Three-time Grammy nominated American composer Miguel del Aguila was born in Uruguay. In over 135 works that combine drama, driving rhythms and nostalgic nods to his South American roots, he has established himself among the most distinctive and highly regarded composers of his generation. His music, which enjoys over 200 performances yearly, has been hailed as “brilliant and witty” (New York Times), “sonically dazzling” (LATimes) and “expressive and dramatic” (American Record Guide).

He was 2021 composer in residence with Danish Chamber Players/Ensemble Storstrøm, after residences with Orchestra of the Americas, New Mexico Symph, Fresh Ink, CTSummerfest, Talis, and Chautauqua. 2021 commissions include works for Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Eroica Trio and Fivebyfive.

He was honored with 3 Latin Grammy nominations, Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, New Music USA/Music Alive, Magnum Opus Award, Lancaster Symph. Composer of the Year, and Copland Foundation among others.

His music has international appeal and presence with performances by over 100 orchestras, thousands of ensembles and 56 CD recordings. This list includes Royal Liverpool Phil, Welsh BBC, Norwegian Radio Orch, Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester; Kiev, Odessa, Heidelberg, Mexico, Buffalo Chicago and Louisiana philharmonic orchestras; Chicago, Toronto, Nashville, Seattle, Albany, San Antonio, Long Beach, Fort Worth, Santa Barbara, Sarasota, Codarts, Reykjavík, Caracas, Puerto Rico and Sao Paulo symphonies.

Artists who perform his works include Leonard Slatkin, JoAnn Falletta, Giancarlo Guerrero, Marin Alsop, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Lukas Foss, Gerard Schwarz, Jorge Mester, Guillermo Figueroa, David Allan Miller, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Andrew Litton, Eckart Preu and Jose Arean; LA Chamber Orchestra, SphinxVirtuosi, Windscape, PNME, SOLI, Chicago Phil.Ch.Players, MACE, New Juilliard Ens, Philadelphia Ch.Ens, Collegium Novum Zürich, Kammerensemble Classic, Imani, FifthHouse, Invoke, Pacifica, and Verona quartets.

New/upcoming releases of his works include CDs by Norwegian Radio Orch; Louisiana Phil, Augusta Symph, Cuarteto Latinoamericano and Eroica Trio, on Naxos, Albany, Bridge and Centaur. Festival performances include Aspen, Breckenridge, Cabrillo, Ravinia, Oregon Bach Festival, Minnesota Orch.Sommerfest, Saarburg, Music in the Vineyards, Focus! Bregenz Festspiele, Wiener Festwochen Budapest Spring, Cervantino, San Miguel de Allende, Prague Spring.

A sought after guest lecturer, he also serves on Barlow Endowment’s Board of Advisors. He’s published by Peermusic, Presser and self-published. After graduating from San Francisco Conservatory he studied at Vienna’s Universität für Musik un Darstellende Kunst. Early premieres in Musikverein and Konzerthaus were followed by Carnegie Recital Hall and Lukas Foss/Brooklyn Philharmonic concerts. Soon after LATimes praised him as “one of the West Coast’s most promising young composers”.

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Summer Song for oboe and piano, was composed in 1988 in Vienna, and premiered there a year later by oboist Vasile Marian, for whom it was written. “The work is all about nature, how it affects us and how we interact with it. It was inspired by an Aztec poem that, though lost long ago, I still recall visually: It’s a quiet, warm and lazy summer afternoon and the protagonist is lying on the grass. As he daydreams, his thoughts interact with the actual landscape, creating a magical, unreal place. Soon, as passing clouds bring rain the protagonist falls asleep and dreams. As the storm passes birds begin to sing, waking him up”.  The work opens with a gentle, modal theme, followed by a more lively and rhythmic second theme. Their interplay provides a gentle dialogue that takes us through a set of variations. The themes become agitated and trigger the "dream" section of the piece from where a bird seems to slowly guide us back to reality. The themes we heard at the beginning return and are later joined by a new, almost scandalous theme, reminiscent of Brazilian samba “Summer Song stands alone among my works due to its capricious form, its over-abundance of thematic material, and most of all for the disparity of styles which somehow seem to merge together: idioms ranging from Indian chant and the 1940s Big Band era coexist with the late Renaissance, Middle Eastern arabesques, music from the Caribbean and Brazilian Samba. Originally written in 1988, I revised the work in 1996, expanding it in both length and, alas, difficulty”.

New York City based composer, pianist and video artist Brian Mark has been hailed as an "attractive and intelligible" artist (Boston Musical Intelligencer), whose work is "compelling" (London Jazz News), and "preserves the vibrancy and relevance of contemporary art music" (New York Examiner). The American Composers Forum esteemed Brian as an "intelligent, modern composer who employs many media elements and does so with marked idiosyncrasy and depth”, and his concert programming has recently been described as “a fluid approach to presenting new music in fresh contexts and juxtapositions” (The New Yorker).

Brian’s music have been performed by many notable ensembles, such as the BBC Singers, Psappha Ensemble, Chelsea Symphony, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Signal, Atlas Ensemble, MikroEnsemble, Brave New Works, Choral Chameleon, both the Ligeti and Esterhazy String Quartets, Juventas Ensemble, Dither Quartet, members of the London Symphony Orchestra, among many others. His works have been presented around the world in festivals such as Bang on a Can, Oregon Bach Festival, London Contemporary Music Festival, Atlas Festival, Spitalfields Music Festival, i=u, June in Buffalo, Tutti Festival, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the highSCORE Festival.

As a visual artist since 2017, Brian’s video installations works have been shown in venues and art galleries in France, UK and the US, such as LSO St. Luke’s, The Holy Art Gallery, Arts & Sciences Days in Saint-Etienne, France, Iklectic Art Lab in Southeast London, Gallery Arte Azulejo, Areté Venue and Art Gallery, IncuArts Gallery, Mozaik Philanthropy Online Exhibition, Artist Talk Magazine (UK), the Nomadic Contemporary Gallery, Eric Fischl Gallery in Phoenix, AZ, Lilypad in Cambridge, MA, and Spectrum NYC.

Brian has received multiple awards and grants from the American Prize, Brooklyn Arts Council, Jerome Composers Commissioning Program/Jerome Fund, New Music USA, the Grammy Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, ASCAP and SCI, New London Singers, Ross McKee Foundation, Florence Gould Michael Iovenko Memorial Fellowship, the BMI Henry Warren Film Scoring Award, and was very highly commended for the 2016 Alan Bush Prize. He has been featured as a composer-in-residence with the Chelsea Symphony, the Bizarre Noir Theatre Company, and was awarded multiple artist residencies at the I-Park Artists’ Enclave, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ucross Foundation. He has received an Honorable Mention from the 2015 American Prize in Orchestral Composition, and was awarded one of the top ten prizes from Mozaik’s Philanthropy’s “Future Art Awards” Competition for works created in response to COVID-19. In 2019 Brian also received a fellowship to study Korean Music at the National Gugak Centre in Seoul.

As a composer for film, his music for the Independent Short Film Misunderstood, directed by Pablo Herrán de Viu, was exhibited at the 2009 Screen Loud Film Festival in New York City, and the 2010 Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre de Humberto Solás in Habana City, Cuba. His collaborative work Sublime Oasis, commissioned by the East London Dance Company, was showcased at the 2012 Spitalfields Hidden Gems Dance Festival.

From 2009-2011 Brian was the Co-Artistic Director and Founder for DETOUR, a composer collective and New Music Ensemble, which was featured as “one the top five new music events of 2011" from New York’s Classical WQXR. He has also collaborated with UK’s record label Nonclassical as a concert curator, featuring emerging composers and artists throughout London and abroad. In addition, he was appointed as an Associate Member for the London Symphony Orchestra’s Composer Soundhub Scheme from 2015-2017, which culminated of his first video installation performance comprising of members from the LSO. His curated concert series Ensemble in Process made its debut at the Iklectik Creative Space in Southeast London on May 15, 2017.

Brian had completed his PhD at the Royal Academy of Music, studying with Gary Carpenter. He is also a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Berklee College of Music, and Boston University. Additional studies had taken place at the Longy School of Music, European American Musical Alliance Summer Course in Paris, France, and Freie Universitat in Berlin, Germany with Dr. Samuel Adler. He has received a graduate certificate in film scoring from the University of Southern California, and has also studied with Philip Cashian, Samuel Adler, David Conte, David Garner, Michel Merlet, James Russell Smith, and Howard Frazin.

His debut LP album, Eleven to One (11/21) was released by Off Latch Press on May 6, 2022.

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What you Seek: A Song Cycle based on 3 Rumi Texts was written in partnership with Rose Hegele and Keri Lee Pierson, two soprano vocalists who I have collaborated on previous projects. The song cycle is based on a quote and two texts from Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, a Sufi mystic and a famous poet from the 13^th century who was considered to have an enormous influence on readers and religious scholars throughout history: What you Seek is Seeking You, One Song and Why Cling.  Rose and Keri and I had discussed this project for two years, as I was instantly drawn to this short quote of the first movement, due to its simplicity yet deeply profound spiritual message.  We decided to build upon What you Seek with two other poems that would complete a balanced song cycle with concepts pertaining to openness, exploration, discovery, conflict, and resolution.  What you Seek: A Song Cycle is for two soprano vocalists, singing bowls, delay pedal and multi-effects processing, and will be premiered at the 44^th Annual Bowling Green New Festival on October 21, 2023, performed by Keri Lee Pierson and Carolyn Ashley Anderson.  What you Seek will also be professionally recorded by Rose and Keri Lee sometime in late 2023.

Movement I: What you Seek is Seeking You

What you Seek is Seeking You

Movement II: One Song

Every war and every conflict
between human beings has happened
because of some disagreement about names.

It is such an unnecessary foolishness,
because just beyond the arguing
there is a long table of companionship
set and waiting for us to sit down.

What is praised is one, so the praise is one too, many jugs being poured into a huge basin. All religions, all this singing, one song.

The differences are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks a little different
on this wall than it does on that wall
and a lot different on this other one,
but it is still the same light.

We have borrowed these clothes,
these time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise,
we are pouring them back in.

Movement III: Why Cling

Why cling to one life
till it is soiled and ragged?

The sun dies and dies
squandering a hundred lived
every instant.

God has decreed life for you
and He will give another
and another and another

Translated by Coleman Barks in his book,
‘The Illuminated Prayer’.

The music of composer Marilyn Shrude is characterized by its warmth and lyricism, rich timbre, multi-layered constructions, and complex blend of tonality and atonality. The result is a bright, shimmering and delicately wrought sound world that is at once both powerful and fragile. Her concentration on color and the natural resonance of spaces, as well as her strong background in Pre-Vatican II liturgical music, give the music its linear, spiritual, and quasi-improvisational qualities.

Shrude received degrees from Alverno College and Northwestern University, where she studied with Alan Stout and M. William Karlins. Among her more prestigious honors are those from the Guggenheim Foundation (2011 Fellow), American Academy of Arts and Letters, Rockefeller Foundation, Chamber Music America/ASCAP, Meet the Composer, Sorel Foundation (Medallion Winner for Choral Music 2011), and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was the first woman to receive the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for Orchestral Music (1984) and the Cleveland Arts Prize for Music (1998). Her work for saxophone and piano, Renewing the Myth, was the required piece for the 150 participants of the 3rd International Adolphe Sax Concours in Belgium (2002).

Active as a composer, pianist, teacher, and contemporary music advocate, Shrude has consistently promoted American music through her many years as founder and director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music (1987-99) and as chair of the Department of Musicology/Composition/Theory at Bowling Green State University (1998-2011). She joined the faculty of BGSU in 1977, has served as Visiting Professor of Music at Indiana University, Oberlin Conservatory and Heidelberg College, and was a faculty member and chair of the Composition and Theory Department at the Interlochen Arts Camp (1990-97). She has received four Dean’s Awards for Service and for the Promotion of Contemporary Music on the Campus of BGSU (1994, 1999, 2005, 2011) and a 2008 BGSU Chair/Director Leadership Award. In 2001 she was named a Distinguished Artist Professor of Music. Together with saxophonist, John Sampen, she has premiered, recorded and presented hundreds of works by living composers both in the United States and abroad.

Shrude’s compositions have been recorded for New World, Albany, Azica, MMC, Capstone, Orion, Centaur, Neuma, Access, and Ohio Brassworks, and are published by C. F. Peters, Editions Henry Lemoine (Paris), American Composers Alliance, Neue Musik Verlag Berlin, Southern Music, and Thomas House. She has had the honor to work with the impressive musicians of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Fromm Music Series, St. Louis Orchestra Chamber Series, Brave New Works, Contemporary Directions Ensemble, Icicle Creek Trio, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Ravenna Festival, Music Today, Spectrum Trio, Lost Dog Ensemble, Ryoanji Duo, Studio for New Music of the Moscow Conservatory, Flexible Music, CORE Ensemble, Duo Montagnard, Azmari String Quartet, Chicago Saxophone Quartet, New Music Chicago, Quatuor Apollinaire, Tower Brass, Masterworks Choral and Voices of Ascension. Her works for orchestra, wind symphony and choir have led to collaborations with conductors such as Emily Freeman Brown, Yuval Zaliouk, Stefan Sanderling, Andrew Massey, John Paynter, Robert Spano, Henry Charles Smith, Christophe Changnard, Kate Tamarkin, Steven Smith, Ed London, Bruce Moss, Mark Kelly, Steven Gage, Octavio Mas-Arocas, Grzegorz Nowak, Janna Himes, Robert Fitzpatrick, Vladimir Valek and Dennis Keene. Works featuring soloists have lead to rich opportunities with distinguished leaders in the field: saxophonists John Sampen, Frederick Hemke, Donald Sinta, Jean-Marie Londeix, Jean-Michel Goury (to mention but a few); sopranos Julia Bentley, Ekaterina Kicheegina, Ann Corrigan, Dawn Padula; violinists Maria Sampen, Stephen Miahky, Timothy Christie, Miranda Cuckson, Movses Pogossian, Jennifer Caine, Ioana Galu; flutists Judith Bentley, Nina Assimakopoulos; oboist Jacqueline Leclair; tubists Velvet Brown, Ben Pierce, Charles Guy; organists Karel Paukert, Emma Lou Diemer; pianists Robert Satterlee, Winston Choi, Hugh Hinton, Anne-Marie McDermott, Joan Tower; cellists Katri Ervamaa, Norbert Lewandowski, Andrea Yun, Andrew Mark; and percussionist Michael Parola. Guest appearances as a pianist and composer include tours to Russia, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Canada, South America, and Armenia, as well as numerous performances in the United States.

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Lost in My Garden (2021) is a duo for violin and cello that was commissioned and premiered by Drs. Yu-Fang Chen and Peter Opie of Ball State University on November 17, 2021. The work captures the antics in my garden which I began observing more closely during the onset of COVID in March 2020. This quiet time give me an opportunity to see things differently—nature was undisturbed and the seasons transformed seamlessly one into the other. Most immediately while working on the duo I tried to focus on the flora and fauna in spring and summer 2021—the flowers (poppies, columbine, daisies); hostas; grape vines; trees (walnut, redbud, Japanese maple) —and the creatures (gentle but invasive deer, pesky mosquitos, resolute but annoying bees, neighborhood cats in their curious prowls, insane squirrels, melodious birds). You need not know the secrets therein, but they help me immerse myself in the private sound world that puts a piece to paper.

James Romig endeavors to create music that reflects the fragile intricacy of the natural world, where isomorphic pattern and design exert influence on both small-scale iteration and large-scale structure, obscuring boundaries between content and form. Critics have described his work as “rapturous, slow-moving beauty” (San Francisco Chronicle), "developing with the naturalness of breathing" (The New Yorker), and “profoundly meditative... haunting” (The Wire). His Still, for solo piano, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. He is a two-time Copland House award recipient and has served as artist-in-residence at national parks including Everglades, Grand Canyon, and Petrified Forest. Guest composer presentations include visits to the Eastman School of Music, the Cincinnati Conservatory, SUNY Buffalo, the Clyfford Still Museum, and the American Academy in Rome. His scores are published by Parallax Music Press, and recordings have been released by New World Records, Navona, Blue Griffin, Relapse, Sawyer Editions, and Perspectives of New Music. Romig’s primary teachers were Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbitt, and he holds degrees from the University of Iowa (BM, MA) and Rutgers University (PhD). He has been on faculty at Western Illinois University since 2002.

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A Circle With Many Centers, for three vibraphones, was commissioned in 2023 by the Bowling Green State University Percussion Studio and the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music. During the first half of the 18-minute work, an initial set of three pitches (B–D–C) is gradually expanded to become a six-note group (B–D–C–F–E–A). During the second half, the original pitches disappear from the hexachord one by one until only the second trichord (F–E–A) remains. Surface-level musical interactions are generated by a large-scale structure that comprises three strands of regularly-occurring waves unfolding at slightly different speeds in a ratio of 9:10:11. Bowed notes articulate the slow pulses, while struck notes occur at points where two streams coincide. The work’s title reflects an enigmatic scene in a short story by Haruki Murakami: an unnamed older man asks the unnamed younger protagonist to imagine “a circle with many centers but no circumference,” reassuring him that “your brain is made to think about difficult things, to help you get to a point where you understand something that you didn’t understand at first… this is the period when your brain and your heart form and solidify.”