MINJU CHOI

Korean-American pianist Minju Choi has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber musician. She has appeared as a soloist with the Indianapolis Symphony and Shreveport Symphony, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, and the Music Academy of the West and Juilliard Orchestras. Ms. Choi has been presented in recitals in cities in the U.S. and abroad, including Paris, New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. She has performed solo concerts in prestigious venues such as the Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, Studio 54, Cosmopolitan Club of NYC, Salle Franck in Paris, and Steinway Hall. She has been heard as a soloist in live and recorded performances on radio stations around the country including WQXR New York Radio, WFMT Chicago Radio, WQSC Santa Barbara, KDAQ Shreveport, and WICR Indianapolis. Choi was a featured artist at the Vancouver Recital Society’s Chamber Music Festival, in which her performances were broadcast on the CBC Canada Radio.

A passionate enthusiast for contemporary music, Choi is recognized for her championship of music by American composers. She has commissioned solo works that have been written for her by multiple American composers. Her performances of contemporary works have included David Diamond’s Piano Concerto with Gerard Schwarz in celebration of the composer’s 85th birthday at Lincoln Center, U.S. premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s “Two Nocturnes,” and Philip Lasser´s piano sonata "Les Hiboux blancs" at La Schola Cantorum in Paris, which resulted in the premier of the sonata performed by Ms. Choi as the centerpiece of a modern dance work presented at Lincoln Center and at the French Institute in New York City. She has also collaborated with composers Gabriela Lena Frank, Derek Bermel, William Bolcom, and Joel Hoffman.

Committed to the education of young pianists and arts advocacy, Ms. Choi has created numerous community music engagement programs in public hospitals and has given masterclasses at universities across the country and in S. Korea. In 2016, she also served as the Indiana Arts Commission’s Strategic Planning Committee Member. She has served as a piano faculty at University of Indianapolis in 2010-2017.

The South Korean-born, Indiana-bred pianist has been awarded prizes in several competitions including first prize in the Nena Wideman International Piano Competition, the Music Academy of the West Concerto Competition, and the Juilliard Concerto Competition. Ms. Choi was also a winner in the National YoungArts Foundation Competition. She earned her bachelor´s and master´s degrees from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Jerome Lowenthal. She pursued additional studies with Jean-Claude Pennetier at École Normale de Musique de Paris and with Bernd Goetzke at Hochschule für Musik, Theater, und Medien Hannover in Germany. She earned her doctoral degree at Stony Brook University in New York with Gilbert Kalish and Christina Dahl. Minju Choi currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Piano at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri.

CHING-CHU HU

Born in Iowa City, Iowa, Ching-chu Hu studied at Yale University, Freiburg Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany, The University of Iowa, and the University of Michigan, where he earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition.  His composition teachers included William Bolcom, William Albright, Michael Daugherty, Leslie Bassett, Bright Sheng, Evan Chambers, David Gompper and Richard Hervig.  His conducting teachers included Alastair Neale, David Stern, and James Dixon.  He also studied piano with Donald Currier, Stéphane Lemelin, and Logan Skelton and bass with Diana Gannett and Eldon Oberecht.

Recent commissions include works for the Granville (Ohio) Bicentennial Committee, the University of Iowa School of Music’s Centennial celebration, the Greater Columbus Community Orchestra, the Newark Granville Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Children’s Choir and the Chamber Music Connection and the Western Springs School of Talent Education. Recent commissions include works for the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival, the Granville (Ohio) Bicentennial Committee, the University of Iowa School of Music’s Centennial celebration, the Greater Columbus Community Orchestra, the Newark Granville Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Children’s Choir and the Chamber Music Connection, string duo Low and Lower, Western Springs Suzuki Talent Education Program’s 30th Anniversary Concert in Chicago Symphony Center’s Orchestra Hall as well as Newark Granville Youth Symphony’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts performance. Other premieres include commissioned work for marimbist Mayumi Hama and pianist Minju Choi.

Ensembles performing his work include the Kiev Philharmonic, the National Dance and Opera Orchestra of China, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, Moscow Conservatory’s Studio New Music Ensemble, Brave New Works New Music Ensemble, the Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the University of Iowa Center for New Music.  Solo artists include violinists Wolfgang David, Scott Conklin and Gabe Bolkosky, flutists Betty Bang Mather and Tamara Thweatt, bassists Robert Black and Anthony Stoops, soprano Jennifer Goltz, erhu artist Guo Gan, percussionist Chris Froh,

GABRIELA LENA FRANK

Included in the Washington Post's list of the 35 most significant women composers in history (August, 2017), identity has always been at the center of composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank's music. Born in Berkeley, California (September, 1972), to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist. She has traveled extensively throughout South America and her pieces often reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own.

Winner of a Latin Grammy and nominated for Grammys as both composer and pianist, Gabriela also holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship given each year to fifty of the country’s finest artists. Her work has been described as “crafted with unself-conscious mastery” (Washington Post), “brilliantly effective” (New York Times), “a knockout” (Chicago Tribune) and “glorious” (Los Angeles Times). Gabriela Lena Frank is regularly commissioned by luminaries such as cellist Yo Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, the King’s Singers, and the Kronos Quartet, as well as by the talents of the next generation such as conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin of the New York Metropolitan Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra. She has received orchestral commissions and performances from leading American orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony. In 2017, she completed her four-year tenure as composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony under maestro Leonard Slatkin, composing Walkabout: Concerto for Orchestra, as well as a second residency with the Houston Symphony under Andrés Orozco-Estrada for whom she composed the Conquest Requiem, a large-scale choral/orchestral work in Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Frank’s most recent premiere is Apu: Tone Poem for Orchestra commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered by the National Youth Orchestra of the United States under the baton of conductor Marin Alsop. In the season of 2019-20, Fort Worth Opera will premiere Frank’s first opera, The Last Dream of Frida (with a subsequent performance by co-commissioner San Diego Opera) utilizing words by her frequent collaborator Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz.

PHILIP LASSER

Philip Lasser is a visionary composer native to French and American traditions.  His music, direct and undisguised, creates a unique sound world that blends together the colorful harmonies of French Impressionist sonorities and the dynamic rhythms and characteristics of American music.

His newly commissioned concerto for piano and orchestra, “The Circle and the Child,” is featured on the recently released Sony Classical album “Broadway-Lafayette” with Simone Dinnerstein and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kristjan Järvi.  Lasser’s works have also been performed by the Atlanta, Seattle, Boulder and Shreveport Symphonies, as well as The New York Chamber Symphony, and by artists including Kristjan Järvi, Susanna Phillips, Elizabeth Futral, Margo Garrett, Lucy Shelton, Cho-Liang Lin, Zuill Bailey, Brian Zeger, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger and Sasha Cooke.  Lasser’s works can be heard on the Sony Classical, Telarc, New World, Crystal, and BMG RCA/Red Seal labels.

Early in his musical training, Lasser entered Nadia Boulanger’s famed Ecole d’Arts Americaines in Fontainebleau, France, where he began to establish his connection to the French lineage. Following his studies at Harvard College, where he graduated summa cum laude, Lasser lived in Paris while working with Boulanger’s closest colleague and disciple, Narcis Bonet, and legendary pianist Gaby Casadesus.  Lasser later received his master’s degree from Columbia University, where he undertook intensive studies in counterpoint with René Leibowitz’s disciple, Jacques-Louis Monod, and received his doctorate from The Juilliard School, where he studied with composer David Diamond.

Lasser is the author of “The Spiraling Tapestry: An Inquiry into the Contrapuntal Fabric of Music,” which brings new insights into the world of musical analysis. Since 1996, he has been the director of the European American Music Alliance (EAMA), a school dedicated to training young composers, chamber musicians, and conductors in the tradition of Nadia Boulanger.  He is also the artistic director of Gaspard, a performance group based in New York City that is dedicated to performing music in the French perspective through salon-type concerts.  Lasser has been a distinguished member of the faculty of The Juilliard School since 1994. He currently lives in New York City with his family.

MINJU CHOI

Korean-American pianist Minju Choi has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber musician. She has appeared as a soloist with the Indianapolis Symphony and Shreveport Symphony, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, and the Music Academy of the West and Juilliard Orchestras. Ms. Choi has been presented in recitals in cities in the U.S. and abroad, including Paris, New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. She has performed solo concerts in prestigious venues such as the Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, Studio 54, Cosmopolitan Club of NYC, Salle Franck in Paris, and Steinway Hall. She has been heard as a soloist in live and recorded performances on radio stations around the country including WQXR New York Radio, WFMT Chicago Radio, WQSC Santa Barbara, KDAQ Shreveport, and WICR Indianapolis. Choi was a featured artist at the Vancouver Recital Society’s Chamber Music Festival, in which her performances were broadcast on the CBC Canada Radio.

A passionate enthusiast for contemporary music, Choi is recognized for her championship of music by American composers. She has commissioned solo works that have been written for her by multiple American composers. Her performances of contemporary works have included David Diamond’s Piano Concerto with Gerard Schwarz in celebration of the composer’s 85th birthday at Lincoln Center, U.S. premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s “Two Nocturnes,” and Philip Lasser´s piano sonata "Les Hiboux blancs" at La Schola Cantorum in Paris, which resulted in the premier of the sonata performed by Ms. Choi as the centerpiece of a modern dance work presented at Lincoln Center and at the French Institute in New York City. She has also collaborated with composers Gabriela Lena Frank, Derek Bermel, William Bolcom, and Joel Hoffman.

Committed to the education of young pianists and arts advocacy, Ms. Choi has created numerous community music engagement programs in public hospitals and has given masterclasses at universities across the country and in S. Korea. In 2016, she also served as the Indiana Arts Commission’s Strategic Planning Committee Member. She has served as a piano faculty at University of Indianapolis in 2010-2017.

The South Korean-born, Indiana-bred pianist has been awarded prizes in several competitions including first prize in the Nena Wideman International Piano Competition, the Music Academy of the West Concerto Competition, and the Juilliard Concerto Competition. Ms. Choi was also a winner in the National YoungArts Foundation Competition. She earned her bachelor´s and master´s degrees from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Jerome Lowenthal. She pursued additional studies with Jean-Claude Pennetier at École Normale de Musique de Paris and with Bernd Goetzke at Hochschule für Musik, Theater, und Medien Hannover in Germany. She earned her doctoral degree at Stony Brook University in New York with Gilbert Kalish and Christina Dahl. Minju Choi currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Piano at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri.

CHING-CHU HU

Born in Iowa City, Iowa, Ching-chu Hu studied at Yale University, Freiburg Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany, The University of Iowa, and the University of Michigan, where he earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition.  His composition teachers included William Bolcom, William Albright, Michael Daugherty, Leslie Bassett, Bright Sheng, Evan Chambers, David Gompper and Richard Hervig.  His conducting teachers included Alastair Neale, David Stern, and James Dixon.  He also studied piano with Donald Currier, Stéphane Lemelin, and Logan Skelton and bass with Diana Gannett and Eldon Oberecht.

Recent commissions include works for the Granville (Ohio) Bicentennial Committee, the University of Iowa School of Music’s Centennial celebration, the Greater Columbus Community Orchestra, the Newark Granville Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Children’s Choir and the Chamber Music Connection and the Western Springs School of Talent Education. Recent commissions include works for the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival, the Granville (Ohio) Bicentennial Committee, the University of Iowa School of Music’s Centennial celebration, the Greater Columbus Community Orchestra, the Newark Granville Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Children’s Choir and the Chamber Music Connection, string duo Low and Lower, Western Springs Suzuki Talent Education Program’s 30th Anniversary Concert in Chicago Symphony Center’s Orchestra Hall as well as Newark Granville Youth Symphony’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts performance. Other premieres include commissioned work for marimbist Mayumi Hama and pianist Minju Choi.

Ensembles performing his work include the Kiev Philharmonic, the National Dance and Opera Orchestra of China, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, Moscow Conservatory’s Studio New Music Ensemble, Brave New Works New Music Ensemble, the Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the University of Iowa Center for New Music.  Solo artists include violinists Wolfgang David, Scott Conklin and Gabe Bolkosky, flutists Betty Bang Mather and Tamara Thweatt, bassists Robert Black and Anthony Stoops, soprano Jennifer Goltz, erhu artist Guo Gan, percussionist Chris Froh,

GABRIELA LENA FRANK

Included in the Washington Post's list of the 35 most significant women composers in history (August, 2017), identity has always been at the center of composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank's music. Born in Berkeley, California (September, 1972), to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist. She has traveled extensively throughout South America and her pieces often reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own.

Winner of a Latin Grammy and nominated for Grammys as both composer and pianist, Gabriela also holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship given each year to fifty of the country’s finest artists. Her work has been described as “crafted with unself-conscious mastery” (Washington Post), “brilliantly effective” (New York Times), “a knockout” (Chicago Tribune) and “glorious” (Los Angeles Times). Gabriela Lena Frank is regularly commissioned by luminaries such as cellist Yo Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, the King’s Singers, and the Kronos Quartet, as well as by the talents of the next generation such as conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin of the New York Metropolitan Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra. She has received orchestral commissions and performances from leading American orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony. In 2017, she completed her four-year tenure as composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony under maestro Leonard Slatkin, composing Walkabout: Concerto for Orchestra, as well as a second residency with the Houston Symphony under Andrés Orozco-Estrada for whom she composed the Conquest Requiem, a large-scale choral/orchestral work in Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Frank’s most recent premiere is Apu: Tone Poem for Orchestra commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered by the National Youth Orchestra of the United States under the baton of conductor Marin Alsop. In the season of 2019-20, Fort Worth Opera will premiere Frank’s first opera, The Last Dream of Frida (with a subsequent performance by co-commissioner San Diego Opera) utilizing words by her frequent collaborator Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz.

PHILIP LASSER

Philip Lasser is a visionary composer native to French and American traditions.  His music, direct and undisguised, creates a unique sound world that blends together the colorful harmonies of French Impressionist sonorities and the dynamic rhythms and characteristics of American music.

His newly commissioned concerto for piano and orchestra, “The Circle and the Child,” is featured on the recently released Sony Classical album “Broadway-Lafayette” with Simone Dinnerstein and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kristjan Järvi.  Lasser’s works have also been performed by the Atlanta, Seattle, Boulder and Shreveport Symphonies, as well as The New York Chamber Symphony, and by artists including Kristjan Järvi, Susanna Phillips, Elizabeth Futral, Margo Garrett, Lucy Shelton, Cho-Liang Lin, Zuill Bailey, Brian Zeger, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger and Sasha Cooke.  Lasser’s works can be heard on the Sony Classical, Telarc, New World, Crystal, and BMG RCA/Red Seal labels.

Early in his musical training, Lasser entered Nadia Boulanger’s famed Ecole d’Arts Americaines in Fontainebleau, France, where he began to establish his connection to the French lineage. Following his studies at Harvard College, where he graduated summa cum laude, Lasser lived in Paris while working with Boulanger’s closest colleague and disciple, Narcis Bonet, and legendary pianist Gaby Casadesus.  Lasser later received his master’s degree from Columbia University, where he undertook intensive studies in counterpoint with René Leibowitz’s disciple, Jacques-Louis Monod, and received his doctorate from The Juilliard School, where he studied with composer David Diamond.

Lasser is the author of “The Spiraling Tapestry: An Inquiry into the Contrapuntal Fabric of Music,” which brings new insights into the world of musical analysis. Since 1996, he has been the director of the European American Music Alliance (EAMA), a school dedicated to training young composers, chamber musicians, and conductors in the tradition of Nadia Boulanger.  He is also the artistic director of Gaspard, a performance group based in New York City that is dedicated to performing music in the French perspective through salon-type concerts.  Lasser has been a distinguished member of the faculty of The Juilliard School since 1994. He currently lives in New York City with his family.

MINJU CHOI

Korean-American pianist Minju Choi has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber musician. She has appeared as a soloist with the Indianapolis Symphony and Shreveport Symphony, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, and the Music Academy of the West and Juilliard Orchestras. Ms. Choi has been presented in recitals in cities in the U.S. and abroad, including Paris, New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. She has performed solo concerts in prestigious venues such as the Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, Studio 54, Cosmopolitan Club of NYC, Salle Franck in Paris, and Steinway Hall. She has been heard as a soloist in live and recorded performances on radio stations around the country including WQXR New York Radio, WFMT Chicago Radio, WQSC Santa Barbara, KDAQ Shreveport, and WICR Indianapolis. Choi was a featured artist at the Vancouver Recital Society’s Chamber Music Festival, in which her performances were broadcast on the CBC Canada Radio.

A passionate enthusiast for contemporary music, Choi is recognized for her championship of music by American composers. She has commissioned solo works that have been written for her by multiple American composers. Her performances of contemporary works have included David Diamond’s Piano Concerto with Gerard Schwarz in celebration of the composer’s 85th birthday at Lincoln Center, U.S. premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s “Two Nocturnes,” and Philip Lasser´s piano sonata "Les Hiboux blancs" at La Schola Cantorum in Paris, which resulted in the premier of the sonata performed by Ms. Choi as the centerpiece of a modern dance work presented at Lincoln Center and at the French Institute in New York City. She has also collaborated with composers Gabriela Lena Frank, Derek Bermel, William Bolcom, and Joel Hoffman.

Committed to the education of young pianists and arts advocacy, Ms. Choi has created numerous community music engagement programs in public hospitals and has given masterclasses at universities across the country and in S. Korea. In 2016, she also served as the Indiana Arts Commission’s Strategic Planning Committee Member. She has served as a piano faculty at University of Indianapolis in 2010-2017.

The South Korean-born, Indiana-bred pianist has been awarded prizes in several competitions including first prize in the Nena Wideman International Piano Competition, the Music Academy of the West Concerto Competition, and the Juilliard Concerto Competition. Ms. Choi was also a winner in the National YoungArts Foundation Competition. She earned her bachelor´s and master´s degrees from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Jerome Lowenthal. She pursued additional studies with Jean-Claude Pennetier at École Normale de Musique de Paris and with Bernd Goetzke at Hochschule für Musik, Theater, und Medien Hannover in Germany. She earned her doctoral degree at Stony Brook University in New York with Gilbert Kalish and Christina Dahl. Minju Choi currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Piano at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri.

CHING-CHU HU

Born in Iowa City, Iowa, Ching-chu Hu studied at Yale University, Freiburg Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany, The University of Iowa, and the University of Michigan, where he earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition.  His composition teachers included William Bolcom, William Albright, Michael Daugherty, Leslie Bassett, Bright Sheng, Evan Chambers, David Gompper and Richard Hervig.  His conducting teachers included Alastair Neale, David Stern, and James Dixon.  He also studied piano with Donald Currier, Stéphane Lemelin, and Logan Skelton and bass with Diana Gannett and Eldon Oberecht.

Recent commissions include works for the Granville (Ohio) Bicentennial Committee, the University of Iowa School of Music’s Centennial celebration, the Greater Columbus Community Orchestra, the Newark Granville Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Children’s Choir and the Chamber Music Connection and the Western Springs School of Talent Education. Recent commissions include works for the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival, the Granville (Ohio) Bicentennial Committee, the University of Iowa School of Music’s Centennial celebration, the Greater Columbus Community Orchestra, the Newark Granville Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Children’s Choir and the Chamber Music Connection, string duo Low and Lower, Western Springs Suzuki Talent Education Program’s 30th Anniversary Concert in Chicago Symphony Center’s Orchestra Hall as well as Newark Granville Youth Symphony’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts performance. Other premieres include commissioned work for marimbist Mayumi Hama and pianist Minju Choi.

Ensembles performing his work include the Kiev Philharmonic, the National Dance and Opera Orchestra of China, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, Moscow Conservatory’s Studio New Music Ensemble, Brave New Works New Music Ensemble, the Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the University of Iowa Center for New Music.  Solo artists include violinists Wolfgang David, Scott Conklin and Gabe Bolkosky, flutists Betty Bang Mather and Tamara Thweatt, bassists Robert Black and Anthony Stoops, soprano Jennifer Goltz, erhu artist Guo Gan, percussionist Chris Froh,

GABRIELA LENA FRANK

Included in the Washington Post's list of the 35 most significant women composers in history (August, 2017), identity has always been at the center of composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank's music. Born in Berkeley, California (September, 1972), to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist. She has traveled extensively throughout South America and her pieces often reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own.

Winner of a Latin Grammy and nominated for Grammys as both composer and pianist, Gabriela also holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship given each year to fifty of the country’s finest artists. Her work has been described as “crafted with unself-conscious mastery” (Washington Post), “brilliantly effective” (New York Times), “a knockout” (Chicago Tribune) and “glorious” (Los Angeles Times). Gabriela Lena Frank is regularly commissioned by luminaries such as cellist Yo Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, the King’s Singers, and the Kronos Quartet, as well as by the talents of the next generation such as conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin of the New York Metropolitan Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra. She has received orchestral commissions and performances from leading American orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony. In 2017, she completed her four-year tenure as composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony under maestro Leonard Slatkin, composing Walkabout: Concerto for Orchestra, as well as a second residency with the Houston Symphony under Andrés Orozco-Estrada for whom she composed the Conquest Requiem, a large-scale choral/orchestral work in Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Frank’s most recent premiere is Apu: Tone Poem for Orchestra commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered by the National Youth Orchestra of the United States under the baton of conductor Marin Alsop. In the season of 2019-20, Fort Worth Opera will premiere Frank’s first opera, The Last Dream of Frida (with a subsequent performance by co-commissioner San Diego Opera) utilizing words by her frequent collaborator Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz.

PHILIP LASSER

Philip Lasser is a visionary composer native to French and American traditions.  His music, direct and undisguised, creates a unique sound world that blends together the colorful harmonies of French Impressionist sonorities and the dynamic rhythms and characteristics of American music.

His newly commissioned concerto for piano and orchestra, “The Circle and the Child,” is featured on the recently released Sony Classical album “Broadway-Lafayette” with Simone Dinnerstein and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kristjan Järvi.  Lasser’s works have also been performed by the Atlanta, Seattle, Boulder and Shreveport Symphonies, as well as The New York Chamber Symphony, and by artists including Kristjan Järvi, Susanna Phillips, Elizabeth Futral, Margo Garrett, Lucy Shelton, Cho-Liang Lin, Zuill Bailey, Brian Zeger, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger and Sasha Cooke.  Lasser’s works can be heard on the Sony Classical, Telarc, New World, Crystal, and BMG RCA/Red Seal labels.

Early in his musical training, Lasser entered Nadia Boulanger’s famed Ecole d’Arts Americaines in Fontainebleau, France, where he began to establish his connection to the French lineage. Following his studies at Harvard College, where he graduated summa cum laude, Lasser lived in Paris while working with Boulanger’s closest colleague and disciple, Narcis Bonet, and legendary pianist Gaby Casadesus.  Lasser later received his master’s degree from Columbia University, where he undertook intensive studies in counterpoint with René Leibowitz’s disciple, Jacques-Louis Monod, and received his doctorate from The Juilliard School, where he studied with composer David Diamond.

Lasser is the author of “The Spiraling Tapestry: An Inquiry into the Contrapuntal Fabric of Music,” which brings new insights into the world of musical analysis. Since 1996, he has been the director of the European American Music Alliance (EAMA), a school dedicated to training young composers, chamber musicians, and conductors in the tradition of Nadia Boulanger.  He is also the artistic director of Gaspard, a performance group based in New York City that is dedicated to performing music in the French perspective through salon-type concerts.  Lasser has been a distinguished member of the faculty of The Juilliard School since 1994. He currently lives in New York City with his family.