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.

Past honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award, fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Tanglewood Music Center (Leonard Bernstein Fellow), two Chamber Music America awards, as well as commissions from the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New World Symphony, Chicago Symphony Music Now, The Crossing, Meet the Composer, Fromm Foundation at Harvard, The Holland/America Music Society, The MacArthur Foundation, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Recent performances include those at Carnegie Hall, Köln Philharmonie, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Wigmore Hall, ArtLab at Harvard University, Lincoln Center, Walt Disney Hall, Teatro Amazonas, Sala São Paulo, Park Avenue Armory, Miller Theater, Villa Medici, Teatro de Madrid, Bâtiment de Forces Motrices de Genève, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago. Recent festival appearances include those at Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival, Ecstatic Music Festival, Acht Brücken, Aldeburgh Music Festival, Aspen, Frankfurter Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, and Banff Music Festival. Past collaborators include the rock band Deerhoof, dj King Britt and Alarm Will Sound, yMusic and Paul Simon, Claire Chase and the San Francisco Symphony, the International Contemporary Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Orquestra Experimental da Amazonas Filarmonica, American Contemporary Music Ensemble, American Composers Orchestra, and conductors Karina Canellakis, Susanna Malkki, Matthias Pintscher, and Steven Schick.

His works are published by PSNY (Schott), and commercial recordings of his music are available through New Amsterdam Records, New Focus Recording, Parlour Tapes+, Oxingale Records, and Navona Records.
He is the Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University, having previously held professorships at the University of California San Diego, Montclair State University, and Columbia College Chicago, visiting professorships at the University of Pittsburgh, Northwestern University, and the University of Pennsylvania, and a pre-doctoral fellowship at Lawrence University. He currently lives in Manhattan, New York.

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Director's note: Wicker Park was written for saxophonist Ryan Muncy, who passed away in July of 2022. A BGSU alum and longtime member of Dal Niente, Ryan left an indelible mark on the new music world, and left us too soon.

Grammy-nominated composer Missy Mazzoli was recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (The New York Times) “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out New York), and has been praised for her “apocalyptic imagination” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker). Mazzoli’s music has been performed all over the world by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, pianist Emanuel Ax, Opera Philadelphia, Scottish Opera, LA Opera, Cincinnati Opera, New York City Opera, Norwegian National Opera, the Detroit Symphony, the LA Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, the Sydney Symphony, JACK quartet, cellist Maya Beiser, violinist Jennifer Koh, pianist Kathleen Supové, and many others. In 2018 she made history when she became one of the first two women (along with composer Jeanine Tesori) to be commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. That year she was also nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Classical Composition” for her work Vespers for Violin, recorded by violinist Olivia De Prato. This work is included in Missy’s first orchestral album, released in March 2023 on BIS Records. The album, and Mazzoli’s compositional style alike, have been praised by many upon the recent release, including VAN Magazine, which states “…the familiar shimmers of Mazzoli’s geologically-layered orchestral textures are a fulcrum that swing the listener between polarities.”

Missy Mazzoli has received considerable acclaim for her operatic compositions. Her most recent opera, The Listeners, was written with longtime collaborator Royce Vavrek, and co-commissioned by Philadelphia Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Norwegian National Opera, where the work premiered in 2022. The Listeners is based on an original story by Jordan Tannahill and follows a community organization formed around the presence of a “hum,” a high-frequency environmental noise that only a select few people, the “Listeners,” can hear. The members attempt to solve the mystery of “the hum,” but, encouraged by a de-facto leader, the group becomes increasingly cult-like. The Listeners received critical acclaim following its debut, described by Alex Ross in The New Yorker as “one of the year’s strongest music-theatre scores,” later calling the piece a “potent and chilling work.”

Mazzoli’s third opera, Proving Up, was also written alongside librettist Royce Vavrek, and was commissioned by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha, and New York’s Miller Theatre. Based on a short story by Karen Russell, Proving Up offers a surreal and disquieting commentary on the American dream through the story of a Nebraskan family homesteading in the late 19th century. Proving Up premiered to critical acclaim in January 2018 at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, in April 2018 at Opera Omaha, and in September 2018 at Miller Theatre. The Washington Post called it “harrowing…powerful…a true opera of our time.” Mazzoli’s second opera, Breaking the Waves, also written with Vavrek, commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and Beth Morrison Projects in 2016, was described as “among the best 21st-century operas yet” (Opera News), “savage, heartbreaking and thoroughly original” Wall Street Journal), and “dark and daring” (New York Times). Earlier projects include the critically acclaimed sold-out premiere of Missy’s first opera, Song from the Uproar, in a Beth Morrison production at New York venue The Kitchen in March 2012. The Wall Street Journal called this work “powerful and new” and the New York Times claimed that “in the electric surge of Ms. Mazzoli’s score you felt the joy, risk, and limitless potential of free spirits unbound.” Time Out New York named Song from the Uproar Number 3 on its list of top ten classical music events of 2012. In October 2012, Missy’s operatic work, SALT, a re-telling of the story of Lot’s Wife written for cellist Maya Beiser and vocalist Helga Davis, premiered as part of the BAM Next Wave Festival and at UNC Chapel Hill, directed by Robert Woodruff. This work, including text by Erin Cressida-Wilson, was deemed “a dynamic amalgamation that unapologetically pushes boundaries” by Time Out New York.

From 2018-2021, Mazzoli was the Mead Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 2012-2015, she was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia, Gotham Chamber Opera and Music Theatre-Group, and in 2011/12 was Composer/Educator in residence with the Albany Symphony. Missy served on the composition faculty at Mannes College of Music at the New School from 2013 to 2023 after serving as a visiting professor of music at New York University in 2013. Missy is currently on the composition faculty at Bard College. From 2007-2011, she was Executive Director of the MATA Festival in New York, and in 2016, along with composer Ellen Reid and in collaboration with the Kaufman Music Center, Missy founded Luna Composition Lab, a mentorship program and support network for female-identifying, non-binary and gender nonconforming composers ages 13-18.

This most recent season included performances by the Norwegian National Opera (World Premiere), Juilliard Opera, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, Third Coast Percussion (World Premiere), the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, Opéra Comique in Paris, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

This season (2023-2024) will include performances by Detroit Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Philadelphia, the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra.

Mazzoli is an active pianist and keyboardist, and often performs with Victoire, a band she founded in 2008 dedicated to her own composition. Their debut full-length CD, Cathedral City, was named one of 2010’s best classical albums by Time Out New York, NPR, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. This was followed by the critically acclaimed Vespers for a New Dark Age, a collaboration with percussionist Glenn Kotche. Vespers was released in March 2015 on New Amsterdam Records along with Missy’s own remixes of the work and a remix of her piece A Thousand Tongues by longtime collaborator Lorna Dune. The New York Times called Vespers for a New Dark Age “ravishing and unsettling,” and the album was praised on NPR’s First Listen, All Things Considered, and Pitchfork. In the past decade, Missy’s band Victoire has played in venues all over the world including Carnegie Hall, the M.A.D.E. Festival in Sweden, the C3 Festival in Berlin, and Millennium Park in Chicago. Victoire returned to Carnegie Hall in March of 2015 as part of the “Meredith Monk and Friends” concert, performing Missy’s arrangements of Monk’s work.

Missy is the recipient of a 2019 Grammy nomination, the 2023 Marc Blitzstein Memorial Award for Musical Theater and Opera, Musical America’s 2022 “Composer of the Year,” the 2017 Music Critics Association of America Inaugural Award for Best Opera, the 2018 Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award, four ASCAP Young Composer Awards, a Fulbright Grant to The Netherlands, the Detroit Symphony’s Elaine Lebenbom Award, and grants from the Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, and the Barlow Endowment. She has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Ucross, VCCA, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Hermitage.

Missy attended the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, and Boston University. She has studied with (in no particular order) David Lang, Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kerins, Martijn Padding, Richard Ayres, John Harbison, Charles Fussel, Martin Amlin, Marco Stroppa, Ladislav Kubuk, Louis DeLise, and Richard Cornell.

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A Flourish of Green is a mini-opera inspired by Day Four, Story 5 of Boccaccio’s Decameron (best known from Keats' version as Isabella, or the Pot of Basil)

The music of composer Martin Rokeach has been described as “fascinating . . . cleanses the listener’s musical palate . . . positively aglow with contented reflection,” (Fanfare Magazine); “surprising and utterly delicious” (San Antonio Express News); “Rokeach has a rare talent for knowing exactly how long his music should be . . . not one second longer, nor shorter, than necessary” (20th Century Music).

Rokeach's works have been performed by the Oakland Symphony, Pacific/Mozart Ensemble, Ensemble Variant (Geneva), San Francisco Concerto Orchestra, Chameleon Arts Ensemble (Boston), the United States Army Orchestra, Dunsmuir Piano Quartet (San Francisco), League of Composers (NY), Ensemble Flageolet (Flagstaff), the Chicago Ensemble, Divisa Ensemble (San Francisco), Musica Nova (Macedonia), Duo Sforzando (Geneva), Atlanta Contemporary Ensemble, Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble, the St. Petersburg (Russia) Chamber Players, the Sheridan Players (Chicago), the Webster Trio (Houston), Guitarinet (Poland), New Dischord (Chattanooga), Tempo (Los Angeles), and many other outstanding ensembles and soloists throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia. His works have earned honors in over fifteen national or international composition competitions, most recently those sponsored by the Atlanta Contemporary Ensemble, International Horn Society, and International Clarinet Association, and he has been commissioned to write music for the Ellsworth Smith International Trumpet Competition, New York’s Cygnus Ensemble, Switzerland’s Dobrzelewski/Marrs Duo, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Music Teachers Association of California, New York’s Eight Strings and a Whistle, The Bowers/Fader Duo (NY), San Francisco Symphony Principal Hornist Robert Ward, Detroit Symphony Principal Hornist Andrew Pelletier, and numerous other soloists. He has been a featured composer and speaker at the Ecole Haute de Musique in Switzerland, Hartt Conservatory of Music, New York University and Wichita State University, and concerts devoted exclusively to his music have been held at Western Carolina University and Washington State University.

Mr. Rokeach earned his Ph.D. in music composition and theory from Michigan State University and Bachelor's and Master's degrees from San Francisco State University. A Professor Emeritus at Saint Mary's College of California, for 33 years he was Artistic Co-director of San Francisco's contemporary music concert series, Composers, Inc. His oratorio, Bodies on the Line: The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike, was recently premiered by the Oakland Symphony and Chorus.

Words and music are inextricably linked for Ned Rorem. Time Magazine has called him "the world's best composer of art songs," yet his musical and literary ventures extend far beyond this specialized field. Rorem has composed three symphonies, four piano concertos and an array of other orchestral works, music for numerous combinations of chamber forces, ten operas, choral works of every description, ballets and other music for the theater, and literally hundreds of songs and cycles. He is the author of sixteen books, including five volumes of diaries and collections of lectures and criticism.

Ned Rorem was one of America's most honored composers. In addition to a Pulitzer Prize, awarded in 1976 for his suite Air Music, Rorem has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship (1951), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1957), and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1968). He is a three-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award; in 1998 he was chosen Composer of the Year by Musical America. The Atlanta Symphony recording of the String Symphony, Sunday Morning, and Eagles received a Grammy Award for Outstanding Orchestral Recording in 1989. From 2000 to 2003 he served as President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2003 he received ASCAP's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in January 2004 the French government named him Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Among his many commissions for new works are those from the Ford Foundation (for Poems of Love and the Rain, 1962), the Lincoln Center Foundation (for Sun, 1965); the Koussevitzky Foundation (for Letters from Paris, 1966); the Atlanta Symphony (String Symphony, 1985); the Chicago Symphony (Goodbye My Fancy, 1990); Carnegie Hall (Spring Music, 1991), and the New York Philharmonic (Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra, 1993). Among the distinguished conductors who have performed his music are Bernstein, Masur, Mehta, Mitropoulos, Ormandy, Previn, Reiner, Slatkin, Steinberg, and Stokowski.

Rorem is justly renowned for his art songs; his catalog includes more than 500 works in the medium. Evidence of Things Not Seen, his evening-length song cycle for four singers and piano, represents his magnum opus in the genre. The New York Festival of Song premiered the cycle at Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall in January 1998. New York magazine called Evidence of Things Not Seen "one of the musically richest, most exquisitely fashioned, most voice-friendly collections of songs I have ever heard by any American composer;" Chamber Music magazine deemed it "a masterpiece."

Rorem's most recent opera, Our Town, which he completed with librettist Sandy McClatchy, is a setting of the acclaimed Thorton Wilder play of the same name. It premiered at the Indiana University Jacob's School of Music in February 2007 and has enjoyed subsequent performances with the Lake George Opera and Aspen Music Theater Center, with future performances scheduled at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Opera Boston, and Festival Opera in Walnut Creek, CA.

October 23, 2003 marked the composer's 80th birthday, highlighting a season of international festivities. Chief among them was the Curtis Institute of Music's "Roremania," a two-week celebration encompassing works in every genre. The birthday season brought a trio of new concertos from Rorem: Cello Concerto, commissioned by the Residentie Orchestra and the Kansas City Orchestra for David Geringas; Flute Concerto, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra for its principal flutist Jeffrey Khaner; and Mallet Concerto, commissioned for Evelyn Glennie by the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Eos Orchestra.

His most recent publication, Facing the Night: A Diary (1999-2005) and Musical Writings, chronicles Rorem's dark journey after the death of 32 year companion, Jim Holmes. In his diary, Lies, (published by Counterpoint Press in 2000) Roremsaid: "My music is a diary no less compromising than my prose. A diary nevertheless differs from a musical composition in that it depicts the moment, the writer's present mood which, were it inscribed an hour later, could emerge quite otherwise. I don't believe that composers notate their moods, they don't tell the music where to go - it leads them....Why do I write music? Because I want to hear it - it's simple as that. Others may have more talent, more sense of duty. But I compose just from necessity, and no one else is making what I need."

Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana on October 23, 1923. As a child he moved to Chicago with his family; by the age of ten his piano teacher had introduced him to Debussy and Ravel, an experience which "changed my life forever," according to the composer. At seventeen he entered the Music School of Northwestern University, two years later receiving a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He studied composition under Bernard Wagenaar at Juilliard, taking his B.A. in 1946 and his M.A. degree (along with the $1,000 George Gershwin Memorial Prize in composition) in 1948. In New York he worked as Virgil Thomson's copyist in return for $20 a week and orchestration lessons. He studied on fellowship at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood in the summers of 1946 and 1947; in 1948 his song The Lordly Hudson was voted the best published song of that year by the Music Library Association.

In 1949 Rorem moved to France, and lived there until 1958. His years as a young composer among the leading figures of the artistic and social milieu of post-war Europe are absorbingly portrayed in The Paris Diary and The New York Diary, 1951-1961 (reissued by Da Capo, 1998). Ned Rorem passed away at his home in New York on November 18, 2022.

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Rorem has said that the sound of the voice drives his work. “I always think vocally,” he says. “Even when writing for violin or timpani, it’s the vocalist in me trying to get out.” You can hear what he means in the Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano, a work brimming with songlike lines. The four movements are filled with surprises – theatrical outbursts, seductive solos, high-speed gambols. The first movement belongs to the flute, an instrument that is a particular favorite of Rorem’s (he has described flute music as “song with the voice removed, with the flute as the voice”). Rorem bases the sensuous flute solo that opens and closes the movement on six notes, which are transformed in an exuberant, rhythmically quirky middle section. The cellist gets his turn in the Andante, with a haunting melody that is based on the same six notes as in the first movement.