Artists

Donald Nally collaborates with creative artists, leading orchestras, and art museums to make new works for choir that address social and environmental issues. He has commissioned nearly 200 works and, with his ensemble The Crossing (Musical America’s 2024 Ensemble of the Year), has produced 35 albums, winning three GRAMMY® Awards for Best Choral Performance, while nominated nine times. 

The Crossing is a professional chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally, dedicated to performing new music and committed to addressing social, environmental, and political issues through nearly 180 commissioned premieres. Collaborating with prestigious ensembles and venues like the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, Park Avenue Armory, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall, The Crossing has released 35 albums, earning three GRAMMY® Awards for Best Choral Performance and multiple nominations. The Crossing is Musical America's 2024 Ensemble of The Year.

Carol Barnett writes audacious and engaging music. She is known for breaking the mold with meter changes, differing tonal centers, unusual instrument combinations, and her love of fast tempi. Despite these typical thumbprints, Barnett’s works are diverse, uncovering the needs of each piece and each text with her characteristic integrity. Barnett’s varied catalog includes works for solo voice, piano, chorus, diverse chamber ensembles, orchestra, and wind ensemble. 

Deborah Kavasch, BMI composer, soprano, educator, and specialist in extended vocal techniques, has had works commissioned and performed in North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, and China. She has received grants and residencies in composition and performance, was a 1987 Fulbright Senior Scholar to Stockholm, and has appeared in major international music centers and festivals in concerts, solo recitals, workshops, lecture/demonstrations, and television and radio broadcasts since 1981.

Multi award-winning composer and pianist Christopher Jessup is an artist of formidable prowess. Jessup has garnered acclaim for his “imaginative handling of atmosphere” [Fanfare] and his “high standard of technique” [New York Concert Review], cementing himself as one of the foremost composer-performers of his generation.

A native of rural Colorado, Leanna Kirchoff’s music career began in a farmyard, singing her own songs to an audience of family and a few barn cats. Her early musical development also included studying piano and accompanying the choir at her local church. Kirchoff credits these early experiences as the genesis for her work as a composer whose catalog of music has grown to include many kinds of songs, musical theater pieces, sacred and non-liturgical choral music, and operas.

Arizona composer Dr. Anne Kilstofte (Kilz-tofft) spent her early winters in Minnesota amid her mother’s paint tubes and pastels, but her father’s influence also played a role by sharing his recordings, introducing her to a wealth of composers including Shostakovich, Grieg, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, Brahms, Dvorak, Schubert, and even Big Band to name just a few. This early introduction is her earliest memory of a world where she was encouraged to create and use her imagination. Her use of color and lyricism and her adeptness at writing for voice may stem from this. Critics often mention her writing using “exceptional variety of tone color, conjuring landscapes that are sometimes misty, sometimes luminous, always atmospheric…” (International Alliance for Women in Music).

Composer Karen Siegel creates innovative, engaging, and meaningful choral and vocal works. Hailed as “colorful and at times groovy” (WQXR.org), her works are frequently performed by the New York City-based ensemble C4: the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective, which she co-founded in 2005. Recent commissions include the choral sound installation "Lessons of Stone," for the Astoria Choir at the Noguchi Gallery in Long Island City; and the feminist collaborative work Vision of Flight for the Danish National Girls’ Choir and cellist Henrik Dam Thomsen.

Adam Estes is associate professor of music at the University of Mississippi, where he teaches saxophone, coaches woodwind chamber ensembles, and teaches woodwinds methods courses. Prior to working in Mississippi, he was assistant professor at Minot State University. Formerly a band director in the public schools in Mason TX, Estes has also held posts as visiting professor of saxophone at Furman University and the University of South Carolina, as well as instructorships at Presbyterian College and the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. He is the founding member of the Assembly Quartet, which celebrated their 20th year in 2023, and maintains an active performance schedule as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician. Abroad, his performing career has taken him to venues in Scotland, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Belgium. Estes is a Légère Endorsing Artist, Yamaha Performing Artist, and has recorded with PARMA Recordings, Albany Records, AMP Recordings, Mark Records, and MSR Classics.

Adrienne Park has extensive experience as a collaborative pianist in chamber, symphonic, and contemporary music settings. She has performed in recital with violinist Joshua Bell, cellists Shauna Rolston and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, bassist Edgar Meyer, flutists Paul Edmond Davies, Timothy Hutchins, and Tara Helen O’Connor, bassoonist Frank Morelli, saxophonist Nikita Zimin, horn artist Frøydis Ree Wekre, percussion group NEXUS, soprano Mary Wilson, and tenor Telly Leung.  Park is Assistant Professor of Collaborative Piano at the University of Mississippi. She mentors graduate collaborative pianists, coaches chamber ensembles, and has collaborated with UM students and faculty since 2001. She is the Artistic Director of the UM Music concert series Sonic Explorations which features multimedia performances with music faculty and professional musicians in the region. Themed concerts focus on a genre, region, or set of composers, exploring the sound world of that theme. Central to concert events is the use of multimedia – projected film, art, and poetry — with unique lighting designs and innovative stage positioning.

Clarinetist Gary Dranch, a specialist in new and contemporary music, obtained his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1981. Dranch has devoted his career to promoting new compositions for clarinet and enlarging its repertoire. As a native New Yorker, Dranch returned home to embark on a freelance career, performing and championing new music compositions with NYU’s Contemporary Players, The New Repertory Ensemble of New York, The American New Music Consortium, The Forum For New Music at NYU, and with North/South Consonance, performing at The Loeb Center, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, and LaMama, among other contemporary new music venues.

Founded in 1924 by visionary violin teacher Mary V. Dodge, Portland Youth Philharmonic provides young musicians in Portland OR with a challenging opportunity to explore their creativity while receiving the highest quality musical education. The nation’s first youth orchestra, PYP has produced consistently inspiring performances and upheld a tradition of excellence since its first public concert in February 1925. Alumni of this organization can be found around the world in professional orchestras, teaching music at every level, and promoting music education as an important life skill that benefits individuals in any career path.

Sirius Quartet combines exhilarating repertoire with unequaled improvisational fire. These conservatory-trained performer-composers shine with precision, soul and raw energy, championing a forward-thinking, genre-defying approach. Since their debut concert at the original Knitting Factory in New York City, Sirius has played some of the most important venues in the world, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Beijing Music Festival, the Cologne Music Triennale, the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Stuttgart Jazz, Musique Actuelle in Canada, the Taichung Jazz Fest — Taiwan’s biggest jazz event — and many others.

The Canadian Encyclopedia calls Christina Petrowska Quilico, C.M., OOnt, FRSC, “one of Canada’s most celebrated pianists. Equally adept at Classical, Romantic and Contemporary repertoires...she is also a noted champion of Canadian composers.” She was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2020 “for her celebrated career as a classical and contemporary pianist, and for championing Canadian music” and to the Order of Ontario in 2022 “for opening the ears of music lovers through her performances and recordings, her teaching at York University and her establishment of The Christina and Louis Quilico Award at the Ontario Arts Foundation and Canadian Opera Company.” She was also inducted in 2021 into the Royal Society of Canada, “the country’s highest honor an individual can achieve in the Arts, Social Sciences and Sciences.” In September 2023, the Ontario Arts Council named her winner of its Oskar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Performance for having “reached a degree of international attention through appearances in other countries, and/or through broadcast and recordings,” with the jury asserting, “She is a legend.” 

Paul Paccione was born in New York City in 1952. He studied classical guitar and music theory at the Mannes College of Music (B.M. 1974). While at Mannes, he was influenced by composer Eric Richards to begin compositional study. Subsequently, he began private composition studies with composer Harley Gaber. He continued composition studies at the University of California, San Diego, with composer Kenneth Gaburo (M.A., 1977). He later studied composition with composer/conductor William Hibbard, at the University of Iowa (Ph.D., 1984). 

Joseph T. Spaniola is a composer on a passionate quest to engage the hearts and minds of audiences and performers through the communicative powers of music. Spaniola is active as a composer, arranger, educator, conductor, lecturer, producer, clinician, and adjudicator. He has composed works for band, orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments, voice, choir, and electronic tape. His works have received honors from National Band Association, The American Prize, Global Music Awards, Florida State Music Teachers Association, Dallas Wind Symphony, and others.

Richard E. Brown, a native of New York State and has been active as a composer-arranger and music educator for many years. His training includes M.M. and D.M. degrees in composition from Florida State University, as well as a B.A. in music education from Central College, which named him a Distinguished Alumnus in 1983. His principal composition studies were with Carlisle Floyd, John Boda, and Charles Carter. He is a member of ASCAP and is represented in the catalogs of several trade publishers, as well as his personal imprint Dacker Music.

Acclaimed as “dynamic and knowledgeable” by the Buenos Aires Herald, Croatian conductor Miran Vaupotić has worked with eminent orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Berliner Symphoniker, the Russian National Orchestra, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Budapest Symphony Orchestra MÁV, Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional Argentina, and others, performing in major halls around the globe such as Carnegie Hall, Wiener Musikverein, Berliner Philharmonie, Rudolfinum, Smetana Hall, Victoria Hall, Forbidden City Concert Hall, Shanghai Oriental Art Center, Dubai Opera, Tchaikovsky Hall, International House of Music, CBC Glenn Gould Studio, and more.

Sophia Serghi (b. 1972) was born in Nicosia, Cyprus and is now a resident of the United States. She has written works for stage, orchestra, and chamber ensembles, along with her vocal and multimedia works, and her compositions have been performed throughout Europe and the United States.

Michael J. Evans is an American composer based in Washington DC. He has recorded with pianist Karolin Rojahn, Sirius String Quartet, Janaček Philharmonic, Moravian Philharmonic. St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, and Kiev Philharmonic. Living in DC has had a profound influence on his music. Many of his works explore, or are inspired by LGBTQ, environmental, and social justice issues. His recent projects are focused on multimedia: combining music, literature, and video.