Artists

Jennifer Mary Castellano received her Bachelor of Arts in Music in classical piano from Manhattanville College and a Master of Music in composition from State University of New York at Purchase. She has studied piano with Donna DeAngelis, Catherine Coppola, and Flora Lu Kuan and composition with Mary Ann Joyce-Walter, Huang Ruo, and Joel Thome. She has also studied organ with David Baranowski and Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka.

Twice the recipient of the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network's Music Award (2013 & 2016), Craig Peaslee's music has been described as bold, crass and unapologetic. His compositions can be traditional, multi-faceted, dissonant, genre-bending and have been known to directly confront social and political issues in order to bring attention to such issues as well as get listeners to critically think and discuss the challenges facing the world we live in.

Composer David MacDonald writes music that is serious and clever, expressing a fondness for groovy rhythms and delightful surprises. He simultaneously embraces and pokes fun at expectations, like smashing the formality of concert traditions through the irreverent firehose of social media.

A bright, young, accomplished singer on the opera and concert stages, soprano Katherine Jolly has appeared in leading roles with Opera Theatre Saint Louis, Florida Grand Opera, New York City Opera, Virginia Opera, Amarillo Opera, Piedmont Opera, Lyric Opera Cleveland, American Lyric Theatre, and Union Avenue Opera. In the concert arena she has performed in multiple seasons with Bach Society Saint Louis in Bach’s Coffee Cantata, The Kingsbury Ensemble in Bach’s Wedding Cantata and Handel’s Il Delirio Amoroso, as the soprano soloist in Handel’s The Messiah with the Evansville Philharmonic, the Richmond Symphony, and the Phoenix Symphony.

James William Stamm completed his classical guitar and theory/composition B.F.A. at Marshall University in Huntington WV. As of the release of PATTERNS, he is completing an M.F.A. in film music composition at UNC School of the Arts. His musical background also includes songwriting.

As a composer, Bunny composes contemporary classical music as well as jazz and ballads. Her most recent works include “Breathe” for jazz ensemble, “Suite for Sarro” for string trio, “Fantasy for Saxophones”, (quartet) “Fantasy for Brass” (quintet) and the suite “Two Rivers and An Ocean” for mixed percussion ensemble. Her client commissions include arrangements. Bunny holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Music Composition from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Dr. David Arbury grew up in Washington, DC where he sang from age 9 as a boy treble at Washington National Cathedral in the Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys under Richard Dirksen and later, Douglas Major. He remained with the choir for 18 years and in that time sang with every voice part. Through the 1990s while still in the choir, he became active in DC’s thriving indie rock scene, playing drums and bass with several bands in the post-punk community there.

Hailed by The Australian as possessing a “rare gift as a melodist” and by Limelight as expressing “both exquisite delicacy and tremendous power,” Australian composer Lachlan Skipworth writes across the mediums of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and experimental music. His vivid musical language is colored by three years spent in Japan where his immersion in the study of the shakuhachi bamboo flute inevitably became a part of his muse.

Kile's frequently performed music is praised by audiences and critics for its emotional power, direct appeal, and strong voice. He is Curator of the Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music in the Free Library of Philadelphia, co-host of Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection, and host of the contemporary American music show Now is the Time on WRTI 90.1 FM in Philadelphia.

Although born in Wisconsin, “Dean” Witter was raised in Los Angeles CA. His early studies were with Halsey Stevens in composition and Ethel Leginska in piano.

Composer, pianist, violist, and conductor Jonathan Newmark was born in New York City in 1953 and received his MM in composition from University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 2015. His teachers at CCM included Joel Hoffman, Douglas Knehans, and Michael Fiday, as well as Jonathan Kolm, Gloria Wilson Swisher, and James McVoy outside of CCM.

Alastair White (b. 1988) is a Scottish composer and writer currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition at Goldsmiths, University of London with Roger Redgate. In 2018 he wrote and composed the opera WEAR, an immersive sci-fi which combined contemporary music with high fashion and abstract theater; it was described by Mark Berry as “spellbinding...an opera of rare imagination - and success” and has since been shortlisted for a Scottish Award for New Music.

The Colorado-based Altius Quartet has dedicated itself to expanding traditional notions of the string quartet. Members Hannah Kennedy and Andrew Giordano (violins), Allyson Stibbards (viola), and Erin Patterson (cello) are equally at home as performers, mentors, and educators, and strive to fulfill each of those roles at the highest possible level. Altius has received critical acclaim for their recordings, including Fanfare Magazine describing their 2017 release Shostakovich: String Quartets Nos. 7, 8, and 9” as “visceral and wrenching”. Altius was also hailed as “rich” and “captivating” by the renowned music blog I Care If You Listen.

Nora Essman Morrow, born in New York City, has been a musician all her life. As a child Morrow composed songs on the guitar and improvised stories at the piano. She attended the Precollege Division of Manhattan School of Music and The High School of Music and Art in NYC.

Allyson B. Wells began composing and arranging as a teenager, when her name was Allyson Brown, and was 18 when her first arrangement, for choir, was commercially published. Two years later, one of her compositions was commercially published. She has earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and Ph.D., all in music composition, and has taught music theory and composition at the university level since the 1980’s.

Clare Shore the second woman to earn the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition from The Juilliard School, has received critical acclaim for her works, with reviewers from The New York Times, New York Post, Boston Globe, Washington Post, and others hailing her works as "provocative," "immensely dramatic," "unpretentious," "ingenious and evocative," "intriguing," and "romantic to the core."

Emma-Ruth Richards is a composer much in demand in the UK and overseas, acclaimed for her understanding of both instrumental and vocal writing which has earned her a role as a favorite among musicians and singers.

A recipient of two consecutive Palmer-Dixon Prizes for best composition presented by The Juilliard School, composer Mathew Fuerst (b. 1977) has also received third prize in the 2nd Annual Antonín Dvořák Composition Competition held in Prague CZ.

Joanne D. Carey studied composition with Lou Harrison, Tikey Zes, and Alan Strange at San Jose State University where she earned B.A. and M.A. degrees (1979, 1986). She spent a decade (1983-1993) as a visiting composer at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) during which she composed three computer-generated pieces.

Andrew Anderson (b. 1971) is based in Melbourne, Australia, where he studied composition with Rodney Ford, violin with Barbara O’Reilly, and piano with Arvon McFadden. His choral works are informed by engagements with parish choirs in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as private tuition in singing with Nigel Wickens (Cambridge UK). From 2021 through 2022, he was the inaugural composer in residence at St James' Old Cathedral.