Born in 1975, Kati Agócs is a citizen of three countries: the United States, Canada, and Hungary (European Union), and has served on the composition faculty at New England Conservatory since 2008. In 2014 The American Academy of Arts and Letters presented her with the Arts and Letters Award in Music, honoring artistic achievement and acknowledging the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice. Her music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles such as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the National Arts Center Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and eighth blackbird, and has been broadcast nationally across the U.S. and Canada.
An audience-choice winner at the 2011 Sounds of a New Century Festival in New York, chamber works by Kati Agócs are championed by leading performers such as saxophonist Timothy McAllister, harpist Bridget Kibbey, and pianist Fredrik Ullén. The multiple Grammy-award winning group eighth blackbird toured the U.S. with Immutable Dreams. Cited by The Cleveland Plain Dealer as “mesmerizing,” the work has entered the repertoire of a dozen other ensembles since its 2007 premiere as a Jerome Foundation commission. Fanfare magazine hailed her violin-piano duet Supernatural Love as “serene and unworldly, exploring space with sound in a way that seems to evoke the time before the universe hosted life.” Hymn, a PRISM quartet commission, has become a favorite of emerging saxophone quartets. Time Out New York listed Bridget Kibbey’s album Love Is Come Again—featuring Agócs’s Every Lover is a Warrior—as one of its top ten recordings of 2007, calling the work “powerful.” The Philadelphia Inquirer compared it to “a series of haiku poems, written with an economy that allowed room for the listener to contemplate a multiplicity of meaning … that told you that nothing was what it seemed.”
Other orchestras and ensembles that have performed and commissioned works by Kati Agócs include the American Composers Orchestra, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Reconsil Vienna, Lontano (London, U.K.), Albany Symphony Orchestra, Da Capo Chamber Players, Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, New Juilliard Ensemble, Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Da Capo Chamber Players, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Duo Concertante, Budapest Saxophone Quartet, Antares, Jullliard Symphony, New England Conservatory Symphony, Newfoundland Symphony, Symphony Nova Scotia, and many more.
Further awards and honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Charles Ives Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Boston Foundation’s inaugural Brother Thomas Fellowship, the ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center, a Fulbright Fellowship to the Liszt Academy in Budapest, a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, the Presser Foundation Award, and others. She has served as Composer-in Residence with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada for its Fiftieth Anniversary Season, and at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival.
In its award citations, The American Academy of Arts and Letters said: “The music of Kati Agócs reveals a wonderfully accessible lyricism that unfolds with both drama and complexity … It has heart: it reaches the hearer through melody and clear design, with its soulful directness and its naturalness of dissonance.”
Paul Burdick is a composer, theorist, and educator who specializes in music and technology. He has worked in the field of algorithmic composition, developing composition software in conjunction with Soundtrack Recording Studios. Music created with this software is used as theme and underscore for nationally syndicated cable television. He has also composed for film, with broadcasts on PBS and WNET in New York. His orchestral works have been performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic and his chamber music has been performed by the Josquin Cage New Music Ensemble and in the Brookline Library New Music Series.
Robert Cogan
Robert Cogan’s internationally acclaimed books include Sonic Design: The Nature of Sound and Music (coauthor, Pozzi Escot), New Images of Musical Sound, recipient of the 1987 Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory, and two books of pioneering spectrographic studies of musical sounds: Music Seen, Music Heard and The Sounds of Song. The Cleveland Orchestra, North and West German radios, RIAS Orchestra of Berlin, the BBC, and the Avignon, Berlin, Gubbio, International Society for Contemporary Music, Montanea, Nice, Prix Italia, and Tanglewood festivals have presented his music, as have distinguished performers throughout the world including Marilyn Crispell, Jan de Gaetani, Joan Heller, Robert Henry, Jacques-Louis Monod, and Leopold Stokowski. His works have been performed, and he has spoken on theoretical and creative matters to the College Music Society, Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, the International Computer Music Association, IRCAM (Paris), the Music Teachers National Association, SEM (Stockholm), Società Italiana di Analisi Musicale, the Society of Composers, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Society for Music Theory, and at musical institutions in Belgium, China, Czechoslavakia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Yugoslavia, and throughout the U.S. Cogan received the Young Composer’s Radio Award (BMI), Chopin and Fulbright scholarships, German government grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency.
B.M., M.M., University of Michigan; M.F.A., Princeton University. Studies with Ross Lee Finney, Nadia Boulanger, Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, Phillip Jarnach. Recordings on Delos, Golden Crest, Leo, Music & Arts, Neuma, Spectrum. Visiting faculty at Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood), SUNY/Purchase, IBM Watson Research Center, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, and Shanghai Conservatory. Codirector of the Talloires International Composers Conference (France). Woodrow Wilson Foundation National Lecturer.
Photo by Bachrach
Coleman
Jazz Festival to the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, Poland,Anthony Coleman’s musical odyssey has taken him through many cultures and led him to wear many hats as composer, improvising keyboardist, and teacher. Coleman joined the NEC faculty in 2006, returning to a school where he himself studied in the 1970s, during the birth of NEC’s Contemporary Improvisation program (then called Third Stream). In addition to his work as a studio teacher and ensemble coach, Coleman works with NEC’s Contemporary Improvisation students to organize a departmental concert each spring.
Commissioners and performers of Coleman’s work include clarinetist David Krakauer/Concert Artists Guild (The Kaspar In Me, 1985), accordionist Guy Klucevsek (Below 14th Street/Above 125th Street, 1987), Relâche (The King of Kabay, 1988), pianist Joseph Kubera (the hidden agenda, 1989), The Crosstown Ensemble (Latvian Counter-Gambit, 1992), Neta Pulvermacher and Dancers/Meet The Composer (Goodbye and Good Luck, 1993), Bang on a Can All-Stars/Jerome Foundation, (Mise en Abîme, 1997), Kitchen House Blend (Lapidation, 2002), guitarist Marco Cappelli/Associazione Alessandro Scarlatti (The Buzzing In My Head, 2003), TILT Brass Band (Set Into Motion, 2005), the Ruhr Triennale (Dubistmeinichbindein, 2007), the Brecht Forum (Artifacts for String Quartet, 2008), Merkin Concert Hall (Flat Narrative, 2008), the Festival Banlieues Blues/Ensemble Erik Satie (Echoes From Elsewhere, 2011), ISSUE Project Room/ String Orchestra of Brooklyn (Empfindsamer, 2012).
Other key works include the cycle by Night (1987–1992), a series of works inspired by Coleman’s experiences in (the ex-) Yugoslavia (CD Disco by Night, Avant 1993). Coleman has presented his own work at the Sarajevo Jazz Festival (Bosnia), North Sea Jazz Festival (Holland), Saalfelden Festival (Austria), and the Krakow and Vienna Jewish Culture Festivals.
Ensembles led by Coleman have recorded extensively for Tzadik and include the trio Sephardic Tinge (Sephardic Tinge, 1995; Morenica, 1998; Our Beautiful Garden is Open, 2002) and Selfhaters Orchestra (Selfhaters, 1996; The Abysmal Richness of the Infinite Proximity of the Same, 1998). Coleman has also toured and recorded with John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Marc Ribot, Shelley Hirsch, Roy Nathanson, and many others.
Coleman has been awarded grants from New York Foundation on the Arts (1988 and 2006), New York State Council on the Arts, and Meet the Composer. He has received residencies from the Yellow Springs Arts Center (1987 and 1990), the Djerassi Colony (1989), the Frei und Hansestadt Kulturbehörde of Hamburg, Germany (2002), and the Civitella Ranieri Center, Umbertide, Italy (2003), the Centro Veneziano di Studi Ebraici Internazionali in collaboration with Venetian Heritage (2011).
Coleman has recorded 13 CDs under his own name, and he has played on more than 100 CDs. His most recent CDs are The End of Summer (Tzadik), which features his NEC Ensemble Survivors Breakfast,Shmutsige Magnaten (Tzadik), a live solo performance from the 2005 Krakow Jewish Culture Festival that features interpretations of the songs of Mordechai Gebirtig; Pushy Blueness (Tzadik) and Lapidation(New World), both recordings of his chamber music, and Freakish: Anthony Coleman Plays Jelly Roll Morton (Tzadik, 2009). His Damaged by Sunlight(2010) was issued on DVD by the French label La Huit.
B.M., New England Conservatory; M.M., Yale University. Studies with Jaki Byard, George Russell, Donald Martino, Malcolm Peyton, David Mott, Jacob Druckman, Betsy Jolas. Participant in Mauricio Kagel's seminar at the Centre Acanthes, Aix-en-Provence, France, 1981.
Photo by Andrew Hurlbut
Michael Gandolfi
Michael Gandolfi has written works for the London Sinfonietta, Riverside Symphony Orchestra, Parnassus, Speculum Musicae, Sonor, Boston Musica Viva, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the Orpheus, Los Angeles, and St. Paul chamber orchestras.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra has performed Gandolfi's Points of Departure, written for Orpheus, and excerpts from his suite The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. He received the first Paul Jacobs Memorial Commission from the Tanglewood Music Center in 1987, and has also received commissions and grants from the Fromm, Koussevitzky, and Guggenheim foundations and the NEA, among others. Gandolfi has received the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters’ Charles E. Ives and Academy-Institute awards.
In 2008, a recording of The Garden of Cosmic Speculation was released on Telarc in a performance by its first interpreter, Robert Spano leading the Atlantic Symphony. The recording received a Grammy Award nomination. In 2009 Boston Modern Orchestra Project released a recording of Y2K Compliant, the outcome of several concerts in which Gandolfi's music has been performed.
B.M., M.M. with honors in composition, NEC. Studies with Oliver Knussen, William Thomas McKinley, and John Heiss. Former faculty of Harvard University. Director of Compositional Activities, Tanglewood Music Center.
Recognition
- Recordings on CRI, Deutsche Grammophon
- Multiple commissions from Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as one of the Atlanta School of Composers
- Grammy Award nomination for The Garden of Cosmic Speculation
- Tanglewood Music Center's first Paul Jacobs Memorial Commission, 1987
John Heiss
John Heiss is an active composer, conductor, flutist, and teacher. His works have been performed worldwide, receiving premieres by Speculum Musicae, Boston Musica Viva, Collage New Music, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Aeolian Chamber Players, Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, and Alea III. He has received awards and commissions from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Fromm Foundation, NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, ASCAP, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His principal publishers are Boosey & Hawkes, E.C. Schirmer, and Elkus & Son.
Heiss has been principal flute of Boston Musica Viva and has performed with many local ensembles, including the BSO.
His articles on contemporary music have appeared in Winds Quarterly, Perspectives of New Music, and The Instrumentalist. Along with Juilliard faculty Joel Sachs, Heiss has designed and written a book/CD-Rom classical music primer for Blue Marble Music entitled Classical Explorer.
Starting in the 1970s, Heiss has directed many NEC festivals dedicated to composers or themes, and has spearheaded visits to NEC by many composers, including Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Berio, Carter, Messiaen, Schuller, and Tippett.
B.A. in mathematics, Lehigh University; M.F.A., music, Princeton University. Composition with Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, Earl Kim, Otto Luening, Darius Milhaud; flute with Arthur Lora, James Hosmer, Albert Tipton. Recordings on TelArc, Nonesuch, CRI, Golden Crest, Arista, Turnabout, Video Artists International, Boston Records, AFKA. Former faculty of Columbia University, Barnard College, MIT, NEC Institute at Tanglewood.
In addition to his work in multidisciplinary role in NEC College studies, John Heiss teaches flute to NEC Preparatory and Continuing Education students.
John Mallia
John Mallia's compositions for diverse instrumental, vocal and electronic forces have been performed internationally by artists and organizations including Yo-Yo Ma, Gaudeamus (The Netherlands), International Computer Music Association, Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, Zeppelin Festival of Sound Art (Barcelona, Spain), Festival Synthese (Bourges, France), Society for New Music (New York), CyberArts (Boston, MA), Medi@terra's Travelling Mikromuseum (Greece, Bulgaria, Germany), and the Boston Microtonal Society.
He has collaborated with visual artists and poets on three multi-media installations:Bloodlines: Remembering Smyrna, 1922 (installation and projected soundscape; with artists John Rexine and Annee Spileos Scott), Summons (hanging screens, lighting, projections and six-channel sound spatialization; with poet Dana Dalton), Sight, Sound, Synapse (electronic sound, hanging forms, floor sculptures, lighting and slide projections, with sculptor Jacques Abelman, poet Dana Dalton and neuroscientist Kara Pratt).
His work has been recognized by the Institut de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges' International Competition of Electro-acoustic Music and Sonic Art (1991, 2000 France), the Luigi Russolo competition (2000 Italy), and the Boston Microtonal Society's Annual Award for the creation of microtonal music. He was co-Director of the Auros Group for New Music (1992-99) and has produced more than seventy concerts of contemporary music in New England. He remains active as a presenter of concerts of electro-acoustic music in the Boston area.
B.M., Syracuse University; M.M., NEC; Ph.D., Brandeis University. Visiting Artist, Lecturer, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Former faculty of College of the Holy Cross, Clark University, Northeastern University, and Brandeis University.
Photo by Andrew Hurlbut
Efstratios Minakakis
Stratis Minakakis is a Greek composer and conductor. His compositional interests include memory, breath and vocality, ancient and modern Greek texts, self-generating systems, complex symmetries, rule-based transformative processes, and the introspective exploration of language.
As a composer, he has collaborated with leading performers and ensembles across Europe, North America and Japan, including conductor Rüdiger Bohn, recorder virtuoso Tosiya Suzuki, Noh performer Ryoko Aoki, the Next Mushroom Promotion ensemble, the PRISM and Stockholm saxophone quartets, the Arditti String Quartet, the ensemble counter)induction, and Dolce Suono Ensemble. A recipient of numerous academic and artistic awards, he most recently received the 2010 Takefu International Composition Prize in the Takefu International Festival in Japan (Toshio Hosokawa, director) for his work Aggeloi II.
As a conductor, he has directed and coached chamber ensembles in performances of early 20th-century and contemporary music. He is currently involved with Boston’s Notariatous, a chamber music ensemble specializing in microtonal music, and EMMA, a collaborative platform combining research, lectures, and performance of electroacoustic, microtonal, multimedia, and algorithmic music.
Also active in the field of music theory, his recent work focuses on analytical approaches to early Modernism and the music of Xenakis and Ligeti.
A.B. Princeton University (Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude); M.M. New England Conservatory (Pi Kappa Lambda, highest awards, distinction in performance); Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania.
Malcolm C. Peyton
Malcolm Peyton has directed, conducted, and concertized in many new music concerts in Boston and New York, including most recently The Composers Series in NEC's Jordan Hall. He is also developing new teaching concepts for understanding modern tonal practice. He has received a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship and awards from the NEA, Norlin Foundation, and American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His music has been performed in Europe and the U.S. and is published by Boelke Bomart/Mobart and the Association for the Promotion of New Music.
Well-known and celebrated compositions: Apostrophe for chorus, soloists, and orchestra; Fantasies Concertantes for orchestra; String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2; five song cycles including Four Songs from Shakespeare, Songs from Walt Whitman, andSonnets from John Donne
B.A., M.F.A., magna cum laude, Princeton University. Composition with Roger Sessions and Edward Cone. Piano with Edward Steuermann. Fulbright Award studying in Germany with Wolfgang Fortner. Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Award. Margaret Crofts Scholarship studying two summers at the Tanglewood Music Center with Aaron Copland and Irving Fine. Citation and award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Recordings on CRI, Centaur. Former visiting lecturer at Princeton and Boston universities.
