Composing Earth
cohort I
(2021-2022)
Nicolas Lell Benavides
Nicolas Lell Benavides’ music has been praised for finding “…a way to sketch complete characters in swift sure lines…” (Anne Midgette, Washington Post) and cooking up a “jaunty score [with] touches of cabaret, musical theater and Latin dance.” (Tim Smith, OPERA NEWS). He has worked with groups such as the Washington National Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, Duo Cortona, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Friction Quartet, New Moon Duo, and Nomad Session. He aspires to be a storyteller through music, frequently drawing on his Nuevomejicano roots and culture. His recent interviews and articles about culture in classical music can be found on I CARE IF YOU LISTEN.
Samantha Boshnack
Whether blasting through the sonic explorations of her alternative chamber orchestra, B’shnorkestra, or leading the 7-piece Seismic Belt or her quintet, Samantha Boshnack’s compositional voice pulses with vitality. Her intention is to charge orchestral and chamber precision with the syncopated rhythm of her personal style.
Drawn to it’s vibrant music scene, Boshnack moved to Seattle in 2003 after graduating from New York’s Bard College. The subsequent seventeen years find her actively bolstering the thriving musical community and creating ensembles, commissions, recordings and performances both locally and nationally. She is a part of the acclaimed composers’ collective Alchemy Sound Project. She has also toured extensively in the zany, postmodern Reptet. Boshnack’s compositions have been performed by the Northwest Symphony Orchestra, Washington Composers Orchestra, Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, Marina Albero/Boshnack duo and more.
Dustin Carlson
Dustin Carlson is a Brooklyn based guitarist composer and improvisor. His work touches the realms of jazz, chamber music, rock, noise, flamenco, and performance art. He has performed throughout the USA, Europe, Mexico and Canada. His band, Air Ceremony, featuring Matt Mitchel, Kate Gentile, Nathaniel Morgan, Eric Trudel, Danny Gouker and Adam Hopkins. released their debut record on Out of Your Head Records in November 2018.
His collaboration with Isabel Umali, a recording and dance piece entitled Shakes/the Noise of Wings was performed at the FICDMX dance festival in Mexico City in August 2018 and Abrons Art Center in NYC in 2017. F$F, his is long standing collaboration with trumpet player Brad Henkel released Forgotten Cities in June 2018, the music for that record was created while he was artist in residence at the Opekta Ateliers in Cologne Germany 2015. He has a solo record entitled Shakes/The Noise of Wings (VSR007 2016).
His collaborative projects include F$F (duo with Brad Henkel) and Secret People (trio with Kate Gentile and Nathaniel Morgan). He is the guitarist in the Webber/Morris Big Band which releases their debut on Greenleaf Records this year. He also plays guitar in Horse Torso, and accompanies Flamenco singer Julia Patinella playing music from Spain and Latin America.
Michael-Thomas Foumai
Dr. Michael-Thomas Foumai (b. 1987, Honolulu, Hawai‘i) is a composer of contemporary concert music and educator. His music has been described as “vibrant and cinematic” (New York Times) and “full of color, drama, and emotion” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). A prolific composer of symphonic music, his work focuses on storytelling and the history, people and culture of his Hawaiʻi home. In 2019, he was selected into the 17th class of the Pacific Century Fellows comprised of 35 outstanding and talented young leaders to represent the individual and professional diversity of Hawaiʻi, including government, small-and-large-businesses, the arts, non-profit and corporate enterprises. Through his works, he was was awarded the Mayor of Honolulu Certificate of Recognition and the recognition by proclamation from the State Senate of Hawaiʻi.
Iman Habibi
Iman Habibi, D.M.A. (Michigan), is an Iranian-Canadian composer and pianist, and a founding member of the piano duo ensemble, Piano Pinnacle.
Hailed as “a giant in talent” (the Penticton Herald), Dr. Habibi has been commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra and The Orchestra of St. Luke's, and collaborated with the Vancouver and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Chiara String Quartet, Del Sol String Quartet, and The Calidore String Quartet, and has been programmed by Carnegie Hall, The Marilyn Horne Foundation, New York Festival of Song, The Canadian Opera Company, and Tapestry New Opera, among others.
His awards include multiple wins at the SOCAN Foundation’s Awards, The International Composers’ Award at the Esoterics’ POLYPHONOS (2012), The Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Awards for Emerging Artist in Music (2011), Brehm Prize in Choral Music (2016), as well as numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, and BC Arts Council.
Jessica Hunt
Dr. Jessica A. Hunt’s music has been heard from coast to coast, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City, broadcast on FM radio and PBS television, recorded on the Pro Organo label, and played in concert by some of today’s finest ensembles and soloists, including the Gaudete Brass Quintet, the Chiara Quartet, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings, the Calidore Quartet, Fulcrum Point, Ensemble 20+ (Michael Lewanski), the Fear No Music Ensemble, Palomar, Oliver Brewer, Richard Hoskins, Jonathan Ryan, and R. Benjamin Dobey, and in readings by the DePaul Symphony Orchestra conducted by Cliff Colnot and by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble and Dal Niente, among others.
Hunt’s primary goal as a composer is to seek emotional resonance in the rhetorical dialogue between herself, the audience, and the performer by creating eclectic works that explore the aural and syntactical intersections between theatre, narrative, sound, truth and fiction. As such, she has a particular focus on works engaging with the interpretation of text. Her current large-scale works in progress include Thurso’s Landing, an opera in two acts based on the epic narrative poem of the same title by Robinson Jeffers, and a series of works for trombone and piano for trombonist Paul Von Hoff which explores the rhetoric, identity and question of “tune.”
Erika Oba
Erika Oba is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and educator based in the SF Bay Area. As a composer she has written works for jazz ensembles, chamber groups, dance and theater. She is active as a performer on both piano and flute, and performs with her own groups the Oba-Bastian-Steinkoler trio, Ends Meat’ Catastrophe Jazz Ensemble, Rice Kings, and The Sl(e)ight Ensemble. She has also performed with the Hitomi Oba Ensemble, Peter Apfelbaum's Sparkler, Jason Levis and Lisa Mezzacappa’s Duo B Experimental Band, and many other jazz and experimental bands in the Bay Area. In addition to her own private teaching studio, she is a private jazz piano instructor for UC Berkeley’s Music Department. As an artist, she is interested in exploring ritual, diasporic identities, and community through performance.
Timothy Peterson
Driven by constant curiosity, composer Timothy Peterson welcomes audiences into musical narratives of genre-crossing expressivity. His music has been performed in the US, Europe, and Australia at venues ranging from art galleries and distilleries to concert halls such as Lincoln Center. Ensembles that have presented Timothy’s music include yMusic, So Percussion, Duo Cortona, ThreeForm, New Opera West, Hartford Opera Theater, and One Ounce Opera. A former fellow at the Gabriela Lena Frank Academy of Music and the Bang on a Can Summer Music Institute at MASS MoCA, Timothy has been awarded residencies at Blue Mountain Center, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. (These residencies have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) Timothy holds a MM in Composition from the University of Southern California and undergraduate degrees in composition and comparative literature from the University of Michigan. His mentors include Gabriela Lena Frank, Sean Friar, Frank Ticheli, Alan Smith, Kristin Kuster, Evan Chambers, Erik Santos, Paul Schoenfeld, Martin Katz, and Kyle Blaha.
Matthew Evan Taylor
As an artist, Matthew Evan Taylor, is intrigued by four aspects of music; the growth of complex music from a simple idea, the social nature of the art form (especially, as it manifests in improvisation and the audience’s reaction), the evocation of color and atmosphere through sound, and the relationship of dance and music. He believes that today’s culture encourages a new kinetic, vibrant type of art, with unhinged rhythms and unbridled expression. It is Matthew’s goal to reflect this world and what is awe-inspiring about it through his music. Ultimately, he wishes to connect with the audience and expose the beauty that is all around.
Matthew was born in Boston, Massachusetts (3 December, 1980) and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was exposed early to the music of Cannonball Adderly, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. He began playing saxophone at the age of 9, and quickly began learning the music of his heroes by ear. In college, he was introduced to the music of Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, which opened his ears to the world of modern classical music. After a five year stint touring as a founding member of Sony Music recording artist Moses Mayfield, Matthew moved to Miami in 2009 to focus on composition.
Jungyoon Wie
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Jungyoon Wie is a composer, educator, and pianist. Themes of identity have been the center of her compositional journey, and her recent research involved creating a short film in collaboration with filmmaker Toko Shiiki, dancers Rie Kim and Jun Wakabayashi, and Converge String Quartet which explores shifting dynamics of identity, otherness, and the marginalized experience of women. This film highlights a string quartet by Ms. Wie, han, which uses Korean, folk, traditional, European, American, and contemporary expressive modalities.
A recipient of the 2020 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, Wie has had the privilege of collaborating with many artists and organizations including the Del Sol String Quartet, Invoke String Quartet, Calidore String Quartet, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Young Women Composers Camp, Magnus Lindberg and Avanti! Chamber Ensemble (Finland), National Orchestra Institute, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, and the Wooster Symphony Orchestra. In 2018, she was chosen alongside Rufus Reid and David Biedenbender by the American Composers Forum to write a new work for the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. In 2016, her orchestral work, Water Prism, was performed by the New Jersey Symphony under the baton of David Robertson, one of four works selected for the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute. Her chamber work, Whimsical Sketches, for two clarinets, percussion, and piano, received the Second Prize at the 2016 Robert Avalon International Competition and was premiered at the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX).