BAHLEST EEBLE Composer fellows
2017
Cycle One: March/October 2017
Screecher Meets Strings
David Coll
David Coll is a composer of concert music, installation art, and interdisciplinary projects that engage physical presence with technology to create dramatic and introspective works, often to playful effect.
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Hitomi Oba
Saxophonist and composer Hitomi Oba was raised in Berkeley, California. Hailed as “powerfully inventive” by the LA Times, recent performances of her compositions include “Fifteenth,” premiered by soprano Tony Arnold and the Third Angle String Quartet, “September Coming,” by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra, and “Aina,” commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series, for which Oba participated as both a performer and composer.
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David Reminick
With his music described as “bracing, original, and often jaw-dropping” (New Music Box), composer David Reminick brings a rigorous and frequently hyper-kinetic approach to contemporary concert music – and a cogent and structurally complex approach to his post-punk endeavors.
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Brandon Scott Rumsey
Brandon Scott Rumsey (they/them) is a queer composer, bassoonist, teacher, gender and sexuality scholar, and mental health advocate based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Brandon is the Director of Operations/Research for the Trade Winds Ensemble, a Senior Editorial Assistant at the Gershwin Critical Edition housed at the University of Michigan, and joined the University of Michigan theory faculty in 2020 as a Lecturer of Music Theory.
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Nina Shekhar
Nina Shekhar (b. 1995) is a composer who explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter to create bold and intensely personal works. Described as “vivid” (Washington Post) and “surprises and delights aplenty” (LA Times), her music has been commissioned and performed by leading artists including Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, LA Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, New York Youth Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, ETHEL, violinist Jennifer Koh, Ensemble Échappé, Music from Copland House, soprano Tony Arnold, Third Angle New Music, The New York Virtuoso Singers, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Lyris Quartet, Ray-Kallay Duo, New Music Detroit, and Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra.
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Carlos Simon
Carlos Simon is a native of Atlanta, Georgia whose music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism. Simon was named as one of the recipients for the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence. The Sphinx Medal of Excellence is the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization, recognizing extraordinary classical Black and Latinx musicians.
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Cycle Two: April/September 2017
High and Low
Michael-Thomas Foumai
Michael-Thomas Foumai (b. 1987, Honolulu, Hawai‘i) is a composer of contemporary concert music and educator. His music has been described as “vibrant and cinematic” (New York Times) and “full of color, drama, and emotion” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). A prolific composer of symphonic music, his work focuses on storytelling and the history, people and culture of his Hawaiʻi home. In 2019, he was selected into the 17th class of the Pacific Century Fellows comprised of 35 outstanding and talented young leaders to represent the individual and professional diversity of Hawaiʻi, including government, small-and-large-businesses, the arts, non-profit and corporate enterprises. Through his works, he was was awarded the Mayor of Honolulu Certificate of Recognition and the recognition by proclamation from the State Senate of Hawaiʻi.
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Christine Hedden
For Boston-based artist, Christine Delphine Hedden, writing was the beginning of her musical journey. Hailing from the highlands of western Connecticut, she began writing songs in early elementary school, set to Tolkien’s poetry, to accompany fantasy adventures on her grandfather’s Christmas tree farm. Today, her creative process is still deeply rooted in these fields: connection with nature and a magically spiritual sense of the world form the foundations of her work.
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Noah Luna
“The very model of a modern, cool composer,” Noah enjoys a whirlwind career: composing original concert music, writing orchestrations for pop, rock, and hip hop artists, conducting orchestras and for live concerts and recordings, and advocating for young musicians to become more involved in contemporary music.
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Guy Mintus
Israeli pianist and composer Guy Mintus is a true citizen of the world. Coming from a mixed heritage of Iraqi, Moroccan & Polish Jews, he is based between Tel Aviv and New York while constantly on the go having recently performed in Brazil, India, Bulgaria, Switzerland, France, Germany and different cities in the US/ Canada. Guy is equally at home whether he’s sharing the stage with jazz legends, composes for classical orchestras, collaborates with masters of traditional music, working with kids or guesting as a soloist with Ska-Punk band Streetlight Manifesto with whom he performed at a sold out Beacon Theater.
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Marco-Adrián Ramos
Marco-Adrián Ramos (1995) is a Mexican-American composer and arranger who has written for a variety of media including works for voice, instrumental and electroacoustic ensembles, and dance. He has attended the European-American Musical Alliance, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, and the Aspen Music Festival; composers with whom he has had the pleasure of working include Christopher Lacy, Robert Beaser, Christopher Rouse, Derek Bermel, Mari Kimura, Christopher Theofanidis, Stephen Hartke, and Arturo Márquez.
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Akshaya Avril Tucker
Akshaya Avril Tucker is a composer who draws inspiration from the music and dance traditions of South Asia, having trained as a cellist and Odissi dancer from a young age. Recent commissions and projects include works for Johnny Gandelsman (Brooklyn Rider), WindSync, Marianne Gedigian, Hindustani vocalist Saili Oak, Duo Cortona, Englewinds, invoke string quartet, Thalea String Quartet and Density512. In 2019, she won an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. She also received an honorable mention from ASCAP in 2018, was a finalist for the award again in 2020, and received an honorable mention from National Sawdust’s Hildegard Competition in 2018.
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Roger Zare
Roger Zare has been praised for his “enviable grasp of orchestration” (New York Times) and for writing music with “formal clarity and an alluringly mercurial surface.” His music often takes inspiration from science, nature, mathematics, and mythology. Currently based in Chicago, he was born in Sarasota, Florida, and began playing piano at age 5 and violin at age 11; he started composing at age 14. Roger holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts (2012) from the University of Michigan, a Master of Music (2009) from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and a Bachelor of Music (2007) from the University of Southern California. Zare currently serves as instructional assistant professor of theory and composition at Illinois State University.
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Cycle Three: July/November 2017
Mallets and Mallets
Beatrice Ferreira
Beatrice is a Montreal-based composer and violist. Whether writing or performing music, Beatrice strives to create work that is thoughtful and personal. Born on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, she grew up competing in fiddle festivals across the state. Her interest in composition began while working as a songwriter for the Philadelphia neo-soul band, Bibi and the Bull, and her background in popular music has led her to explore and prioritize music-as-activism.
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Gilbert Galindo
Gilbert Galindo is an award-winning internationally performed composer of classical music, an active DJ-producer, and experienced music engraver. He is also the Executive and Curatorial Director of NYsoundCircuit — a multi-media event series — and has produced concerts and events in New York City for over 10 years.
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Ethan Helm
Ethan is a New York City-based saxophonist and composer, existing somewhere in the space between jazz and contemporary classical music. He performs regularly in NYC with the Balkan Peppers, the Gil Evans Project, and the Shrine Big Band, in addition to leading his own quartet, and co-leading the quintet Cowboys & Frenchmen.
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Lisa Neher
Portland, Oregon mezzo-soprano and composer Lisa Neher (pronouns: she/her, last name pronounced "NEER") (DMA) thrives in the crossroads of the concert hall and the theatre stage. Trained as a stage actress, she is equally at home in the worlds of opera and spoken theatre, bringing dramatic specificity and committed physicality to her performances. Lisa’s compositions are shaped by her keen sense of dramatic timing and feature aching, lyrical phrases, energetic rhythmic motives, and intensely dissonant pitch clusters.
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Garrett Schumann
Garrett Schumann is an award-winning composer, music theorist, and nonprofit arts administrator who splits his time between Southeast Michigan and the mountains of western North Carolina. Garrett’s original music for voice, chamber ensemble, orchestra, electronics and solo instruments has been programmed at venues across the country, in Europe, and in Asia.
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Matthew Evan Taylor
As an artist, Matthew Evan Taylor, is intrigued by four aspects of music; the growth of complex music from a simple idea, the social nature of the art form (especially, as it manifests in improvisation and the audience’s reaction), the evocation of color and atmosphere through sound, and the relationship of dance and music.
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