crea
mentors
2019
Composers for Racial Equity in the Arts
Marcos Balter
Praised by The Chicago Tribune as "minutely crafted" and "utterly lovely," The New York Times as "whimsical" and "surreal," and The Washington Post as "dark and deeply poetic," the music of composer Marcos Balter (b.1974, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is at once emotionally visceral and intellectually complex, primarily rooted in experimental manipulations of timbre and hyper-dramatization of live performance. His works have been featured worldwide in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Köln Philharmonie, the French Academy at Villa Medici, New World Symphony Center, Park Avenue Armory, Teatro de Madrid, Tokyo Bunka Kaykan, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Teatro Amazonas, Le Poison Rouge, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago. Recent festival appearances include those at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, Ecstatic Music Festival, Acht Brücken, Aldeburgh Music Festival, Lockenhaus Kammermusikfestival, Aspen, ACO's SONiC Festival, Frankfurter Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Color Field, Musica Nova, and MATA's Interval Series. Past honors include commissions from Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, The Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, The Holland/America Music Society, The MacArthur Foundation, and the Art Institute of Chicago, fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Tanglewood Music Center/Leonard Bernstein Foundation, and Civitella Ranieri Foundation, as well as first prizes in several national and international composition competitions. His works are published by Schott NY, and commercial recordings of his music are available through New Amsterdam Records, New Focus Recording, Parlour Tapes+, and Navona Records.
He graduated with school and departmental honors at Northwestern University where his main teachers were Augusta Read Thomas, Amy Williams, and Jay Alan Yim. Guest instructors in master classes and festivals include Louis Andriessen, George Benjamin, Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, Oliver Knussen, Christian Lauba, Tristan Murail, Enno Poppe, Bernard Rands, Wolfgang Rihm, and Kaija Saariaho.
Having previously taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Northwestern University, Lawrence University, and Columbia College Chicago, he is currently an Associate Professor of Music Composition at Montclair State University.
Anthony Cheung
Composer and pianist Anthony Cheung writes music that reveals an interest in the ambiguity of sound sources and the subtle transformation and manipulation of timbre allied with harmony. Musical artifacts, both imaginary and allusive, become sites of fragmentation or excavation. The music also frequently engages poetic imagery, syntax and rhetoric, natural phenomena, and is heavily influenced by improvisatory traditions. His music has been commissioned and performed by leading groups such as the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, New York Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Scharoun Ensemble, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and many others. From 2015-17, he was composer-in-residence with the Cleveland Orchestra.
He is the recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as a 2012 Rome Prize, and received First Prize at the 2008 Dutilleux Competition. In 2007, he co-founded the Talea Ensemble, and served as pianist and artistic director of the group. Recordings include three portrait discs: Cycles and Arrows (New Focus), Dystemporal (Wergo), and Roundabouts (Ensemble Modern Medien). He studied at Harvard and Columbia, and was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2009-12. Since 2013, he has taught at the University of Chicago as an Assistant Professor of Music.
Valerie Coleman
Valerie Coleman is regarded by many as an iconic artist who continues to pave her own unique path, as a Grammy® nominated flutist, composer and entrepreneur. Regarded as “one of the Top 35 Women Composers” as listed in the Washington Post by critic Anne Midgette, she is also an alumna of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center CMS Two, laureate of Concert Artists Guild, the flutist and founder of the performer-composer trio Umama Womama. Perhaps most notably, she is the creator, founder, and former flutist of the acclaimed Imani Winds, an ensemble whose performances and original works have redefined wind chamber music with performances that span the globe. Imani Winds’ legacy is documented and featured in a dedicated exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
Coleman’s multi-faceted career has led her to be featured with the Philadelphia Orchestra, The Atlanta Symphony, the Hartford Symphony, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Boston Symphony Orchestra Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI), New Haven Symphony, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Music at Angelfire, Banff, Spoleto USA, Bravo! Vail, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center, to name a few. Her career as a recitalist and clinician has led her to be the featured guest flutist for the Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair, New Jersey Flute Fair, South Carolina Flute Society Festival, Colorado Flute Fair, Mid-South Flute Fair, and the National Women’s Music Festival, among many others. Looking forward, Valerie is scheduled to appear for a host of festival and collegiate multi-disciplinary residencies, including Phoenix Chamber Music Society, Virginia Tech, Oberlin College, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, University of North Dakota, Chamber Music Northwest, University of Michigan, and Centre College. She will be the featured headliner at the Long Island Flute Club, Raleigh Area Flute Association, Greater Portland Flute Society, Seattle Flute Society, University of Wisconsin-Madison Flute Day, Bethune-Cookman University Flute Day, and the Florida Flute Society Festival.
Coleman’s passion for chamber music performance is what guided her to become a top advocate, mentor and specialist of the field, with an extensive performance history of premieres and collaborations at festivals and chamber music societies across the United States, with esteemed artists such as Orion String Quartet, Harlem String Quartet, Quarteto Latinoamericano, Dover Quartet, Miami String Quartet, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Yo-Yo Ma, David Shifrin, Gil Kalish, Shai Wosner, Anne-Marie McDermott, Wu-Han, members of the LA Chamber Orchestra, and jazz legends Paquito D’Rivera, Stefon Harris, Jason Moran, René Marie, among many others. She has given countless flute and chamber music masterclasses at institutions in 49 states and over 5 continents, including The Eastman School of Music, The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College of Music, Yale University, University of Colorado-Boulder, Northern Colorado State University, University of Louisville, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Carnegie Mellon, New England Conservatory, Oberlin College, McGill University, Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory, University of Maryland, Interlochen Arts Academy, Beijing Conservatory, Brazil’s Campo do Jordão Festival, and Australia’s Musica Viva, to name a few. With Imani Winds, she was recently an artist-in-residence at Mannes College of Music, Banff Chamber Music Intensive, and Visiting Faculty at the University of Chicago.
Advocacy and mentorship of artists and emerging ensembles is important to Valerie, and she has immensely enjoyed their success over the years. In 2011, she created the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, a summer mentorship program in NYC that has welcomed musicians from over 100 institutions both nationally and abroad. She has also served on the as an adjudicator for National Flute Association’s High School Artist Competition, Concert Artist Guild, APAP’s Young Performing Concert Artists fellowship, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award, MapFund Award and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. She is on the board of advisors for Composers Now, MacDowell Colony, and Sphinx LEAD, and has previously served on the APAP’s Classical Connections Committee, National Flute Association’s New Music Advisory Committee and Board Nomination Committee.
Valerie studied flute with Julius Baker, Judith Mendenhall, Doriot Dwyer, Leone Buyse and Alan Weiss; composition with Martin Amlin and Randy Wolfe. She is published by Theodore Presser, International Opus and has her own company, V Coleman Music.
Vivian Fung
JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung has a unique talent for combining idiosyncratic textures and styles into large-scale works, reflecting her multicultural background. NPR calls her “one of today’s most eclectic composers.”
Highlights of Fung’s 2019–2020 season include the UK premiere of Birdsong, performed by violinist Midori at Kings Place in London, world premiere performances of a new trumpet concerto with trumpeter Mary Elizabeth Bowden and the Erie Philharmonic, performances of Dust Devils by The Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra led by Peter Oundjian, Fanfare with the Florida Orchestra, Aqua by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal under conductor James Gaffigan, Earworms with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra led by Bramwell Tovey, Pizzicato with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra led by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Fung will also write new works commissioned by Standing Wave Ensemble in Vancouver and L’arc Trio in San Francisco.
Recent highlights include A Child Dreams of Toys, commissioned by the 2019 Winnipeg New Music Festival; a new Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra for the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra; the world premiere of String Quartet No. 4 “Insects and Machines” performed by the American String Quartet; Earworms, which musically depicts our diverted attention spans and multi-tasking lives; and The Ice Is Talking for solo percussion and electronics, commissioned by the Banff Centre, using three ice blocks to illustrate the beauty and fragility of our environment.
With a deep interest in exploring different cultures, Fung traveled to Cambodia in 2019 to connect with her roots and collect research for a new opera. She traveled to Southwest China in 2012 to study minority music and cultures, and has also explored North Vietnam, Spain, and Bali.
Fung has received numerous awards and grants, including the 2015 Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award for achievement in new music from SOCAN, a Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Gregory Millard Fellowship, and grants from ASCAP, BMI, American Music Center, MAP Fund, American Symphony Orchestra League, American Composers Forum, and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre and currently serves as Vice Chair of the board of the American Composers Forum. Passionate about fostering the talent of the next generation, Fung will mentor young composers this summer in programs at the American Composers Forum, San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players, and Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.
In 2012, Naxos Canadian Classics released a recording of Fung’s Violin Concerto [No.1], Piano Concerto “Dreamscapes,” and Glimpses. The Violin Concerto earned Fung the 2013 JUNO Award for “Classical Composition of the Year.” Several of Fung’s other works have also been released commercially on the Telarc, Çedille, Innova, and Signpost labels.
Born in Edmonton, Canada, Fung received her doctorate from The Juilliard School. She currently lives in California with her husband Charles Boudreau and their son Julian and is on the faculty of Santa Clara University.
Wang Lu
Composer and pianist Wang Lu writes music that reflects a very natural identification with influences from traditional Chinese music, urban environmental sounds, linguistic intonation and contours, and freely improvised traditions, through the prism of contemporary instrumental techniques and new sonic possibilities.
She is currently the David S. Josephson Assistant Professor of Music at Brown University, after receiving her doctoral degree in composition at Columbia University and graduating from the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music. Wang Lu’s works have been performed internationally, by ensembles including the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Alarm Will Sound, Minnesota Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lille, Holland Symfonia, Shanghai National Chinese Orchestra, Taipei Chinese Orchestra, Musiques Nouvelles, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Third Sound, Curious Chamber Players, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Argento, the Aizuri Quartet, the New York Virtuoso Singers and Momenta Quartet, among others.
Wang Lu has received the Berlin Prize in Music Composition (Spring 2019 residency) and was a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, and she has received commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress and the Fromm Foundation at Harvard. She won first prize at Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s Young Composers Forum in 2010 and shared the Tactus International Young Composers Orchestra Forum Award in 2008. She was selected for a Tremplin commission by IRCAM/Ensemble Intercontemporain in 2010 and the International Composition Seminar with the Ensemble Modern in 2012, and has also received two ASCAP Morton Gould awards.
Her music was programmed on festivals such as the 2014 New York Philharmonic Biennial, MATA Festival, Cresc. Biennale in Frankfurt, Gaudeamus Music Week, Tanglewood, Cabrillo Music Festival, Beijing Modern, Pacific and Takefu festivals in Japan, Mostly Mozart, Aspekte Festival in Salzburg, Mizzou International Composers Festival, and the Havana New Music Festival. She has also been a resident at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Collaborations have included an installation at Brown University’s Cohen Gallery with artist Polly Apfelbaum and an evening of poetry and music with poet Ocean Vuong. In 2019, her music was featured on portrait concerts at Miller Theater with ICE and Yarn/Wire, with Ensemble Recherche in Paris, and with Ensemble Mosaik plus soloists Ryan Muncy and Wu Wei in Berlin. Wang Lu’s recent compositions include a brass fanfare Code Switch for the opening of the Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW 2019-20 season, a duet for Noh performer Ryoko Aoki and cello, a flute and electronic piece for Claire Chase’s Density 2036, a solo piano work for Shai Wosner in honor of I.M. Pei, a new work for the Longleash trio supported by New Music USA, and a new work for the Talea Ensemble. Recent solo works includes commissions from violinists Miranda Cuckson, Jennifer Koh, and pianist Joel Fan.
Of her portrait album Urban Inventory, released in March 2018, Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker, “I’ve listened at least a dozen times to the composer Wang Lu’s new album, “Urban Inventory” (New Focus Recordings), and remain happily lost in its riotous maze of ideas and images. Every moment is vividly etched, drenched in instrumental color, steeped in influences that range from ancient Chinese folk music to the latest detonations of the European avantgarde… The sense of loneliness that emerges at the end of “Cloud Intimacy” lurks behind all of Wang Lu’s meticulous frenzies: it is of a piece with the essential solitude of composing, of sitting in silence and dreaming of a music that has never been heard.”
Huang Ruo
Huang Ruo has been lauded by the New Yorker as “one of the world’s leading young composers” and by the New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz. As a member of the new generation of Chinese composers, his goal is not just to mix both Western and Eastern elements, but also to create a seamless, organic integration. Huang Ruo’s diverse compositional works span from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, multi-media, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film.
Huang Ruo’s music has been premiered and performed by orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Kiel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic, ensembles and quartets such as Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, Remix Ensemble, Quatuor Diotima, and Ethel Quartet and conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Michael Tilson Thomas, James Conlon, Marin Alsop, Dennis Russell Davies, Ed Spanjaard, Peter Rundel, Alexander Liebreich, Xian Zhang, and Ilan Volkov.
Huang Ruo’s opera Dr. Sun Yat-Sen had its American premiere at the Santa Fe Opera in 2014 and will receive its Canadian premiere by the Vancouver Opera for its future season. His opera Paradise Interrupted received its world premiere at the Spoleto Festival USA in 2015 and was performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2016, before going on tour to Asia and Europe. In addition, his works were shown at Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera and Opera Hong Kong.
Huang Ruo was born in Hainan Island, China in 1976 – the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended. His father, who is also a composer, began teaching him composition and piano when he was six years old. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, when China was opening its gate to the Western world, he received both traditional and Western education at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. As a result of the dramatic cultural and economic changes in China following the Cultural Revolution, his education expanded from Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutoslawski, to include the Beatles, rock and roll, heavy metal, and jazz. Huang Ruo was able to absorb all of these newly allowed Western influences equally. After winning the Henry Mancini Award at the 1995 International Film and Music Festival in Switzerland, Huang Ruo moved to the United States to further his education. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in composition from the Juilliard School.
Huang Ruo is currently on the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music at the New School in NY. He is the artistic director and conductor of Ensemble FIRE (Future In REverse), and was selected as a Young Leader Fellow by the National Committee on United States–China Relations in 2006.
Matthew Evan Taylor
Award-winning composer, saxophonist, and improviser Matthew Evan Taylor has been hailed as “a promising new voice” (Lawrence Budmen, Miami Herald) and a “risk taker” (Neil De La Flor, Huffington Post) whose music is “insistent and defiant…envelopingly hypnotic” (Alan Young, Lucid Culture). His music has been performed across the United States and Europe by such ensembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Metropolis Ensemble, the Imani Winds, the Manhattan Girls Chorus and the Frost Symphony Orchestra. Matthew has also collaborated with visual artists and dancers; most recently he and visual artist Dannielle Tegeder collaborated on a series of graphic scores, premiered at the Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago. He has also performed with improvisers Elliott Sharp, Marilyn Crispell, Tatsuya Nakatani, Taylor Ho Bynum, and Mary Halvorson; dancers Laurel Jenkins, Christal Brown, Lida Winfield; and visual artists Molly Zuckerman-Hartung and JJ Peet. His music has appeared on recent recordings released Albany Records, “The Reaction” performed by bass-baritone Carl DuPont, and Centaur Records, “Let’s Meet at the Horizon” performed by violinist Karen Lord-Powell and double bassist Brian Powell.
Matthew is an avid promoter of living composers. He has been a founder and artistic director of such festivals as Vanguard Miami and Counter-Programming. He is also board member and composer-in-residence with Festival Baltimore. His most recent project, New Century | New Voices, is a concert series in Middlebury, Vermont celebrating the continued contributions of women and composers of color to the classical music canon. This series, which began in January 2019, included collaborations with composers Marcos Balter and Gabriela Lena Frank; pianists Asiya Korepanova and Redi Llupa; and violinist Gary Levinson.
Matthew – who earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami – is Assistant Professor of Music at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he teaches composition, music theory, and improvisation.
Michi Wiancko
Michi Wiancko is an internationally-acclaimed and multi-dimensional composer, violinist, and collaborator. Strad Magazine described her music as “intriguing and exquisitely beautiful…music that breaks through the pop classical barrier.”
Michi gave her violin solo debuts with the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performed her recital debut in Carnegie’s Weill Hall, and released a solo album of works by Émile Sauret on Naxos. Michi holds a B.Mus. in performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Master’s degree from Juilliard, where she studied with the Donald Weilerstein and the late Robert Mann, respectively.
Valued for her dedication as a collaborator, Michi has worked closely with musicians across a vast musical spectrum: Missy Mazzoli, Steve Reich, Silk Road Ensemble and Yo-Yo Ma, Wye Oak and Jenn Wasner, Emily Wells, Laurie Anderson, William Brittelle, Daniel Wohl, Emanuel Ax, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Vijay Iyer, International Contemporary Ensemble, The Knights, A Far Cry, to name a few. She has also toured several times with Musicians from Marlboro, and is a co-founder of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra.
Michi’s compositions and arrangements have been performed by orchestras, ensembles, and bands throughout the country and around the world. She has been commissioned by the Ecstatic Music Festival, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, The SPCO’s Liquid Music series, Enso Quartet, Sybarite5, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, violinist Mark Fewer, NOW Ensemble, and also composes music for film, commercial, and for her own band, Kono Michi.
Michi’s work has been performed by the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Arkansas Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Harvard Chamber Orchestra, Burlington Chamber Orchestra, Boston Conservatory Orchestra, and The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, as well as by youth orchestras in Australia and Colombia.
A native of California, Michi lives in Gill, a small farming community in western Massachusetts, where she and her husband, composer Judd Greenstein, run Antenna Cloud Farm, a music festival and artistic retreat on their 100 acre hilltop home.