2023 Twin Cities New Music Festival

P R O G R A M

This special event will include a Q & A with James Dillon and performances of excerpts from The Louth Work. Vocalist Alyssa Anderson, violist Harris Bernstein, and pianist Shannon Wettstein will also demonstrate unique performance techniques from some of their favorite parts of the piece.

February 27, 2023
4:30 pm

MacPhail Center for Music
Antonello Hall
501 South 2nd St
Minneapolis, MN 55401

FREE and Open to the Public

More info here.

March 2, 2023
7:00 pm

St. Paul’s United Church of Christ
900 Summit Ave
St Paul, MN 55105

Purchase Tickets
Festival Pass $40
Adults $15
Students/Seniors $5
Children FREE

program

M I V O S Q U A R T E T
Olivia De Prato, violin
Maya Bennardo, violin
Victor Lowrie Tafoya, viola
Tyler J. Borden, cello

Trio by Yu-Chun Chien

String Quartet No. 1 by Jose Javier Torres Maldonado


Vortex of Length by Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi

Dr. Sumanth Gopinath discusses his analysis of echo the angelus by James Dillon, with live excerpts from the work performed by concert pianist, Noriko Kawai.

March 3, 2023
12:00 pm

University of Minnesota
Ferguson Hall, Room 280
2106 4th St South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

FREE and Open to the Public

March 3, 2023
7:00 pm

St. Paul’s United Church of Christ
900 Summit Ave
St Paul, MN 55105

FREE and Open to the Public

Program

N O R I K O K A W A I, piano

Purple Blooms and Scarlet Stains by James Dillon, 2018
(world premiere)

Charm by James Dillon, 2008

dragonfly by James Dillon, 2009

echo the angelus by James Dillon, 2016
(US premiere)

March 4, 2023
2:00 pm

St. Paul’s United Church of Christ
900 Summit Ave
St Paul, MN 55105

Purchase Tickets
Festival Pass $40
Adults $15
Students/Seniors $5
Children FREE

program

String Quartet No. 8 by James Dillon

M I V O S Q U A R T E T
Olivia De Prato, violin
Maya Bennardo, violin
Victor Lowrie Tafoya, viola
Tyler J. Borden, cello

Yiddish is my Homeland by Josh Musikantow

Justin Anthony Spenner, baritone
Alyssa Anderson, soprano

M I V O S Q U A R T E T
Olivia De Prato, violin
Maya Bennardo, violin
Victor Lowrie Tafoya, viola
Tyler J. Borden, cello

The Soadie Waste by James Dillon

Shannon Wettstein, piano

M I V O S Q U A R T E T
Olivia De Prato, violin
Maya Bennardo, violin
Victor Lowrie Tafoya, viola
Tyler J. Borden, cello

March 4, 2023
7:00 pm

St. Paul’s United Church of Christ
900 Summit Ave
St Paul, MN 55105

Purchase Tickets
Festival Pass $40
Adults $15
Students/Seniors $5
Children FREE

program

The Louth Work by James Dillon

conducted by Betsy McCann

Alyssa Anderson, soprano
Harris Bernstein, viola
Patti Cudd, percussion
Rebeccah Parker Downs, cello
Michael Duffy, electronics
Pat O’Keefe, clarinet
Shannon Wettstein, piano

Take our audience feedback survey here, or scan the QR code below.

This activity is supported, in part, by the City of Saint Paul Cultural Sales Tax Revitalization Program.

4th Annual Twin Cities New Music Festival was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Helen F. Whitaker Fund, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc.

Special Thanks to Michael Cain, Heather Barringer, The Baroque Room, Jeffery Kyle Hutchins, Benjamin J M Klein, May Klug, Aarush Bothra, Nate Krebs, Nat Parrot, Emily Chen, Lowell Stephani, Willow Skidmore, and Walt Skidmore.

Alyssa Anderson

Dr. Alyssa Anderson (mezzo-soprano) is an active performer and arts administrator based in Minneapolis. She received her B.M. in performance from the State University of New York, College at Fredonia, and her M.M. and D.M.A. from the University of Minnesota.

As Artistic Director and vocalist of The Dream Songs Project, a classical voice and guitar duo based in Minneapolis, Alyssa has commissioned twelve major works for the ensemble and premiered numerous pieces by local and national composers in concerts across the US. She is a founding member and current Artistic Director of the experimental chamber group, RenegadeEnsemble, and also performs as The Poem Is Done with saxophonist Dr. Jeffery Kyle Hutchins.

A core member of The Rose Ensemble since 2015, Alyssa has also performed as a soloist with numerous other ensembles and presenting organizations in the Twin Cities, such as Zeitgeist, Mirandola Ensemble, LOFTRecital, 113 Composer Collective, Metamorphosis Opera Theater, Consortium Carissimi, Minnesota Bach Ensemble, Oratorio Society of Minnesota, Kenwood Symphony Orchestra, Twin Cities Lyric Theater, and Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. More information can be found at http://alyssaanderson.org

Maya Bennardo

Violinist Maya Bennardo is an active performer and teacher living in Brooklyn, NY. Maya is passionate about opening the dialogue between composers and performers, and is devoted to performing music of the present. She is a founding member of the violin/viola duo andPlay, described by I Care If You Listen as “enthusiastic champions for new music and collaboration.” She is a core member of Nouveau Classical Project and Hotel Elefant, and has performed with ensemble mise-en, Contemporaneous, Mimesis Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, and [Switch~ Ensemble]. Maya also performs new and traditional repertoire for violin and piano with pianist, Karl Larson, in their duo, Bennardo/Larson.

Recent highlights include recording residencies at Electronic Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY and at the Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm, Sweden with andPlay, performances on the Lincoln Center Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, Sound of Stockholm festival (Sweden), Omaha Under the Radar, String Theories, KROCH festival (Sweden), and the premiere of a new work for solo speaking violinist by Jesse Diener-Bennett. Maya was a fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival at Mass MoCa 2014/15, a member of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra in 2014, and a participant in the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik 2016.

Maya also enjoys a rich teaching life, is a member of the faculty at the Brooklyn Waldorf School, and teaches in her private studio. She graduated from NYU with a Master of Music and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with a Bachelor of Music. She studied with Gregory Fulkerson at both institutions.

Tyler J. Borden

Hailed for his "technically polished playing" (Jan Jezioro, Artvoice) as well as his “astounding performances of superlatively difficult modernist solo works" (Edge of the Center), Tyler J. Borden is a rising force in the contemporary music landscape. A dedicated purveyor of modern music, Tyler has performed with many contemporary music luminaries such as the Theater of Eternal Music Brass and String Band, the Slee Sinfonietta, Ensemble Offspring (Australia), and Tony Conrad. He has performed at the Soundways New Music Festival (St. Petersburg, Russia), June in Buffalo, the New Media Art and Sound Summit (Austin TX), and has been a participant at the Lucerne Festival Academy and the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. His performance of Witold Lutoslawski's "Cello Concerto" with the University at Buffalo Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Daniel Bassin was praised for how he "mastered the work’s intricacies with elegant grace" (Artvoice). Currently, Tyler is a member of the [Switch~ Ensemble], a group dedicated to the performance of works that incorporate multimedia elements into live performance. Tyler received his BM at Ithaca College, where he studied with Elizabeth Simkin and Heidi Hoffman, and his MM at the University at Buffalo, where he studied with Jonathan Golove. Currently, he is working towards a DMA at UC San Diego with Charles Curtis.

https://tylerjborden.com

Olivia De Prato

Internationally recognized as a soloist as well as a chamber musician, Austro-Italian violinist Olivia De Prato has been described as "flamboyant...convincing" (New York Times) and an "enchanting violinist" (Messaggero Veneto, Italy). After recently moving to New York City she has quickly established herself as a passionate performer of contemporary and improvised music. Her chamber music activities include appearances at the Bang on a Can Marathon in NYC, the Lucerne Festival with Pierre Boulez, the Ensemble Modern Festival, "June in Buffalo," and the Ojai Festival with Steve Reich. Olivia is a member of the new music ensemble Signal directed by Brad Lubman and Victoire, founded by composer Missy Mazzoli. Olivia has closely collaborated with composers such as Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, Chaya Czernowin, Peter Eötvös, Michael Gordon, Helmut Lachenman, David Lang, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Todd Reynolds, Ned Rothenberg, Julia Wolfe, and Evan Ziporyn. Olivia studied at the University of Music and Arts in Vienna and received her B.M. from the Eastman School of Music. She graduated with her M.M in Contemporary Performance from the Manhattan School of Music.

www.oliviadeprato.com

Victor Lowrie Tafoya

Victor Lowrie Tafoya is a versatile violist, improviser and composer. As a passionate advocate of new music, he has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician and educator throughout the US, South America, Europe and Asia. Victor is a founding member of Mivos, and performs regularly with groups such as Ensemble Signal, Slee Sinfonietta and the Wet Ink Ensemble. He can be heard on recordings from Carrier, Kill Rock Stars, New Amsterdam, New Focus Recordings, and Tzadik Records. As a composer, Victor writes for soloists and chamber ensembles, combining an ever-evolving personal sense of melody and harmony with explorations of improvisation and electronics. He earned his Bachelor of Music Performance from San Francisco State University, and was in the inaugural graduating class of the Master in Contemporary Performance program from the Manhattan School of Music. Victor grew up on the idyllic central coast of California and currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

www.victorlowrietafoya.com

MIVOS QUARTET

The Mivos Quartet, “one of America’s most daring and ferocious new-music ensembles” (The Chicago Reader), is devoted to performing works of contemporary composers and presenting diverse new music to international audiences. Since the quartet's beginning in 2008 they have performed and closely collaborated with an ever-expanding group of international composers representing a wide aesthetic range of contemporary composition. Highlights during the 2022/23 season will include performances and residencies at the Walker Arts Center with Cécile McLorin Salvant and Ambrose Akinmusire, UPenn, ECLAT Festival (DE), Columbia University, Peak Performances with Mary Halvorson, and the announcement of a new album of Steve Reich string quartets. 

Mivos is invested in commissioning, premiering, and growing the repertoire of new music for string quartet—striving for rich collaborations with composers over extended periods of time. Recently, Mivos has collaborated on new works with Jeffrey Mumford (LA Philharmonic/Library of Congress), Michaela Catranis (Fondation Royaumont), Chikako Morishita (rainy days festival), George Lewis (ECLAT Festival Commission), Sam Pluta (Lucerne Festival Commission), Eric Wubbels (CMA Commission), Kate Soper, Scott Wollschleger, Patrick Higgins (Zs), and poet/musician Saul Williams. For this work and its continuation, the quartet was the recipient of the 2019 Dwight and Ursula Mamlok Prize for Interpreters of Contemporary Music. 

Beyond expanding the string quartet repertoire, Mivos is committed to working with guest artists exploring multi-media projects and performing improvised music. Mivos has worked closely with artists such as Cécile McLorin Salvant (Ogresse), Ambrose Akinmusire (Origami Harvest), Ned Rothenberg, Timucin Sahin,  Nate Wooley, and most recently guitarist, composer, and 2019 MacArthur Fellow, Mary Halvorson.

Mivos has performed to critical acclaim on prestigious series such as Noon to Midnight (USA), Lucerne Festival (CH), Jazz at Lincoln Center (USA), the New York Phil Biennial (USA), Wien Modern (AT), the Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (DE), rainy days festival (LU), Asphalt Festival (DE), HellHOT! New Music Festival (Hong Kong), Shanghai New Music Week (CN), Música de Agora na Bahia (Brazil), Aldeburgh Music (UK), and Lo Spririto della musica di Venezia (IT). 

In addition to their performance season, Mivos is committed to the education of young composers and string players, and is regularly the quartet in residence at the Creative Musicians Retreat at the Walden School (USA) and the Valencia International Performance Academy and Festival (ES). The quartet has conducted workshops at Columbia University, Harvard University, Boston University, UC Berkeley, US San Diego, Duke University, Royal Northern College of Music (UK), Shanghai Conservatory (China), University Malaya (Malaysia), Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (Singapore), the Hong Kong Art Center, and MIAM University in Istanbul (Turkey) among others. Along with their work at educational institutions, Mivos grants the Mivos/Kanter String Quartet Composition Prize, a yearly award to support the work of emerging and mid-career composers residing in the USA, and the I-Creation prize, a competition for composers of Chinese descent worldwide.

The members of Mivos are violinists Olivia De Prato and Maya Bennardo, violist Victor Lowrie Tafoya, and cellist Tyler J. Borden. Mivos operates as a non-profit organization dedicated to performing, commissioning, and collaborating on music being written today.

www.mivosquartet.com/

JAMES DILLON

James Dillon is one of Europe’s most internationally celebrated and performed composers. His work spans all genres from solo to chamber music, orchestral to opera. The recipient of a number of prizes and awards including the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis and the Japan Foundation Artist Scholarship, he has also won an unprecedented five Royal Philharmonic Society awards, most recently in 2018 for his work Tanz/haus : triptych 2017. He has been a guest lecturer at many universities throughout the world, and was named 2001 New York University Distinguished International Visitor. In 2007 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Huddersfield and in the same year was appointed Professor of Composition, University of Minnesota, now holding the position of Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

In 1983, Dillon’s First String Quartet received its premiere from the Arditti Quartet at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. The Arditti Quartet has remained closely involved with the composer, having premiered and widely performed all nine of Dillon's string quartets. Huddersfield is one of the many festivals to regularly feature Dillon's music, most recently as Composer in Residence at the 2014 Festival where the Arditti Quartet performed all the quartets in chronological order over two concerts.

Nine Rivers, an enormous three-and-a-half hour sequence of works composed over more than two decades, was first performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2010 and has subsequently been heard in New York and at the 2013 Holland Festival to enormous acclaim. Nine Rivers was conceived, not as a cycle, but as a collection of works with certain 'internal symmetries'. The nine works are scored for various forces, ranging from the solo percussion and electronics of La coupure, through ensemble pieces such as East 11th St NY 10003, to the largest works - Viriditas, for sixteen solo voices, and Oceanos. This last piece, the 'ocean of oceans', is Nine Rivers' delta, bringing together all the forces previously deployed throughout the series and including more than fifty musicians and live electronics. Dillon says that he embarked upon the Nine Rivers project in part to escape the frustratingly 'atomistic' nature of a composer's activities. The intricate references of this complex meditation on time range from environmental concerns to the nature of musical language connected through the metaphor of the river.

Nine Rivers is indicative of Dillon’s tendency to think in terms of large-scale, complementary forms. In the mid-1980s, Dillon began a 'German Triptych', a set of works based on the idea, the composer says, of 'illumination as the emanation from darkness', a recurring theme in Western art. Überschreiten from 1985 was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta. This was followed in 1987 by helle Nacht, Dillon's first work for large orchestra. Richard Toop described this piece as 'a music full of figures which, like the stars, are intense, yet seem almost infinitely far away'. The 'German Triptych' was completed with the 1996 flute concerto Blitzschlag. Other grouped works include: L'évolution du vol, a song cycle for female voice and chamber ensemble; the violin series that makes up Traumwerk and The Book of Elements, a cycle in five volumes for solo piano. Most recently Dillon has completed a set of instrumental Triptychs, for ensembles based in Leuven, New York and Oslo.

Dillon’s orchestral music includes concertos for flute, violin, piano and string quartet—Edinburgh Festival, BBC Proms and Donaueschingen Musiktage commissions respectively; Via Sacra, commissioned by the Société Philharmonique de Bruxelles to celebrate the city’s Millennium project; Physis, commissioned by the Orchestre de Paris and La navette, a single-movement work commissioned by SWR for performance at the Donaueschingen Musiktage 2001; and The Gates, commissioned by the Donaueschingen Musiktage 2016 for String Quartet and Orchestra.

Dillon’s 2004 opera Philomela, further explores the material of La navette. Premièred in Oporto in September 2004 and subsequently toured, Philomela sets Dillon’s own libretto, based on the myth of Philomela’s rape and torture by Tereus and her subsequent weaving of the story.

Recordings of Dillon’s works have received a number of critics prizes including the Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2008 from Germany and a Grand Prix du Disque 2010 from France.

His music has been published exclusively by Peters Edition since 1982.

© Peters Edition, Ltd.

Patti Cudd

Dr. Patti Cudd is active as a percussion soloist, chamber musician and educator. Patti is a member of the acclaimed new music ensemble, Zeitgeist. As a champion of the music of the 21st century, she has given concerts and master classes throughout North America, Asia, Europe and South America. She has participated in such festivals as the Bang on a Can Festival at Lincoln Center, ICMC (Greece, UK, China, Netherlands, US), Frau Musica Nova (Cologne, Germany), Mexico City’s Ciclo de Percusiones Series, Interactive Arts Performance Series in NYC, NYCEMF, PASIC, SARC (Belfast, Ireland), GRIM (Marseille, France), The North American New Music Festival (Buffalo, NY), June in Buffalo, Society of Composers, Inc National Conference (Miami, Fl), Noise in the Library Festival (San Diego, CA), SEAMUS, The Mirror of the New (Hawaii), Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, Beyond the Pink Festival (LA), New Progressions Series (Baltimore, MD), Sonic Diasporas, New Music Festival (San Diego,CA), Spark Festival of Electronic Music (Minneapolis), Form and the Feminine Voice Festival (LA), Copenhagen Composers’ Biennale (Denmark), Nove Hudby Plus Festival in Brno, Czech Republic, Samcheok Music Festival, (Samcheok, Korea), Sokcho Arts Festival (Sokcho, Korea), New Music for Technology (Hanyang University (Seoul, Korea) and the Festival Cultural Zacatecas.

Patti has worked closely with some of the most innovative composers of our time including Brian Ferneyhough, Morton Feldman, Roger Reynolds, Martin Bresnick, Pauline Oliveros, Jay Aaron Kernis, John Luther Adams, John Zorn, Michael Colgrass, Cort Lippe, Harvey Sollberger, Julia Wolfe, Christian Wolff, Vinko Globokar and Frederic Rzewski.

As a percussion soloist and chamber musician, she has premiered well over 200 new works, and has recorded under the labels Sideband, Hat Hut, Bridge, New World, CRI, Innova, Emf Media and Mode. She recently released, on Innova Recordings, a triple solo CD of solo percussion and electronic pieces. Patti is a Yamaha Performing Artist, an endorser of Sabian Cymbals and a member of the Vic Firth and Black Swamp Education Teams.

Patti holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree specializing in Contemporary Musical Studies from the University of California, San Diego and a Master of Music Degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She completed undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and studied in the soloist class with a Fulbright Scholarship at the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her teachers have included Steven Schick, Jan Williams, Joe Holmquist, Gert Mortensen and Bent Lylloff.

Patti currently teaches percussion and new music studies at the University of Wisconsin River Falls and the College of St. Benedict/ St. Johns University.

Michael Duffy

Michael Duffy (b. 1976), is a composer/improviser/sound artist/performer who cut his teeth in DIY hardcore punk. His work has been performed by Dal Niente, Irvine Arditti, Noriko Kawai, Duo Gelland, JACK, ICE, Second Instrumental Unit, and Zeitgeist. He is a member of the 113 Composers Collective and performs in the electro-acoustic duo Shield Your Eyes. Co-founder of the Contemporary Music Workshop at the University of Minnesota, he studied composition with James Dillon and currently works as the University of Minnesota Music Technology, Media Lab and Studios Specialist. 

Prior to moving to Minneapolis in 2006, he attended the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, CUNY, studying composition with Jeff Nichols and Bruce Saylor, computer music with Hubert Howe, and percussion with Michael Lipsey.

http://michael-duffy.net

Josh Musikantow

Joshua Musikantow (b. 1981) is a Twin Cities composer whose music has been performed in concerts and festivals in England, France, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and across the United States. He has completed commissions for 113, Acute Trio, Noriko Kawai, Zeitgeist, No Exit Ensemble, Strains New Music Ensemble, Loadbang, Duo Gelland, Chartreuse Trio, Spitting Image Collective, The Gregorian Singers, and Artemis Vocal Ensemble, among many others. He has been a recipient of awards from the McKnight Artist Fellowship, the Jerome Fund for New Music award, the Zeitgeist call for scores, the New Music USA creator development fund, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts emergency grant. He has earned a BM in Music Composition and a BA in English at Lawrence University, a MA in Music Composition at the University at Buffalo, and a PhD in Music Composition at the University of Minnesota, studying under James Dillon. He is chair of the development committee for the new music presenting organization, 113. 

Pat O’Keefe

Pat O'Keefe is a multifaceted performer who is active and in demand in a wide variety of musical genres. He has performed as a soloist with symphony orchestras and wind ensembles, wailed away for belly dancers, and rocked samba in the streets. He draws upon this multiplicity of experiences and interests in his performances, which employ a "superb control of extended techniques," and have been described as "passionate," "explosive," and "breath-stoppingly exquisite." He is currently the woodwind player for the contemporary music ensemble Zeitgeist, based in St. Paul, Minnesota. With Zeitgeist he has premiered over two hundred new works, and performed throughout the United States and Europe. Pat has also performed and recorded with other noted new music groups around the country, including ETHEL, California E.A.R. Unit, and Cleveland New Music Associates, and appeared as a soloist at the ClarinetFest, SEAMUS, Spark!, and the Third Practice festivals.

Pat began his career as an orchestral clarinetist, serving as the principal clarinetist for five seasons with the Augusta Symphony in Augusta, Georgia. Active in the improvised music and world music communities, as well, Pat is a founder and co-director of the large improvising ensemble Cherry Spoon Collective, and the electro-acoustic duo Willful Devices (with composer and computer musician Scott Miller). Pat’s music-making is heavily influenced by the music of other cultures, having studied Turkish music with Turkish Rom clarinetist Selim Sesler, and Brazilian music with master drummer Jorge Alabé. In 2016 he spent time at the National Gugak Center in Seoul studying Korean traditional music, and performed at the International Sori Festival in Jeonju, South Korea. He is one of the founding directors of the Brazilian percussion group Batucada do Norte, and appears regularly with Choro Borealis, 113 Composers Collective, and The Maithree Ensemble in the Twin Cities.

Pat holds a BM (with Performer’s Certificate) from Indiana University, an MM (with Academic Honors and Distinction in Performance) from the New England Conservatory, and a DMA from the University of California, San Diego. He has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and in 2015 was awarded a Performing Musician Fellowship from the McKnight Foundation. He currently teaches at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls.

www.patokeefe.org

Shannon Wettstein

Pianist Shannon Wettstein invites audiences to hear connections between daring new music and historical masterworks. With over 400 premieres as soloist and chamber musician, she has collaborated with composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Julia Wolfe, Chinary Ung, and Frederick Rzewski. In concerts, Shannon pairs new and old repertoire in themed programs around topics ranging from insomnia to meteorology, and from deep space to birds and bugs. When asked why she makes music, Shannon says, “For me, it’s all about taking risks—I love taking audiences along with me into unknown territory.” 

In the US, Shannon has performed solo and chamber concerts at Lincoln Center, Boston’s Gardner Museum, the Ft. Worth Modern Art Museum, and Qualcomm’s headquarters in San Diego. Steve Smith of the New York Times wrote that her performance at The Stone was “full of subtleties no recording could catch...a reminder of why we attend concerts.” 

Recent U.S. Artists International-sponsored tours include performances at Hong Kong’s City Hall, the Monteverde Institute in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, and at the Janáček Conservatory in Brno, Czech Republic. Grants and awards include those from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Composers Forum, and Chamber Music America. 

During the pandemic, Shannon presented livestream performances that have engaged audiences from 23 states and 4 continents. These events featured new or seldom-heard pieces by Jimmy Lopez, Florence Price, and Xavier Beteta. Audience members commenting on these interactive performances wrote that the experience felt like “eavesdropping into the primordial creative mind…” 

Shannon is a professor of piano and chamber music at St. Cloud State University and regularly performs contemporary chamber music as half of the Calliope flute and piano duo. Shannon is the host of Dr. Avant-Garde, a podcast about creating community and inspiring creativity through conversations with people moving the art of music forward in the 21st century.

Learn more about Shannon’s Grammy-nominated recordings of works by Xenakis, Anthony Davis, Chopin, and others at www.shannonwettstein.com.

Justin Anthony Spenner

“A wild and anxious ride”(Star Tribune), Justin Anthony Spenner’s appearances run the gamut from recital and oratorio staples to world premieres of experimental music. Recent stage credits include Danilo (Die Lustige Witwe) with Opera on the Lake; Tarquinius (The Rape of Lucretia) with An Opera Theatre; Schaunard (La Bohème) with Theater Latte Da; and Father (The Golden Ass/World Premiere) with 113 Collective. Soloist credits include Winterreise at the Hamline Music and Arts Series; Das Fliegenpapier and Strange Autumn (Steven Takasugi) and Maulwerke (Dieter Schnebel) with 113 Collective; Coffee Cantata and Apollo e Dafne with Le Grande Bande; and Niccolai Messe/Coronation Mass/The Messiah with St. John's Lutheran Music Series. Justin recently took First Place and Best Song Interpretation at the 2022 Edvard Grieg Society of MN Voice Competition.

His self-produced work focuses on destigmatizing mental illness/trauma (I Enter As A Stranger; A Winter’s Journey). He also produces in other genres, including a music education podcast (Is This Music?!?!); a metal band ((ab)scheid), and a Norwegian pop/troubadour cover band (Near Norse). As an educator, Justin develops integrative music education programs with An Opera Theatre, and runs a small and dedicated voice studio.

When he’s not tinkering, Justin spends almost too much time snuggling with cats and reading about fringe subgenres of rock music. More information, including upcoming performances, can be found at www.barispen.com

Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi

Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi (b. 1997 Tehran, Iran) is a California/Vancouver-based composer and performer. She writes for hybrid instrumental/electronic ensembles, creates electroacoustic and audiovisual works, and performs electronic music. Kimia explores the unfamiliar familiar, while constantly being driven by the concepts of motion, interaction, and growth in both human life and the sonic world.

Being a cross-disciplinary artist, she has actively collaborated on projects evolving around dance, film, and theatre. Kimia’s work has been showcased by organizations such as the Iranian Female Composer Association, Music on Main, Western Front, Vancouver New Music, and Media Arts Committee. She has been featured in The New York Times, Georgia Straight, MusicWorks Magazine, Vancouver Sun, and Sequenza 21.

Kimia’s work has been performed at festivals around the world including Ars Electronica Festival, Festival Ecos Urbanos, Tehran Contemporary Sounds, AudioVisual Frontiers Virtual Exhibition, The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Yarn/Wire Institute, Ensemble Evolution, New Music on the Point, wasteLAnd Summer Academy, EQ: Evolution of the String Quartet, Modulus Festival, and SALT New Music Festival.

She holds a BFA in Music Composition from Simon Fraser University’s Interdisciplinary School for the Contemporary Arts, having studied with Sabrina Schroeder and Mauricio Pauly and is currently pursuing a DMA in Music Composition at Stanford University.

Javier Torres Maldonado

Javier Torres Maldonado (1968) is considered one of the most representative contemporary Mexican composers of his generation. He combines his creative activity with teaching in a very high-profile international career. He has received the “Commande d'état” (French Ministry of Culture) five times (2007, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2020), the prestigious “Queen Elisabeth” Grand Prize (Belgium—2004), and important international composition awards, such as “Da Capo” (Brandenburg Biennial and Brandenburger Symphoniker—2012), “Reina María José” (Geneva, Switzerland—2000), GRAME (Lyon, France—2006), “Alfredo Casella” (Siena, Italy—2001), “Mozart” (Mozarteum in Salzburg—1997 and 2000), “Ad Referendum II” (Montréal—1999), “Prix des musiciens” (Nouvel Ensemble Moderne—1999), and “Ibermúsicas-Iberescena” (2013), among others.

Torres Maldonado was nominated for the “Manuel de Falla” Chair in 2015 in Spain, and in 2016, was composer-in-residence at the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City, where he composed Un lume per lo mar for Jake Arditti and the Arditti Quartet (commissioned with the support of Ibermúsicas). In 2016, the Ensemble Klangforum (Vienna), the Ernst von Siemens Foundation (Germany) and the International Cervantino Festival commissioned him to compose Móvil, cambiante (2017), for 16 moving instrumentalists. The piece premiered during the International Cervantino Festival in 2017. In 2018, the Mozarteum commissioned him to compose High over the distant horizon, for seven moving instrumentalists and electroacoustic device, for the 60th anniversary of the Mozarteum Electronic Music Studio. The piece premiered during the Crossroads Festival (Salzburg, Austria).

In 2018, Torres Maldonado was invited to teach composition master classes as a professor at the Domaine Forget Academy in Canada. In June of 2022, the French music magazine “Polyphonies” made special mention of his new work, included in the album, Ancienne chanson corse (lettera a mamma): un portrait imaginare, for 20 male voices divided into four groups distributed in the space and awarded four diapasons d’or (four tuning forks) to the new CD ÔM (Hortus 206), recorded by the vocal ensemble “Spirito,” conducted by Nicole Corti. 

Torres Maldonado has been a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte of Mexico and has composed more than 60 works for renowned performers specialisizing in contemporary repertoire, including Ensemble Klangforum of Vienna, Pablo Márquez, Mario Caroli, Arditti Quartet, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Ensemble 2e2m, New Arts and Music Ensemble Salzburg, Phoenix Ensemble Basel, Laboratorium Ensemble, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, Ensemble Sillages, Choeur Britten, Spirito, Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Accroche Note, Ensemble "El Perro Andaluz" (Dresden), Ensemble Tema (Karlsruhe), Ensemble Aleph (Paris), and Ensemble “Taller Sonoro ”(Seville), among others. His music is performed at renowned international festivals such as Wittener Täge für Neue Musik (WDR 3, Germany), Venice Biennale, Milano Musica, MITO (Milan and Turin), Klangspuren (Austria), Mozart Week (Mozarteum), Tiroler Festspiele Erl , Musica (Strasbourg), Présences (Paris), Extension (Paris), Musiques en Scène (Lyon), Semana Musical (San Sebastián), Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Alicante Festival, BBVA Foundation Cycle (Bilbao), Lucerne Festival, Festival of Autumn (Warsaw), Akiyoshidai (Japan), and Gaudeamus Music Week (Amsterdam), among others. He is tenured Professor of electroacoustic composition at the Conservatoire of Milan and carries out an incessant number of master classes and composition seminars at the international level in many of the most prestigious universities and conservatories—mainly in Europe. 

Torres Maldonado studied composition at the conservatories of Mexico and Milan and completed advanced studies in composition with Franco Donatoni, Azio Corghi at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia (Rome—1999) and Chigiana Academy (Siena), and Ivan Fedele at the Strasbourg Conservatory (honourable mention). He studied electroacoustic composition at the Milan Conservatoire (1999-2003) and at IRCAM (2003). He has created many different works as composer-in- residence, collaborating with important European institutes for acoustics and music research, such as GRAME (National Center for Music Creation, Lyon), SME Mozarteum (Salzburg), La muse en circuit (National Center for Music Creation, Paris), CIRM (National Center for Music Creation, Nice), and SCRIME (University of Bordeaux), among others. His works are published by Suvini Zerboni (Milan) and Universal Edition (Vienna).

Yu-Chun Chien

Yu-Chun Chien is a Taiwanese composer based in the United States and Taiwan. Her compositions and arrangements have been published and performed in Taiwan, the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Canada. She has appeared at festivals and residencies such as Time of Music (Musiikin aika), ilSUONO Contemporary Music Week, June in Buffalo, NUNC4! New Music Conference and Festival, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, impuls International Ensembles and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music, the Asian Composers League Conference and Festival, the Etchings Festival, and the Loretto Project. She has collaborated with some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, ensembles and musicians, including the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, the Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Signal, Decoda Ensemble, loadbang, Mivos Quartet, Ensemble Suono Giallo, Uunsinta Ensemble, Longleash Piano Trio, David Gilbert, Brad Lubman, Pablo Rus Broseta, Fusao Kajima, and many others. 

Yu-Chun Chien has received several prizes, awards, scholarships, grants, and commissions, including work selected for the 113 Call For Scores; Second Prize, Orchestra’s Choice, and Audience’s Choice in Orchestra Composition Competitions held by the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra; Distinction Awards in the Solo/Duet and Choral Composition Competitions organized by the National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center; selection as the Representative Piece of Taiwan in the International Rostrum of Composers; selection as the Representative Piece of Taiwan in the Asian Composers League Conference and Festival; “Call for Scores” Commission Awards from the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra; a Scholarship for Overseas Study from the Ministry of Education in Taiwan; Grants from the National Culture and Arts Foundation; and many others. 

Yu-Chun Chien is full-time faculty and Head of Aural Skills at the Manhattan School of Music. Previously, she was a Teaching Assistant Professor at West Virginia University. She also served on the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award panel.

Yu-Chun Chien received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the Manhattan School of Music in New York, and her Bachelor of Music degree from Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan. Some of her most influential teachers have been Reiko Füting, Susan Botti, Chung-Kun Hung, Tsung-Hsien Yang, and Wan-Jen Huang.

Noriko Kawai

Noriko Kawai began piano lessons at the age of 3. Moving to London as a teenager, she studied with Phyllis Sellick and Yonty Solomon at the Royal College of Music, London. After graduating from the RCM with the highest honours, including the Hopkinson Gold Medal presented by Her Majesty the Queen Mother, she moved to Rome to study with Rodolfo Caporali.

Noriko has made world-wide concert appearances as a soloist at Festivals and concert series in Aldeburgh, Bath, Dartington, Huddersfield, Dublin, Paris, Strasbourg, Brussels, Berlin, Rotterdam, Valencia, Alicante, Oslo, Viitassari, Riga, Vilinius, Warsaw, Bludenz, Lausanne, Tel Aviv, Rome, Macerata, Venice, Sydney, Tokyo, San Diego, New York, and Minneapolis.

For the British NMC label, Noriko has recorded works by Gerald Barry and James Dillon’s The Book of Elements, Volumes I - V. The latter recording received unanimous acclaim, including ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Gramophone. Noriko’s earlier Scriabin recital CD from Live Notes, Japan, was also hailed as a major artistic achievement: “…rivalling the greats of the so called Golden Age… one of the great Scriabin recitals on disc.” A second Dillon disc for NMC includes chamber music with Irvine Arditti and the Arditti Quartet.

Concerto engagements have included the first performance of Dillon’s Andromeda, with the BBC Scottish Symphony orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov, in London (BBC Proms 2006) and Glasgow, and Lachenmann’s Ausklang in Transcendent - the Music of Helmut Lachenmann, presented by the Royal College of Music. Noriko also gave the French premiere of Andromeda, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liege/ Pascal Rophé at the festival ‘Musica’ in Strasbourg. At the Arena Festival in Riga (Latvian National Symphony Orchestra/ Zsolt Nagy), she performed Alternative World - Versions by Saed Haddad, and in San Diego (La Jolla Symphony Orchestra / Steve Schick), Scriabin’s Prometheus. Her more recent performances of Dillon’s Andromeda were given at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/ Steve Schick) and the Gaida Festival Vilnius (Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra / Christopher Lyndon-Gee).

A passionate chamber player, Noriko has worked with the Arditti Quartet, Leopold String Trio, Quatuor Diotima, Irvine Arditti, Rohan de Saram, Benny Sluchin, and Baritone Philip Zawisza.

Noriko gave the first complete performance of Etudes Mystérieuses by Saed Haddad at the French Academy of Villa Medici Rome, and her recording of this work for the Wergo label received The German Record Critics’ Award (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik) in November 2010.

In January 2020, Noriko gave the complete performance of James Dillon’s The Book of Elements Volume I - V as part of the ‘International Piano Series’ at the South Bank Centre, London and in November, gave the world premiere of echo the angelus by the same composer at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival/ BBC Radio 3— both performances winning the highest critical acclaim.

In addition to her concert activities, Noriko has been active teaching, served as Professor of Piano at the Royal College of Music, London 2004-08, and Associate Professor of Piano and Chamber Music at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities School of Music 2007-13. In high demand as a teacher, she continues a private studio in London.

Harris Bernstein

Born and raised in Minneapolis, Harris Bernstein is a violist, educator, avid chamber musician, and advocate of new music. Harris made his solo debut with the Yale Philharmonia in a premiere of a viola concerto by composer, Soomin Kim. Harris has made an appearance at prominent summer festivals such as Sarasota Music Festival, Domaine Forget and Orford Musique, and collaborated with outstanding musicians including Masumi Rostad, Rob Kapilow, and Grigory Kalinovsky. Harris earned his bachelor’s degree from McGill University in 2019, from which he received distinguished honors. He has most recently earned two master’s degrees from the Yale School of Music, where he received the Frances G. Wickes Scholarship and fellowship and the Lester S. and Enid W. Morse Scholarship. Upon moving back to Minneapolis in September 2022, Harris co-founded a chamber music organization called Rattlebox, which is making their Twin Cities debut on March 24th. 

Rebeccah Parker Downs

Rebeccah Parker Downs stays active as a professional chamber musician, orchestral musician, and private lesson teacher. She maintains a thriving home Suzuki studio and is also faculty at the MacPhail Center for Music and the St. Joseph’s School for Music. She holds a Masters degree and Artist Diploma in cello performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) as a student of Yehuda Hanani. She has Suzuki method training through book 3 with both Nancy Hair and Barbara Wampner and has completed long-term Suzuki method training (a 2 year program) at the New York School for Strings in Manhattan, studying with Pamela Devenport for books 1-10.

Rebeccah has soloed with orchestras around the country, performing the Lalo Cello Concerto, the Elgar Cello Concerto, and the Faure Elegie. She is a founding member of Piace Duo and performs around the country and Europe with her husband, Benjamin Downs, an accomplished pianist. Rebeccah plays on a William Whedbee cello thanks to the generous contributions of the Medici Foundation.

Betsy McCann

Betsy McCann has been Assistant Director of Bands/Director of Marching and Athletic Bands at the University of Minnesota since 2013. McCann is the first female head director of a marching band in the Big Ten Conference. She previously directed bands at Watertown-Mayer High School (Watertown, MN), Waubonsie Valley High School (Aurora, Illinois) and Burnsville Senior High School (Burnsville, Minnesota). She holds a Bachelor of Music (flute performance and music education) from the University of Minnesota and a Master of Music (conducting) from Northwestern University.

Sumanth Gopinath

Sumanth Gopinath is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He has written or co-edited books on the ringtone industry (The Ringtone Dialectic, 2013), mobile music studies (The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, 2014), and the music of Steve Reich (Rethinking Reich, 2019). His writings on Reich, minimalism, Marxism and music scholarship, sound and digital media, and country/folk music have appeared in various journals and edited collections. He is the leader of the independent Americana band, The Gated Community.

String Quartet No. 1

On September 24, 2009 in the Stadtforum in Innsbruck during the Festival Klangspuren Schwaz, the Arditti Quartet played the Cuarteto de cuerdas n. 1 for string quartet, commissioned by Irvine Arditti and the Festival Klangspuren.

”Like Sinfonía mixta, written between 2006 and 2007, the first quartet reflects my interest in an idea of global structure that, thanks to a continuous reinterpretation of its proportions, allows parallel processes to be generated. As a sort of counterpoint, a second level, characterized by processes divergent from the above mentioned mechanisms, displays my interest in a work that contains within it the idea of opposition between global symmetry and internal asymmetry. A further analogy with Sinfonía mixta comes from the fact that I have created, sometimes consciously, sometimes inevitably, a synthesis of the ideas that have characterized my music over the last years. In works of this type it is impossible not to consider their relation with the great tradition of music. There are, in fact, allusions in the division into five movements (like Bartók’s IV and V Quartet and Ligeti’s Second Quartet), in the global idea of formal balance and also in an idea that goes beyond the literature purely for string quartet—that is the use of the golden number as a determining factor for the proportions of the musical structure. It is possible in fact to observe a clear tendency for the structures to shrink towards the middle, only to expand again towards the end. In this quartet, the analogy between the general form and the primary musical objects stems from the principle of reinterpretation of the characteristics and of the general structural proportions considered within a self-generating mechanism. The divergent processes superimposed over the basic structure are responsible for the individual characteristics of each of the five movements. The wish to establish the global form with the material and musical objects is contrasted by the idea of superimposing mobile materials and forms that themselves constitute multidirectional structures and processes. It is as if a fragment of a logarithmic spiral was running back and forth, giving rise, in great quantity, to divergent ramifications, complex labyrinths whose introspective gaze is turned towards the music itself.” — Javier Torres Maldonado

vortex of length

”I view the string quartet as like Pablo Picasso’s cubist portraits; the portraits resemble human faces, and yet each organ has its own identity. To me, the violins, the viola, and the cello are all one creature. Each can be either augmented or diminished into a new characteristic and yet stay within the same established body, AKA sound world. vortex of length explores this idea.” — Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi

The Louth Work

The Hymns of Orpheus [Trans. Thomas Taylor, 1792]

Layers o shiny dew weep flowering veils
In dimming nights of infinity’s fate

Layers of shiny dew; aether, sun moon, and stars

Come and bless this mystical air with spirit

Insert 1
“E tremo a mezza state, ardendo il verno” [Sonnets: Petrarch]

Incarnate shadows wailing dark
spiritual eye of radiation

Sunrise pierce the shining wind,
Your heart dawn comes wave upon wave

Drunken clouds, pregnant,

Pass misty stations in sacred showers

Eye of aether, electric gales,
Sea-born dawn winds, eye of sky moisture

Ocean I call…I call on,
The blessed power of dreams

Blushing Aurora ever bedowed with tears
Heavenly beams with bright reddish glow

Swirling flowers,
Swift blush’d clouds, Mighty fires

…Circle the sideshow…

Insert 2
La nuit descent
On y present
Un long destin de sang” [from Alcools; G. Apollinaire]

Blush’d in purple,
Her sigh the wailing wind

Come close thunder and winter,
Your howl cries in the mist

Like fire passing clouds,
laments the pale dawn

High winds cry…

My heart speaks…

Divine angel remove the veils!

The dead return to adore me

I am a lure from paradise

Insert 3
“Les becs de gaz pissaient
leur flamme a clair de lune” [Alcools; G. Apollinaire]

High winds push rainclouds
over drench or snow cover,
But cloudless aithra
Spreads wide and a white dew shines
…and there the blessed

Trio

Inspired by the nature of the instrumental combination within a string quartet (three kinds of instruments — violin, viola and cello), Trio (for string quartet), centers around the number “three” — the basis upon which the musical content and formal structure are established. The piece also explores the sonic world, which is not only created by the instruments themselves, but triggered by the essential movements and their surroundings.