DechoVoce (Katherine Petersen, voice and Jacob Swanson, sax) recently recorded “Epilogue” and included in on their December 2021 recitals. I really appreciate them making this beautiful recording and wanted to share it with you! They also have a live recording posted to their YouTube channel, along with other music by some wonderful composers. Follow them for more exciting sax repertoire!
Tag: Performance
“This World of Yes” Tour
I am very happy to announce that mezzo-soprano Megan Ihnen and saxophonist Alan Theisen will perform Epilogue on their upcoming tour. Their program, “This World of Yes,” features a number of twenty-first century compositions from a diverse group of composers. Tour dates and locations are:
- Nov. 13 at 7 pm at Xavier University in New Orleans, LA
- Nov. 14 at 7 pm at Highlands United Methodist Church in Birmingham, AL
- Nov. 15 at 7:30 pm at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC
- Nov. 16 at 7:30 pm at Mars Hill University in Mars Hill, NC
Megan and Alan have previously performed the program in Fort Wayne, IN; Kansas City, MO; and Lamoni, IA. A video of one of their past performances can be found here:
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Electronic Music Midwest 2017
My work “Falling” for voice and live processing has been selected for inclusion at the 2017 Electronic Music Midwest Festival. Held at the Kansas City Kansas Community College on Sept. 21-23, “Falling” will be on the 1:30 pm concert on Saturday, Sept. 23.
The work was premiered at the Women Composers Festival of Hartford in 2015. Based on a line of text by Sarah Teasdale, the work uses Max/MSP to build ambient textures from the spoken vocal part. If you attend, you’ll see a rare sight – me performing!
IAWM Annual Concert 2017
Every year, the International Alliance for Women in Music presents a concert of works selected from a competitive score call. I am pleased to announce that my violin-cello duo You, as You Were Before You Existed has been selected for performance at the 2017 concert. The event will take place on Saturday, Oct. 28 at 7:30 pm at the University of Kansas’s Swarthout Recital Hall. The concert will featured the following works performed by the Kansas Virtuosi:
- Running Amok by Victoria Malawey (USA)
- Stay by Jennifer Bellor (USA)
- You, As You Were Before You Existed by Jessica Rudman (USA)
- Solitude by Ellen Ruth Harrison (USA)
- The Lives and Opinions of Literary Cats by Jennifer Jolley (USA)
- Up a Half Step by Amelia S. Kaplan (USA)
- Conigli by Anne Guzzo (USA)
- Meadowlark by Tawnie Olsen (Canada)
- Parakeet Dancing by Seunghee Lee (South Korea)
If you are in the area, I hope you will join us!
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“Still I Rise!” selected for ICO Readings
My most recent orchestra work Still I Rise! has been chosen for the Earshot Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra Readings and Competition. Along with compositions by four other emerging composers, the ICO will workshop my piece and present it in a public concert on Sept. 23 at 7 pm. Full details about the ICO Readings, including profiles of all of the composers, can be found here.
The music is inspired by Maya Angelou’s eponymous poem. Her words express a profound sentiment of perseverance: they reflect not only surviving hardships, but coming out of them with one’s spirit in tact. The narrator’s sassiness, quirky humor, and energy are manifested in the music’s grooves, flirty lines, and vibrant colors. Angelou’s theme of endurance is expressed as the main motive, or “protagonist,” travels through periods of confidence, adversity, manic excitement, questioning, and catharsis. Even when the identity of the main motive is almost obliterated by the heavy, static chords of the climax, it emerges to close the piece with a wink and a flourish —always rising again.
I began the work during a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2014. Since then, I have worked on it in Spain, Canada, across the U.S., and here at home–actually, in three different homes–in Connecticut. This will be the piece’s first performance, and I am very happy that the music will be brought to life soon!
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Ensemble for These Times Call for Scores Winner
I recently received the good news that There Will Come Soft Rains for unaccompanied voice was chosen for performance by the Ensemble For These Times in their inaugural Call for Scores. Selected from over 200 submissions, the piece will be performed during the 2016-17 concert season. I am very excited to be working with this great ensemble and am honored to be among the composers chosen (see the official release for a full list of winners).
This work is now available through the online store – click here to listen to a recording, view a perusal score, and/or purchase downloadable sheet music.
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WCFH Benefit Concert on 10/23
As part of our Fall Fundraising Campaign running from now until Oct. 23, board members from the Women Composers Festival of Hartford, along with a few special guests, will present an exciting evening of music. “Love, Motherhood, and the Female Gaze” explores the ways that women composers offer unique perspectives on parenthood, romantic relationships, and the female body. The program will include music by Pauline Viardot, Florence Price, Amy Beach, Lori Laitman, Gala Flagello, myself, and more.
The concert will be held on Oct. 23 at 7:30 pm in the historic Charter Oak Cultural Center. Tickets are a suggested donation of $20 for general admission or $5 for students, educators, and seniors. Tickets are available ahead of time online or at the door.
Additionally, we have teamed up with Savers Thrift Store as part of this event, which means that we are accepting donations in the form of cash, check, and bags of gently used clothing, accessories, books, and small household items! We will also be selling swag from our Indiegogo campaign, which you can check out ahead of time here.
We hope you will join us for the concert. If you can’t make it but would still like to support the Festival, please consider making a tax-deductible donation – every little bit helps us to continue presenting high quality music by women composers!
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HICO/CCI Concert on 12/6
The Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra (HICO) is pairing up with Connecticut Composers, Inc. to present a concert of music by local composers. Five works were selected through a score call, and I am happy to announce that my Scenes from Battleship Potemkin will be performed with works by Robert Carl, Ryan Jesperson, Ken Steen, and Frank Vasi. After the concert, the audience will vote on their favorite work on the program, and the winning composer will be commissioned by HICO for the 2015-2016 season. Hope to see you there!
December 6 at 7:30 pm
Charter Oak Cultural Center
Hartford, CT
Tickets: $20 General/$10 Student and Senior
Tickets can be purchased HERE or at the door
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June in Buffalo
I am very pleased to announce that I have been selected as a participant in the 2014 June in Buffalo Festival for emerging composers. I will be in residence at the University of Buffalo on June 2-8 for the event, and my flute-percussion duet “Rituals and Superstitions” will be performed on one of the Festival concerts. I am greatly looking forward to this exciting opportunity and will post more details as they become available. Until then, general information about June in Buffalo can be found online at http://www.music.buffalo.edu/center21c/jib.
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Early March Activities
The first two weeks of March will be a busy time for me! In addition to presenting my research about Ellen Taaffe Zwilich at the Society for American Music National Conference on March 7 (see an earlier post about this event here), I’ll be making trips to Westfield State University for their Festival of New Music on March 2 and Mansfield University for a residency with the Cadillac Moon Ensemble on March 10.
As part of the Westfield Festival of New Music, the Boston New Music Initiative will be performing my First Praise. I am very excited to work with the talented musicians of BNMI again and am fortunate they have chosen to present the work for the second time this season (the first being the Parma Music Festival/SCI Region I Conference back in August). The concert will also feature works by Taila Amar, James Crowley, Sungji Hong, Cody Kauhl, Rodrigo Lima, Jeffrey Shivers, and Frederic Rzewski performed by BNMI and by the Connecticut-based Generous Ensemble. In addition to participating in the concert, I will also be conducting a masterclass at the University and am greatly looking forward to meeting with the students.
The following week I will head to Pennsylvania for a short visit at Mansfield University, where I will also have the opportunity to work with students. While I am at the University, the NYC-based Cadillac Moon Ensemble will also be in residence and will be performing a program featuring premieres by Andrew Walters and myself. Having heard a reading session this past week that included my new string duo You, As You Were Before You Existed and a number of other works written for the CME, I can guarantee they will put on a great show!
As if that was not enough to keep me busy, I’ll also be in Connecticut for the weekend portion of the Women Composers Festival of Hartford on March 6-9. (Check back soon for a post about this staple of the Hartford music scene.) I hope to see you at one or more of these fantastic events!
New Horizons Music Festival
This Saturday, Nov. 2, my fixed media work “Not One Would Care” will be included in the New Horizons Music Festival at Truman State University (Kirksville, MO). The Festival includes a number of traditional concerts as well as a gallery show with art by Nicholas Naughton and electroacoustic music selected from a score call. The exhibition is entitled “Disasters of War”, and my work, which was among those chosen to accompany the prints, was inspired by Sara Teasdale’s post-apocolyptic poem “There will come soft rain”. The art will be on display in the Truman Art Gallery with the selected pieces on loop from 12-6:30 pm. More information about the Gallery Concert and all other events of the Festival can be found online at http://music.truman.edu/newhorizons/.