-Collective Orchestra, Loggins-Hull was co-principal flutist on the soundtrack to Disney’s 2019 remake of The Lion King, working closely with Hans Zimmer. She was a co-producer of Nathalie Joachim’s celebrated album Fanm d’Ayiti, which was nominated for a 2020 GRAMMY for Best World Music Album. On the small screen, she has been featured in an internationally broadcast ESPN Super Bowl commercial, the 62nd annual GRAMMYs Award Show and the Black Girls Rock! Awards Show. Continuing her work in film, Loggins-Hull composed the score for Bring Them Back, a 2019 award-winning documentary about the legendary dancer Maurice Hines directed by Jon Carluccio and executive produced by Debbie Allen. 

Allison Loggins-Hull is a former faculty member of The Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program and teaching artist at The Juilliard School’s Global Ventures. From 2018-2022, Allison Loggins-Hull served on the flute faculty of The John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University. Born in Chicago, she lives with her family in Montclair, New Jersey.

Originally from Bogotá, Colombia, based in Brooklyn, NY, celebrated Latin Grammy Award-winning percussionist and composer Samuel Torres thrives at the intersection of Afro-Latin rhythms, Latin jazz, and contemporary classical music. “…intelligent, sophisticated and explosive." – JazzTimes Magazine 

Torres has performed, arranged, produced and/or recorded with the “who’s who” of the jazz, Latin pop and the classical world, including such luminaries as Tito Puente, Paquito D’Rivera, Yo-Yo Ma, Chick Corea, Alejandro Sanz, Ricky Martin, Don Byron, Richard Bona, Arturo Sandoval, Lila Downs, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Angelique Kidjo, Marc Anthony, Rubén Blades, Fonseca, Andrés Cepeda, Thalía, Cecile McLorin Salvant, Bridget Kibbey, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Nashville Symphony, and his country’s own international superstar, Shakira. He has been featured as a composer and soloist with classical orchestras such as Berlin Symphoniker, City of London Sinfonia, Bogotá Philharmonic, Medellín Philharmonic, Delaware University Orchestra, Berklee Composition Orchestra,  Gainesville Chamber Orchestra, and the Cali Philharmonic.

Torres won the Latin Grammy Award for the Best Classical Record with his album 'Regreso,' a concerto for congas and symphony orchestra in 2019. He is a three-time recipient of the New Jazz Works Grant by Chamber Music America. Torres received 2nd place at the Thelonious Monk Jazz Hand Percussion Competition in 2000. In 2023, he earned his master’s degree in classical composition from the prestigious Manhattan School of Music, where he was honored with the Nicolas Flagello Award for his outstanding achievements as a composer.

Juri Seo* (b. 1981.12.31) is a Korean-American composer and pianist based in Princeton, New Jersey. She seeks to write music that encompasses extreme contrast through compositions that are unified and fluid, yet complex. She merges many of the fascinating aspects of music from the past century—in particular its expanded timbral palette and unorthodox approach to structure—with a deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and classical form. With its fast-changing tempi and dynamics, her music explores the serious and the humorous, the lyrical and the violent, the tranquil and the obsessive. She hopes to create music that loves, that makes a positive change in the world—however small—through the people who are willing to listen.

Her composition honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and the Andrew Imbrie Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, Copland House Residency Award, and the Otto Eckstein Fellowship from Tanglewood. She has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, the Goethe Institut, and the Tanglewood Music Center. Her portrait albums "Mostly Piano" and “Respiri” were released by Innova Recordings. She holds a D.M.A. (Dissertation: Jonathan Harvey's String Quartets, 2013) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied with Reynold Tharp. She has also attended the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome, corsi di perfezionamento with Ivan Fedele) and Yonsei University (Seoul, B.M.). She has been a composition fellow at the Tanglewood, Bang on a Can, and SoundSCAPE festivals, the Wellesley Composers Conference, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She is Associate Professor of Music at Princeton University.

Juri lives in Lawrenceville, just outside of Princeton, with her husband, percussionist Mark Eichenberger and a little mutt named Roman.

*Note on pronunciation: In North America, my name is pronounced [Jew-ri Suh].