Mentors

Called “some kind of musical Thomas Edison—you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop, putting together new sounds and textural ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle), Katherine Balch is a composer interested in found sounds, playfulness, intimate spaces, and natural processes. A recipient of the 2020/21 Rome Prize, Katherine’s music has been presented by leading ensembles and festivals including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Tokyo Symphony, Musikfest Berlin, and Tanglewood. When not making or listening to music, she can be found hiking, cooking, or building windchimes.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Eve Beglarian “is a humane, idealistic rebel and a musical sensualist.” Her current projects include a collaboration with writer/performer Karen Kandel and director Mallory Catlett about women and gender-expansive people in Vicksburg from the Civil War to the present which will premiere at Harlem Stage in January 2023, and a piece for 24 basses in a grove of trees, composed for Robert Black and friends. Since 2001, she has been creating A Book of Days: “a grand and gradually manifesting work in progress…an eclectic and wide-open series of enticements.” (Los Angeles Times)

Amelia Brey’s music has been described as possessing “haunting beauty” and “a deep, disquieting power” (National Sawdust Log). Her accomplishments include premieres by Ensemble Dal Niente, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, and members of Ensemble Intercontemporain and the New York Philharmonic, as well as commissions from Musical Mentors Collaborative, HUP! Productions, and Project eGALitarian. Brey serves as the Composition Coordinator for zFestival, a virtual new music workshop for composers, performers, and audio engineers. Hailing from Tallahassee, Florida, Brey is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and a current doctoral candidate at the Juilliard School.

Courtney Bryan is a composer and pianist and the Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts, Tulane University. She holds a DMA in Composition from Columbia University. Bryan’s award-winning music draws on jazz and other types of experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. She was the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2019-20 recipient of the Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition, and is currently a recipient of a 2020-21 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and a 2020 United States Artists Fellow.

Praised by the New York Times for her “spellbinding music,” Phyllis Chen (she/her) is a composer and sound artist whose music draws from her tactile exploration with sound. She is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, 2019 Cage-Cunningham Fellow and creates music that reflects her third culture kid experience. She is a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, the founder of the UnCaged Toy Piano and an assistant professor at SUNY New Paltz.

Currently serving as Composer-in-Residence with the storied Philadelphia Orchestra and included in the Washington Post’s list of the 35 most significant women composers in history, identity has always been at the center of composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank’s music. Born in Berkeley, California (September, 1972), to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Gabriela explores her multicultural American heritage through her compositions. In 2017, Gabriela founded the award-winning Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, a non-profit training institution held on her two rural properties in Boonville, CA for emerging composers from a vast array of demographics and aesthetics.

Jennifer Higdon, makes her living from commissions and has had the distinct honor of working with some extraordinary performers in many genres (chamber, orchestral, band, and opera). She is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and is a three-time Grammy winner, and has pieces recorded on over 80 recordings. Her work, “Blue Cathedral”, is the mostperformed orchestral work of the 21st Century, with over 700 performances. She also runs her own publishing company and teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Cited by The Washington Post as “one of the top 35 female composers in classical music,” LAURA KAMINSKY’s works are “full of fire as well as ice, contrasting dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection. It is strong stuff.” (American Record Guide). Hometown to the World (librettist Kimberly Reed; Santa Fe Opera) and Finding Wright (librettist Andrea Fellows Fineberg; Dayton Opera) premiere in 2021.  2019-20 Composer Mentor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, Kaminsky teaches composition at Purchase College Conservatory of Music /SUNY. Scores: Bill Holab Music. Recordings: Albany, Bridge, BSS, Cedille, CRI, Capstone, Mode, MSR.

Four-time Emmy winning composer Laura Karpman brings a unique and conceptual voice to her significant body of work spanning film, television, and video games. In film, she is known for her scores to Miss Virginia which stars Uzo Aduba, the Netflix rom-com Set It Up, Sony’s Paris Can Wait, Lionsgate’s The Cotton Club Encore, Fox Searchlight’s Step and Black Nativity, as well as the animated shorts Sitara and Walk Run Cha-Cha. For television, Karpman most recently scored the HBO series Lovecraft Country and the Discovery’s docu-series Why We Hate, for which she earned two Emmy nominations. Her other television credits include WGN America’s award-winning series Underground, the PBS’ Peabody award-winning series Craft in America, and Showtime’s Sid and Judy.

Born in London in 1984, Hannah Kendall is based in New York City as a Doctoral Fellow in composition at Columbia University. Kendall’s work has been widely celebrated. Her work has been performed extensively, and across many platforms. She has worked with ensembles including London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, The Hallé, Ensemble Modern, and London Sinfonietta, but you’ll also find her collaborating with choreographers, poets and art galleries; crossing over to different art-forms, and celebrating the impact these unique settings have on sound. She is currently composing an Afrofuturist opera for experimental vocalist and movement artist Elaine Mitchener.

Amirtha Kidambi is invested in the creation and performance of subversive music, from free jazz and improv, to electroacoustic, noise, experimental bands and new music. She is an educator, activist and organizer, informed by anti-racist, decolonial, anti-patriarchal, anti-caste and anti-capitalist values. As a bandleader, she is the creative force behind Elder Ones and has received critical praise from the New York Times, Pitchfork, and Wire magazine. In addition to leading Elder Ones and vocal ensemble Lines of Light, Kidambi is a key collaborator in Mary Halvorson’s sextet Code Girl, the duo Angels & Demons highlighting the poetry of Sun Ra with saxophonist Darius Jones, duo with bassist Luke Stewart, duo with Matteo Liberatore, Neti-Neti with percussionist Matt Evans and in various collaborations with William Parker.

Sky Macklay is a composer, oboist (with Ghost Ensemble), and installation artist based in Baltimore, where she is Assistant Professor of Composition at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Her music is conceptual yet expressive, exploring extreme contrasts, surreal tonality, audible processes, humor, and the physicality of sound. Sky’s work has been recognized with awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Chamber Music America, ASCAP, MacDowell, and Civitella Ranieri. Recent projects include an opera set in a uterus, a set of mnemonic songs for mushroom hunters, and three interactive installations of harmonica-playing inflatable sculptures.

Nebal Maysaud is an award-winning queer Lebanese Druze composer based in Philadelphia. A recipient of the first Kluge Young Composer’s Competition and the James Ming Prize in Composition at Lawrence University, Maysaud converges Western and Middle Eastern classical music styles to explore questions of faith, identity, and power. Their music has been performed by the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, Juventas New Music Ensemble, and Lawrence University Wind Ensemble and Opera Department. They have contributed articles about diversity and classical music to NewMusicBox and convened community music workshops at YallaPunk 2019. They hold a B.M. in Music Composition from Lawrence University.

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post).

From massive works for orchestra and chorus such as Yanga (2019), concertos Fractalis (2022), politically charged operas Only the Truth (2008), magical chamber works Altar de muertos (1997), and intimate solo pieces Canto a Hanna (2005), Gabriela Ortiz’s music reveals a sophisticated compositional technique and a meticulous attention to rhythm and timbre. Her work has been performed by prestigious orchestras and ensembles such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Ortiz is currently composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall, with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and at the Curtis Institute of Music. She also teaches composition at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

Composer Paola Prestini has collaborated with poets, filmmakers, and scientists in large-scale multimedia works that chart her interest in themes ranging from the cosmos to the environment. She has created, written and produced projects such as the world’s largest and first communal VR opera, The Hubble Cantata, and the eco-documentary The Colorado. Her opera Sensorium Ex, produced by her frequent creative partner Beth Morrison Projects, dives into community impact and AI – bridging her love of collaboration with system building. Prestini is a Co-Founder of VisionIntoArt, a non-profit new music and interdisciplinary arts production company in New York City and is the Co-Founder/Artistic Director of the non-profit music organization National Sawdust.

Cellist and composer Tomeka Reid has emerged as one of the most original, versatile, and curious musicians in Chicago’s bustling jazz and improvised music community. A 2021 USA Fellow, Foundation of the Arts (2019), 3Arts (2016) recipient, Reid received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017. In the Fall of 2019 Tomeka Reid received a teaching appointment at Mills College as the Darius Milhaud chair in composition

Caroline Shaw is a New York-based musician—vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer—who performs in solo and collaborative projects. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for “Partita for 8 Voices,” written for the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth. Upcoming releases include two albums with Sō Percussion (joined y Dawn Upshaw and Gil Kalish), and a second album with the Attacca Quartet following their 2019 Grammy-winning record Orange. Caroline loves the collor yellow, otters, Beethoven opus 74, Mozart opera, Kinhaven, the smell of rosemary, and the sound of a janky mandolin.

Jeanine Tesori has written a diverse catalog for Broadway, opera, film and television. Along with Missy Mazzoli, Ms. Tesori is one of the first female composers commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Her musicals include: Fun Home (Tony Award, Pulitzer finalist); Soft Power (Pulitzer finalist); Caroline, or Change (Olivier Award); Violet; Shrek; Thoroughly Modern Millie; Twelfth Night; A Free Man of Color; Mother Courage (starring Meryl Streep). Her Operas include: Blue (Libretto, Tazewell Thompson); A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck (Tony Kushner); The Lion, The Unicorn and Me (J.D. McClatchy); and the upcoming Grounded (George Brant). She is the founding artistic director of New York City Center’s Encores! Off-Center Series; the founding creative director of A BroaderWay; and a lecturer at Yale University.

Sakari Dixon Vanderveer seeks to incorporate the unique artistry of her collaborators in each of her compositions, which often feature visceral, stark contrasts that convey her recurring fascination with metamorphosis as an element of life. She eagerly engages with creatives of various disciplines, especially if such projects enable children to participate in the joy of making art. Vanderveer’s dream is to give youth from all backgrounds access to contemporary music and composition, allowing them to develop a better appreciation of concert music – new and old – so that they can cherish it and engage with it throughout their lives.

Ayanna Woods is a Grammy-nominated performer, composer, and bandleader from Chicago. Her music explores the spaces between acoustic and electronic, traditional and esoteric, wildly improvisational and mathematically rigorous. She earned her B.A. in music from Yale University. Woods’ music has been performed in the US and abroad by Chanticleer, Third Coast Percussion, The Crossing, and Manual Cinema. Her band Yadda Yadda will release its debut EP, Spies & Remedies, this spring.

DU YUN, born and raised in Shanghai, China, and currently based in New York City, works at the intersection of opera, orchestral, theatre, cabaret, musical, oral tradition, public performances, electronics, visual arts, and noise.  Her body of work is championed by some of today’s finest performing groups and organizations around the world. Known for her “relentless originality and unflinching social conscience” (The New Yorker), Du Yun’s second opera, Angel’s Bone, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize; in 2018 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow; and in 2019, she was nominated for a Grammy Award in Best Classical Composition. As an avid performer and bandleader (Ok Miss), her onstage persona has been described by the New York Times as “an indie pop diva with an avant-garde edge.”