NICHOLAS VINES - COMPOSER
Described as “riveting” (The New York Times), “arresting” (The Boston Globe), “compellingly original” (Boston Phoenix), “full, extravagant and wild” (Sydney Morning Herald), and “kitchen-sink expressionism; edgy, bright and entertaining as hell” (NewMusicBox), the works of Nicholas Vines (b.1976, Sydney) have been performed by the likes of Alarm Will Sound, BMOP, Ensemble Offspring, the Schola Cantorum Gedanesis Chamber Choir, the BT Scottish Ensemble, and the Australian Piano Quartet. He has been commissioned by organizations around the world, such as Acacia Quartet, Callithumpian Consort, Firebird Ensemble, mmm…, Guerilla Opera, ChamberMade Opera, the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and various Sydney schools.
Recognition for Vines’s work includes APRA AMCOS Art Music, Helpmann, and Green Room Awards (2011/2012, 2007, 2006), runner-up in the 2010 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, an honourable mention in the 2006 Salvatore Martirano Competition (USA), and 2nd Prize in the ‘Musica Sacra 2005’ Competition (Poland). Published by Wirripang, Faber Music, the Australian Composers Online Project, and Alexander Street Press, the majority of his work is available through the Australian Music Centre. An album of Vines’s compositions featuring the Callithumpian Consort, TORRID NATURE SCENES, was released on Navona Records in May 2013.
Graduating in 2007 with a PhD from Harvard University, Vines taught theory and composition there and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before taking up a position at Sydney Grammar School. He is also a composition tutor at the University of New South Wales, and mentor for the annual Artology Fanfare Competition, which in 2016 won the APRA AMCOS Art Music Award for Excellence in Music Education.
BIOGRAPHIES
ALIANA DE LA GUARDIA - LOOSE
Aliana de la Guardia (soprano) is a vocalist specializing in new music, as well as an actor, teacher, and producer dubbed by Stuff Magazine as “an anomalous player on the Boston music scene,” and hailed by The Boston Globe as “vocally fearless” and “fizzing with theatrical commitment.” She began training in theater and film in her native New Jersey and completed studies in voice and opera at The Boston Conservatory (B.M. ’05 and M.M. ’07). As an avid performer of new music she has performed the works of many of the leading composers of our time, such as Birtwistle, Gorecki, Harvey, Kurtág and Sciarrino, among others. She is a co-founding artist of Guerilla Opera, with which she has premiered 15 operas with roles written specifically for her, and the director of Dirty Paloma, for which she has produced concerts with varied repertoire throughout New England, including commissioning new vocal music from living composers. Additional new music performances include American Lyric Theater, Beth Morrison Projects, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Center for Contemporary Opera, Firebird Ensemble, I/O Ensemble at Williams College, Ludovico Ensemble, Monadnock Music and the PARMA Festival. Her experience extends to standard classical repertoire as well, including performances with Boston Lyric Opera, Granite State Opera, New England Philharmonic, Lorelei Ensemble and Cappella Clausura, among others. She can also be seen as an actress on television, guest-starring in the second season of ABC’s Body of Proof.
BRIAN CHURCH - WET
Brian Church (baritone) has a busy and varied career in the Boston performing arts scene. A longtime member of the Choir at King’s Chapel and Cantata Singers, as well as a frequent guest performer with Callithumpian Consort, Mr. Church is a strong proponent of contemporary music. He has performed with SoundIcon, Boston Musica Viva, Boston Modern Orchestra Project and many others. In 2013, he performed the Speaker’s part in Lachenmann’s …zwei Gefuhl as part of the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. Brian has performed Peter Maxwell Davies’ rigorous Eight Songs For a Mad King with both Callithumpian Consort and Collage New Music. He has worked closely with many composers of our time including Lewis Spratlan, Christian Wollf, Caroline Shaw, Chaya Czernowyn and Roger Reynolds.
Brian has performed as a substitute member of the GRAMMY award-winning vocal octet Roomful of Teeth in concerts in Boston, NYC, Seattle, Portland and Carlsbad, CA. Brian enjoys a long-standing relationship with Guerilla Opera, having taken part in eleven productions (nine premieres), most recently the title role in Hannah Lash’s Beowulf, as well as the part of Wet in Nicholas Vines’ Loose, Wet, Perforated. Brian teaches General Music in Dorchester and Jamaica Plain as part of Handel and Haydn Society’s Education Outreach Division. He also teaches voice, beginner piano, guitar and bass at Music 101 Studios in Melrose. He is also the father of two boys, Elias and Quentin. For eleven years, he played bass and sang in the avant-noise punk group Tristan Da Cunha. He will be releasing his second solo album Then That Soon I See this Winter, and currently sings, plays guitar and does arrangements and transcriptions with Renaissance Men, Boston’s Male Vocal Ensemble.
DOUG DODSON - PERFORATED
A native of Spearfish, South Dakota, Doug Dodson has been hailed as a “vivid counter-tenor” (Wall Street Journal) with a voice that is “pellucid” (Boston Globe) and “unusually sparkling” (Kansas City Star). A performer of early as well as new music, he has recently appeared as a soloist with Chicago Opera Theater, American Repertory Theater, South Dakota Symphony, Oregon Bach Festival, Pegasus Early Music, and the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme at Aldeburgh Music. He also performs regularly with several of the United States’ top professional choirs, including the Handel and Haydn Society Chorus, Seraphic Fire, the South Dakota Chorale, and Skylark.
THEA LOBO - VARIOUS
Hailed as “excellent”, “impeccable”, “limpidly beautiful”, “impressive”, “stunning”, and “Boston’s best”, Grammy-nominated mezzo-soprano Thea Lobo has recently performed with Boston Symphony Orchestra, Callithumpian Consort, fortepianist Sylvia Berry, Sunshine City Opera, Brandeis New Music, Sarasota Choral Society, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Bucknell Bach Festival, Emmanuel Music, Halcyon Chamber Series, The Shakespeare Concerts, and Brookline Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Lobo has appeared under conductors Gunther Schuller, Harry Christophers, Stephen Stubbs, Joshua Rifkin, Martin Pearlman, Helmut Rilling, and Andris Nelsons, and has been featured by the Firebird Ensemble, Boston Baroque, Handel + Haydn Society, The Bermuda Festival, Boston Early Music Festival, and Europäisches Musikfest Stuttgart. Her dedication to new music, art song, and early music has seen her featured on True Concord’s Grammy winning recording of Stephen Paulus’s ‘Prayers & Remembrances’, invited to the Carmel Bach Festival as an Adams Fellow, a prizewinner at the Bach Vocal Competition for American Singers, a grant recipient of the Julian Autrey Song Foundation, a featured recitalist for the Boston Portuguese Festival, and performing as a soloist under the direction of composers Steve Reich, Fred Lerdahl, Christian Wolff, and Louis Andriessen. Thea Lobo is a graduate of New England Conservatory and Boston University.
AMY ADVOCAT - CLARINETS
Hailed as “dazzling” by the Boston Globe, Dr. Amy Advocat, clarinetist, is an avid per-former of new music having performed with Guerilla Opera, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Sound Icon, Firebird Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, Collage New Music, Dinosaur Annex, and The New Fromm Players.
Ms. Advocat is a founding member of the bass clarinet and marimba duo, Transient Canvas, with whom she has commissioned and premiered nearly 80 new works, includ-ing pieces by Lainie Fefferman, Dan VanHassel, and Adam Roberts. They have been fea-tured performers at New Music Gathering (San Francisco), SoundNOW Festival (Atlanta), New Music Nights at Spectrum (NYC), Original Gravity Concert Series, and New Gallery Concert Series. Committed to inspiring the next generation of musicians, Transient Canvas performs and lectures at universities and colleges across the United States. They have been in residence at Harvard University, Tufts University, Boston Conservatory, Otterbein University, and University of Georgia and will be the Ensemble in Residence at the 2017 Alba Music Festival Composition Program in Alba, Italy. Their debut album, sift, will be released in July 2017 with New Focus Recordings.
Equally at home with more traditional classical music, Amy Advocat has also performed with Odyssey Opera, Boston Pops, Harrisburg Symphony, Opera Boston, Boston Philharmonic, and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Advocat was twice a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, and has participated at the New Hampshire Music Festival, Monadnock Music, Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP), New York String Orchestra Seminar, Virginia Arts Festival, Spoleto USA Festival, and the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. Amy Advocat is a proud endorsing artist with Henri Selmer Paris Clarinets.
PHILIPP A. STÄUDLIN - SAXOPHONES
Philipp A. Stäudlin is an award-winning virtuoso saxophonist who has performed hundreds of concerts throughout North America, Europe and Asia. His characteristic tonal qualities, deep sense of phrasing and superb technical skills make him one of the most unique voices in today’s classical saxophone world.
A native of Friedrichshafen, Germany, Stäudlin has appeared as a soloist with the Sinfonieorchester Basel, Ensemble Sound Icon, Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble White Rabbit, Niederrheinische Sinfoniker, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Callithumpian Consort, Bielefelder Philharmoniker, Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, Tufts University Orchestra and The Providence Singers. Stäudlin has also performed with the Harvard Group for New Music, Equilibrium Ensemble, ECCE, Talea Ensemble, Steamboat Switzerland, Dinosaur Anex, Ensemble White Rabbit (former ensemble in Residence at Harvard University), Ludovico Ensemble, IGNM Basel, Alea III, Back Bay Choral and many others.
A graduate of Musikhochschule Basel, Stäudlin received a Soloist Diploma, having studied with Marcus Weiss and Iwan Roth. He was awarded a full scholarship two years in a row from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to study at Longy School of Music of Bard College with Kenneth Radnofsky, where he received an Artist Diploma. Philipp A. Stäudlin teaches saxophone at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee in both the standard degree and contemporary music programs, and he is on the applied music faculty at Tufts University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He lives with his wife, Yoko Hagino, and their daughter Anna in Melrose MA.
CHRIS MOORE - TROMBONE
A champion of contemporary music, trombonist Chris Moore has worked closely with such composers as Helmut Lachenmann, Vinko Globokar, Christian Wolff, Roger Reynolds, Lei Liang, and Pierluigi Billone. As a performer, educator, and teaching artist, Moore is driven by the belief that all music is accessible if presented in the right context and constantly seeks to broaden the sonic horizons of his audiences, his classes, and himself. He regularly performs with Callithumpian Consort and Sound Icon and is sought after as an avant-garde soloist.
Outside of contemporary music, Chris keeps busy performing with such ensembles as Spokane Symphony, New World Symphony, Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra, and the Redline Brass Quintet. He is a faculty member at the Longy School of Music in the Teaching Artist Program and holds degrees from the University of Maryland, New England Conservatory, and Longy School of Music. No one succeeds without help and Chris is no different. He owes a debt of gratitude to Norman Bolter, Carol Viera, Stephanie Skor, and Stephen Drury for their long and profound support over the years.
MIKE WILLIAMS - PERCUSSION
Hailed by the Boston Globe as “one of the city’s best percussionists,” Mike Williams has performed throughout North America and Europe and is a regular performer in the Boston area. He is a member of Callithumpian Consort and the new music sinfonietta Sound Icon, and is the percussionist and artistic director of Guerilla Opera, with whom he has commissioned and premiered 15 new chamber operas since 2007. He has also performed with such groups as the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Ludovico Ensemble, Chameleon Arts Ensemble, and Harvard Group for New Music. Williams has worked with many of the leading composers of our time, including Pierluigi Billone, Philippe Leroux, Salvatore Sciarrino, Gunther Schuller, and Roger Reynolds, and he has been involved in numerous recordings on labels such as Cantaloupe, BMOP/sound, Albany, and Northwest Classics. He was awarded a fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center and attended the Institute and Festival for Contemporary Performance in New York. Williams has performed at the Festival de México, Gaudeamus Music Week, New Hampshire Music Festival, Monadnock Music, and SICPP at New England Conservatory. Williams holds both B.M. and M.M. degrees from Boston Conservatory, where he won top prize in the Concerto Competition. He also completed a year of advanced study at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, during which he regularly performed with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra under Peter Eötvös. His principal teachers include Peter Prommel, Pat Hollenbeck, Nancy Zeltsman, and Salvatore Rabbio. Williams is on the music theory faculty at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
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