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Salon Series April 11, 2012: An Evening With Wang Jie
Speaker(s):
Original Content •
4/19/2012
Featuring selections from the vocal and instrumental works of composer Wang Jie performed by soprano Mary MacKenzie, mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann, violinist Jennifer Choi and the composer at the piano. The program includes:
- Serenade in Isolation
- A Prayer — Lord? Please Don't Let Me Die in a Funny Way (libretto by Paul Simms)
- From the Other Sky, Scene II — Human World (libretto by Wang Jie)
At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.At the forefront of the younger generation American composers, Wang Jie
has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices. Elegant and
elementally clear, her works are powerfully engaging, richly
orchestrated and rhythmically vibrant. She spins a few notes into large
music forms — a rare trait in today’s composers.
Born in Shanghai shortly after the Culture Revolution, Wang was raised
during an era of breathtaking economic expansion. She was a known piano
prodigy by the age of five. A scholarship from Manhattan School of Music
brought her to the U.S., where she began her composition studies under
the tutelage of Nils Vigeland and Richard Danielpour.
While a student at Manhattan School and later the Curtis Institute of Music, her tragic opera Nannan was showcased by New York City Opera’s annual VOX festival. This led to the production of her chamber opera Flown, a meditation on lovers who must separate, by Music-Theatre Group. The Emily Dickenson-inspired song cycle I Died for Beauty was featured at the opening ceremony of Beijing Modern Music Festival. Her piano trio Shadow dramatizes the inner life of an autistic child.
It was featured by the New Juilliard Ensemble at the Museum of Modern
Art and was subsequently presented by Continuum at Merkin Hall’s “China
in America.”
The 2010-2011 season has been particularly fruitful. Having won the coveted Underwood Commission, her concert opera From the Other Sky
was the centerpiece of the American Composers Orchestra’s season
opening concert at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks later, the Minnesota
Orchestra, led by Osmo Vanska, performed her Symphony No.1 as
part of the “Future Classics” series. The multi-language song cycle “A
Longing for Spring” was later premiered at Merkin Hall for the 45th
anniversary celebration of Continuum.
Critical response has been immediate and highly enthusiastic. The New York Times described From the Other Sky
as “clear, lucid and evocative” and Classicalsource.com thought it to
be “far more fun than one is supposed to have at a concert of ‘serious’
music”. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press claims that Symphony No. 1 is “self-assured” and “fascinating.” Previous reviewers have cited her music as “introspective” (The New York Times) and “scrupulously crafted composition that embraces both Chinese and Western modern classical expression” (Pittsburgh Times Review).
The Milton Rock Fellowship committee awarded her its inaugural prize, commissioning an environmentally aware ballet, Five Phases of Spring, which highlighted the season of Philadelphia’s esteemed Rock School for Dance Education. Her Death of Socrates
won the fourth edition Northridge Composition Prize. She was named a
Schumann fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with
Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie in the Master Class program,
and she earned an Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute with Richard
Danielpour. Other honors include multiple ASCAP awards, and citations
from BMI, OPERA America, American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music
Ensemble and, most recently, the MacCracken Fellowship from NYU
Graduate School of Arts and Science.
This season, Wang joins composers’ collective Random Access Music.
Several premieres have been scheduled with groups such as ICE, Orchestra
of the League of Composers and Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.
Wang is a publishing member of ASCAP. She lives in New York. Aside from
composing, she is a semi-pro badminton player, a self-taught chef, a
photographer and plays softball on a team in Central Park.
Hailed by Time Out New York as “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” violinist Jennifer Choi
has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of
solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation.
Internationally recognized as a performer with “brilliance and command,”
(The New York Times), “a leading New York new-music violinist that plays it with fiery authority” (Boston Globe), and with “intense, spectacularly virtuosic play” (The
Seattle Weekly), Choi brings her strong classical background and
dedication to whatever work she decides to take on from Bach to Zorn and
back. Choi is regularly sighted in solo performances of rare works that
stretch the limits of violin playing often calling for extended
techniques, improvisation and the use of electronics. In 2006, she
received a grant from the New York State Music Fund for the premiere and
performances of Holding Fast for violin and video written for her by Randall Woolf. She also gave the world premiere of John Zorn’s solo violin work, Goetia, at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the U.S. premieres of Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Capriccio and Helmut Lachenmann’s Toccatina.
She can be heard on over a dozen albums for TZADIK record label in
compositions by new music icons such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Wadada
Leo Smith and the Susie Ibarra Trio, and on her debut solo album,
VIOLECTRICA- Works for Solo Violin and Electronics.
Described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary
agility and concentration… whose performance extended well beyond her
strong, appealing singing to inhabit her eyes and other features,” Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie
has captured the attention of audiences in New York, Chicago,
Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. A passionate performer of
contemporary music, Mackenzie has worked closely with composers John
Harbison, Richard Danielpour and James Primosch. She was invited to
perform at John Harbison’s Token Creek Music Festival, premiering
selections from his anthology of pop songs, Songs after Hours. She has
also appeared with The Juilliard School’s AXIOM Ensemble, Fulcrum Point
New Music Project, the Continuum Ensemble, the Oakwood Chamber Players,
Red Light New Music and the Talea Ensemble. Mackenzie recently made her
Alice Tully Hall debut, performing Jean Barraqué’s Chant Aprés Chant
with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dan Druckman.
Mackenzie recently made her professional opera debut as Despina in Così fan tutte with Madison Opera under the direction of Kelly Kuo. Solo concert appearances include Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, The Youth in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Faure’s Requiem in New York City.
Mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann is the recipient of the New York City
Opera 2009 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and the 2008 Intermezzo
Foundation Award, given by the prestigious Elardo International Opera
Competition. Other recent awards include the Silver Prize with Opera
Index and a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant for 2006-2007 and
2008-2009 Gerda Lissner second place award recipient. In the 2010-2011
season, Swann has performed Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana with the Opera Orchestra of New York and conducted by Alberto Veronisi. She will also be covering Schwerleite in Die Walküre
with the Metropolitan Opera, and she will participate in the Bregenz
Festival in Austria. This past season, Swann appeared as Emilia in Kurt
Weill and Ira Gershwin’s The Firebrand of Florence with the
Collegiate Chorale conducted by Ted Sperling, and an opera gala concert
with Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Swann also participated in various
outreach programs with New York City Opera. She also returned to New
York City Opera as Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. A recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Swann was featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Opera News with acclaimed dramatic mezzo Dolora Zajick.
Additionally, at the Manhattan School of Music she received critical
acclaim in Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea and as Madame de la Haltiere in Massenet’s Cendrillon.
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