Composer Chats

Avid vocal composer Matthew Recio recently finished his post as Vanguard emerging opera composer with Chicago Opera Theatre. During his residency, he developed operas with librettists Royce Vavrek (2021) and Stephanie Fleischmann (2020). The concert presentation of his work with Royce, "The Puppy Episode," was premiered in March of 2021 through the Chicago Opera Theater (COT) and followed by co-production between Opera Columbus and Oberlin Conservatory for the staged premiere.

This year he is thrilled to be collaborating with the LYNX project for their amplify series, creating a song cycle with living neurodiverse poets. He will also be featured on the DeCameron Opera Coalition's holiday project series, representing the Chicago Fringe Opera for a video song project. This spring, he will collaborate with Hana Cai and the Ithaca College Treble choir on a new choral work with poetry by Stephanie Fleischmann. Recio will be featured on tenor Ryan Townsend Strand's song cycle project, Letters to Jackie, a CD project featuring many prominent, living art song composers of our time. He is a resident artist with the West Edge Opera Aperture Program developing his new opera with Stephanie Fleischmann, L'autre Moi.

Most recently, he collaborated with Chicago-based choir Stare at the Sun on an immersive choral cantata, The Hollow, performed at the Linne Woods forest preserve that explores themes of isolation, depression, emergence, and renewal with a libretti by Alejandra Villareal Martinez. This past spring, he was thrilled to present Touch the Water with the Chicago Fringe Opera Series "A City of Works," which featured text by Chicago-based writer Anna Gatdula. This collaboration was written for Chicago-based artists Keanon Kyles and David Sands. As a performer/composer, his collaboration on How We Hush (poetry by Jenna Lanzaro) with tenor Michael Day earned him a winning prize with Fourth Coast Ensemble's 2021 Chicago SongSlam.

He looks forward to a new collaboration with Chicago-based librettist Jerre Dye on a new song that will be produced on a new album, 40x40 by Grammy-nominated soprano Laura Strickling, featuring the work of 40 different leading composers of the art song genre. This fall, he will be collaborating on a unique project by Queer In(n) to create a vocal work inspired by the life of trans-Chicago icon Mama Gloria. This project will feature an adaptive libretto by Dr. Marquese Carter and feature the talents of upcoming trans singer Jalissa Spell.

In addition to his work with COT and West Edge Opera, he was selected as the first commissioned composer for the Cincinnati Song Initiative 2018-2019 season. He is a published artist under the Dale Warland Series and the Craig Hella Johnson Series under G. Schirmer/Hal Leonard. As the 2018 Georgina Joshi vocal prize commission winner, Recio received a premiere of his work "In the Desert" for mezzo-soprano and sinfonietta with the Indiana University New Music Ensemble.

Recio was recently named the 2017 American Prize winner in choral composition and was a featured composer with Beth Morrison Projects as an operatic composer at the National Sawdust theatre in Brooklyn, New York. The New Voices Opera Company commissioned him for his one-act opera, "In Memoriam," in 2017 (Libretto: Molly Korroch). Recio is a humble winner of the Cincinnati Camerata Competition, a two-time winner of the NOTUS Composition Competition, a finalist in the Young New Yorker's Choral Competition, and a finalist in the Morton Gould Awards and BMI Awards. William Stowman's CD, A Timeless Place (Klavier Records Label), features Recio's song cycle Chronology of Storms, with poetry written by Jenna Lanzaro.

With an equal passion for instrumental composition, Recio has been represented at the Midwest Composer Symposium, the UNK Music Festival, and the Hammer and Nail Dance collaboration. His chamber works received recognition at the IMTA young artist composition competition and the Quartet Nouveau Competition. Recio is a proud alumnus of the IMANI Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, the Valencia International Performing Arts Program, the Norfolk Chamber Series, and Donald Nally's Grammy award-winning choir, "The Crossing."

A summa cum laude graduate and Charles F. Hockett Scholarship winner of Ithaca College (B.M. Composition), Recio received his doctorate in music composition at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music as a Jacobs fellowship recipient and associate instructor in aural skills. His principal teachers include Dana Wilson, Claude Baker, Aaron Travers, Don Freund, David Dzubay, Eric Ewazen, P.Q. Phan, and Sven-David Sandström.

For more information visit: www.matthewrecio.com

http://www.bessmccrary.com

Felix Jarrar is a multidisciplinary artist, distinguished as a composer, coach and

conductor. His music has been praised for its "dreamlike" quality (Boston Globe) and

"delightfully cruel" edge (Operawire). Jarrar's compositions have been noted to "flow

from him in the most natural and lively way" (Tom Cipullo).

Jarrar has had the privilege of collaborating with numerous esteemed organizations,

including Santa Fe Opera, St. Petersburg Opera, OPERA San Antonio, The New

School, Opera Naples, Opera North, Opera Ithaca, Penn Square Opera, Hogfish,

University of Memphis and the iconic Apollo Theater. For the 2024/2025 season, he

serves as Assistant Conductor with Florida Grand Opera, working on productions of Die

Zauberflöte, L’elisir d’amore, and Carmen.

Jarrar's impressive compositional catalog comprises 275 works, including 235 art

songs, 14 operas, 2 string quartets, and a symphony. He has received notable

commissions from and been underwritten by the New England Repertory Orchestra,

University of Missouri Kansas City, Prismatic Arts Ensemble, Off the Chamber, Spark

Duo, Idaho Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His

operas have been produced by Landlocked Opera, Chicago Fringe Opera, /kor/

productions, Killer Queen Opera, Opera Elect, and New Wave Opera, amongst others.

His song "Sun of the Sleepless" was featured on the 2024 GRAMMY-nominated album

40@40 by Laura Strickling and Daniel Schlosberg.

Felix Jarrar holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Marlboro College, where he graduated

with highest honors in music composition and piano performance. He earned his Master

of Music degree from Brooklyn College, receiving the Graduate Dean's Award in Music

Composition. Jarrar's musical training was influenced by his studies with Jason Eckardt,

Stanley Charkey, Tania León, and Robert Merfeld, as well as mentorship from piano

pedagogue Burton Hatheway.

https://www.felixjarrarmusic.com

Collaborative pianist and composer Jodi Goble is Senior Lecturer in Voice at Iowa State University, where she coaches singers, music-directs the ISU Opera Studio, and teaches diction and song literature. She received the Iowa State University Award for Early Excellence in Teaching in 2015. Before coming to Iowa, she was Lecturer at the Boston University College of Fine Arts, Senior Vocal Coach and Coordinator of Opera Programs for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, diction faculty at the Walnut Hill School for the Performing Arts, and the primary rehearsal pianist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Tanglewood Festival Chorus. During her tenure with the Boston Symphony, she was privileged to play under conductors James Levine, Bernard Haitink, Sir Colin Davis, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, Keith Lockhart, and Seiji Ozawa, and to collaborate in rehearsal with artists José van Dam, Paul Groves, Yvonne Naef, Stephanie Blythe, Marcello Giordano, and Peter Serkin.

Ms. Goble collaborates regularly in recital with bass-baritone Simon Estes, both locally and across the United States, and is his official collaborator for the Iowa Roots and Wings Community Concerts, as well as the pianist and artistic director for the Simon Estes Young Artist Concert Series. She has been the official pianist of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in Iowa since 2009, and is a frequent recitalist with artists associated with Des Moines Metro Opera; recent collaborative partners include tenor Taylor Stayton, baritone Michael Maves, and sopranos Sarah Jane McMahon and Sydney Mansacola.

Ms. Goble’s compositions have been performed across the United States and internationally and featured on National Public Radio. Her awards include the 2013 Commission Competition of the Iowa Music Teachers Association and selection as a finalist entry in the 2008 NATS Art Song Competition. Her choral cantata True Witness was premiered and recorded in November 2013 by the Claremont College Choirs, the Chamber Singers of the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, and soloists Gwendolyn Lytle and Simon Estes. Other recent commissions include works for Voices of the Pearl, the UNCC Operatecture Project, the P.A.L.S. Girlchoir in Boston, and Omaha-based chamber trio I, the Siren. Her works have recently received performances at Beijing Central Conservatory, Boston University, Iowa State University, Hunan Women’s College, Scripps College, Curry College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Iowa Composers’ Forum, the University of Northern Iowa, the Art Song Preservation Society of New York, the Ames Town and Gown Musicale, the Le Ran Arts Festival in Shanghai, and the ASEAN International Festival of Contemporary Music.

https://www.jodigoble.com

r. Emerson Eads currently serves as Director of Choral Activities at Minot State University. As a composer and conductor, he has devoted himself to music of social concern.

His Mass for the Oppressed was written to support the Fairbanks Four, Alaskan Natives from the composer’s hometown who were wrongfully imprisoned for over sixteen years. His cantata “…from which your laughter rises” was written for the mothers of the Fairbanks Four. His opera, The Princess Sophia, premiered in Juneau, Alaska, on October 25th, 2018, to a rave review in Opera magazine. Recent work includes A Prairie Cantata and Black Wolf: A Passion Cantata. Emerson studied choral conducting with Carmen-Helena Téllez at the University of Notre Dame, working with eminent choral conductors, including Joseph Flummerfelt, Stephen Cleobury, Ann Howard Jones, and Peter Phillips. Before his graduate work, he studied composition with Alaskan composer John Luther Adams.

https://emersoneads.com

Award-winning composer Paul Leonard-Morgan has written music for the concert hall, the theater, public events, worked with pop and rock bands, and composed for the screen, both large and small. His experience and range are the epitome of the skill, versatility, and appeal of a 21st century composer—in a world where genres are less and less important, he’s a conservatory trained composer with a punk rock heart.

Leonard-Morgan is one of the most notable contemporary soundtrack composers, in demand for his seamless use of the orchestra with electronics. Writing music for a variety of visual media, his credits include his collaborations with Philip Glass for series The Green Veil, Tales from the Loop, and The Pigeon Tunnel; the feature films Limitless, Best Sellers, Dredd, and The Tomorrow Man; Errol Morris’ series Wormwood and the documentary American Dharma; and the video game Cyberpunk 2077. He has garnered a BAFTA award for his first film score, Reflections Upon the Origin of the Pineapple, and Emmy, Ivor Novello, and World Soundtrack Award nominations.

His expertise extends to the recording studio, where has worked with such leading artists as Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian, Snow Patrol, No Doubt, and Isobel Campbell.

Scottish by birth and upbringing, Leonard-Morgan’s classical works are steeped in the musical and poetic traditions of his home. With a mother who was a music teacher, Leonard-Morgan learned numerous instruments as a child, and went on to earn a degree at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

His composing for the stage includes a commission from the National Theatre to score new adaptations of Rona Munro’s history plays James I, II & IV, which opened at the Edinburgh International Festival.

His concert music includes the Celtic Concerto for violin, harp, soprano, whistles, and pipes, which was commissioned for the Inter-Celtic Festival in Lorient. A suite from his original score for the BBCSSO’s A History of Scotland toured Scotland and was performed at Proms in The Park.

His pieces for commemorative events include “Glory of Pursuit,” the official anthem of the US Olympic Committee for the Beijing Olympic Games, and the orchestral anthem for the Queen’s Baton Relay of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Currently, Leonard-Morgan is developing new works, including a song cycle for L'Orchestre National de Bretagne, for ensemble and a vocalist singing poems by Scots language poet Lennie, and is preparing to release an album of new Etudes for Piano and Cello, featuring cellist and interdisciplinary artist Suuvi.

https://www.paulleonardmorgan.com/about

Composer Kurt Erickson specializes in creating innovative large scale, multi-year projects for multi-artist commissioning consortiums. His 2023-2025 Each Moment Radiant will include some 20-25 global arts organizations, including those in the US, Sweden, and Finland. The multimedia vocal work will honor the lives of the thirty-five Syracuse University students who perished in the Pan Am Flight 103 Tragedy over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Erickson’s Seventeen Minutes and Twenty-Two Seconds for solo piano commemorates the 300th Anniversary of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier and the memory of jazz great Chick Corea. The work was created from a 2020-2023 commissioning consortium led by the San Francisco International Piano Festival, including a consortium of 20 pianists performing the work over North and South America.

His 2018-2020 Here, Bullet song set achieved global success as work that was written for a global consortium of 30 singers from three different continents, won First Prize in the 2020 NATS Art Song competition, and was the subject of a published doctoral dissertation. In a version of the piece written for Sybarite5, Here, Bullet will be turned into a short film by Tonynominated actor/director Will Chase. The film and the new version of the piece will be toured during the 2024-2025 season, screened at international film festivals, presented in performances by military performing ensembles, and presented at veteran’s organizations and other civic events.

Erickson currently serves as Composer-in-Residence with San Francisco’s LIEDER ALIVE!, writing and premiering new commissioned works on their subscription concert series. He has been called “a composer at the height of his powers” and his music has been described as “haunting and poetic”, “gripping”, “genuinely moving”; with one author writing that a performance “moved this reviewer to tears”.

Noteworthy performances and commissions include those by the Minnesota Orchestra, Grammy Award winning San Francisco Girls Chorus at Davies Symphony Hall, violist Paul Yarbrough of the Alexander String Quartet, performances and radio interviews at the American Guild of Organists National Convention, and a commissioned work for soprano and orchestra celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra. His vocal music and song sets are performed on recitals across the United States.

Erickson’s association with the late countertenor Brian Asawa led to premiere performances in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Long Beach, and Seattle with critical acclaim in The Huffington “Erickson’s settings are simply gorgeous: the recording of the Los Angeles premiere (Here, Bullet)…moved this reviewer to tears.” Kathleen Roland Silverstein, Journal of Singing Post and San Francisco Classical Voice. Erickson has worked extensively with San Francisco Opera Ballet Master Lawrence Pech on a number of dance commission projects and festival teaching engagements.

Considered an entrepreneurial artist and thought leader, Erickson has implemented and designed over ten years of innovative multi-year composer residencies with performing arts organizations, cathedrals, dance companies, and national shrines. He is a frequent podcast guest and host, interviewing artists including soprano Karen Slack and Pulitzer Prize winning composer Anthony Davis. He designed the weekly CRC Music: In The Studio series at Sacramento’s Cosumnes River College, and frequently serves as a guest artist at colleges and universities across the country.

While in his twenties, Mr. Erickson created a series of unique sacred music residencies: a 1999-2000 Three Church Residency at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, St. Mary the Virgin, and Berkeley’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church; then later a 2001-2003 composer residency at The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi. Erickson’s choral works appear on the professional choral ensemble Schola Cantorum’s release This Christmas Night.

A new music advocate, Mr. Erickson has premiered new compositions and commissioned 20 prominent composers as part of the Neue Lieder Commissioning Program, a biennial project on the LIEDER ALIVE! concert series. He Directed the Composers Workshop at the Napa Music Festival, mentoring young composers while arranging public performances of original compositions.

As a young composer Erickson participated in Yale University’s Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Banff Centre for the Arts, as well as festivals hosted by Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Brandeis University, and The University of Notre Dame.

Erickson is a frequent performer with his wife, acclaimed soprano/pedagogue/voice scientist Heidi Moss Erickson. Together they collaborate on new works and speak on topics ranging from composer-singer best practices to assorted pedagogy issues in educational and classical music forums. They are in demand as speakers at colleges, on recital series, and with podcasts.

Mr. Jones studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and has been a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and Allentown Symphony. He has also been an assistant or apprentice conductor with the New York Youth Symphony, National Music Festival, and Gulf Coast Symphony. He’s guest conducted the Color of Music Festival orchestra and with the Trilogy Opera Company. In 2015 he founded Orchestra Amadeus, a New York City based project whose mission is to promote social justice through classical music.

As a composer, Mr. Jones’ works have been performed in the United States and Europe. He has written a wide variety of music including art song, solo instrumental, chamber music, choral, concertante, chamber, string, and full orchestra, oratorio, and opera. Most recently he was the first prize-winner in the call for scores held by Music Of the Unsung America in Miami, giving the premiere of his Second Symphony for String Orchestra in April, 2021.

Mr. Jones has studied violin, viola, percussion, and voice and has performed as an orchestral and chamber musician, chorister, and soloist. He studied composition with Nicholas Maw at Peabody and Dr. Samuel Adler at the Bowdoin Festival.

Mr. Jones is a native of Rhode Island, where he was raised on a farm in a small town. He currently lives in New York City.

https://joachimamadeus.wixsite.com/josephjones

Marti Epstein (November 25, 1959) started studying composition in 1977 with Professor Robert Beadell at the University of Nebraska. She has degrees from the University of Colorado and Boston University, and her principal teachers were Cecil Effinger, Charles Eakin, Joyce Mekeel, Bunita Marcus, and Bernard Rands.

Marti was a fellow in composition at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1986 and 1988 and worked with Oliver Knussen and Hans Werner Henze. As a result of her association with Henze, she was invited by the City of Munich to compose her puppet opera, Hero und Leander, for the 1992 Munich Biennale for New Music Theater. She was on the jury for the 1994 Biennale.

Marti has received commissions from the Paul Jacobs Memorial Commissioning Fund, the CORE Ensemble, ALEA III, Sequitur New Music Ensemble, the Fromm Foundation, guitarist David Tanenbaum, the American Dance Festival, the A*DEvant-garde Festival of Munich, tubist Samuel Pilafian, flutist Marianne Gedigian, the New England Brass Quintet, the Iowa Brass Quintet, Boston Conservatory, Boston University Marsh Chapel Choir, pianist Kathleen Supové, the CrossSound New Music Festival of Juneau Alaska, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Radius Ensemble, the Ludovico Ensemble, and the Callithumpian consort. The Longy School of Music commissioned her to compose Quartet for BSO English horn soloist Robert Sheena to be played at the Inauguration of Karen Zorn, their new president. Marti’s music has been performed all over the world by ensembles, which include the San Francisco Symphony, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Frankfurt, the Atlantic Brass Quintet, and Ensemble Modern.

https://www.martiepstein.com

Jessica Rudman’s music inspires empathy for social issues through stories of myth, magic, and the modern world. Described as a “new music ninja” by the Hartford Advocate, she blends lyrical melodies and dramatic narrative structures with sensual harmony and vibrant color to draw the audience into the world she has created. Her works for the concert hall, dance, and opera often differ in musical language and approach, with the common thread always being expressivity. She believes that the ability to reach one’s audience is of extreme importance in our current social, economic, and political environment.

Jessica’s works have been performed by groups such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Cadillac Moon Ensemble, The Omaha Symphony’s Chamber Orchestra, the Yakima Symphony Orchestra, and the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra. She has received awards from SCI/ASCAP, Boston Metro Opera, the College Music Society, the International Alliance for Women in Music, and others. Jessica is a 2019 Connecticut Artist Fellow, with support from the Connecticut Office of the Arts.

Jessica recently joined the faculty at University of Utah as an Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory. Learn more about her here.

https://www.jessicarudman.com/