Concert Program

Elizabeth McNutt and Shannon Wettstein formed the Calliope Duo decades ago. Over the years the duo has survived ice storms, tornadoes, and cross-country moves. In their collaborations as the Calliope Duo and in their highly acclaimed solo performances, Dr. McNutt and Dr. Wettstein present the most original, innovative, and excellent newly composed music. The Calliope Duo’s programs focus on works from the last fifty years but occasionally incorporate innovative older repertoire for contrast and a fresh perspective. Through collaborations with composers and outreach to audiences, the Calliope Duo works to build the concert repertoire and audiences of the future. The name “Calliope” refers to an innovative American hybrid of flute and piano, a keyboard instrument that plays a rank of steam-driven pipes. “Calliope” is also the name of the Greek muse of eloquence and epic poetry, an embodiment of the duo’s mission to convey ideas of heroic intensity with beauty and grace. The Calliope Duo has presented guest artist residencies at the Festival for New American Music, the Walden School, the China-ASEAN music festival (Nanning, China), the Nirmita Composers Workshop (Bangkok, Thailand), and universities including CU Boulder, California State University, and Rice University, among others. Their projects have been supported by grants from the American Composers Forum, US Artists International, and the Brannen-Cooper Fund. The members of Calliope are also dedicated teachers. Dr. Wettstein has been a professor of piano at Michigan State University, St. Cloud State University, Augsburg University, and Bemidji State University; Dr. McNutt is on faculty at the University of North Texas. 

Flutist Elizabeth McNutt is a recitalist who specializes in new and unusual repertoire. She has premiered hundreds of new works and performed widely in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. Her recordings include the solo CD pipe wrench: flute and computer and tracks on numerous other releases; her writing has been published in Organized Sound, Music Theory Online, and the Flutist Quarterly. Her chamber music activities include the Calliope Duo and the Tornado Project; she is also director of the Sounds Modern series at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. McNutt holds a DMA in contemporary music performance from the University of California San Diego. She is on the faculty at University of North Texas, where she teaches flute and directs the new music ensemble Nova.

Pianist Shannon Wettstein invites audiences to hear connections between the most daring new music and historical masterworks.  About why she makes music, “For me, it’s about taking risks—I love taking audiences along with me into unknown territory.” With over 450 premieres, Shannon has performed at Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the Ft. Worth Modern Art Museum, and Chicago’s Constellation. Steve Smith of the New York Times wrote that her performance at The Stone was “full of subtleties no recording could catch…a reminder of why we attend concerts.” Her latest solo recording, Con Grazia, was recently released to wide acclaim on the Neuma label. Con Grazia is the culmination of Shannon’s long-term exploration of the music of the Italian avant-garde. German music publication AM:PLIFIED says, “Wettstein doesn’t simply play these works—she illuminates them, makes their micro-gestures sparkle, and takes listeners on an acoustic journey through time where old and new wink at each other.” Shannon has been a professor of piano at Michigan State University, St. Cloud State University, Augsburg University, and Bemidji State University. With performances on four continents, she is a clinician, lecturer, coach, and the host of Dr. Avant-Garde, a podcast about moving the art of music forward in the 21st century.

Beyond this Point (John Corkill, Adam Rosenblatt, Rebecca McDaniel) is a Chicago-based collaborative music ensemble dedicated to the advancement of experimental and contemporary culture.  This multifaceted collective of musicians, performers, and arts practitioners builds experimental projects that engage with written music, sound art, lighting, installation, improvisation and live electronics. From the intimate to the monumental, BTP is known for producing unique performances that offer captivating and exhilarating experiences. Most recently, BTP has presented its community-oriented multimedia production Reclaimed Timber; immersive intermedia program Verify You Are Human; and thought-provoking theatrical performance Musician Minus Instrument. Highlights of their 2025-2026 season include the opening concert of the 2025 Time:Spans Festival in New York performing intermedia works by Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen in collaboration with Ensemble Dal Niente; the launching of a new afterschool program for Chicago Public School students focused on programming LEDs to respond to sound; and performances at the Universities of Notre Dame, Kansas, Missouri, Chicago, and Northern Illinois, and at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, among others.

Percussionist John Corkill is a passionate advocate for the development, process, and creation of new artistic works that provide accessibility to the public at large.  He is currently serving as the percussionist for the University of Chicago’s Grossman Ensemble, an ensemble-in-residence at the University’s Center for Contemporary Composition. John is Lecturer of Percussion at the University of Chicago as well as the Percussion Ensemble Director at Loyola University. He received his Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University where he graduated cum laude and Master of Music Degree from the Yale University School of Music.

Chicago-based percussionist and performer Adam Rosenblatt has a penchant for finding interesting and uncommon ways to present and perform contemporary music. He has a keen interest in growing an interdisciplinary performance practice, believing that a mix of media and art forms can speak directly and powerfully to our current context. Adam earned a Bachelor of Music Degree from the Peabody Conservatory and a Master of Music Degree from the Yale School of Music. Through grants from the Flemish Government, the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund, and the Belgian American Education Foundation, Adam performed and studied contemporary chamber music with the Ictus and Spectra Ensembles in Belgium as part of their Advanced Masters academy program.

Rebecca McDaniel is passionate about sharing music with others and about supporting the creativity of young musicians. Relying on music as a unifying force, Rebecca seeks to share curiosity and joy as a performer, educator, and arts administrator. She is the Development Manager for the GRAMMY® Award-winning quartet Third Coast Percussion, working closely with the ensemble in support of its performance, education, and collaborative programs. She is also an active chamber percussionist in the Chicagoland area, collaborating with violin and percussion duo Hot Second and Beyond This Point. She teaches at Wheaton Warrenville South High School. Rebecca attended Furman University (B.A. Music, B.A. Earth and Environmental Sciences) and the University of Missouri-Columbia (M.M., Percussion Performance).

Julia-Broome Robinson is a trombonist, music educator, writer and composer. She is the principal trombone of the Fox Valley Orchestra, located in Aurora, Illinois and serves on the music faculty at Harper College as an adjunct trombone instructor. She is the print news editor and regular contributor to the International Trombone Association Journal – recent articles have included a theoretical analysis of Ernst Krenek’s Five Pieces for Trombone and Piano and a collection of memories from former students of the late John Marcellus, iconic trombone professor at the Eastman School of Music. As a composer, Broome-Robinson loves experimenting with “found sound” and text in combination with instrumental timbres. She presented her piece for two trombones and tape, on being a person in an environment, at the 2023 International Trombone Festival in Salt Lake City, as part of a joint lecture recital with fellow trombonist and dear friend Jenny Young. She also manages social media for the Pokorny Low Brass Seminar, an annual event that has been close to her heart since she first attended as a performer in 2015.

Stefano D’Alessio was born in Trieste (Italy) in the late 80s and grew up swimming in salty water, playing in metal bands and drinking local wine at the Slovenian border. For more than a decade D’Alessio has worked as a media artist and director, performer, music composer and educator. His works are audio-visual compositions, interactive performances, media installations and are regularly shown in international festivals. His research addresses internet induced societal issues and explores the multiple influences that the web and its derivatives have on the human behaviour and body.

Kaj Duncan David is a composer and performer of electronic music living in Berlin. He has released two solo albums, All Culture Is Dissolving (2021) and Only birds know how to call the sun and they do it every morning (2025). He has created soundtracks for dance pieces by Michelle Moura and other choreographers and has composed two large-scale, collaborative music theatre works, including the prize-winning Up Close and Personal with Troels Primdahl and Daniel Gloger (2018) for the Münchener Biennale für neues Musiktheater.

Known for his gutsy, colorful and nuanced playing—and the communicative clarity of his performances—violist Anthony Devroye has helped people deepen their connection to great music for over twenty years. As violist of the Avalon String Quartet, Mr. Devroye has performed at Carnegie Hall in New York, the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá and the Shrine of St. Thérèse in Juneau, Alaska. The quartet’s diverse performance projects – and their recordings on the Cedille, Bridge and Albany labels – have showcased a repertoire ranging from Beethoven, Bartok, Brahms and Berg to Stacy Garrop, Harold Meltzer, Leo Sowerby and Florence Price. An innovative and inspiring educator, Mr. Devroye is professor of viola at the Northern Illinois University School of Music. He has also presented guest masterclasses at over a dozen universities including Northwestern and UCLA, and has spent summers teaching at Interlochen, Madeline Island, and the Icicle Creek Center for the Arts. Tony plays a 2001 viola made by Gabrielle Kundert in Olney, Maryland.

Violist Daphne Gerling enjoys an international career teaching, performing, and writing. Daphne’s travels and performances have taken her to more than thirty universities around the United States and to more than fifteen countries across the globe. An advocate for contemporary music, she has participated in commissioning projects with composers Libby Larsen and Jorge Variego, leading to premieres in Tennessee, Georgia, Los Angeles, and in Rome and Cremona, Italy. As a chamber musician, she has appeared with Dallas’ Chamber Music International and Art Music series, as well as Sounds Modern in Fort Worth. As a concerto soloist, Gerling has performed works by Clarke, Mozart, Hindemith, and Weber in Texas, Brazil, and at Vietnam’s Saigon Opera House. Ms. Gerling is also a former summer fellow of Lincoln Center Education in New York City. She is currently Assistant Professor of Viola at the University of North Texas, and Secretary to the board of the American Viola Society.

Zachary Good is a multifaceted clarinetist, chamber musician, composer and educator based in Chicago. He is the clarinetist of the sextet Eighth Blackbird, a member of Ensemble Dal Niente, and a founding co-artistic director and member of the eccentric performance collective Mocrep. He is a frequent guest with Music of the Baroque Chicago, Present Music Milwaukee, International Contemporary Ensemble and the puppet company Manual Cinema. As an improviser, he performs and records with the trio ZRL and the quintet Honestly Same, as well as regularly appearing on improvised music series throughout Chicago. His discography includes releases on Cedille Records, Moon Glyph Records, American Dreams Records, Carrier Records, No Index, Homeroom, Parlour Tapes+, ears&eyes and his own record label Add Dye Editions. He is currently serving as Visiting Assistant Professor of clarinet at NIU,

Eric Johnson is the Director of Choral Activities at Northern Illinois University and the Founding Artistic Director of the professional vocal ensemble Cor Cantiamo (2009-2025). As a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Artworks grant recipient, he has been recognized for his artistic leadership, whose ensembles represent “choral artistry at its finest” (Lauridsen). He is a committed champion of contemporary choral music and dedicated to addressing social justice issues through interdisciplinary concert events. Johnson is the 2020 recipient of the Harold Decker Award, given by the Illinois American Choral Directors Association to celebrate his career of quality leadership and service to the art of choral music.

Tonia Ko’s creative evolution is largely guided by three conceptual pillars: texture, physical movement, and the relationship between melody and memory. These ideas permeate her work across a variety of media—from instrumental solos and large ensemble pieces, to improvisations and sound installations. No matter how traditional or experimental the medium, Ko’s work reveals a core that is at once whimsical, questioning, and lyrical. Recipient of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, Ko has been commissioned by leading soloists and ensembles from a broad range of the music scene. She recently collaborated with Riot Ensemble, Tangram Collective, Grossman Ensemble, and Spektral Quartet. Her work has been performed at prominent venues such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, LSO St. Luke’s, and featured at the Hertzbreakerz Sound Spaces Festival and Thailand International Composition Festival. Ko has received grants and awards from the Fromm and Barlow Foundations, Chamber Music America, American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as residencies at MacDowell,

Simon Løffler’s works range from very intimate set-ups to enigmatic constructions, embracing traditional instruments (transformed in various ways) as well as novel instrumental concepts. Løffler studied Composition with Bent Sørensen, Hans Abrahamsen and Niels Rosing-Schow at The Royal Danish Academy of Music and Music Theory with Lars Bisgaard at The Royal Danish Academy of Music, Composition with Wolfgang Heiniger at Hochschule für musik Hanns Eisler, Berlin, Composition with Simon Steen-Andersen at The Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus. Further studies at A.PASS (advanced performance and scenography studies), Brussels. Since 2017 he has been a lecturer in Composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. Simon Løffler was awarded the 3-year work grant by The Danish Arts Foundation (2015), The prestigious stipendium prize at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (2014) and was awarded by The Danish Arts Foundation for his work c (2013). 

Missy Mazzoli  is an American composer and pianist who has received critical acclaim for her chamber, orchestral and operatic work. In 2018 she became one of the first two women to receive a commission from the Metropolitan Opera House. She is the founder and keyboardist for Victoire, an electro-acoustic band. From 2012 to 2015 she was composer-in-residence at Opera Philadelphia, in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theater Group. Mazzoli received a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a Fulbright Grant to the Netherlands, and has been nominated for three Grammy Awards for Best Classical Composition.  In 2018, Mazzoli was named for a two-season term as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Mazzoli is a professor of composition at Bard College. She previously taught at the Mannes College of Music. Mazzoli was named the Bragg Artist-in-Residence at Mount Allison University in Canada beginning in 2022. Her music is published by G. Schirmer.

The music of Augusta Read Thomas  is nuanced, majestic, elegant, capricious, lyrical, and colorful — “it is boldly considered music that celebrates the sound of the instruments and reaffirms the vitality of orchestral music” (Philadelphia Inquirer). A composer featured on a Grammy winning CD by Chanticleer and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Thomas’ impressive body of works “embodies unbridled passion and fierce poetry” (American Academy of Arts and Letters). The New Yorker magazine called her “a true virtuoso composer.” Championed by such luminaries as Barenboim, Rostropovich, Boulez, Eschenbach, Salonen, Maazel, Ozawa, and Knussen, she rose early to the top of her profession. The American Academy of Arts and Letters described Thomas as “one of the most recognizable and widely loved figures in American Music.” She is a University Professor of Composition in Music and the College at The University of Chicago. In 2016, Thomas founded the University of Chicago’s Center for Contemporary Composition, which is a dynamic, collaborative, and interdisciplinary environment for the creation, performance and study of new music and for the advancement of the careers of emerging and established composers, performers, and scholars.

Francois Sarhan is a  French composer, director and visual artist, performed in Asia, Africa, America and Europe. He studied composition with Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, Magnus Lindberg, Philippe Manoury, Tristan Murail, Guy Reibel. In addition, he studied analysis, aesthetics, cello, conducting, and harmony and counterpoint with various teachers, in addition to attending Jacques Roubaud ‘s seminars on compared poetics at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes (Paris, 1999-2002). His works have been presented at international festivals, including Musica (Strasbourg), Donaueschingen, Wittener Musik Tagen, Ars Musica (Brussels), Holland Festival, Maerzmusik (Berlin), etc. He composed a chamber opera for the Aix-en-Provence Lyrical Art Festival (july 2003), as well as a first monographic CD for the french label Zig zag Territoires.

Thomas Snydacker, a concert saxophonist and educator based in Chicago, has been praised for his “plush tone” (South Florida Classical Review) and his “stunning tour-de-force” and “thoroughly compelling” performances (Chicago Classical Review). Snydacker is the applied artist of classical saxophone at Northern Illinois University and is a performing member of the Chicago Philharmonic. Snydacker is a strong advocate for new music and has a substantial list of premieres to his credit, including works by a pair of Rome Prize winning composers. In the spring of 2013, he performed the world premiere of Passing Future Past, a chamber work by Prix de Rome winner John Anthony Lennon. In the fall of 2009, he played the solo soprano saxophone part on the world premiere of a concerto grosso by another Prix de Rome winner, Roger Boutry, entitled Eclats D’Azur. Snydacker has also premiered pieces by such composers as Carolyn O’Brien, David Reminick, Chris Fisher-Lochhead and Zae Munn, among many others. He frequently works with young composers to write for the saxophone, and has performed works by student composers at such institutions as Northwestern University, the University of Southern California and Columbia College Chicago. Aside from his work with various orchestras, Estrella Consort, and as a soloist, Snydacker has performed with such notable new music ensembles as Mocrep, a.pe.ri.od.ic and Ensemble Dal Niente.

Tōru Takemitsu was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu was admired for the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He is known for combining elements of oriental and occidental philosophy and for fusing sound with silence and tradition with innovation. He composed several hundred independent works of music, scored more than ninety films and published twenty books. He was also a founding member of the Experimental Workshop in Japan, a group of avant-garde artists who distanced themselves from academia and whose collaborative work is often regarded among the most influential of the 20th century.