Yuan-Chen Li (b.1980, Taiwan) first arrived on the contemporary music scene in Taiwan with her very personal use of instrumentation and style in her chamber music piece Zang (the funeral) in 2000. In 2003, the expression and orchestration of her orchestral work Awakening won the prize at the Asian Music Festival 2003 in Tokyo from the Asian Composers’ League, and was subsequently premiered by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. In recent years, Li’s music reflects her transformation of processes and concepts in Chinese phonology, Taiwanese chamber and aboriginal music, Asian traditional arts, literature, and Buddhism into a compositional technique for solo, chamber, and orchestra of both Western and Chinese instruments, offering new experience to her audience and collaborators with the cross-cultural and cross-disciplined approach to musical time, space, and drama. With her virtuosity in instrumentation and fluency in converging and synthesizing contrastingly cultural, musical, and conceptual ideas, her treatment of the space of sonority, temporality, texture, and syntax have engaged musicians of different practices, critics, researchers, and worldwide listeners.

Featuring her distinct artistry in different contexts, Li’s work has been programmed in many concert series and festivals: Chamber Music North West (2019), Georgia Tech Institute (2019), Oberlin Conservatory (2018) and Peabody Conservatory (2018), Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra (2017), EarTaxi New Music Festival (Chicago, 2016), American Composers Orchestra’s EarShot (Buffalo, 2015), Northwestern University Institute for New Music NUNC! (Chicago, 2014), Asian Composers’ League (Tel-Aviv 2012, Tokyo 2003), 2012 Thailand International Composition Festival, IMANI Winds Chamber Music Festival (New York, 2012), Contempo series (University of Chicago, 2010-2015), Peace Cross-strait Orchestra Concert (China and Taiwan, 2009), Composers/Pianists concert series (New England, 2008-9), New Music New Haven (Yale, 2006-08), The Female Form: Women Composers (New York, 2008), Listening to the 21Century (Taipei, 2007), Soundbridges (Berlin, 2007), Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Norfolk, 2007), Tune in to Taiwan 2003 (Taipei, 2003), New Ideal Dance Festival (Taipei, 2003), and Kuan-Du Musical Soiree (Taipei, 2001).

Major honors and awards include an Artist Residency at Omi International Art Center, Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2010), grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, National Culture and Arts Foundation of Taiwan, the Ezra Laderman Prize, the Rena Greenwald Memorial Prize, Finalist Martirano Award 2016, and ASU Gammage Beyond 2018, First prize of Literature and Art Creation Award (Taiwan), the Chang-Hui Hsu Memorial Prize of Asian Composers League, Study Abroad Scholarship from the Education Minister (Taiwan), and Scholarship of Arts from Tzu Chi Foundation. Recent commissions include those from the Yale-Taiwan Music Group, National Performing Arts Center (Taiwan), ensembles such as Sound of Dragon Society, and soloists such as American saxophonist Jessica Maxfield, harpist Li-Ya Huang, and clarinetist Tsai-Pei Lun.

Li received her Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Chicago in 2015. Her primary advisors are composers such as Marta Ptaszynska and Shulamit Ran, conductor Cliff Colnot, musicologist Martha Feldman, and theorist Lawrence Zbikowski. Before her residence in Chicago, Li earned the Artist Diploma from Yale University, studying with Martin Bresnick. Her dissertation “Wandering Viewpoint,” a concerto for solo cello and two ensembles, is about maintaining the freedom and independence of the soloist in a highly assimilated texture and sound competed by two ensembles of similar instrumentations. The piece received review that called Li’s compositional voice “original and somewhat difficult to describe,” and “engaging” (Chicago Classical Review, 2015.4.24). Accompanying her Ph.D. degree is a paper entitled “Difficult Voice in Vocal Composition, Composers’ Aesthetic Responses to Secondhand Holocaust Experiences,” featuring three case studies, including Chaya Czernowin’s opera Pnima...ins innere, Meredith Monk’s theater opera Quarry, and Schoenberg A Survivor from Warsaw, using psychoanalytic theory to discuss musical transgenerational phenomenon of the post-war music. Li also holds an Artist Diploma from the Yale University School of Music (2008), studying composition with Martin Bresnick, and M.F.A. (2006) and B.F.A.(2003) from Taipei University of the Arts, having studied composition and theory with Tsung-Hsien Yang and Chung-Kun Hung. Before entering college she studied composition and classical music for ten years with Ting- Lien Wu.

Committed to cultivating the combination of new music composition, interpretation, and community, she has frequently collaborated with Paul Ching-Po Chiang, conductor of Moment Musicaux Philharmonia (Taiwan), National Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan), and Chinese ensemble Chai-Found Music Workshop (Taiwan). Since 2011, Li has been mentored by Maestro Cliff Colnot, through whom she has been introduced to professional notation, rehearsal techniques, and editorial work for orchestra, chamber music, and songs. After holding a visiting professor position at Reed College (Portland OR), she has since lived and worked in Portland. yuanchenli.wordpress.com

Peter Dayton

Described by American Record Guide as “...a composer whose heart and care are palpable... who has a voice that deserves to be heard often” and by the Baltimore Sun as having “a refined sense of melodic arcs and harmonic motion,” Peter Dayton’s compositions have been performed across North America and in Europe. Dayton holds a Bachelor’s Degree (summa cum laude) from Vanderbilt University and a Master’s Degree in Composition from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. At Peabody he was the winner of the Macht and Gustav Klem Composition Awards.

Dayton’s creative output is directly shaped by his relationships and life experiences. Many of his works use visual art or poetry as the spark for an artistic response. His works responding to contemporary painters have generated friendships and connections across the globe, from England to Peru. Current projects include a tribute to the late Peruvian painter Fernando de Szyszlo for accordion and guitar quartet and an album of Dayton’s compositions inspired by the paintings of British artist John Hitchens, the latter releasing in conjunction with the artist’s 80th retrospective in April, 2020.

Dayton’s passion for literature has resulted in over a dozen settings of poems in art songs and choral works, focusing on 20th-century and contemporary poetry. In addition to his settings of modern American poets, Dayton wrote the libretto for his own chamber opera May She | She May about the poet Gertrude Stein’s first love affair.

His “interesting and promising debut” (Whole Note) album of chamber music, NOTES TO LOVED ONES, presents pieces for piano and strings that “practically hum with the intensity of love and life, and they are presented in sequence in a way that makes the process of listening to them feel like looking through a beautiful photo album” (American Record Guide). Selections of Dayton’s orchestral and choral music are available on compilation albums released by Ablaze Records. These works include Daytons From Sombre Lands, after a painting by John Hitchens, and selections from the ongoing An American Mass cycle of choral settings of modern American poetry.

An involved member of local, national, and international musical communities, Dayton has studied in England and Sweden, taken part in festivals and conferences in Louisiana, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Italy, and Spain, organized concerts of his work in Ohio, Tennessee, and Maryland, and exhibited his music at the Violin Society of America, Chamber Music America, and American Choral Directors Association conventions. Dayton was selected as a Composer Fellow for the Intimacy of Creativity Conference in Hong Kong in April, 2019.  www.peterdaytonmusic.com

Hans Bakker

After he had finished his studies in piano, church organ, and choral conducting in Utrecht, Hans Bakker (b. 1945) began teaching piano at music schools in two places in the Netherlands. Apart from his teaching practice, he conducted two choirs and was active in the improvisational music scene. His career in music was followed by the study of Sanskrit at the University of Amsterdam. After his successful graduation, he returned to music and was completely absorbed by teaching at the Globe Center for Art and Culture in the city of Hilversum.

Initially, composing was only a minor occupation next to Bakker's other work. Starting in 1997 it became a daily routine; he wrote a great number of chamber music works and many choir compositions, including the cycle of choirs Praśasti. He also composed works for orchestra and six pieces for carillon, and recently the commissioned Violin Concerto KAIROS.

His first album, THE UNNAMED SOURCE (2010), features moving performances by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Vit Micka and an astounding array of the orchestra’s instrumentalists.

Since then, Bakker’s works have been featured on the Navona albums SLICES (2012), SEEKING & FINDING (2012) with seven choral works performed by the Kühn Choir of Prague, and DANCES OF ETERNITY (2013) with two orchestral works: Canzona L'altra Persona and Canzona II Tribute to the Sun. This was followed by the chamber works multi-composer album PINNACLE (2016).

The next release was the duo album LINES TO INFINITY (2017) with composer Peter Greve, which revolves around scores for piano, cello, clarinet, and flute. His latest releases are included on the albums TOMORROW’S AIR (2017), which shows that classical music can hit a greater audience; and the compilation album LEGENDS & LIGHT (2018), including Canzona III Hidden in Her Light for orchestra.

About his compositions Bakker says:  More than 20 years ago the source of my music started to flow after I became acquainted with the writings of the German painter and writer Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, also known as Bô Yin Râ.  I believe in the power of artistic beauty and lyricism. In my view music need not necessarily be easy for the ear, but it should be accessible to the mind; and must be able to tune the receptive listener. My intention is to awaken the emotional nature in the listener, so that he/she may come to herself/himself for a moment.

Bakker lives in the old city of Amersfoort NL. He sells the majority of his works via MusicaNeo.

Nearly all of Navid Bargrizan’s compositions explore intonational and tuning concepts, ranging from just intonation and extended equal temperaments (e.g. 24-tone or 36-tone equal temperament) to various microtonal concepts taken from diverse musical cultures. Since 2014, his experiments with microtonality have resulted in 13 premieres and more than 40 performances of his works in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Austria, including at New York City Electroacoustic Festival, Toronto Electroacoustic Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Florida Contemporary Festival, and conferences of the Society of Composers, Inc. His works have been performed and recorded by artists such as Tolgahan Çoğulu, Stacks Duo, Boston String Quartet, and Bold City Contemporary Ensemble. For his woodwind quintet Tuning Exercise 1, Bargrizan  was chosen as a finalist in 2016 American Prize for Composition, Chamber Music Division. As the summer-2018 composer-in-residence of Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville FL, he composed Pictures at the Micro-Exhibition, a suite for solo alto saxophone that employs synthetic, microtonal pentatonic scales and rhythmical patterns inspired by non-Western musical traditions. Laurent Estoppey recorded this piece and has performed it at several venues in the United States and Europe.

Bargrizan’s scholarly research on microtonality, especially the music of American composer Harry Partch and German composer Manfred Stahnke, as well as his secondary focus on sociopolitical implications of Roger Waters’s protest music, have led to many publications, such as in Journal of the Society for American Music, eContact! Online Journal for Electroacoustic Practices, and Müzik-Bilim Dergisi: the Journal of Musicology. He has presented his research projects—supported by awards such as DAAD German Studies Scholarship and Doctoral Fellowship of the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere of the University of Florida—at approximately 30 international conferences in North America and Europe, including German Studies Association, Society for Music Theory, Society for American Music, Conference for Interdisciplinary Musicology, and International Association of the Study of Popular Music. Bargrizan has worked as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Composition; Adjunct Lecturer of General Humanities; and Adjunct Lecturer of Languages, Literature, and Cultures at the University of Florida, where he has taught courses in music, general humanities, and German language. At this institution and Universität Hamburg, Germany, he earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Music History and Literature; Music Composition, Theory and Technology; Systematic Musicology; and Art History. www.navidbargrizan.com

Charles Corey is an American composer holding a Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory from the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied with Mathew Rosenblum, Eric Moe, Amy Williams, and Trevor Björklund. His approach to composition exploits and subverts the relationships that exist between different tuning systems; the results of this process range from pieces that use standard tuning systems in unique ways to works that involve multiple tuning systems working in concert. Corey's compositions, known for their unexpected, evocative harmonies and their strong dramatic arcs, have been played across Europe and the Americas by performers including Cikada Ensemble, Iktus Percussion, Kjell Tore Innervik, Ere Lievonen, Inverted Space, and entelechron, with recent premieres in Amsterdam, Kansas City, and Buenos Aires.

Corey is Director and Curator of the Harry Partch Instrumentarium and Affiliate Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Washington, Seattle, as well as Director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra's Merriman Family Young Composers Workshop. He was recently awarded a Jack Straw Foundation Artist Support Grant, and his score Courtship Dance of the Jungftak received third prize in the 2018 Young Virtuosos International Marin Goleminov Composers Composition.  You can hear his music at www.charlescorey.com.

Jessica Maxfield

As a critically acclaimed artist, Los Angeles-based classical saxophonist Jessica Maxfield enjoys an active career as an accomplished performer, educator, clinician, adjudicator, lecturer and conductor. She has concertized and presented master classes and clinics throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Maxfield has received awards and recognition from the Yamaha Young Artist National Competition, the Selmer-Paris/Ukraine International Saxophone Competition, the Adolphe Sax International Saxophone Competition and the Music Teacher’s National Association Chamber Music Competition.

She has performed frequently with prestigious ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Ravinia Festival, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Santa Barbara Symphony, Redlands Symphony, Redlands Bowl Symphony, Chicago Philharmonic, Joffrey Ballet, Kaleidoscope, the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic, the National Wind Ensemble in Carnegie Hall, the Lima, Evanston, Rockford, and Lake Shore Symphonies, as well as soloist with the Northern Kentucky University Symphonic Winds Ensemble, Chicago's Apollo Chorus and Cor Cantiamo.

As an advocate for new music, she has collaborated with numerous emerging composers as soloist and chamber musician including several commissions by notable composers throughout North America and Europe. As a saxophone scholar, her diligent research culminated into a dissertation entitled, “Contributions to the Early History of the Saxophone in Germany.”

Jessica Maxfield holds degrees with distinction from Bowling Green State University, while under the tutelage of Dr. John Sampen, and Northwestern University, where she completed a Master of Music and Doctor of Music degrees and served as a Lecturer of Saxophone under the guidance of the legendary Dr. Frederick Hemke. Currently she is on the faculty at the University of Southern California’s famed Thornton School of Music as Artist-Teacher of Classical Saxophone. According to Dr. Hemke, "As a true artist, Jessica Maxfield is one of the brightest and most accomplished young performer/scholars in today's contemporary saxophone world.”

In addition, Jessica Maxfield is a Conn-Selmer Artist-Clinician and hosted the North American Saxophone Alliance's Region 5 Conference at Northern Illinois University in January 2015.

Ruud Harte started playing the guitar at the age of 17. Inspired by the classical repertoire for the guitar he began his studies at the ArtEZ Conservatorium in Rotterdam in 2007. Between 2012 and 2014 he continued his lessons with Lydia Kennedy and Frans van Gurp and finished the Master course at the same conservatory. In this period Harte specialized in contemporary music for the classical guitar and even started to explore the role of the electric guitar in contemporary classical music. To learn more on this subject he took private lessons with Wiek Hijmans between 2014 and 2017.

Harte plays concerts regularly and one of his main goals is to work with composers and expand the range of works for the classical and electric guitar.

He premiered Tiento I by Hans Bakker in 2017. Furthermore he seeks to collaborate with people in other disciplines like electronic music and contemporary dance. Watch Ruud Harte on Youtube.

Tatakh Huismans (b.1962, Amsterdam) studied at the Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam with Dick Visser (1926) and graduated in 1991. Huismans devotes his time to teaching guitar and investigating, studying, and researching the music from the Segovia archive (opened in 2001 and published by Angelo Gilardino), and more widely, the guitar music of the 20th Century.

Huismans premiered the wonderful Tiento II by Hans Bakker in 2009, playing on a Meinel guitar strung with gut strings and wound on silk basses by Northern Renaissance Instruments from Manchester.

This performance is on Youtube , and it will show an interesting contrast with the studio recording.

Stacks Duo

Reinventing the saxophone recital, STACKS concerts are a seamless stream of saxophones, electronics, and video. Based in Greensboro NC, STACKS has been presenting concerts in the United States since 2011. In February 2015, STACKS toured from North Carolina to Florida, performing ten shows. "Our repertoire consists primarily of pieces dedicated to the duo. In addition we collaborate with video artists who create films from and for our compositions, student composers, and performance and improvisatory workshops for young artists. Our concerts are typically presented without interruption and bring spectators into a visual and auditory trip." STACKS is also part of COLLective for hAPpy SoundS (COLLAPSS), a collective of musicians, composers, dancers, and visual artists based in Greensboro. A DVD of the duet was published in France by Thödol and released in February 2015. "It's the most fun you can have with 8 saxophones, three computers, video and dancers.”

stevestusek.com

TOLGAHAN ÇOĞULU

The first prize winner at Georgia Tech Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition in 2014, Tolgahan Çoğulu designed his "Adjustable Microtonal Guitar" in 2008. His first album with microtonal guitar, Atlas, was published in 2012 by Kalan Music. His microtonal and fretless guitar duo and lecture recital, “Microtonal Guitar Music,” has taken him to many festivals and universities in 33 countries. Çoğulu is building a repertoire for microtonal guitar with more than 40 composers involved at this point. In 2013, he became an Associate Professor in Guitar at Istanbul Technical University’s Turkish Music State Conservatory, where he had founded the classical guitar department in 2010 and the world’s first microtonal guitar department in 2014. His second album, Microtonal Guitar Duo, was published by Kalan Music in June 2015. His recording of William Allaudin Mathieu’s three-movement Lattice-İşi in just intonation was published in the United States in 2016. He completed a research project entitled “Historical Tunings on Microtonal Guitar” at the University of Bristol in 2016 for 12 months. Between 2015-2017 he collaborated with the University of Music Würzburg for the project “Creating and Presenting a Repertoire for the Microtonal Guitar” supported by DAAD in which 12 composers wrote pieces for microtonal guitar and ensemble. His book Microtonal Guitar was published in 2018 by Mojo Roots Music, co-authored by Fernando Perez. His latest album Microtonal was published in 2018 by Ahenk Music. Currently, he is teaching at Istanbul Technical University. tolgahancogulu.com

PEDROIA STRING QUARTET

With an intense and beautiful blend of freshness and experience, the Pedroia String Quartet is bursting onto the Boston scene. To the unified and persuasive core of Peter Sulski and Rohan Gregory’s ten years of quartet playing together, add the power and fire of first violinist Jae Cosmos Lee and the consummate beauty and flexibility of cellist Jaques Lee Wood, and you have the Pedroia Quartet.

Sulski’s seven years in the London Symphony, Lee’s founding of  “A Far Cry,” the most exciting new chamber orchestra in the United States, Wood’s solo appearances with orchestras in Seoul and Merkin Hall, Gregory’s tours to India, Thailand, and Brazil with famous world music groups: these comprise the ingredients that make up the complex and versatile playing of the Pedroia.

Having steeped themselves in the knowledge of the Juilliard, Cleveland, Tokyo, Vermeer, and Takacs Quartets, the Pedroia members have gone on to play as guests with the Borromeo, Jupiter, Audubon, and Alcan quartets, and members have founded, toured, and recorded with both the Arden and QX quartets. Sulski and Gregory, founders and ten-year members of QX, held a Clark University residency, recorded on Albany Records, and performed in Jordan and Mechanics Halls; to this core of experience add the dynamism of Wood and Lee, and Boston’s newest sound is heard: The Pedroia.

www.pedroiaquartet.com