Artists

Chamber Singers is the premiere vocal ensemble at the University of South Dakota. It is comprised of graduate and undergraduate students selected through audition from the entire university student body. Known to critics for “creating a choral concert of stunning beauty and musical understanding,” its repertoire, which is primarily a cappella, includes music from the Renaissance to the present in a wide variety of styles.

Eric Simonson's music has been heard in concerts across North America, including SEAMUS (Society of Electroacoustic Music in the United States), ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) and SCI (Society of Composers Incorporated) performances.

Mark G. Simon is an accomplished American composer and clarinetist. He holds a D.M.A. in composition from Cornell University, where he studied with Karel Husa, Steven Stuckey, and Robert Palmer. His compositions include orchestral, chamber, and vocal works, many featuring the clarinet. His musical Jennie’s Will was commissioned for the bicentennial of the Village of Dryden NY. The Carnival of the Subatomic Particles, a 13-movement exploration of particle physics for chamber ensemble and narrator set to a poem by Cornell physicist N. David Mermin, was commissioned and premiered by Music’s Recreation in Ithaca NY.

Carlos Simon is a versatile composer and arranger who combines the influences of jazz, gospel, and neo- romanticism.

Amintas Angel Cardoso Santos Silva (b. 1977) is a composer, singer, songwriter, writer and diplomat whose passion is expressing himself through art, especially music. He refers to the radio, soundtracks of old Brazilian soap operas, and of course, his mother’s singing as his first musical experiences. He also mentions his father’s old school musical taste as an initial and permanent guidance.

Lawrence Siegel brings to the writing of KADDISH twenty-five years of experience creating and directing music and music theater projects using texts from oral histories, interviews, and community dialogues. His music has won awards from the McKnight Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and many others. He has been a fellow in composition at the Tanglewood Music Center and the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH.

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.

Christopher Shultis is a Regents' Professor of Music at the University of New Mexico. His early musical life was as a performer, specifically a percussionist and conductor specializing in the interpretation of experimental music. His first compositions were experimental in nature. Beginning with an exploration of sound and the world in which those sounds occur, Shultis's current work is an examination of self in that world and the sounds that he hears as a result are what he writes down.

James Shrader is a composer, conductor, author, and retired academic administrator. He holds degrees from Bradley University (Music Education), The Cleveland Institute of Music (Opera Direction), and Texas Tech University (Fine Arts/Conducting). He was Director of Music and Fine Arts at The First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland, Associate Director of Choral Activities at Texas Tech and Oklahoma State Universities, Chair of the Music Department and Director of Choral and Opera Studies at Northwestern Oklahoma State University, and Head of the Department of Music at Valdosta State University. He was Chorus Master for Tulsa Opera where he prepared nine productions.

Benjamin Shorstein is a composer of classical and jazz music and a founding member of the creative music collective Madre Vaca. He has been named a finalist for several national and international competitions, including the Franz Schubert Conservatory World Championship in Composition, the American Prize for Chamber Music Composition, and the Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music. Shorstein’s music has been performed at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, recorded for film, and featured in concerts and recordings. His jazz arrangement of Franz Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise was named one of the best jazz recordings of 2020 by the Chicago Tribune, with critic Howard Reich writing that “Benjamin Shorstein has created the best kind of jazz-meets-the-classics merger, the two worlds intermingling rather than crashing up against each other.”

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."

Melissa Shiflett’s career began as resident composer for the experimental Dream Theatre in Chicago. She is a composer, librettist, and pianist whose operas have been produced by the American Chamber Opera Company, Peabody Chamber Opera Theatre, New York City Opera’s Vox Festival, Nautilus Music-Theater, New Dramatists, and the Pennsylvania Opera Theater. 

When Bill Sherrill (b. 1939) departed for college with piano and voice scholarships, there were fond hopes within his family of a musical career for him. College tennis and the study of Chemistry soon displayed and delayed those hopes. After college and during a working career which included stints as a Naval Flight Officer, Intelligence Officer, and Chief Administrator for large law firms, he kept in touch with music by singing in varied oratorio and symphonic choruses. He retired early to study music and has been composing ever since. He also serves as a Church Musician which provides a ready venue for conducting, composing, and arranging.

Laurence Sherr is recognized for his uniquely interconnected work on music related to the Holocaust, uniting his activities as composer of remembrance music, researcher, lecturer, producer of remembrance events, author, and educator. He has presented this work in the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, England, Norway, San Marino, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and across the United States. Containing “sacred beauty and abundant lyricism,” and “moments that convey energy, lyricism, drama, and bravado” (EarRelevant), Sherr’s album – FUGITIVE FOOTSTEPS: REMEMBRANCE MUSIC – was awarded a Gold Medal in the Global Music Awards. He designs events that feature remembrance music enriched by stories of Holocaust-era creators and concurrent musical and historical developments.

Scott Anthony Shell was born in Omaha Nebraska USA but grew up near Chicago IL. He earned a degree in music composition at DePaul University while studying voice and singing in choirs. Instead of pursuing academic degrees, he immersed himself in the Chicago indie rock scene and created a record label and rock band (singer / songwriter / guitarist) called Cats & Jammers that released several recordings and toured all over the USA. S.A. is fluent in Spanish and has spent quite a bit of time in South America. Currently he resides in in Patagonia AZ.

Jonathan Sheffer is a Grammy-nominated composer and conductor whose diverse career in music spans the worlds of classical, opera, dance, and film and television. Born in New York City, Sheffer graduated from Harvard University, where his teachers included Leonard Bernstein, and later attended The Juilliard Extension School and the Aspen School of Music. Sheffer’s range of works comprises television and feature film scores, works for orchestra, solo piano, concertos, musicals, and short operas. In addition to several scores for Hollywood films, including Encino Man, Pure Luck, A Shallow Grave and others, his most recent films include the documentaries Mann v. Ford (HBO) and the German/Israeli film, The Decent One, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.

An explorer of sonic realms, Judith Shatin is equally known for her acoustic, electroacoustic, and digital music. Called “highly inventive on every level” by the Washington Post, her music has been commissioned by organizations including the Barlow Endowment, Fromm Foundation, Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Wintergreen Performing Arts, and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Arts Partners Program.

Barry Seroff was born in Flushing, Queens on July 4th 1978. He earned his Bachelors Degree at the Aaron Copland School of Music where he studied theory with Joe Strauss, composition with Paul Alan Levi, Jeff Nichols, and Bruce Saylor, and musicology with Henry Burnett. At the same time outside of school, he studied classical flute with Michael Laderman and Petina Cole, modern and traditional jazz guitar with Joe Giglio and Bern Nix, and shakuhachi with Ronnie Nyogetsu Seldin.

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.

Duo Sequenza’s passion is to build new audiences for today’s classical music and promote the work of living composers. The duo has toured extensively, premiering American new music throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. Lauded as "… brilliant, gossamer, and completely engaging…a delight to hear..." by Arts Indiana Magazine, they have been honored with invitational performances at the 21st Century Guitar Conference, Flute New Music Consortium Festival, Mid-Atlantic Flute Festival, National Flute Association Convention, and others. Award-winning adjunct projects, composer collaborations, and residencies augment their impact on today’s classical music, as have more than 20 new works written for them.