Concert Program

Heewon Cha, Accompanist

Soprano

Evangelina Combs

Emma Gawaran

Kayla Lockhart

Rachel Yasutaki

Alto

Sarah Calgaro

Anna Knecht

Kayti Miller

Cassandra Valdes

Tenor

Jonnie Kullins

Sam Lynas

Joseph Quaynor

Matt Skirmont

Bass

Boone Elledge

Ryan Jensen

Ryan Nelson

Daniel Chukwunyem

Georgie Dimitrov

Flute

Kaelyn Witt 

Segun Owele (piccolo) 

Violet Welchel 

Angel Salas Mercado 

Vicky Gonzalez 

Jake Santini  

Oboe

Amanda Fujii 

Clarinet 

Eduardo Zamudio

Kelly Nelson 

Henry Lloyd  

Jacob Salas 

Mikeala Jackson 

Katelyn Ackland 

Frankie Salas-Hernandez  

Bass Clarinet

Mitchell Lucas 

Saxophone

ASX   Daniel Smith 

ASX  Sarah Lang 

TSX  Teddy Malamis 

BSX  Andrew Stover 

Horns

Liam Weber 

Carmen Houde 

Madeline Miller 

Les Stark  

JonLuca LaPorte  

Trumpet

Nick Anderson 

Marlowe Galvez

Isaac Lopez 

Zinnia Wedige

Jackson Vanderbleek 

Trombone

Hunter Otgontseren  

Daeglan Sullivan  

Zaire Burks

Bass Trombone

Juan Garcia 

Euphonium

Bri Fox

Logan Bryant 

Korbyn Ringer 

Tuba

Cody Toth 

Logan Yugo 

Kenny Ryan 

Percussion

Jacob Parra 

Connor Butler 

Evan Miller

Morgan Tipton

Brayden Dulin

(* = principal)

Flute   

Chanel Antoshin*

Angel Salas Marcano

Segun Owele (fl/picc)

Oboe  

Amanda Fujii*

Fernando Marroquin

Clarinet          

Eduardo Zamudio*

Kelly Nelson

Mitchell Lucas (bass)

Bassoon          

Martha Jacobson*

Jason Hanna*

Horn   

Brooks Wallace*

Liam Weber

Shae McCabe

Noah Kocsis

Trumpet         

Nick Anderson*

AJ Sullivan

Trombones:    

Spencer Mackey*

Isabella Rodriguez

Tanner Jackson (bass)

Tuba   

Cody Toth

Timpani

Michael Speziale

Percussion      

Karl Olsen*

Delaney Jacobi

Will Carr 

Rose Malcome

Abagail Vokoun

Harp   

Anya Pasowicz

First Violins    

Javier Polania Cleves**

Jordan Weiss

Reilley Farrell

Keira Specht

Ella Barribeau

Myshona Philips

Second Violins

Sally Waterhouse**

Jacob Kukielka

Christian Balgeman

Mei Lin McDermott

Aditi Venkatesh

Vanessa Felix

Violas 

Jacob Seabrook*

Baxter Brown

Emily Bychowski

Tim Liu

Chloe McKendry

Vivian Munoz

Savannah Lisner

Cellos  

Sofia Vrettou*

Chris Mendez

Oskar Kaut 

James Zih-Cian Yu

Ben Gilbert

Hannah Schwarz

Hannah Sheridan

William Colangelo

Basses

Ronnie Gorka*

William Letterman

Frederick Melk

A fervent advocate for new music and the community that surrounds and supports it, Amy Wurtz is a vibrant performer, composer, and curator. For Women’s History Month, Amy developed a program performing 31 pieces on each day of March, to celebrate women composers. Her 2024 album, Touching Rapture features Amy’s work Chambers alongside works by three other American women composers. Originally from California, Amy has lived and worked in the Bay Area, Southern California, throughout the Midwest, South America and Europe. In addition to composing and curation, she is in demand as a solo pianist, chamber and choral musician, teacher, and collaborative pianist. She has won support from the Illinois Arts Council, New Music Chicago, and Ravinia’s Breaking Barriers Festival. Amy performs regularly with the Wurtz-Berger Duo, Access Contemporary Music, the Calumet Chamber Musicians. As the former President of New Music Chicago and the current Curatorial Director of the Ear Taxi Festival, Wurtz is an active force in the new music community. She curates New Music at the Green Mill and the Impromptu Fest, and performs regularly at the Thirsty Ears Festival and the Sound of Silent Film Festival in Chicago. She conducts and performs with the Sounds Good and Good Memories choirs where she works with singers age 55 and better who experience memory loss. She also works with young children, high school students, and adults in their love and pursuit of musical creativity. www.amywurtz.com

The Flannau Duo (Kyle Flens: percussion; Jonathan Hannau, piano) is a dynamic, new music loving, tour-de-force ensemble combining piano, percussion, electronics, improvisation, and absurdism. Jon and Kyle first performed together as part of the 2021 Thirsty Ears Festival. Shortly after they schemed to create an official identity for themselves solely out of puns and hybrid names. The duo takes pride in eclectic programming, not adhering to any specific musical aesthetic. Flannau Duo performs in the Chicago area and beyond exploring a multitude of sounds, styles, and moods from composers and artists from every musical corner. The duo is the recipient of a 2023 Chicago DCASE individual artist grant.

Fulbright Scholar Gregory Beyer is the Artistic Director of the NIU New Music Festival and is Director of Percussion Studies at Northern Illinois University. Beyer is also Artistic Director of Arcomusical, an organization dedicated to the Afro-Brazilian berimbau. Arcomusical has released four albums, MeiaMeia (2016, Innova Recordings), Spinning the Wheel (2019, National Sawdust Tracks), Semente (2021, Selo Grão Discos), and Emigre and Exile (2022, New Focus Recordings), and has been featured on PBS’s “Now Hear This” and NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. Beyer is a member of the Grossman Ensemble at the University of Chicago’s Center for Contemporary Composition, and is one of just two ensemble members to receive a commission to compose for the ensemble. (Amen)ding Thirteen: a Sign of Abundance received its Grossman premiere on March 1, 2024. As a composer, educator, and performer, Beyer’s singular artistic voice tastefully blends classical, jazz, and world music sensibilities.

Geof Bradfield’s work as a composer and performer on saxophones and clarinets embraces intersections of modern jazz and other streams of African Diaspora music, drawing inspiration from Charlie Parker, Melba Liston, Lead Belly, Shona mbira music, and Gullah spirituals. Born in Houston, TX, Bradfield has performed throughout North America, Europe, Russia, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, sharing the stage with artists such as Randy Weston, Dana Hall, Clark Sommers, Brian Blade, Anna Webber, Orrin Evans, Jeff Parker, Matt Ulery, and Ryan Cohan. His work is featured on 50+ CDs including eight albums as a leader that have garnered critical accolades from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and NPR. Nate Chinen describes his Yes, and…Music for Nine Improvisers (Delmark Records) as “an album of chamber-esque color and oft-surprising texture, because Bradfield is the sort of composer who creates room for departure.” He has received grants and awards from Chamber Music America, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, DCASE, Illinois Arts Council, and the Mellon Foundation. The Downbeat Critics Poll has named him a Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist and Arranger multiple years.

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.

Marybeth Kurnat (b. 1987) is a rising voice in modern choral music. Her debut work, Epitaph For A Romantic Woman, was premiered by the St. Charles Singers in October 2021. Her SATB work, I, Lover, was the 2021-22 winner of True Concord’s Stephen Paulus Emerging Composers’ Competition. She premiered her work, The Lagoon, as a 2023 Composition Fellow for the PREMIERE|Project Festival. She will be a featured composer in New Music Chicago’s 2025 Ear Taxi Festival. Described as “transcendent” and “otherworldly,” Marybeth’s compositional voice is strongly influenced by her musical roots as a jazz saxophonist – most clearly illustrated in her colorful, adventurous harmonic vocabulary and unique command of rhythm. Marybeth holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education from Northern Illinois University and is pursuing her M.A. in music composition at Washington State University.  She has taught in Illinois public schools since 2011 and currently serves as a music educator for the DeKalb School District.  Marybeth maintains an active performance schedule as a choral singer and soprano soloist in the Chicago area. She regularly appears with the St. Charles Singers, Chicago Choral Artists, and the Grant Park Music Festival Chorus.

David Maki earned his degrees in Composition at Northern Illinois University (B.Mus.), the University of Iowa (M.M.), and the University of Michigan (D.M.A.). Maki’s works have been performed widely at regional, national, and international venues. His music has been described as “fresh and unusual” (All Music Guide), “vivid, introspective” (American Record Guide), and “meditative and beautiful” (Fanfare). Recordings can be found on the Albany, Avid Sound, Neuma, and Parma labels. He has substantial experience as a pianist and collaborative artist performing a variety of genres including classical, jazz, and new music. Maki enjoys finding inspiration from nature, literature, arts, design, and a wide variety of music in order to compose multilayered works that speak clearly. He also seeks to employ a harmonic language that varies from lushly tonal to jaggedly chromatic, within transparent formal structures. Dr. Maki is Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Theory and Composition at Northern Illinois University.

Composer Marc Mellits is one of the leading American composers of his generation, enjoying hundreds of performances throughout the world every year, making him one of the most performed living composers in the United States.  From Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, to prestigious music festivals in Europe and the US, Mellits’ music is a constant mainstay on programs throughout the world.  His unique musical style is an eclectic combination of driving rhythms, soaring lyricism, and colorful orchestrations that all combine to communicate directly with the listener.  Mellits’ music is often described as being visceral, making a deep connection with the audience. 

The Chicago Tribune has praised the music of David “Clay” Mettens as “a thing of remarkable beauty,” displaying a “sensitive ear for instrumental color.” His recent work seeks to distill the strange and sublime from the familiar. He reflects upon the experience of wonder in music that ranges from rich and sonorous to bright and crystalline, seeking expressive immediacy in lucid forms and dramatic shapes. his works have been performed by Grossman Ensemble, Spektral Quartet, Yarn/Wire, the New York Vituoso Singers, soprano Tony Arnold and the soundSCAPE Festival Sinfonietta, on the Contempo Series at the University of Chicago, by Ensemble Dal Niente at the 2017 SCI National Conference, and the Civitas Ensemble on Chicago’s inaugural Ear Taxi Festival.

GRAMMY-nominated for his latest solo album “Lord, How Come Me Here?”—a collection of reimagined Negro spirituals—and named one of the 2023 Musical America Top 30 Professionals of the Year, Nigerian-American composer Shawn E. Okpebholo’s music resonates globally, earning widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike. The press has described his music as “devastatingly beautiful” and “fresh and new and fearless” (Washington Post), “affecting” (New York Times), “lyrical, complex, singular” (The Guardian), “searing” (Chicago Tribune), “dreamy, sensual” (Boston Globe), and “powerful” (BBC Music Magazine). Okpebholo has garnered numerous accolades, including awards from The Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Prize in Composition, the Music Publishers Association, ASCAP, and was awarded the Inaugural honoree of the Leslie Adams-Robert Owens Composition Award.

Brian Penkrot is an American composer from Chicago.  He teaches composition and theory at Northern Illinois University. Brian’s music has been performed at festivals and institutions in the US, Europe, and Asia. He has attended numerous festivals and conferences, including June in Buffalo, soundSCAPE, and the N.E.O.N. festival. Ensembles including ICE, JACK Quartet, ECCE, and Enid Trio have performed his works. Brian’s background also includes theater and dance.  He has performed and written countless productions, including The Roof is on Fiddler and SpaceFuture.  Brian has performed in many Chicago’s theaters and trained at the Second City Conservatory, iO (formerly ImprovOlympic), the Annoyance Theater, Act One Studios, Gus Giordano Dance Studio, and the University of Wisconsin. Brian received his PhD from the University of Iowa. He is the treasurer for Ensemble Dal Niente and is the former business manager for Melos Music. More information can be found at www.brianpenkrot.com.

Known for his energetic rhythms, rich harmonic language, and striking colors, award-winning composer Josh Rodriguez (b. 1982) continues to gain recognition as an emerging composer and collaborator on a national and international scale. Born in Argentina and raised in Guatemala, Mexico and the United States, Rodriguez’s musical imagination has been formed by this bilingual, multicultural heritage. He collaborates regularly with theater and film directors and has received several notable concert commissions in a wide range of musical genres. Rodriguez serves as Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Elmhurst University. His music is published by Walton Music, Murphy Music Press, and J. W. Pepper and can be found on YouTube, Bandcamp, Instagram, Spotify, and www.joshrodriguezmusic.com/

Described as “otherworldly and mysteriously familiar” (Chicago Classical Review), and as “exciting and clear… with a striking boldness” (Luigi Nono Competition Prize), Igor Santos’s music has been performed internationally, by leading musicians such as Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain,Ensemble Dal Niente, Yarn Wire, Alarm Will Sound, POING, the American Composers Orchestra, and The Florida Orchestra. His work is centered on mimetic relationships between found sounds, acoustic instruments, and recently with video, all of which is dramatized through repetition and the use of microtonal keyboards.

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 teaches saxophone at the Northern Illinois University School of Music and Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of the Performing Arts. He is a member of the Chicago Philharmonic and has frequently appeared as an orchestral musician with such world-class ensembles as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Milwaukee Symphony, and the New World Symphony under such luminaries as John Adams, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas, Susanna Mälkki, Marin Alsop, Bobby McFerrin, and Matthias Pintscher. Snydacker is the baritone saxophonist in the Estrella Consort.

A sound can evoke a time, a place, or a way of looking at the world. Alex Temple writes music that distorts and combines iconic sounds to create new meanings, often in service of surreal, cryptic or fantastical narratives. In addition to performing her own works for voice and electronics, she has collaborated with performers and ensembles such as Mellissa Hughes, Julia Holter, wild Up, Spektral Quartet and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In 2017 she completed a DMA at Northwestern University, and she is now an Assistant Professor of Composition at Arizona State University

A sound can evoke a time, a place, or a way of looking at the world. Alex Temple writes music that distorts and combines iconic sounds to create new meanings, often in service of surreal, cryptic or fantastical narratives. In addition to performing her own works for voice and electronics, she has collaborated with performers and ensembles such as Mellissa Hughes, Julia Holter, wild Up, Spektral Quartet and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In 2017 she completed a DMA at Northwestern University, and she is now an Assistant Professor of Composition at Arizona State University.

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.

Ania Vu (née Vũ Đặng Minh Anh) is a Polish composer and pianist of Vietnamese descent whose music explores the intersections of language, time, and the sounds of nature. Her method, which she describes as “composing text to write music,” often involves crafting her own texts in Polish and English, which guide the sound, form, and character of her compositions. Praised by the Boston Globe as showcasing “artful vocal writing [that] ranges from percussive whispers to glinting, pure-voiced lines […] elegantly blending into the roiling cauldron of strings,” Ania’s work has been recognized by institutions such as the American Opera Project, ASCAP, Copland House, Tanglewood, the Boston New Music Initiative, and the I-Park Foundation. She was the 2024 Composer-in-Residence at the Chelsea Music Festival and served as the 2022-23 Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Chicago. She is currently a Lecturer at both the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, and has previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin. Ania received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.M. in composition and theory from the Eastman School of Music.

Ben Wahlund is a Grammy-nominated music educator, composer, and performer who serves as full-time percussion instructor at Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL) where he was awarded the prestigious NIU Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction Award and serves as the Director of Percussion at the College of DuPage (Glen Ellyn, IL) where he was awarded the College-Wide Outstanding Faculty Award. Mr. Wahlund’s engaging teaching style has availed him of the opportunity to work for years with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra as percussion ensemble director, director of a number of high school regional camps and workshops, and university residencies across the country. His music compositions have won numerous international awards and are performed by professionals around the world. His works are distributed by C. Alan, Musicon, Bachovich, and HoneyRock Publications.