Transition and Apotheosis

Jiyoun Chung

The work of composer and pianist Jiyoun Chung (b. 1982, South Korea) has received many distinctions and awards and is often heard in festivals and concerts in Asia, Europe, and the United States. Her current interest in composition lies in incorporating various cultural influences into her works. Her own identity as a Korean immigrant plays a big factor in her music making. Having two different cultural perspectives as she has enculturated into the United States allows her to see one culture as an abundant source of inspiration from the point of view of the other. Thus, embracing both in the compositional process comes naturally to her. However, Chung’s works are not limited to the fusion of Korean and concert music. While she derives much from East Asian culture, other inspiration comes from contemporary concert music, K-pop, jazz, musical theater, hip-hop, street music, and world traditional music. Languages, structures, timbres, and vocabularies from those different musical arts have expanded her palette, which helps her speak to a broad range of audiences. Chung received her B.M. in Composition from Hanyang University in South Korea. She earned her M.M. in Composition and in Piano Performance from Illinois State University, studying with Carl Schimmel and Martha Horst. She received her D.M.A. in Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she studied with Chen Yi, Zhou Long, and James Mobberley. She is an Assistant Professor of Music at Central Washington University.

Yunfei Li

Yunfei Li is a composer and violinist based in Kansas City MO. Li writes music that explores new sounds on instruments and music software. She takes inspiration from the sounds of nature and has converted nature sounds into musical language as part of her original compositions. With a background that includes both Eastern and Western classical music, she is also inspired by a variety of modern music styles including pop, electroacoustic, and film music. As a composer, she has collaborated with film directors, writers, choreographers, and multimedia artists.

Mike McFerron

Mike McFerron is professor of music and composer-in-residence at Lewis University and he is founder and co-director of Electronic Music Midwest (emmfestival.org). McFerron’s music has received critical acclaim and recognition. His music has been performed by the Remarkable Theater Brigade (Carnegie Hall), the Louisville Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and Cantus among many others.

He serves on the board of the directors for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra and is a past Chair of the Executive Committee for the Society of Composers, Inc. McFerron’s music can be heard on numerous commercial recordings as well as on his website at bigcomposer.com

Paul Lombardi

Paul Lombardi holds a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Oregon, and studied composition with David Crumb, Robert Kyr, Stephen Blumberg, and Leo Eylar. His music has been performed in more than 30 states across the US, as well as in other areas in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia. Recordings of his music are available from Parma Recordings, Capstone Records, Revell Records, Zerx Records, Mark Records, ERMMedia, and Thinking outLOUD Records.

Robert McClure

Robert McClure’s music attempts to discover beauty in unconventional places using non-traditional means. His work has been featured at festivals including NYCEMF, Beijing Modern Music Festival, ISCM, TIES, SEAMUS, and ICMC. His works may be found through ADJ·ective New Music, Bachovich Music Publications, Resolute Music Publications, and Tapspace Publications as well as on ABLAZE, Albany, and New Focus Record labels.

Robert received his doctorate from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Robert has previously held positions at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and Soochow University in Suzhou, China. He serves as Associate Professor of Composition/Theory at Ohio University.

Droki Ouro

Droki Ouro is a composer framing pictorial properties found in visual art, namely color, shape, balance, and space, with organizing principles of philosophical, sociological, and metaphysical intent. These elements forge aural convictions that engage with intersectional experiences related to persecution, assimilation, and masking – a self-portrait. Their music has been described as “beautifully haunting” (Robert Avalon Competition), “patiently evocative” (George Lewis), and “unsettling, [yet] interesting” (Joshua Weatherspoon, Cycling ’74), and has been performed by Hypercube, Duo Sequenza, and ensemble vim. Ouro has been featured at several festivals including the Aspen Music Festival, SEAMUS, and ICMC and has been commercially released with several labels including Navona Records, PARMA Recordings, Petrichor Records, and RMN Music.

William Price

William Price’s music has been featured at numerous international events, including the World Saxophone Congress, the International Trumpet Guild Conference, the International Saxophone Symposium, the International Computer Music Festival, Ars Electronica Forum Wallis, the Musica Viva Festival in Portugal, the Musinfo Journées Art & Science in France, the Festival Internacional de la Imagen in Colombia, and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Chamber Music Festival in Singapore.

Joseph Klein

Born in Los Angeles in 1962, Joseph Klein is a composer of solo, chamber, and large ensemble works, including instrumental, vocal, electroacoustic, and intermedia compositions. His music — which has been described as “a dizzying euphoria… like a sonic tickling with counterpoint gone awry” (NewMusicBox) and exhibiting a “confident polyvalence [that] heightens its very real excitement” (The Wire) — reflects an ongoing interest in processes drawn from such sources as fractal geometry, chaos, and systems theory, often inspired by natural phenomena. His works frequently incorporate theatrical elements, either as an extension of the extra-musical references or as an organic expression of the musical narrative itself. Literature is another important influence on his work, with recent compositions based on the writings of Franz Kafka, Elias Canetti, Alice Fulton, W.S. Merwin, Milan Kundera, and John Ashbery.

Ania Vu

Ania Vu (née Vũ Đặng Minh Anh) is a composer-pianist from Poland of Vietnamese descent. Her work searches for connections between music and language, the sounds of the natural world, and varied perceptions of time. An avid cross-field collaborator, she has worked with writers, dancers, choreographers, visual artists, and filmmakers. She often creates her own texts (in Polish and English), which fuels her musical creativity – a method she calls “composing text to write music.” The Boston Globe has described her music as featuring “artful vocal writing [that] ranges from percussive whispers to glinting, pure-voiced lines that […] blended elegantly into the roiling cauldron of strings.” Her work has been recognized by Tanglewood, ASCAP, the American Opera Project, Copland House, Boston New Music Initiative, and I-Park Foundation, and she has worked with the New Fromm Players, Grossman Ensemble, DanceWorks Chicago, Daedalus and Mivos Quartets, Sō Percussion, and the TAK Ensemble, among others. She was the University of Chicago’s Postdoctoral Researcher and Fellow of “Composers and the Voice,” which provides experience in writing for the voice and opera stage. Vu received her degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the Eastman School of Music, and has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania.