crea
MEntors
2020

Kenji Bunch

Kenji Bunch is one of America’s most engaging, influential, and prolific composers. Through an expansive blend of classical and vernacular styles, Bunch makes music that's “clearly modern but deeply respectful of tradition and instantly enjoyable.” (The Washington Post) Deemed “emotional Americana,” (Oregon ArtsWatch) and infused with folk and roots influences, Bunch’s work has inspired a new genre classification: “Call it neo-American: casual on the outside, complex underneath, immediate and accessible to first-time listeners… Bunch’s music is shiningly original.” (The Oregonian) Hailed by The New York Times as “A Composer To Watch” and cited by Alex Ross in his seminal book The Rest Is Noise, Bunch’s wit, lyricism, unpredictability, and exquisite craftsmanship earn acclaim from audiences, performers, and critics alike.

Bunch grew up in the Pacific Northwest, received conservatory training at The Juilliard School, and after 20 years in New York City, returned to reside in his hometown of Portland, Oregon where he serves as Artistic Director of Fear No Music. His interests in history, philosophy, and intergenerational and cross-cultural sharing of the arts reflect in his work. The varied style references in his classical music writing authentically mirror the diversity of global influence on American culture. Irresistible grooves frequent Bunch’s music, revealing his deft ability to integrate bluegrass, hip hop, jazz, and funk idioms. At the same time, the rich, tonal harmonies and drawn-out, satisfying builds which characterize his work have wide emotive appeal, and easily lend themselves to dance and film.

Over sixty American orchestras have performed Bunch’s music. His vivid instrumentation “reache(s) into every section of the orchestra to create an intriguing mixture of sonic colors.” (NW Reverb) Recent works include commissions and premieres from the Seattle Symphony, the Oregon Symphony, the Lark Quartet, the Britt Festival, Music From Angel Fire, Chamber Music Northwest, the Eugene Ballet, Third Angle New Music, the Grant Park Music Festival, and 45th Parallel, with whom he serves as Composer in Residence. All-Bunch concerts have been mounted in New York City, Boston, Denver, Nashville, Mobile (AL) and Portland (OR), as well as at the Perpignon Conservatoire in southern France, the Stamford Festival in England, and The Oranjewoud Festival in The Netherlands. His dance collaborations include work with such renowned choreographers as Toni Pimble, David Parsons, Nai-Ni Chen, Kate Skarpetowska, Paul Vasterling, and Darrell Grand Moultrie. Bunch's film credits include The Bellman Equation and The Argentum Prophecies, and his extensive discography includes recordings on Sony/BMG, EMI Classics, Koch, Kleos Classics, RCA, Naxos, Pony Canyon, GENUIN, Capstone, MSR Classics, Innova, ARS, and Crystal labels.

Also an outstanding violist, Bunch was the first student ever to receive dual Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in viola and composition from The Juilliard School and was a founding member of the highly acclaimed ensembles Flux Quartet (1996-2002) and Ne(x)tworks (2003-2011), and played fiddle and sang with the band Citigrass for over 15 years. He is a frequent performer with jazz, pop, folk, country, rock, and experimental musicians. Bunch teaches viola, composition, and music theory at Portland State University, Reed College, and for the Portland Youth Philharmonic.

https://www.kenjibunch.net/

Jimmy López Bellido

An “undeniably exciting composer” (Opera News), with “a brilliant command of orchestral timbres and textures” (Dallas Morning News) and “a virtuoso mastery of the modern orchestra” (The New Yorker), Peruvian-born, American Composer Jimmy López Bellido has created works performed by leading orchestras around the world including the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the National Symphony Orchestras of Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Spain, among others, and his music has been heard in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Kennedy Center, Vienna’s Musikverein, Konzerthaus Berlin, and during the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. His music has been featured in numerous festivals, including Tanglewood, Aspen, Grant Park, Darmstadt, Donaueschingen and the Nordic Music Days.

As part of the Renée Fleming initiative, the Lyric Opera of Chicago commissioned him a full-length opera based on Ann Patchett’s bestselling novel Bel Canto which premiered on December 2015 to wide critical acclaim. Bel Canto became the bestselling opera of Lyric’s 2015-2016 season, and it went on to earn a nomination to the 2016 International Opera Awards. In 2017 it was broadcast all throughout the U.S. on PBS' Great Performances. His work Fiesta! has been performed over 90 times worldwide, ranging from Australia to Siberia, thus making it one of the most performed contemporary orchestral works. Dreamers, an oratorio which he wrote in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz, received its world premiere by Soprano Ana María Martínez, Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London in Berkeley, California in March of 2019. Mr. López has just completed a three-year tenure as the Houston Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence.

Symphonic Canvas, a new album exclusively dedicated to his orchestral works, was released in August of 2019. All works were recorded by Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He studied with Enrique Iturriaga from 1998-2000 at the National Conservatory of Music in Lima, and with Veli-Matti Puumala and Eero Hämeenniemi from 2000-2007 at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, from where he obtained his Master of Music Degree. He completed his PhD in Music at the University of California-Berkeley in May of 2012 with Edmund Campion. He is published by Filarmonika Music Publishing.

https://www.jimmylopez.com

Jessie Montgomery

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, language, and social justice, placing her squarely as one of the most relevant interpreters of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post).

Jessie was born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1980s during a time when the neighborhood was at a major turning point in its history. Artists gravitated to the hotbed of artistic experimentation and community development. Her parents – her father a musician, her mother a theater artist and storyteller – were engaged in the activities of the neighborhood and regularly brought Jessie to rallies, performances, and parties where neighbors, activists, and artists gathered to celebrate and support the movements of the time. It is from this unique experience that Jessie has created a life that merges composing, performance, education, and advocacy.

Since 1999, Jessie has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African-American and Latinx string players. She currently serves as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble. She was a two-time laureate of the annual Sphinx Competition and was awarded a generous MPower grant to assist in the development of her debut album, Strum: Music for Strings (Azica Records). She has received additional grants and awards from the ASCAP Foundation, Chamber Music America, American Composers Orchestra, the Joyce Foundation, and the Sorel Organization.

Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Five Slave Songs (2018) commissioned for soprano Julia Bullock by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Records from a Vanishing City (2016) for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Caught by the Wind (2016) for the Albany Symphony and the American Music Festival, and Banner (2014) – written to mark the 200th anniversary of The Star-Spangled Banner – for The Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation.

In the 2019-20 season, new commissioned works will be premiered by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the National Choral Society, and ASCAP Foundation. Jessie is also teaming up with composer-violinist Jannina Norpoth to reimagine Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha; it is being produced by Volcano Theatre and co-commissioned by Washington Performing Arts, Stanford University, Southbank Centre (London), National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Additionally, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony will all perform Montgomery’s works this season.

The New York Philharmonic has selected Jessie as one of the featured composers for their Project 19, which marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting equal voting rights in the United States to women. Other forthcoming works include a nonet inspired by the Great Migration, told from the perspective of Montgomery’s great-grandfather William McCauley and to be performed by Imani Winds and the Catalyst Quartet; a cello concerto for Thomas Mesa jointly commissioned by Carnegie Hall, New World Symphony, and The Sphinx Organization; and a new orchestral work for the National Symphony.

Jessie began her violin studies, at the Third Street Music School Settlement, one of the oldest community organizations in the country. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and currently a member of the Catalyst Quartet, she continues to maintain an active performance career as a violinist appearing regularly with her own ensembles, as well as with the Silkroad Ensemble and Sphinx Virtuosi.

Jessie’s teachers and mentors include Sally Thomas, Ann Setzer, Alice Kanack, Joan Tower, Derek Bermel, Mark Suozzo, Ira Newborn, and Laura Kaminsky. She holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a Graduate Fellow in Music Composition at Princeton University.

https://www.jessiemontgomery.com

Reinaldo Moya

Reinaldo Moya is a graduate of Venezuela’s El Sistema music education system. Through El Sistema, he had access to musical training from an early age and was a founding member of the Simón Bolívar Orchestra touring throughout Europe, North and South America.

He graduated from The Juilliard School with both masters and doctorate degrees, under the tutelage of Samuel Adler and Robert Beaser. He received his Bachelors in Music degree from West Virginia University, where his principal teacher was John Beall.

He was the Composer-Residence at The Schubert Club in Minnesota from 2017-19, which led to the commissioning and premiere of his chamber opera Tienda in May 2019. The premiere was hailed by the Star Tribune for its "proud individuality... [and]textures of pulsing vibrancy, subtly shading harmonies to trace the fragile emotional arc of his central characters." He is the recipient of the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letter, the 2015 McKnight Composers Fellowship, the Van Lier Fellowship from Meet the Composer and the Aaron Copland Award from the Copland House. In January 2020 he was announced as the winner of the inaugural recipient of the $20,000 Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Composer Award. He will write a new work for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra for the 20-21 Season

His family opera Memory Boy, with a libretto by Mark Campbell,  was commissioned by the Minnesota Opera for its Project Opera and premiered in February of 2016. Excerpts from his opera Generalissimo (about the life, death and afterlife of a fictionalized Latin American dictator) have been performed in New York at Symphony Space and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.

His violin concerto Vestida de mar was co-commissioned by the Greenwood Music Camp and the Lakes Area Music Festival. It received its premiere in the summer of 2019 with Francescas Anderegg as the soloist and conducted by Benjamin Rous and Gemma New. His orchestral piece Siempre Lunes, Siempre Marzo was performed by the New Jersey Symphony and The Juilliard Orchestra, under the batons of JoAnn Falletta and Carlos Miguel Prieto, respectively. In the fall of 2016, his Passacaglia for Orchestra was chosen by the audience and the musicians of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra as the winner of the Earshot Composers Competition sponsored by the American Composers Orchestra.

His music has been performed in Germany, Colombia, Australia, Argentina, Venezuela and throughout the United States by performers such as the Juilliard Orchestra, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Attacca Quartet as well as musicians from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, among others. Mr. Moya has taught at St. Olaf College and Interlochen Arts Camp, and is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Augsburg University in Minneapolis.

https://www.reinaldomoya.com