Root Progressions, Composer Bios - formatted

Composer Bios Anthony Davis In 2020, Anthony Davis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for the opera The Central Park Five. The opera was presented at Long Beach Opera and Portland Opera and was recorded in June of 2022. Mr. Davis has composed eight operas. His first, X: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MALCOLM X with a libretto by Thulani Davis, had its world premiere at the New York City Opera in 1986. A revised version of X debuted at Detroit Opera in May of 2022 and in concert in Boston in June 2022. A new recording of the opera with Boston Modern Orchestra Project was released in September 2022. The opera debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in Fall of 2023 and presented Live in HD across the United States, Asia and Europe. The opera traveled to Seattle Opera in 2024 and will be presented at theLyric Opera of Chicago in 2026.

His fourth opera, AMISTAD also with a libretto by Thulani Davis premiered at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1997 and at Spoleto USA in 2008. A recording of the opera was released on New World in 2008. He recently completed a song cycle for orchestra, Broken in Parts, for soprano Latonia Moore with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

His other works include the music for the critically acclaimed Broadway production of Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA and music for orchestra and chorus.

Mr. Davis is currently the Cecil Lytle Endowed Chair of Music at the University of California, San Diego. In 2006 Mr. Davis was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. In 2021, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Future works include the musical SHIMMER, a children’s opera, PANCHO RABBIT AND THE COYOTE and a piano concerto for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Jon Jang Composer Jon Jang became the first American-born Chinese to compose a symphonic work that honors Chinese American history. Commissioned by the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra and Oakland East Bay Symphony, Jon Jang composed The Chinese American Symphony (2007) for erhu virtuoso Jiebing Chen and orchestra which pays tribute to the 12,000 Chinese immigrant laborers who built the first transcontinental railroad in United States Jang’s other works include CAGES: A Way to Interrogate History in collaboration with poet Paul Flores (2022); Can’t Stop Cryin’ for America: Black Lives Matter! in collaboration with poet Amanda Kemp (2017); Suite for Min Xiao Fen (2017) in collaboration with pipa virtuoso and singer Min Xiao Fen; When Sorrow Turns to Joy – Songlines: The Spiritual Tributary of Paul Robeson and Mei Lanfang (2000) co-composed with James Newton; Island: The Immigrant Suite No. 1 (1995) in collaboration with poet Genny Lim; Island: The Immigrant

Suite No. 2 (1995) for the Kronos Quartet and Cantonese Opera singer; Tiananmen!

(1992), Reparations Now! Concerto for Jazz Ensemble and Taiko (1988).

Pianist/composer Jon Jang has toured and recorded with Max Roach, James Newton, and David Murray. His ensembles have toured at major concert halls and music festivals in Europe, China, Canada, United States and South Africa, four months after the election to end apartheid in April 1994. During 1999-2001, Jang toured with Max Roach as part of the Beijing Trio at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Zurich, Berlin, Milan, and the Royal Festival Hall in London.

As a public intellectual, Jang has given presentations at Columbia University, Brown University, Hamilton College, Stanford University and UCLA. In 2012, Jang was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr.-Cesar Chavez-Rosa Parks Visiting Professorship at the University of Michigan.

In 1987, Jang and Francis Wong co-founded Asian Improv Records which has produced over 130 recordings.

James W. Newton James W. Newton's work encompasses chamber, symphonic, choral, and electronic music genres, compositions for ballet and modern dance, and numerous jazz and world music contexts.

Mr. Newton has been the recipient of many awards, fellowships, and grants, including the Ford Foundation, Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts and Rockefeller Fellowships, Montreux Grande Prix Du Disque, and Downbeat International Critics Jazz Album of the Year. Downbeat Magazine's International Critics Poll also voted Newton the top jazz flutist for a record-breaking 23 consecutive years. In May 2005, the California Institute of the Arts honored Newton with a Doctor of Arts Degree, Honoris Causa.

His Mass received its world premiere at the 2007 Metastasio Festival in Prato, Italy, and its U.S. premiere in 2011 at Walt Disney Concert Hall by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon. Maestro Gershon also led the 2015 world premiere of Newton's St. Matthew Passion by Coro e Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Torino at the Torino Jazz and La Sidone Festivals.

A musician's renaissance man, Newton has performed with and composed for countless notable artists in the jazz and classical fields including Coro e Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Torino, Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi, Mingus Dynasty, Anthony Davis, Abdul Wadud, San Francisco Ballet, The New York Philharmonic, Geri Allen, Dino Saluzzi, Zakir Hussain, Billy Hart, Gloria Cheng, Henry Threadgill, Aurèle Nicolet, Lyris Quartet, Cecil Taylor Jon Jang and Frank Wess among others.

Arturo O’Farrill

Arturo O’Farrill, pianist, composer, and educator, was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. Arturo’s professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte.

In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music.

An avid supporter of all the Arts, Arturo has performed with Ballet Hispanico, Ron Brown’s EVIDENCE Dance company, and the Malpaso Dance Company, for whom he has written several ballets.

Arturo’s well-reviewed and highly praised Afro-Latin Jazz Suite from the album CUBA: The Conversation Continues (Motéma) took the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition as well as the 2016 Latin Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Recording. In addition, his composition Three Revolutions from the album Familia-Tribute to Chico and Beboalso received the Best Instrumental Composition Grammy in 2018. Arturo’s album, Fandango at the Wall in New York, won yet another Grammy award in 2023.

Arturo has been a Steinway Artist for many years and is a Blue Note Records Recording Artist.

Linda May Han Oh Based in New York City, GRAMMY award-winning Linda May Han Oh is a bassist/composer who has performed and recorded with artists such as Pat Metheny, Kenny Barron, Joe Lovano, Dave Douglas, Terri Lyne Carrington, Steve Wilson, Geri Allen and Vijay Iyer.

Born in Malaysia and raised in Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia, she has received many awards including a 2022 Deutscher Jazz Preis and was voted the 2018-2023 Bassist of the Year by the Jazz Journalist’s Association, as well 2022 Bassist of the Year in Jazztimes. Linda also was voted 2019 Bassist of the Year in Hothouse Magazine and was the 2020 recipient APRA award for Best New Jazz Work. In 2023 she received the prestigious Herb Albert Award for music and received an Honorary Doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music in 2024.

Linda has had five releases as a leader which have received critical acclaim, her latest – a quintet album entitled The Glass Hours on Biophilia Records. Her latest commissions include “Littoral Tales” a solo piano piece in two movements for Gloria Cheng, and Ephemeral Echoes written for percussion trio and piano trio as well as “Mirrors and Shadows” written for piano and bass duo.

Linda has written for large and small ensembles as well as for film, participating in the

Sundance Labs at Skywalker Ranch and composing for several of sociologist/film maker Sabrina McCormick. Linda also composed and produced music for a collaborative film project with non-profit, “Hoperaisers”, based in Korogocho, Kenya by film-maker Kizito Gamba and contributed music to his latest documentary Calling the Shots co-directed by Kore Abong about aspiring African women in the film-industry.

Linda is currently Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music in the bass department and is also part of the Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice led by Terri Lyne Carrington.

Linda was featured on bass in the 2020 Pixar movie Soul under the musical direction of Jon Batiste (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert) alongside drummer Roy Haynes and was the model for the character in the film - bassist “Miho.”

Gernot Wolfgang The compositions on 2016 GRAMMY® nominee Gernot Wolfgang’s chamber music CD Passing Through have been described as “Substantial, provocative, entertaining examples of the now and future of chamber music.” (icareifyoulisten.com) Gernot has so far received more than 50 commissions from organizations and individuals such as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the European Broadcasting Union, the Verdehr Trio, pianist Gloria Cheng, a variety of American chamber music festivals and concert series, as well as current and former Los Angeles Philharmonic members Joanne Pearce Martin (keyboard), Michele Zukovsky (principal clarinet) and David Breidenthal (principal bassoon).

Albany Records has released four CDs of his chamber music: Vienna And The West (2019), the GRAMMY® nominated Passing Through (2016), Short Stories (2011) and Common Ground (2006).

As a guitarist with the Austrian jazz ensemble “The QuARTet” Gernot has recorded two critically acclaimed albums for Extraplatte and toured extensively throughout Europe in the 1990s. Recordings of his jazz compositions feature internationally recognized musicians such as saxophonist Bob Berg, guitarists Wolfgang Muthspiel and Nguyen Le, pianists Richie Beirach and Aydin Esen, bassists John Patitucci und Gerald Veasley, as well as drummers Peter Erskine, John Hollenbeck and Idris Muhammad.

Gernot received awards and grants from the American Composers Forum, Berklee College of Music, Billboard Magazine, BMI, the Fulbright Commission, and the Austrian Ministry of Education and the Arts.

Gernot Wolfgang also works in the motion picture industry as an orchestrator of film and TV scores. He is a former associate artistic director of the Los Angeles based HEAR NOW Music Festival.