Eric Nathan, Artistic Director
Frank Epstein, Founder & President
Season 52, 2024-2025
March 2, 2025
COLLAGE NEW MUSIC
FRANK EPSTEIN, Founder
ERIC NATHAN, Artistic Director
TONY ARNOLD, 2024-25 Artistic Partner
JINGMIAN GONG, 2024-25 Collage Fellow
DAVID HOOSE, Music Director Emeritus
JIM CONNOLLY, General Manager
Performers on Today’s Program
SARAH BRADY, flute
ALEXIS LANZ, clarinet
HEATHER BRAUN, violin
JAN MÜLLER-SZERAWS, cello
CHRISTOPHER OLDFATHER, piano
CRAIG MCNUTT, percussion
TONY ARNOLD, soprano
ANNA HANDLER, conductor
Board of Trustees
FRANK EPSTEIN, Founder & President
MEGHAN TITZER, Treasurer
CHARLOTTE DOBBS, Clerk
MICHAEL ALPERT • FERDINANDO BUONANNO • KAREN CARMEAN • ELSA MILLER • FRANCOISE MOROS • DOANE PERRY • RUTH SCHEER
Honorary Trustees
NICK ANAGNOSTIS • CHARLES BLYTH • SUSAN DELONG • PETER EPSTEIN • CAROLYN REFSNES KNIAZZEH
Artistic Advisory Panel
TONY ARNOLD • MATTHEW AUCOIN • MARCOS BALTER • ANTHONY CHEUNG • TANIA LEÓN • JOAN TOWER
Cover photo: Karjaka Studios
Collage New Music is grateful for the support of the following foundations.
FROM OUR FOUNDER
This year (our 52nd season) marks an exciting new direction for Collage New Music. Eric Nathan as our new Artistic Director will lead us with renewed vigor and new visions for Collage and its followers. The ensemble ably led by David Hoose for 33 years now shifts to Eric Nathan. We look forward to welcoming you at our exciting season.
It has been my pleasure and commitment to lead Collage to this point in time and 52 years is a long time. I feel a sense of both pride and satisfaction at having carried Collage thus far. It is my sincere wish to have it continue. Of course I did not do this alone.
Over the period of these 52 years we have had so many wonderful players performing with us. Perhaps they are the real heroes though without a wonderful and capable and caring conductor we might not be as far along. David Hoose has given it his all and his complete preparation for each piece has been a source of strength and comfort. His careful program building and his longevity are both to be applauded.
I now hope and wish for Eric Nathan to pick up the effort and move Collage forward. Forward in both quality of performance, program building, and audience satisfaction.
And Eric has stepped up to the plate in a generous way. Here are some of the things he has put in motion: a year-long creative partnership and educational residency with Longy School of Music, featuring three concerts (Oct. 6, Nov. 3, May 4) and the return of the Collage Composers Colloquium (Oct. 5), including workshops, composition readings, and two side-by-side performances with Longy students. We expand our concert series to Boston (March 2) with a new partnership with Goethe-Institut Boston and are also proud to continue a relationship with the Korean Cultural Society of Boston who have co-sponsored our opening weekend of events. In addition, we are excited to collaborate with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in making possible BSO Assistant Conductor Anna Handler’s Collage debut in March to coincide with performances of Gabriela Ortiz’s music at the BSO. We hope more such collaborations continue in the years ahead.
Our main commitment is to not only to perform music of the twentieth and twenty first century but to commission new works along the way. We will be looking to increase our funding resources to allow us to commission on a regular basis.
I hope you our audience will come along and join us for this ride into the future. I surely shall be watching from the wings pushing and pulling and cheering as Collage moves into a wonderful and exciting place. So please when called upon please help us reach our goal. Financial underpinning of a group like ours is extremely important. Please do your part, no amount is too small or too large.
I thank you all for your support and look forward to seeing you all at all our future concerts.
Sincerely,
Frank Epstein
Dear Friends,
FROM OUR ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
The concept of “home” has been nearby as I crafted this season. I have been thinking of Collage Founder Frank Epstein, past Music Directors John Harbison and David Hoose, our musicians, Board, and audiences, and how all have worked to create and nurture the musical home that Collage has become for so many over the past 52 years.
My journey with Collage began twelve years ago when David Hoose conducted the first professional performance of my music in Boston. I can still remember the thrill of that moment, sitting in Longy’s Pickman Hall and hearing my music come to life with such dedication and commitment.
I am excited to share with you this season, which is full of music I love and brings many new musical voices to Collage. I hope that each program will open our ears, thrill us, move us, and ask us to think in new ways about the world in which we live. I hope it will also encourage us to reflect on what Collage has meant and what it can continue to mean as we enter this next chapter.
Our season began with New Beginnings, featuring music that builds on the past in a variety of surprising ways to find new sonic futures, featuring composers who find inspiration from both J.S. Bach and improvised music. We featured two newly commissioned world premieres, from Wang Lu and John Harbison, that connect Collage’s past and its future.
In November, we welcomed back Collage’s longtime friend, soprano Tony Arnold, in the newly created role of 2024-25 Artistic Partner. That program, I Shall Be Brave: A Celebration in Song, was an intimate vocal recital featuring Tony and an allstar cast of friends—soprano Lucy Shelton, baritone William Sharp, pianist Seth Knopp—as well as a side-by-side performance with Longy student vocalists. The program centers on the bravery of finding one’s voice and giving voice to others.
Tonight, in partnership with Goethe-Institut Boston, we present BSO Assistant Conductor Anna Handler’s Collage debut in Between Words and Worlds, a concert that revolves around themes of language, memory, life, and death in the human and natural worlds, including a world premiere commission by Collage Fellow Jingmian Gong.
For our Season Finale in May, We Carry Our Homes Within Us, David Hoose returns to conduct as Music Director Emeritus, leading premieres of Collage commissions by Michael Gandolfi and Yaz Lancaster, in honor of Frank Epstein’s retirement from Collage.
I am immensely honored to join Collage’s community. I have so enjoyed working with Collage’s musicians and I look forward to the meaningful performances that we will create together in the years to come.
Yours, Eric
Nathan
COLLAGE NEW MUSIC
Frank Epstein, Founder & President Eric Nathan, Artistic Director
The Nancy and Richard Lubin Concert
Sunday, March 2, 2025, 7:30pm Goethe-Institut Boston
Heather Braun, violin
Jan Müller-Szeraws, cello
Sarah Brady, flute
Alexis Lanz, clarinet
Christopher Oldfather, piano
Craig McNutt, percussion
Tony Arnold, soprano
Anna Handler, conductor
Concert III: Between Words and Worlds
Kareem Roustom Xarja (2017) (b.1971)
Olga Neuwirth Magic Flu-Idity (2018) (b.1968)
Gabriela Ortiz El águila bicéfala (2005) (b.1964) (“The Two-Headed Eagle”)
— Intermission —
Jingmian Gong Elegy (2024) (b.1998) World premiere; Collage commission
Gabriella Smith Anthozoa (2018) (b.1991)
Jörg Widmann Sieben Abgesänge auf eine tote Linde (1997) (b.1973) (“Seven Swansongs for a Dead Linden Tree”)
The concert will conclude by 9:15pm. Please join Collage for a reception following the performance.
Presented in partnership with Goethe-Institut Boston
PROGRAM NOTES
Kareem Roustom, Xarja (2017) soprano and percussion
Xarja, pronounced Shar-ja, is a Spanish or Catalan spelling of the Arabic word Kharja ( خرجة ) which means “exit” or “final,” but is also the last stanzas of genre of Arabic poetry (called muwashshah) that originated in Arab Spain around the tenth century. These ending stanzas were often in Classical Arabic but some mixed Arabic with Ibero-Romance languages (Spanish, Catalan, etc.). On a personal level, this work marks a creative “exit” from a musical language which has been inspired by the music of the muwashshah genre. The work begins in a traditional sounding mode but quickly morphs into a more chromatic language with a more irregular musical pulse. Like the speaker of the poet, the sense of loss is one filled with sadness and desperation. Like the grief-stricken lover, “death is my state” can be applied to the musical language I’ve been using for some time. However, out of “death” comes “rebirth” and the opportunity to begin anew. The text is taken from the “Waterfire” muwashshah by Al’Ama al-Tuttli (d. 1126 Tudela, Spain) and other poets of that era.
—Kareem Roustom
Olga Neuwirth, Magic Flu-Idity (2018)
flute and typewriter/wine glasses
Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth’s Magic Flu-Idity for solo flute and Olivetti typewriter is a reworking of her Aello - ballet mécanomorphe, a concertante work for flute with muted trumpets, strings, synthesizer, and typewriter, written for and premiered by flutist Claire Chase, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, and conductor Thomas Dausgaard in 2017 as a companion to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4. The piece references the harpy Aello, the “capricious” and “demonic” ancient Greek mythological figure who, Neuwirth writes, was “sent by the gods to restore peace, if necessary with force, and to exact punishment for crimes.” Neuwirth created the present version for part vi of Chase’s ambitious, 24-year commissioning project, Density 2036. The flute writing is virtuosic in the extreme, and the typewriter, standing in for the continuo group in the Bach concerto, playfully evokes the tap and crunch of the harpsichord.
—Jim Connolly
Collage thanks Julia Sanches for providing the Olivetti typewriter for tonight’s performance.
Gabriela Ortiz, El águila bicéfala (2005)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano
El águila bicéfala (The two-headed eagle) is dedicated to the ONIX Ensamble and was written thanks to the support of the Programa México en Escena of the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes award.
On textiles and fabrics of the Mizteca zone of the Metlatónoc there are exquisitely conceived embroideries of fantastic birds with extended wings and two, three, or even six heads. The two-headed eagle was a common graphic motive from the beginning of colonial times. These eagles are bilateral symmetric and flexible designs that fit into rectangular or triangular spaces. This motive has evolved through history, and one can discover an iconographic resemblance with the Habsburg’s eagle.
Just like in the designs on the textiles, my piece is based on geometrical similarities. Musical motives are interwoven in such a way that they overlap in order to create various geometrical acoustic shapes that unfold through a continuous musical discourse, a discourse where past and an imaginary future references meet to shape what I perceive as a unified present: a dual discourse that reflects my personal history through a syncretism that has permeated my cultural background.
—Gabriela Ortiz
Jingmian Gong, Elegy (2024)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion
Commissioned by Collage New Music, Elegy is a reflection on death and a search for reconciliation with it. While the piece was influenced by the passing of my grandfather, it is not merely a lament but an observation on and a dialogue with death.
The harmonic and rhythmic language is opaque, with thoughts and emotions entangled. Fragmented musical ideas reflect the incoherence of memories and the struggle to grasp what is no longer tangible. Embroidered into the music is an image inspired by my grandparents, whose ashes were scattered into a river in accordance with my grandfather’s will. At times, the music evokes the river’s current and the shimmering reflections of light on rippling water, where our past and our pain sink and dissipate into the perpetual flow.
—Jingmian Gong
Gabriella Smith, Anthozoa (2018) violin, cello, piano, percussion
Commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Ensemble Connect—a program of Carnegie Hall,The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.The world premiere was given by Ensemble Connect at Zankel Music Center, Helen Filene Ladd Concert Hall, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, on October 19, 2018.
From Gabriella Smith’s introductory comments at Anthozoa’s world premiere: Anthozoa is the name of the class of marine animals that includes coral, including the coral that make up coral reefs. And the piece is inspired by a series of underwater field recordings I made of coral reefs. I recently had the opportunity to spend some time in French Polynesia, off the islands of Raiatea, Taha’a, and Huahine, and every chance I got, I would go out on a paddleboard with my hydrophone and paddle out to the reef and drop my hydrophone down and record and listen. It’s amazing. Most people think that it’s silent down there, but really it’s incredibly loud and vibrant and biodiverse. . . .
The sounds in this piece are inspired by some of those sounds, some in a very direct way, others in a much more abstract way. But this piece is also inspired by that glorious feeling of dropping the hydrophone down and hearing, for the very first time, this amazing soundscape that is for the most part undiscovered.
Jörg Widmann, Sieben Abgesänge auf eine tote Linde (1997) soprano, clarinet, violin, piano
It was in 1996 that Christoph Poppen, at that time conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, told me about a curious concert he had experienced in Münsing (Ammerland). One of the most violent thunderstorms ever experienced in the region raged visibly and audibly for all participants during one of his orchestral concerts in the local church. During this storm, lightning struck a notable landmark in Münsing: an ancient lime tree which was several hundred years old.
The poet and writer Diana Kempff, a local resident, was in the audience at this concert and was so devastated by the demise of the lime tree that she subsequently recorded her impressions in a series of poems. Christoph Poppen proved once more to be an active intermediary and contacted me again shortly afterwards. His idea was to premiere a sort of requiem a year later at the scene of the event, i.e. the church in Münsing, in commemoration of the tree which had “seen” such a lot during its life. This would take place within the framework of the music festival Holzhauser Musiktage, incorporating texts by Diana Kempff and my own music.
This led to a wonderful and very intensive encounter between myself and Diana Kempff, the youngest daughter of the pianist Wilhelm Kempff, during which she displayed a somewhat untypical gesture for a writer: she permitted me to utilize at will individual sections and even fragmentary lines from the relevant poems, and I was also free to arrange and define the order of these texts according to my own requirements. She was immediately aware (and also wished!) that something completely independent and totally new would be created with the aid of the music. It was an especial pleasure for us to be able to greet a visibly emotional Diana Kempff onstage a few months later.
Her lyrical poetry is the expression of a manifestly severely tortured soul and frequently appears to us to be bizarre and fantastical. A fragile tenderness is relentlessly confronted by an almost brutal abrasiveness. Schubert’s “Fremd bin ich eingezogen” [“As a stranger I arrived”] is an appropriate phrase for Diana Kempff and is expressed in her verses in an affinity with all things that are strange (despite the simultaneous manic orbiting of her own self and own memory), remote or supernatural (despite an accompanying skepticism). It was this disembodied, spectral element which I attempted to underline with my selection of texts and musical resources in these Sieben Abgesänge (“Seven Swansongs”).
The first piece is a bleak study on the passing of time: nothingness; the second invokes the (beneficial) rain which later does actually arrive—though ultimately with a disastrous effect. I have titled the third swansong “Dance of the Dead Souls”; this movement takes the form of a Zwiefacher, a Bavarian dance, which with its dark and shady “Viennese” chromaticism has however long lost its amiable Bavarian character. The fourth swansong, narrated throughout from the perspective of the lime tree, is tonally perhaps the most advanced and intense movement. The fifth swansong set to the text “Und wenn der Tod so kommen mag” [“And if death should thus come”] is deliberately kept simple in the style of a mournful folk song. While the sixth movement verges dangerously close to a monodrama in its Expressionist character, it is ultimately the soul (which has breathed its last but perhaps continues to exist?) which literally characterises the final swansong on the subject of trees and souls.
The Sieben Abgesänge have now also become a memorial for Diana Kempff who recently passed away.
—Jörg Widmann, June 2008 (translated by Lindsay Chalmers-Gerbracht)
COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES
Syrian-American Kareem Roustom is a composer whose genre-crossing collaborations include music commissioned by conductor Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, arrangements for pop icons Shakira and Tina Turner, as well as a recent collaboration with acclaimed British choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh. Roustom has been composer-in-residence at the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago, the Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming, and with the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen in Germany and the Mannheim Philharmonic. A musically bi-lingual composer, Roustom is rooted in the music of the Arab near-east but his music often expresses beyond the confines of tradition. The themes of a number of his works often touch issues of those affected by war and instability.
Roustom’s music has been performed by ensembles that include the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Osaka Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Württembergische Philharmonie-Reutlingen, Pittsburgh Symphony, Boulez Ensemble, Oregon Symphony, Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse, A Far Cry, and by acclaimed choral groups such as Coro Allegro, Lorelei Ensemble, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, and The Crossing choir. Roustom’s music has also been performed at renowned festivals and halls such as the BBC Proms, the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Verbier Festival, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, and others. Roustom has been composer-inresidence with the Grand Teton Music Festival, the Grant Park Music Festival, the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, and the Mannheim Philharmonic. Roustom has received commissions from the Malmö Symphony Orchestra (Sweden), the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Grand Teton Music Festival (2018 & 2023 seasons), the Grant Park Music Festival, the Daniel Barenboim Stiftung (2013, 2015, & 2017), the Pierre Boulez Saal, the Royal Philharmonic Society & Sadler’s Wells Theatre (UK), A Far Cry & Lorelei Ensemble and others. Roustom’s music has also been recorded by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester (Berlin), and the Philharmonia Orchestra (London). Current projects include a Trumpet Concerto on commission from the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker (May 2025 premiere), a solo piano work for pianist Garrick Ohlsson, and trio for harp, flute, and viola commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra harpist, Emily Levin. Roustom is also finalizing a chamber music album featuring the Balourdet Quartet to be released on Phenotypic Recordings in 2025.
Olga Neuwirth was born in Graz, Austria, in 1968. She studied at the Academy of Music in Vienna and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. While in the States she also attended an art college, where she studied painting and film. Her private teachers in composition included Adriana Hölszky, Tristan Murail, and Luigi Nono. She burst onto the international scene in 1991, at age 22, when two of her mini-operas were performed at the Wiener Festwochen; since then her artistic practice includes a multiple aesthetical experience taken from film, literature, everyday life, visual arts, architecture, and science.
For over 30 years Olga Neuwirth has raised her voice against deplorable states of social-political affairs and her works have explored a wide range of forms and genres: operas, radio-plays, sound installations, artworks, photography, and film music. Aside from composing, she has also realised sound installations, art exhibitions, and short films; one of her multimedia installations was presented at the documenta 12 in Kassel in 2007. In many works she fuses live musicians, electronics, and video into audiovisual experiences.
Among numerous prizes, she was the first-ever woman to receive the Grand Austrian State Prize in the category of music in 2010. She was awarded the Robert Schumann-Preis für Dichtung und Musik in 2021, as well as the prestigious Wolf Prize together with Stevie Wonder. In 2022 she was the recipient of the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize.
Her opera Orlando after Virginia Woolf premiered at the Vienna State Opera in December 2019, making Neuwirth the first woman commissioned in the 150 year history of the house. Opernwelt named it World Premiere of the Year, and Orlando was awarded the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in 2022.
Keyframes for a Hippogriff for orchestra, countertenor, and children’s chorus had its world premiere in September 2021 by Jakub Hrůša and the Berlin Philharmonic and its U.S. premiere by the New York Philharmonic and Thomas Søndergård in April 2024, those orchestras being among its commissioners. The orchestral piece Dreydl was premiered in 2022 as part of her residency at Orchestre National de Lyon.
Neuwirth was resident composer at the Trondheim International Chamber Music Festival in 2022 with performances of many of her works and including a world premiere of her double concerto According to What for cello, percussion, and orchestra. She was Stockholm Philharmonic’s featured composer in November 2022 and featured composer with Dresden Staatskapelle throughout 2022-23. The Festival d’Automne in Paris celebrated her music in autumn 2022 with performances in three concerts of three major works—The Outcast, Masaot, and Encantadas. Neuwirth was appointed as a composition professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria, in 2021.
Born to a musical family in Mexico City, Gabriela Ortiz has always felt she didn’t choose music—music chose her. Her parents were founding members of Los Folkloristas, a renowned ensemble dedicated to performing Latin American folk music. While playing charango and guitar with her parents’ group, she was also learning classical piano. Her formal studies began under esteemed Mexican composers Mario Lavista, Federico Ibarra, and Daniel Catán. Later, she continued her studies in Europe, earning a master’s degree at Guildhall School of Music and Drama under the guidance of Robert Saxton, and earning a doctorate in composition and electronic music from London’s City University under the guidance of Simon Emmerson.
Ortiz’s music incorporates seemingly disparate musical worlds, from traditional and popular idioms to avant-garde techniques and multimedia works. This is, perhaps, the most salient characteristic of her oeuvre: an ingenious merging of distinct sonic worlds. While Ortiz continues to draw inspiration from Mexican subjects, she is interested in composing music that speaks to international audiences.
A landmark achievement in her career came in 2025 when her portrait album Revolución diamantina, recorded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, won three Grammy Awards, including Best Contemporary Classical Composition for the title work. This historic recognition solidified her as a leading voice in contemporary classical music.
From massive works for orchestra and chorus such as Yanga (2019), concertos as Fractalis (2022), politically charged operas as Only the Truth (2008), magical chamber works as Altar de muertos (1997), and intimate solo pieces as Canto a Hanna (2005), Ortiz’s music reveals a sophisticated compositional technique and a meticulous attention to rhythm and timbre. Her work has been performed by prestigious orchestras and ensembles such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra.
Ortiz’s many accolades include the 2022 Bellas Artes Gold Medal, Mexico’s National Prize for Arts and Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright-García Robles Fellowship, and two Latin Gramy nominations. She is a member of the Academy of the Arts and has been inducted into El Colegio Nacional, Mexico’s most esteemed circle of intellectuals.
Ortiz is currently composer-in–residence at Carnegie Hall, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and the Curtis Institute of Music. She also teaches composition at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. Her music is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
Biography written with contribution from Ana Alonso Minutti
Jingmian Gong is a composer holding an M.F.A. in Composition and Theory from Brandeis University and a B.M. from Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University, her recent compositions have been performed by prestigious ensembles such as Ensemble Dal Niente, Lydian String Quartet, and Hub New Music. Jingmian has received commissions from institutions including Lingnan Normal University choir and South Central University for Nationalities in China, as well as Boston-based performers. She has also collaborated with visual artists on experimental films.
Jingmian Gong is the 2024-25 Collage Fellow. Previous Collage Fellows, since 2014-15, have been Stephanie Anne Boyd, Katherine Balch, Talia Amar, Yi Yiing Chen, Joseph Sowa, Benjamin Park, Brian Sears, Lingbo Ma, and Len Tetta.
Gabriella Smith is a composer whose work invites listeners to find joy in climate action. Her music comes from a love of play, exploring new instrumental sounds, and creating musical arcs that transport audiences into sonic landscapes inspired by the natural world. An “outright sensation” (Los Angeles Times), her music “exudes inventiveness with a welcoming personality, rousing energy and torrents of joy” (New York Times).
Lost Coast, a concerto for cello and orchestra, written for her longtime collaborator Gabriel Cabezas, received its world premiere in May 2023 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. This work joins her organ concerto, Breathing Forests, written for James McVinnie, also premiered by the LA Phil, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Other current projects include a large-scale work for Kronos Quartet, commissioned in celebration of their 50th anniversary season, and an album-length work for yMusic featuring underwater field recordings. In December 2023, her work Tumblebird Contrails was performed on the Nobel Prize Concert by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Her first full-length album, titled Lost Coast, was recorded with Gabriel Cabezas and producer Nadia Sirota at Greenhouse Studios in Iceland and named one of NPR Music’s “26 Favorite Albums Of 2021” and a “Classical Album to Hear Right Now” by the New York Times. Gabriel and Gabriella, as a cello-violin-voice-electronics duo, have performed together around the world, including in Reykjavík, New York City, and Paris.
Gabriella grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area playing and writing music, hiking, backpacking, and volunteering on a songbird research project.
Jörg Widmann is considered one of the most versatile and intriguing artists of his generation. The 2024-25 season sees him appear in all facets of his work, as a clarinetist, conductor, and composer, including his second season as Principal Guest Conductor of NDR Radiophilharmonie and Creative Partner of Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Artistic Partner of Riga Sinfonietta, and Associate Conductor of Münchener Kammerorchester.
In the 2024-25 season Jörg Widmann appears as conductor with Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, and Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona. Other highlights include his residency with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and the Spanish premiere of his work Danse macabre performed by the National Orchestra of Spain in Madrid under his baton. 2025 sees Widmann make his debuts at the helm of BBC National Orchestra of Wales and NHK Symphony Orchestra for the orchestra’s Music Tomorrow series, the programme of which includes the Japanese premieres of Danse macabre and the trumpet concerto Towards Paradise with soloist Håkan Hardenberger. Re-invitations take him to Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, and Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa amongst others. Widmann gave the world premiere of Mark Andre’s Clarinet Concerto über at the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2015. Other clarinet concertos dedicated to and written for him include Wolfgang Rihm’s Musik für Klarinette und Orchester (1999) and Aribert Reimann’s Cantus (2006).
His compositions are performed regularly by conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding, Kent Nagano, Franz Welser-Möst, Christian Thielemann, Iván Fischer, Andris Nelsons, and Sir Simon Rattle and premiered by orchestras as Wiener and Berliner Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra, and many others.
Jörg Widmann studied clarinet with Gerd Starke in Munich and Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York and later became himself Professor of Clarinet and Composition, first at University of Music Freiburg and since 2017 as Chair Professor for Composition at the Barenboim-Said Academy Berlin. In June 2024
Jörg Widmann was named a member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Music in consideration of his merits to musical art. He is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg (2007), German Academy of Dramatic Arts and Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz (2016) and received an Honorary Doctorate from University of Limerick, Ireland in February 2023.
He studied composition with Kay Westermann, Wilfried Hiller, Hans Werner Henze, and Wolfgang Rihm. His works continue to receive many awards, most recently Bach-Preis der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, as well as Musikpreis der Landeshauptstadt München.
PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES
Soprano Tony Arnold is a luminary in the world of chamber music and art song. She is acclaimed as a leading proponent of contemporary music in concert and recording, having premiered hundreds of works by established and emerging composers. Since becoming the first-prize laureate of both the 2001 Gaudeamus International Competition and the 2001 Louise D. McMahon Competition, Tony has collaborated with the most cutting-edge composers and instrumentalists. As the soprano of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), a catalyst for dozens of groundbreaking projects, including David Lang’s Whisper Opera in ICE’s touring production, directed by Jim Findlay. She has toured the United States as a member of the George Crumb Ensemble and has become the singer most associated with Crumb’s music after the late Jan DeGaetani. A graduate of Oberlin College and Northwestern University, Tony was twice a fellow of the Aspen Music Festival, as both conductor and singer. She currently is on the faculties of the Peabody Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Center. As Collage New Music’s inaugural Artistic Partner, Tony Arnold performs in three Collage concerts in 2024-25.
Called “enchanting” by the Boston Globe, flutist Sarah Brady is sought after across the country as a soloist, chamber musician, and master teacher. An avid promoter of new music she has premiered and recorded new music from many of today’s top composers. Recent projects have included premieres of new solo flute and electronic music from Elena Ruehr, Andy Vores, Marti Epstein, Reinaldo Moya, John Mallia, and Curtis Hughes as well as music for flute and strings from Marcos Balter, Nicholas Vines and Johnathan Bailey Holland. Her solo, chamber and over 50 orchestral recordings can be heard on the Albany, Naxos, Oxingale, Cantaloupe, and BMOP/sound music labels. As a leading interpreter of contemporary music, she was invited to read and record new music commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma for his Silk Road Project at Tanglewood.
Heather Braun performs as first violinist of the prizewinning Arneis Quartet and as a member of the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music. Heather began teaching violin and chamber music at the Boston University School of Music in 2014 and joined the Saint Anselm College faculty in 2016. She has performed throughout the United States, Canada, China, and Italy, including venues such as the Beijing Modern Music Festival, Cabot Theater, Concord Free Library, Frederick Collection, Music on Main (Vancouver), Rockport
Chamber Music Festival, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, University of Indianapolis, and Williams College. Heather has performed as a soloist with various orchestras in Boston, Milwaukee, Washington DC, and Manchester, VT. She has acted as visiting concertmaster for the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra and as a guest violinist with the Greenwich Chamber Players. Other chamber music and solo collaborations include performances with Tony Arnold, Randall Hodgkinson, Marc Johnson, Robert Levin, St. Lawrence String Quartet, and Shanghai Quartet. Heather earned her Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music and completed her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Boston University, studying with Peter Zazofsky. While a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow, she received the Jules C. Reiner Violin Prize; other awards received include the Zulalian Foundation Award (BU), the John Lad Prize (Stanford University) and Silver Medal at the ICMEC Competition. Heather has coached chamber music and violin at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Point Counterpoint, Duxbury Music Festival, Manchester Music Festival, Taconic Music Chamber Intensive and Festival, and Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music. Recordings include chamber music by John Wallace, as a violinist soloist and member of the orchestra for Bach Cantatas with soprano Kendra Colton, and on Elena Ruehr’s album Icarus, released in the spring of 2022 and featured on NPR and BBC Proms.
German-Colombian conductor and pianist Anna Handler has been performing on stages and in concert halls around the world since her debut at the 2022 Salzburg Festival. In February 2025, Deutsche Oper Berlin announced Handler’s appointment as Kapellmeister, a position she will begin in the 2025-26 season. She is scheduled to conduct eleven opera performances during her first season. In the 2023-24 season, Handler was a Dudamel Fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. After her successful concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Hall, she was immediately invited to return; she will conduct the orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl in July 2025. In September 2024, she began her first season as an assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She makes her BSO debut at Tanglewood in summer 2025, and in the 2025-26 season, she will conduct the orchestra in subscription concerts at Symphony Hall. Further highlights of her career to date debuts with internationally renowned orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, and hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt. She has worked with soloists including Barbara Hannigan, Okka von der Damerau, Sabine Meyer, and Yo-Yo Ma. Previously, Handler worked as an assistant with renowned conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, including conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in Baden-Baden. Handler is director of the Ensemble Enigma Classica, which she founded in 2019. Conducting from the piano and chamber music collaborations with violinist Laura Handler are an important
part of her musical identity. Handler grew up in Munich and initially studied piano and conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich before continuing her studies at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar, the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale di Imola, and the Folkwang University of the Arts. She completed her master’s degree in conducting at the Juilliard School in May 2023. At Juilliard, she was the first conductor ever to receive the prestigious Kovner Fellowship. Handler received the Rising Star Award from the European Cultural Foundation Europamusicale and is a scholarship holder of the German Foundation for Musical Life. She was also awarded the Maria Ladenburger Prize for Music in cooperation with WDR, the Cusanuswerk Foundation, and Deutsche Grammophon.
Alexis Lanz has been principal clarinetist of the Boston Ballet Orchestra since 2011, and he is a member of Sound Icon and the Callithumpian Consort. He has performed with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, A Far Cry, Xanthos Ensemble, and Symphony New Hampshire, and has appeared with the Atlantic Music Festival, the Summer Institute of Contemporary Performing Practice, New Hampshire Music Festival, and the National Orchestral Institute. He has also appeared as principal clarinetist of the New York String Orchestra Seminar and as soloist with the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble. Alexis has performed with conductors Stefan Asbury, Andrew Davis, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Bernard Haitink, and James Levine. For three summers, Alexis was a student at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he was awarded the Gino B. Cioffi Memorial Prize. He earned his B.M. and M.M. degrees at the New England Conservatory, and his teachers have included Edward Cabarga and Thomas Martin.
Craig McNutt , percussionist, has been featured as soloist with the Rhode Island Philharmonic (Russell Peck’s Harmonic Rhythm ) and Collage New Music (Steven Mackey’s Micro-Concerto ). He has collaborated with composers Elliott Carter, Lukas Foss, John Cage, Bernard Rands, Gunther Schuller, George Rochberg, Charles Fussell, John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, and Lee Hyla, and he has performed with conductors Seiji Ozawa, James Levine, Simon Rattle, Roger Norrington, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Robert Spano, Oliver Knussen, Reinbert de Leeuw, and John Williams.
Craig has worked with virtually all of Boston’s major musical groups, including the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops, Boston Ballet, Boston Lyric Opera, Cantata Singers, A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra, and the Bos -
ton Landmarks Orchestra. He is Principal Timpanist with the Rhode Island Philharmonic and performs regularly as Principal Timpanist with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Emmanuel Music, and Opera Boston. Other new music ensembles with which he has performed include ALEA III, Boston Musica Viva, and Dinosaur Annex. Craig also regularly performs on Baroque timpani with Boston Baroque, Handel & Haydn, and Boston Cecilia.
Jan Müller-Szeraws , cellist, has appeared in music festivals that include the Cape & Islands, Rockport, El Paso Pro-Musica, Strings in the Mountains, Florida Arts, Sebago-Long Lake, Kingston Chamber Music, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, Garth Newel Music Center, Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, Staunton Music, and the European Chamber Music Association. He has been a member of Boston Musica Viva, is a member of Mistral, and has performed with Dinosaur Annex, Composers in Red Sneakers, and Winsor Music. He performs frequently as an extra player with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Jan’s solo performances have included Bernard Hoffer’s Concerto di Camera II (Boston Musica Viva), Shirish Korde‘s Lalit (Richmond Symphony), and Gunther Schuller’s, John Harbison’s and Chou Wen-Chung’s cello concertos with the New England Philharmonic. He has also performed concertos with Orquesta Sinfónica de Concepción and Orquesta de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Concord Orchestra (MA), Boston Landmarks Orchestra, and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. For eight years, Jan was Artist-in-Residence at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, where he directed the Performance Program and was founder and director of the Chamber Music Institute at Holy Cross. He has given master classes in Santiago and Concepción, Chile, and he currently teaches at Phillips Academy Andover. Jan studied at the Musikhochschule Freiburg, Germany, and holds a B.M and M.M. from Boston University.
Pianist Christopher Oldfather has devoted himself to the performance of contemporary music for over twenty years. He has participated in innumerable first performances, featuring every possible combination of keyboard instruments, in cities all over America. He has been a member of Collage New Music since 1979, and New York City’s Parnassus since 1997. He also performs with the Met Chamber Ensemble and is keyboard chair of the American Composers Orchestra. Chris appears regularly in recitals with singers and instrumentalists throughout the United States. In 1986, Chris presented his recital debut in Carnegie Recital Hall. Since then, he has pursued a career as a freelance musician, which has taken him as far afield as Moscow and Tokyo, performing virtually every sort of keyboard ever made, including the
Chromelodeon, a 43-note-per-octave instrument. He is widely known for his expertise on the harpsichord and is one of the leading interpreters of contemporary works for that instrument. As a soloist, Chris has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, New World Symphony, and Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, Germany. He has collaborated with the conductor Robert Craft and can be heard on several of his recordings. His recording of Elliott Carter’s violin-piano Duo with Robert Mann was nominated for two Grammy Awards.
Special Thanks to Our Donors!
Represents donors who have given from January 2024 to February 2025
Conductor’s Circle ($5,000+)
Ferdinando Buonanno
Nancy Lubin / Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation
Massachusetts Cultural Council
David Oswald, in honor of Frank Epstein and Eric Nathan
Soloist’s Circle ($3,000-$4,999)
The Amphion Foundation, Inc. Ditson Foundation, Columbia University Ann B. Teixeira
Composer’s Circle ($1,500-$2,999)
Katie & Paul Buttenwieser
Aaron Copland Fund for Music
Frank & Mary Epstein
David Josephson
Elsa Miller
Julie I. Rohwein
Benefactor ($1,000-$1,499)
Dianne & Michael Blau
Birgit Blyth
Susan E. DeLong
Donald & Majorie Forté
Fellow ($500-$999)
Richard & Deborah Cornell
Carolyn Davies, in honor of her mother, Beverly H. Davies
Ruth & Ken Scheer
Meghan Titzer
Anonymous, in honor of Susan DeLong and in memory of Gary DeLong
Charles & Esther Lee Kimerling Foundation
Korean Cultural Society of Boston
Francoise Moros
Doane Perry & Karen Carmean
Marjorie Merryman
Andy & Joanne Nathan
Lia G. Poorvu
Patron ($250-$499)
Peter Child
Nancy Husbands
John Kochevar
