Concert Program

Emma Hospelhorn is a musician whose creative practices resist easy categorization. As a flutist, she has been praised by the Chicago Classical Review for her “standout” and “joyful” performances; as a songwriter, her music has been hailed as “scintillating” by the Chicago Reader and “beguiling” by WNYC. She is flutist and Managing Director of Ensemble Dal Niente, with whom she has premiered and recorded works by composers including George Lewis, Hilda Paredes, Erin Gee, Jeff Parker, Igor Santos, Anthony Cheung, and many more. She writes and performs experimental folk music as Em Spel, and released her sophomore album, Bird or Snake, in March of 2026. She is one half of The Machine Is Neither…, an electroacoustic duo centered around motion-capture technology, which has created works including Terra Lingua (2019/2020) for dancers in motion-capture suits and live instruments, and Tree of Secrets (2018) for audience and listening lamp. Emma performs with a wide variety of improvising ensembles, folk, and pop groups, and additional collaborations include a working duo for instruments and homemade circuits with cellist Katinka Kleijn, as well as stints with Manual Cinema, the Neo-Futurists, Lookingglass Theatre, and Silk Road Rising. She is a co-founder of Musical Bridges to Memory, a musico-social intervention for people with dementia. 

Recent performances include Theatro Sao Pedro in São Paulo, Brazil; Thalia Hall in Chicago; Big Ears Festival in Knoxville; the Walt Disney Concert Hall for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight; Forum for New Music Mexico City; the Library of Congress; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC. Emma is the recipient of a 2022 composer’s fellowship at the Eastern Frontier Foundation’s Norton Island Residency, a 2025 Individual Artist Grant from Chicago DCASE, and a 2025 Illinois Arts Council Grant. Emma holds a PhD in Learning Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where her research focuses on spatial and embodied learning in musical contexts. She also holds degrees from Columbia University and CUNY Queens College, and was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago from 2007-2009.

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.

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.

Saunder Choi is a Los Angeles-based Filipino-Chinese composer and choral artist. Winner of the 2024 American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Raymond Brock Prize for professional composers, his works have been performed internationally by various groups including Conspirare, the Philippine Madrigal Singers, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Pacific Chorale, Pacific Symphony, World Youth Choir, Brightwork New Music, People Inside Electronics, and many others. As an arranger and orchestrator, Saunder has written for Tony-Award winner Lea Salonga, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Auburn Symphony, Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa, Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. Saunder believes in music as advocacy, using the media as a platform for diversity, equity, inclusion, justice. His compositions are focused on narratives and conversations surrounding immigration, racial justice, LGBTQ+ advocacy, climate justice, and representations of his identity and roots. He is currently Director of Music at Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena and a composition teaching artist with the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Dr. Thomas Bough conducts the Wind Ensemble, Wind Symphony, and Huskie Marching Band at Northern Illinois University.  His 35 years of teaching experience includes 7 years as a high school band director in Mesa, Arizona.  As a Yamaha artist and Denis Wick Ambassador, he leads dozens of clinics and workshops per year across the country. He has presented four times at the Midwest Clinic, twice at the International Society for Music Education, as well as the International Women’s Brass Conference, and eighteen different state music education association conferences.  His compositions are published by Alfred Music, Cimarron Music Press and JW Pepper. Recent commissions include music written for Olivet Nazarene University, Kappa Kappa Psi, the Alloy Horn Quartet, the Alliance Brass Quintet, the University of San Diego, Creston High School, and Hubble Middle School. His compositions include concerti for each brass instrument. Hear his music at www.tombough.com.  

The NIU Wind Ensemble represents the top wind, brass and percussion players at Northern Illinois University.  They perform a broad variety of literature, spanning both traditional and emerging band literature, as well as music arranged or composed by NIU faculty and graduate students.  The band has a long history of outstanding performances, especially when featuring our many gifted faculty as soloists.  The Wind Ensemble has been the featured ensemble each year at the Northern Illinois University Concert Band Festival, sponsored by the Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps, since the creation of the event.  The Wind Ensemble is a distinguished part of the School of Music at Northern Illinois University.  Learn more at www.niu.edu/music. 

The Avalon String Quartet has performed in major venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the 92nd St Y, Merkin Hall, and Bargemusic in New York; the Library of Congress and National Gallery of Art in Washington DC; Wigmore Hall in London; and Herculessaal in Munich. Other performances include appearances at the Bath International Music Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Caramoor, La Jolla Chamber Music Society, NPR’s St. Paul Sunday, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Dame Myra Hess Concerts, Los Angeles Music Guild, and the Ravinia Festival. 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. 

Maria Kurochkina is Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Orchestras at Northern Illinois University, where she leads the NIU Philharmonic and teaches conducting and orchestral studies. Her work spans symphonic, operatic, and contemporary repertoire, with a particular interest in historically informed interpretation, underrepresented repertoire, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her operatic credits include productions of The Consul with Chicago Summer Opera, Alice Tierney at the Boston Fringe Festival, and Gianni Schicchi with the Boston University Opera Institute, as well as the world premiere of R. Yunusov’s chamber opera Steps at the Diaghilev Festival. Her current projects include collaborations with Chicago Nova Opera and the development of new orchestral and interdisciplinary initiatives at NIU. Kurochkina holds a DMA in orchestral conducting from Boston University and a Specialist Degree from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where her teachers included James Burton, William Lumpkin, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, and Igor Dronov.

The Northern Illinois University Philharmonic Orchestra is the primary orchestral ensemble of the NIU School of Music, bringing together undergraduate and graduate musicians in the study and performance of orchestral repertoire. Its programming ranges from core symphonic works to contemporary music and lesser-known repertoire, with an emphasis on stylistic awareness, ensemble communication, and professional orchestral training. The Philharmonic regularly collaborates with faculty and guest soloists and participates in choral, operatic, and interdisciplinary productions throughout the academic year. The ensemble continues to expand its repertoire through performances of music by composers from a wide range of periods and backgrounds. For this New Music Festival performance, the Philharmonic is represented by members of its string and percussion sections.