bsheng@umich.edu
734-647-9413
Office: 2216 Moore

 

Bright Sheng is a composer, conductor, and pianist. In April of 1999, Mr. Sheng received a special commission from the White House to create a new work for a state dinner, hosted by the president, honoring the Chinese Premiere Zhou Rongji. In October 2001, Bright Sheng was named a MacArthur Fellow with a cash prize of $500,000.

 

Professor Sheng's music has been widely performed throughout the world by such prestigious groups as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Symphony, New York Chamber Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Santa Fe Opera, New York City Ballet, New York City Opera. San Francisco Ballet, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg Radio Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, National Symphony of Russia, Warsaw Symphony, Danish National Radio Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Dusseldorf Symphony Orchestra, Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra, Bern Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony, Luxembourg Philharmonic, National Symphony of Spain, Orqesta Sinfonica de Bilbao, Gulbenkian Orchestra (Portugal), Slovenian Radio & TV Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, China National Symphony, Orchestra of National Opera of Greece, among others; and with distinguished musicians including Leonard Bernstein, Christoph Eschenbach, Kurt Masur, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, Gerard Schwarz, David Zinman, Neeme Jarvi, David Robertson, Robert Spano, Marin Alsop, Eiji Oue, Bramwell Tovey, Jeffery Kahane, Thomas Dasgaard, Hugh Wolff, Arthur Fagen, Jahja Lin, Sakari Oramo, Muhai Tang, Carl St. Clair, Shui Lan, Yo Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Peter Serkin, Yefim Brofman, Evelyn Glennie, Lynn Harrell, Richard Stoltzman, Edgar Meyer, Truls Mork, Jane Eaglen, Elisabeth Futral, Joseph Kaiser, and Lauren Flanigan.

 

Professor Sheng has appeared as solo pianist and conductor with the San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra (Russia), Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra (Germany), Hong Kong Philharmonic, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, and China National Symphony,among others, and has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the Tanglewood Music Center. He has also collaborated with such eminent ensembles and individuals as the Emerson Quartet, Takacs Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, St. Petersburg Quartet, Colin Graham (librettist and stage director), Jude Kelly (stage director), Ong Keng Sen (stage director), David Henry Hwang (playwright/librettist), Andrew Porter (librettist), Helgi Tomasson (choreographer), Peter Martins (choreographer), Christopher Wheeldon (choreographer), and Will Tuckett (choreographer).

 

In addition to many national and international awards, Mr. Sheng has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Naumberg Foundation, Copland Foundation, Michigan Arts Award and a Rackham fellowship and a fellowship from the Institute for the Humanities from the University of Michigan.

Mr. Sheng's music is exclusively published by G. Schirmer, Inc. and records on the Sony Classical, Naxos, Telarc, Delos, Koch International, New World, and Grammofon AB BI labels.

 

Among his important teachers were Leonard Bernstein, George Perle, Hugo Weisgall, Chou Wen-Chung, and Jack Beeson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

psps@umich.edu
734-615-6953
Office: 2243 Moore

 

Even if his works have rarely been popular with the press [“Bad Culture” (The Hague), “Really Annoying Music” (Danceview Times), “An Undeserved Standing Ovation” (The New York Times), “One is not sure whether to laugh or gape in awe at a mind so warped” (San Francisco Examiner)], Paul Schoenfeld’s music is widely performed and continues to draw an ever-expanding group of fans.  According to Juilliard’s Joel Sachs, “He is among those all-too-rare composers whose work combines exuberance and seriousness, familiarity and originality, lightness and depth. His work is inspired by the whole range of musical experience, popular styles both American and foreign, vernacular and folk traditions, and the ‘normal’ historical traditions of cultivated music making, often treated with sly twists. Above all, he has achieved the rare fusion of an extremely complex and rigorous compositional mind with an instinct for accessibility and a reveling in sound that sometimes borders on the manic.”

Although he now rarely performs publicly, Schoenfeld was formerly an active pianist, touring the United States, Europe and South America as a soloist and with groups including “Music from Marlboro.” Among his recordings as a pianist are the complete violin and piano works of Bartók with Sergio Luca. His compositions can be heard on the Angel, Decca, Innova, Vanguard, EMI, Koch, BMG and New World labels.
Reclusive and a wanderer by nature (having rarely lived in any one place for more than five years), Schoenfeld is presently on the composition faculty at the University of Michigan. Additionally, he is an avid student of mathematics and the Talmud.

 

 

 

 

 

Erik Santos
Director Electronic Music Studio, Associate Professor of Composition and Performing Arts & Technology, and Chair of Composition

esantos@umich.edu
Office: 400 BMT

 

BM in Voice Performance, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
MM, DMA in Composition, University of Michigan

 

Erik Santos is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and singer who is active in many musical genres, from rock, to classical, to electronic, world music, and music for theater and dance.

 

Professor Santos has received commissions, prizes, fellowships, and other recognitions for his concert music, including the Charles Ives Scholarship and the Charles Ives Fellowship from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, awards from Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), the MacDowell Colony, the Bozeman Symphony, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Rackham Graduate School of U-M, and the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA).

 

In recent years, Santos has become increasingly preoccupied with presenting music in venues other than the classical concert hall  — dance clubs, street corners, radio, theaters, churches, car stereos, movies, internet, iPods, etc. — where there is more emphasis given to the interaction of music with other spontaneous sensory elements, involving listeners at the hub of an experience. This interest flourished in 2002, when he was invited to join the pioneering and internationally celebrated Japanese butoh company Dairakudakan: Temputenshiki (avant-garde dance/theater), as resident composer — a collaboration which continues to this day.

In 2005, Santos and artist/singer Toko Shiiki formed an upbeat band called October Babies, which has performed a large variety of original multi-cultural and multi-lingual dance songs in America and Japan. They are affiliated with the local Ann Arbor music label Oddfellow Music. Having completed 4 albums, along with music videos and documentaries with October Babies, Santos and Shiiki became interested in filmmaking, and this led to the full-length movieThreshold: Whispers of Fukushima. This project focuses on the lives of several musicians who have continued to live in Fukushima, Japan, despite the devastation of earthquake and tsunami, and the threat of the failing nuclear reactor.

 

Santos has been a central force in the development of the local music scene, hosting several long-standing open-mic stages in the area. These days, he’s become increasingly devoted to the daily practice of his guitars and basses, improving his learning habits and improvisation skills, memorizing poetry, and the television seriesBreaking Bad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

kkuster@umich.edu
734-763-4068
Office: 2243 Moore

 

Composer Kristin Kuster "writes commandingly for the orchestra," and her music "has an invitingly tart edge" (The New York Times). Kuster's colorfully enthralling compositions take inspiration from architectural space, the weather, and mythology. Her orchestral music "unquestionably demonstrates her expertise in crafting unique timbres" (Steve Smith, Night after Night).

 

Most recently, Kuster received an OPERA America Grant for female composers, made possible through The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. The grant will support the recording of Kuster's work Old Presque Isle, a 75-minute opera drawn from the haunting of northern Michigan's Old Presque Isle Lighthouse. The opera is written for singer, six trumpets, two percussionists, a men's chorus, and features a libretto by poet Megan Levad, assistant director of the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan.

 

Upcoming and recent premieres of Kuster's music have included works for the Philadelphia-based Network for New Music, The Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, the Lisbon Summerfest Chamber Choir, multi-percussionist Joseph Gramley, and the Donald Sinta Quartet.

 

Kuster was recently awarded one of the highest honors the University bestows upon junior faculty - a 2015 Henry Russel Award. The award recognizes faculty early in their academic careers who already have demonstrated excellence as a teacher. Given yearly, university-wide junior faculty are eligible for the Henry Russel award, and Kuster is among only four music faculty to receive the award since its inception in 1926.

Recent CD releases include "Breath Beneath" on the PRISM Saxophone Quartet's New Dynamic Records CD Breath Beneath, "Two Jades" on the U-M Symphony Band's ArtifactsEquilibrium CD, "Little Trees" on U-M Percussion Ensemble's Locally Grown Equilibrium CD, and "Lost Gulch Lookout" on the NAXOS CDMillennium Canons: Looking Forward, Looking Back by the University of Georgia Wind Ensemble.

 

Kuster's music has received support from such organizations as the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2004 Charles Ives Fellowship), the Sons of Norway, American Composers Orchestra, League of American Orchestras, Meet The Composer, the Jerome Foundation through the American Composers Forum, the Argosy Foundation, the Jack L. Adams Foundation, the Composers Conference at Wellesley College, and the Larson Family Foundation. She has received commissions from ensembles such as the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, the 6ixWire Project, the Lisbon Summer Fest Chamber Choir, the Atlantic Chamber Ensemble, the Michigan Philharmonic, Sequitur, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Cantori New York, the New York Central City Chorus, the Heartland Opera Troupe, and the Summerfest Chamber Series.

 

Born in 1973, Kuster grew up in Boulder, Colorado. She earned her Doctor of Musical Arts from U-M, where she now serves as associate professor of Composition.

 

Follow her on Twitter: @KristinKuster, or visit kristinkuster.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mkd@umich.edu
734-764-5594
Office: 2224 Moore

 

Education:
B.Mus., North Texas State Univ.
M.Mus., Manhattan School of Music, Theatre & Dance
M.Mus.A., D.M.A., Yale Univ.

 

Michael Daugherty is one of the most commissioned, performed, and recorded composers on the American concert music scene today. His music is rich with cultural allusions and bears the stamp of classic modernism, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound; at the same time, his melodies can be eloquent and stirring. Daugherty has been hailed by The Times (London) as "a master icon maker" with a "maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear." Daugherty first came to international attention when the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Zinman, performed his Metropolis Symphony at Carnegie Hall in 1994. Since that time, Daugherty's music has entered the orchestral, band and chamber music repertory and made him, according to the League of American Orchestras, one of the ten most performed living American composers.
 
In 2011, the Nashville Symphony's Naxos recording of Daugherty's Metropolis Symphony and Deus ex Machina was honored with three GRAMMY® Awards, including Best Classical Contemporary Composition. Also in 2011, Naxos released a new CD of Daugherty's orchestral music to great acclaim entitled Route 66 with Marin Alsop conducting the Bournemouth Symphony.
 
Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty is the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. He studied music composition at the University of North Texas (1972-76), the Manhattan School of Music (1976-78), and computer music at Pierre Boulez's IRCAM in Paris (1979-80). Daugherty received his doctorate from Yale University in 1986 where his teachers included Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Roger Reynolds, and Bernard Rands. During this time, he also collaborated with jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York, and pursued further studies with composer György Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany (1982-84). After teaching music composition from 1986-90 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daugherty joined the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition and a mentor to many of today's most talented young composers.
 
Daugherty has been Composer-in-Residence with the Louisville Symphony Orchestra (2000), Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1999-2003), Colorado Symphony Orchestra (2001-02), Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (2001-04, 2006-08, 2011), Westshore Symphony Orchestra (2005-06), Eugene Symphony (2006), the Henry Mancini Summer Institute (2006), the Music from Angel Fire Chamber Music Festival (2006), the Pacific Symphony (2010), Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra (2012), New Century Orchestra (2014), and the Albany Symphony (2015).
 
Orchestras who have commissioned Daugherty include the Albany Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (United Kingdom), Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, New Century Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Phiharmonia Orchestra (London), RAI Symphony Orchestra (Italy), Nashville Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony, Rochester Symphony Orchestra, San Antonio Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Spokane Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Syracuse Symphony.
 
Bands who have commissioned Daugherty include the University of Miami (Coral Gables), U-M, Michigan State University, San Diego State University and University of Texas.
 
Conductors who have directed world premieres of Daugherty's orchestral music include Marin Alsop, Neal Gittleman, Giancarlo Guerro, David Kawaka, Mariss Jansons, Neemi Järvi, David Alan Miller, Leonard Slatkin, Carl St.Clair, Markus Stenz, Michael Tilson Thomas, Hugh Wolff and David Zinman.
 
Conductors who have directed world premieres of Daugherty's band music include Gary Green, Jerry Junkin, Shannon Kitelinger, Michael Haithcock, H. Robert Reynolds, Emily Threinen and John Whitwell.
 
Performing artists and ensembles who have given world premieres of Daugherty's music include Zuill Bailey (cello), Bash Ensemble (percussion), Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Paul Crossley (piano), Dogs of Desire, Manuel Barrueco (classical guitar), Ethos Percussion Ensemble, Greg Fulkerson (violin), Dame Evelyn Glennie (percussion), Thomas Hampson (baritone), Paul Jacobs (organ), Carol Jantsch (tuba), Kronos Quartet, Ida Kavafian (violin), Hila Plitmann (soprano), Amy Porter (flute), Present Music (Milwaukee), Mike Rowe (narrator), London Sinfonietta, DJ Sparr (electric guitar), Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (violin), Michael Wayne (clarinet), Terrence Wilson (piano) and Chuck Ullery (bassoon).
 
At U-M, Daugherty has organized residencies by renowned guest composers such as Louis Andriessen, Michael Colgrass, Henryk Górecki, Betsy Jolas, David Lang, Tania Leone, György Ligeti, Michael Torke, and Joan Tower.
 
In 2010, Daugherty organized a historic three-day festival and conference called ONCE. MORE. Held November 2-4 at Rackham Auditorium on the U-M campus, the event featured composers Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, Roger Reynolds, and Donald Scarvada, who returned to Ann Arbor 50 years after hosting the original ONCE festival in Ann Arbor from 1961-66. ONCE. MORE. featured concerts of their recent works, as well as their innovative compositions from the original ONCE festival.
 
Organizations such as the American Composers Orchestra, Minnesota Composers Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Omaha Symphony, and the Young Composers Institute in Apeldoorn (Netherlands) have invited Daugherty to be advisor and mentor for reading sessions and performances of music by promising young composers.
 
Daugherty is a frequent guest composer at universities and colleges in the United States. Past residencies include the University of Texas at Austin, University of Colorado at Boulder, Rice University, Northwestern University, Syracuse University, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of North Texas, Vanderbilt University, Louisiana State University, Appalachian State University, University of Southern California, Eastman School of Music, The Hartt School, Juilliard School of Music, Shenandoah University Conservatory of Music, and Yale University.
 
Daugherty is also a frequent guest at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago, where his wind ensemble music is performed by high school, college, and professional wind ensembles. In 2001, the United States Air Force Band performed a concert of Daugherty's music at the Midwest Clinic's "Midnight Special."
 
Daugherty also collaborates with youth wind ensembles and orchestras throughout America: In 2004, the Ravinia Festival Community Outreach program invited Daugherty to work with student ensembles in the Chicago public middle and high schools; in 2002, Daugherty composed Alligator Alley for the Slauson Middle School Band (Ann Arbor); in 2014, Daugherty composed Vulcan for the Pioneer, Huron, and Skyline High School Bands in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Ann Arbor High School Bands.
 
Daugherty has received numerous awards, distinctions, and fellowships for his music, including: a Fulbright Fellowship (1977), the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award (1989), the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1991), fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1992) and the Guggenheim Foundation (1996), and the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (2000). In 2005, Daugherty received the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra Composer's Award, and in 2007, the Delaware Symphony Orchestra selected Daugherty as the winner of the A.I. DuPont Award. Also in 2007, he received the American Bandmasters Association Ostwald Award for his composition Raise the Roof for Timpani and Symphonic Band. Daugherty has been named "Outstanding Classical Composer" at the Detroit Music Awards in 2007, 2009 and 2010. His GRAMMY® Award-winning recordings can be heard on Albany, Argo, Delos, Equilibrium, Klavier, Naxos, and Nonesuch labels.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

evankc@umich.edu
734-764-2527
Office: 1339 Moore

 

Education:
BM., Bowling Green State Univ.
MM, DMA, Univ. of Michigan

 

In his music, Evan Chambers (b.1963 Alexandria, LA) seeks to capture the energy and physicality of folk performance, translating it into the language of contemporary classical idioms. His compositions bear the stamp of his family's participation in the American folk revival and an early exposure to the edginess and immediacy of community music-making. The result is a new music that honors traditional roots as diverse as Albanian polyphony, Sufi Qawwali music, Sacred Harp singing, Irish dance tunes, and American polkas. His work has been described by The Washington Post as "luminous, wistful...undeniably poignant," "with an elegant sense of restrained longing."

 

Chambers is known for his intense vocal performances of his own works, and is also an Irish-traditional fiddler; he appeared as the fiddle soloist in his Concerto for Fiddle and Violin at Carnegie Hall with the American Composers Orchestra (its second Carnegie performance); his orchestral song-cycle The Old Burying Ground was also performed in Carnegie Hall. He won first prize in the Cincinnati Symphony Composers' Competition, and was awarded the Walter Beeler Composition Prize by Ithaca College; his work has been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the International Luigi Russolo Competition, Vienna Modern Masters, and the American Composers Forum. Chambers' works have been performed by the Cincinnati, Kansas City, Spokane, Memphis, Toledo, New Hampshire, and Albany Symphonies, among others. He has written commissioned works for the Albany Symphony, Toledo Symphony chamber players, the USMA Wind Ensemble, eighth blackbird, the Verdehr Trio, Quorum, the Greene String Quartet, the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, and the University of Michigan Bands. He has been a resident of the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, and his work has been supported by grants from the NEA, Argosy Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Arts Foundation of Michigan, and ArtServe Michigan.

 

He is professor of composition at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance, and served as chair of the Department of Composition for a number of years. Chambers graduated with highest honors from the U-M, where he received a DMA and MM in composition. He also holds a BM in viola performance from Bowling Green State University, where he studied viola with Bernard Linden, and was honored as an Accomplished Graduate in 2002. His composition teachers include William Albright, Leslie Bassett, Marilyn Shrude, and Nicholas Thorne; he also studied electronic music with George Wilson and Burton Beerman.
 
His works have been released on recordings by Equilibrium, the Foundation Russolo-Pratella, Cambria, Centaur, Clarinet Classics, Albany Records, and Dorian Sono Luminus. His orchestral song-cycle The Old Burying Ground is available on Dorian Sono Luminous and on iTunes: for a complete list of works, sound samples or to order music online, click the hyperlink below.