Making Missouri a major center for the music of tomorrow

Donnacha Dennehy returns to the Mizzou International Composers Festival in 2019 as a distinguished guest composer, having previously served in the same capacity in 2012, and thereby making MICF history by becoming the only composer to play that role twice.

Considered one of Ireland’s top living composers, Dennehy (pictured) is a founder of the new music group Crash Ensemble and an associate professor of music at Princeton University. His music has been featured at major festivals and venues around the world, including the Edinburgh International Festival; Carnegie Hall; the Tanglewood Festival; the Kennedy Center; The Barbican, Wigmore Hall, and the Royal Opera House in London, and many others.

In recent years, Dennehy has concentrated especially on large-scale musico-dramatic works, including his first opera “The Last Hotel,” which premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2015 and was released on an album earlier this year by Cantaloupe Music; and “The Second Violinist,” which won the 2017 Fedora Prize for Opera, premiered in July 2017 at the Galway International Arts Festival, and was presented in September 2018 at the Barbican in London.

Then there’s “The Hunger,” which was performed first as a work-in-progress at the 2012 MICF, subsequently co-produced in completed form by Alarm Will Sound and Opera Theatre St. Louis, and presented in 2016 at Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.

The work follows the story of an American who went to Ireland during the Great Famine when so many were fleeing, and shows through text and music her transformation “from clerical observer to empathetic participant.” Now in its completed form, “The Hunger” will be released as an album in CD and digital formats on Friday, August 23 by Nonesuch Records.

For the MICF, Alarm Will Sound, soprano Katherine Manley, and sean nós singer Iarla O’Lionáird will perform the complete concert version of “The Hunger” as part of AWS’ concert on Thursday, July 25 at the Missouri Theatre. In addition, the Mizzou New Music Ensemble will perform Dennehy’s “The Blotting” as part of the “Mizzou New Music” concert on Friday, July 26 at the Missouri Theatre.

Other recent projects of Dennehy’s include “Surface Tension,” premiered by Third Coast Percussion in February 2016 and released last month as part of an album on the New Amsterdam label; “The Weather of it” for the Doric String Quartet, co-commissioned by Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall and premiered at Wigmore Hall in July 2016; a piece for the LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series; and “Broken Unison” for So Percussion, co-commissioned by the Cork Opera House and Carnegie Hall.

In addition to the above, Dennehy has received commissions from Bang On A Can, Contact Contemporary Music (Toronto), Dawn Upshaw, Fidelio Trio, Joanna MacGregor, Kronos Quartet, Icebreaker, Nadia Sirota, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Orkest de Volharding (Amsterdam), Percussion Group of the Hague, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, United Instruments of Lucilin (Luxembourg), Wide Open Opera (Dublin), and many others.

Along with the forthcoming album of “The Hunger,” Dennehy’s music can be heard on a number of recordings. Grá agus Bás, his 2011 release on Nonesuch featuring Crash Ensemble and singers Dawn Upshaw and Iarla O’Lionáird, was named as one of NPR’s “50 favorite albums’’ for the year.

RTE Lyric FM in 2014 issued a portrait CD of Dennehy’s orchestral music, and his works also have been heard on other releases include a number by NMC Records in London, Bedroom Community in Reykjavik, and Cantaloupe Music in New York. A recording of “Tessellatum,” a piece for Nadia Sirota and viol consort, came out on Bedroom Community in August 2017, and Surface Tension / Disposable Dissonance, with performances by Crash Ensemble and Third Coast Percussion, was released in June 2019 on New Amsterdam records.

For more about Donnacha Dennehy, listen to the interview he did recently with KMUC’s “Mizzou Music” program, and read the interview with him published last month in The Journal of Music. You can hear some of his music via the embedded players below.

Donnacha Dennehy, director Tom Creed, and singers Iarla Ó Lionáird and Katherine Manley are interviewed about the 2016 production of “The Hunger” at Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York

“Broken Unison,” performed by So Percussion on January 19, 2019 at Koerner Hall in Toronto

“Stainless Staining,” performed by Isabelle O’Connell (piano) with electronics on March 30, 2017 at SARC, Queen’s University in Belfast, Ireland

“Bulb,” recorded in 2014, featuring Vicky Chow (piano), Ashley Bathgate (cello) and Todd Reynolds (violin)

“The weather of it,” performed by Isaac Allen (violin), Bram Goldstein (violin), Angela Choong (viola) and Alex Greenbaum, (cello) on October 16, 2018 at Historic Old St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco

Amy Beth Kirsten occupies a unique place in Mizzou International Composers Festival history, returning in 2019 as a distinguished guest composer after having been one of the eight resident composers at the very first MICF (then called the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival) in 2010.

Kirsten is the only composer to take part in the festival in both capacities, and to celebrate her return, the 2019 MICF will feature the world premiere of excerpts from a major new composition of hers.

Selected parts of “Jacob in Chains,” an evening-length, music-driven theatrical work commissioned by Alarm Will Sound and the Mizzou New Music Initiative, will be performed for the first time anywhere as part of AWS’ concert on Thursday, July 25 at the Missouri Theatre. In addition, the Mizzou New Music Ensemble will perform Kirsten’s “World Under Glass No. 2” at the “Mizzou New Music” concert on Friday, July 26 at the Missouri Theatre.

Recognized with artist fellowships from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, Amy Beth Kirsten grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City and Chicago; was educated at Roosevelt University (MM) and the Peabody Institute (DMA); and now lives in New Haven, CT.

A member of the composition faculty at Longy School of Music of Bard College since 2017, she also teaches music composition privately and, for the past eight years, at the HighSCORE summer festival in Pavia, Italy. Kirsten previously served on the faculty of the Peabody Institute from 2015 to 2017, and she has been a guest lecturer at institutions including the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (U.K.), Yale University, Princeton University, Curtis Institute, Cornell University, and the Royal Academy of Music in London.

The expansive nature of “Jacob in Chains” is in keeping with Kirsten’s aesthetic, which is “characterized by an abiding interest in exploring theatrical elements of creation, performance, and presentation…Her body of work fuses music, language, voice, and theatre and often considers musicians’ instruments, bodies, and voices as equal vehicles of expression.”

Kirsten’s major works in recent years include “Savior,” a collaboration between her own ensemble, HOWL, and musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, that was premiered in 2018 for the 20th anniversary of the CSO’s MusicNOW series; “QUIXOTE,” a 90-minute theatrical work inspired by Cervantes’ epic novel, created with director/designer Mark DeChiazza and HOWL and staged in 2017 at Montclair State University in New Jersey; and “Colombine’s Paradise Theatre,” an evening-length work commissioned and produced by the multi-Grammy-winning eighth blackbird that opened the 2014-15 seasons of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and New York’s Miller Theatre, selling out both venues.

She also has written and composed fully-staged theatrical works and traditional concert works for HOWL, the New World Symphony, Peak Performances, American Composers Orchestra, and many others. Most recently, over the past year she has composed solo and chamber works for Mike Compitello (percussion), the Dutch singer/composer Bec Plexus (voice and percussion), New Thread Quartet (saxophones), and Don Berman (piano).

For more about Amy Beth Kirsten, read the Chicago Tribune‘s story from 2018 about the premiere of “Savior”, and the interview with her published around that same time on the CSO’s “Songs and Stories” website. You can hear some samples of her music in the embedded players below.

“World Under Glass No. 2,” performed by Equilibrium, featuring Nicole Parks (violin), Mike Avitabile (flute), Stephen Marotto (cello), and Mike Williams (percussion), conducted by Matt Sharrock

“Pirouette On A Moon Sliver,” recorded October 31, 2017, performed by Emma Resmini

“the crowd examines QUIXOTE to find a cause of his madness,” recorded in March 2017 at Montclair State University,  performed by HOWL, featuring Jonny Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum and Terry Sweeney ( percussion), with Lindsay Kesselman (soprano), Hai-Ting Chinn (mezzo-soprano) and Kirsten Sollek (contralto)

“Drink Me,” performed by Alarm Will Sound on July 18, 2010 at the Missouri Theatre

Fittingly for an international festival located in the heartland of the USA, 2019 MICF resident composer Chelsea Komschlies is a native Midwesterner whose music has been performed in eleven countries on four continents around the world.

The daughter of an artist, Komschlies grew up in Appleton, WI creating and loving all sorts of visual art, and still enjoys drawing, digital painting, and creating hand-sculpted jewelry. She often uses real or imagined images as inspiration for her works, hoping that listeners will “make deep, instinctual associations with her music, be they emotional, visual, or otherwise abstract.”

She recently completed a post-graduate artist diploma at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and this fall will begin studies for a doctoral degree in composition at McGill University.

Komschlies (pictured) previously earned her master of music degree in composition from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and her bachelor’s degree from Wartburg College in Waverly, IA.

For the Mizzou International Composers Festival,  she has written a new work called “Hexactinellida,” which will be performed along with world premieres from the other seven resident composers by Alarm Will Sound as part of the festival’s grand finale concert on Saturday, July 27 at the Missouri Theatre.

In addition to the piece she’s written for the MICF, her recent projects include a work for organ, harpsichord, and orchestra, premiered by the Curtis Institute in 2018; an extended-reality collaboration with Drexel University game design and software engineer students using the Microsoft Hololens; and “Nunc Dimittis,” an oratorio for voices and period instruments commissioned by the Bach Festival of Philadelphia and premiered in February of this year.

Komschlies’ other commissions include creating works for Rock School for Dance Education and One Book, One Philadelphia, and a distinguished composition fellow commission from the Cortona Sessions for New Music.

Her music has been performed at events such as the Ravinia Festival and the finale concert of Make Music Chicago, and she has received fellowships from programs including the Aspen Music Festival, Copland House, the Fontainebleau School (where Nadia Boulanger once taught), the Fresh Inc Festival, the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival, and a number of other festivals in the U.S. and abroad.

For more about Chelsea Komschlies, listen to her interview broadcast a few weeks back on KMUC’s “Mizzou Music” program.  You can hear some of her music in the embedded players below.

“Steam,” recorded November 4, 2017 at Bread & Salt in San Diego, CA, featuring Beth Ross Buckley (flute) and Sheryl Renk (clarinet)

“Borealis”, world premiere performance recorded April 6, 2018 at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, PA, featuring Emma Resmini (flute), Julian Tello (viola), and Lena Goodson (bass)

For resident composer Peter Shin, the 2019 Mizzou International Composers Festival is more than just the chance to write a new work for the festival’s resident ensemble Alarm Will Sound. It’s also an opportunity to pay a visit to, and have his work performed in, his home state, for Shin originally is from Kansas City, MO, just a couple of hours west on I-70.

He recently has been splitting his time between coasts, studying for his master of musical arts degree at the Yale School of Music in New Haven, CT while also serving as a composer fellow of the Berkeley Symphony in California. Shin (pictured) previously earned his bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in music from the University of Southern California.

For the MICF, he has written a new work titled “dogwhistling,” which will be performed along with new music from the seven other resident composers by Alarm Will Sound at the festival’s grand finale concert on Saturday, July 27 at the Missouri Theatre.

Shin describes himself as a composer whose music “navigates issues of national belonging, the co-opting and intermingling of disparate musical vernaculars, and the liminality between the two halves of his second-generation Korean-American identity.”  His works already have received positive attention on a national level, most notably from the New York Times, which in 2018 called him as “a composer to watch” and praised his music as “entirely fresh and personal.”

Shin’s works have been performed at venues including Carnegie Hall through the “First Music” Commission,; Walt Disney Concert Hall through the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Noon to Midnight” series; Chicago’s Symphony Center through the Civic Orchestra New Music Workshop; and at the Cabrillo Festival.

In addition to his piece for the MICF, Shin’s other recent projects include a commission for Roomful of Teeth through the American Composers Forum, which will be premiered next month in a concert at MASS MoCa in Massachusetts, and a chamber orchestra work for the Berkeley Symphony’s 2018-19 season.

His honors and awards include an American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Scholarship, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Fulbright Research Grant, Tanglewood Music Center Fellowship, Aspen Music Festival Fellowship, Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra International Call for Scores, and SCI/ASCAP Commission Competition in the Graduate Division, among others.

For more about Peter Shin, listen to the interview he did recently with KMUC’s “Mizzou Music” program. You can hear some samples of his music in the embedded players below.

“Screaming Shapes” premiere performance on August 3, 2017 at the Aspen Music Festival in Aspen, CO, featuring Mehrdad Gholami (flute), Juan Olivares (bass clarinet), Seo Hee Min (violin), Richard Narroway (cello), and Tim Weiss (conductor) with fixed electronics featuring Corey Dundee (saxophone), Graycen Gardner (voice), Liya Khaimova (voice), and Nick Volpert (cello)

“Relapse” performed October 14, 2016 at the University of Southern California by the USC Thornton Symphony Orchestra conducted by Donald Crockett