Eric Nathan Artistic Director
Frank Epstein Founder Season 53, 2025-2026
Concert I Memory Palaces
September 28, 2025
COLLAGE NEW MUSIC
FRANK EPSTEIN, Founder
ERIC NATHAN, Artistic Director
TONY ARNOLD, 2025-26 Artistic Partner
GASTON GOSSELIN, 2025-26 Julie I. Rowein Collage Fellow
DAVID HOOSE, Music Director Emeritus
CIYADH WELLS, General Manager
Musicians on Today’s program
CATHERINE FRENCH, violin
JASON FISHER, viola
JAN MÜLLER-SZERAWS, cello
SARAH BRADY, flute
ALEXIS LANZ, clarinet
DONALD BERMAN, piano
CRAIG MCNUTT, percussion
ERIC NATHAN, conductor
Board of Trustees
ANN TEXIERA, Interim President
MEGHAN TITZER, Treasurer
CHARLOTTE DOBBS, Clerk
MICHAEL ALPERT • FERDINANDO BUONANNO • KAREN CARMEAN • ELSA
MILLER • FRANCOISE MOROS • RUTH SCHEER
Honorary Trustees
NICK ANAGNOSTIS* • CHARLES BLYTH* • SUSAN DELONG • PETER EPSTEIN* CAROLYN REFSNES KNIAZZEH *in memoriam
Artistic Advisory Panel
TONY ARNOLD • MATTHEW AUCOIN • MARCOS BALTER
ANTHONY CHEUNG • TANIA LEÓN • JOAN TOWER
Collage New Music is grateful for the support of the following foundations:
FROM THE INTERIM PRESIDENT
Dear Friends,
I am greeting you as successor to Collage Founder Frank Epstein’s distinguished leadership of Collage New Music for over 50 years Leading this transition into Collage’s next era is an honor and a daunting challenge that I am excited to take on
Eric Nathan’s dynamic programming for this season brings an eclectic mix of contemporary works to draw us in to the comforting theme of home as we try to keep our bearings though the overwhelming swirl of societal, political, environmental, technological and other disruptions around us.
Boston’s best contemporary new music players will perform a vast array of works from a wide range of composers who speak in distinct musical voices, an unusual number of which are pieces commissioned by Collage. The season is a ‘collage’, aptly bringing to life the ensemble’s name.
I invite you to revel in this its breadth and depth, to share your experience with others, to return for the next three concerts, and to share your generosity that is the foundation of Collage’s ongoing health and vitality.
Here’s to Season 53!
Thank you,
Ann Teixeira
FROM OUR ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Dear Friends,
As I begin my second season as Artistic Director of Collage New Music, I am excited to continue the journey we began together last season. At our 2024-25 season finale concert, “We Carry Our Homes Within Us,” we honored the legacy of Collage founder Frank Epstein upon his retirement after 52
years, and celebrated the musical home Frank and Collage have built for so many composers, musicians and audiences.
The 2025-26 season builds upon the theme of home, expanding our exploration broadly across the entire season, looking at how memory, time, language, and community impact our understanding of what home can mean to each of us. The four concert programs presented this year form a musical mosaic filled with a multitude of perspectives: Memory Palaces (Sept. 28), Clocks for Seeing (Nov. 2), Missing Words (Mar. 1), and Mosaics of Home (Apr. 26).
I look forward to welcoming back longtime collaborators and introducing many new ones. Tony Arnold returns as our Artistic Partner for her second season, appearing in two programs (November and April). Conductor Anna Handler returns to lead the concert premiere of my Missing Words cycle at the Goethe-Institut Boston. Jeffrey Means makes his Collage debut in Clocks for Seeing. We also welcome numerous guest artists to our stages, doubling our ensemble size in our Spring performances.
I am thrilled that we will present nine world premieres of Collage commissions, including a season-opening work by Nomi Epstein, who grew up hearing Collage rehearse in her family home. Collage leads a major cocommissioning project with Eighth Blackbird and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble with What is Home?, a suite created by six composers from across the country. These new works, many made possible by the Frank B. Epstein Commissioning Fund, reflect a wide range of voices and experiences
We are so happy to renew our educational and artistic partnership with the Longy School of Music where we will also present the Collage Composers Colloquium (April 25), a day-long convening of New England composers for masterclasses and discussion. We expand connections with valued local partners Goethe-Institut Boston and the Korean Cultural Society of Boston, and build new ones with Project STEP, and Shelter Music Boston, the latter bringing a concert to community members experiencing homelessness.
Thank you for joining us this afternoon. I look forward to sharing this season with you and to the conversations the music will invite.
Eric Nathan
COLLAGE NEW MUSIC
Frank Epstein, Founder Eric Nathan, Artistic Director
The Ferdinando S. Buonanno Concert
Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 3pm Pickman Hall, Longy School of Music of Bard College Presented in partnership with Longy School of Music
Catherine French, violin
Jan Müller-Szeraws, cello
Alexis Lanz, clarinet
Craig McNutt, percussion
Jason Fisher, viola
Sarah Brady, flute
Donald Berman, piano
Eric Nathan, conductor
Concert I: Memory Palaces
Curtis K. Hughes Vestibule III (2013) (b. 1974)
Joan Huang A Flowing Brook in Yunnan (2020) (b.1957)
Sarah Gibson I prefer living in color (2017) (1986-2024)
Christopher Cerrone South Catalina (2014) (b.1984)
Intermission
Curtis K. Hughes Vestibule I (2013)
Nina Young Rising Tide (2015) (b.1984)
Nomi Epstein: with (2025) (b 1978) World Premiere; Collage commission
Steven Stucky Ad Parnassum (1998) (1949-2016)
The concert will conclude by 4:30pm. Please join Collage for a reception following the performance in the Wolfinsohn Room.
ABOUT THE CONCERT
From Artistic Director Eric Nathan:
As I crafted this opening program for our 2025–26 season, Mosaics of Home, I thought of the Photomosaic™ technique pioneered by MIT student Robert Silvers, who recreated portraits from countless smaller images. One might also think of Paul Klee’s pointillism and his “polyphonic painting” technique seen in Ad Parnassum, which adorns today’s program cover an attempt to render music in visual form.
Today’s program gathers wide-ranging works, many inspired by other art forms, and places them in dialogue around light, memory, and place. Together, they form a contrapuntal mosaic that reflects on interconnectedness and what “home” can mean in a musical community.
The concert features composers tied to two cities at opposite coasts: Boston and Los Angeles. I began planning it as wildfires ravaged L.A. in January 2025, destroying countless homes. The title, Memory Palaces, nods to Christopher Cerrone’s eponymous work for percussion and electronics. A memory palace, he writes, is “ an ancient technique of memorization… placing mental signposts in an imaginary location and ‘walking’ through it.” Our program begins with Boston composer Curtis Hughes’s duos Vestibule III and Vestibule I, which respectively open each half A vestibule bridges outside and inside, and Hughes’s music welcomes us through these thresholds.
L.A.–based Joan Huang-Kraft, a longtime friend of Collage founder Frank Epstein, tragically lost her home in the wildfires. Her A Flowing Brook in Yunnan transforms a theme from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony into a Chinese folk song, symbolizing the interconnectedness of musical cultures across continents. Sarah Gibson, a classmate of mine at Indiana University and a beloved L.A. figure before her passing in 2024, drew inspiration from David Hockney in I prefer living in color, evoking the curves and vistas of Mulholland Drive. Cerrone’s South Catalina, shaped by the brilliant light of Southern California and the art collective rAndom International’s installation Swarm, unfolds as a mesmerizing procession of shifting textures.
In the second half, we hear Rising Tide by Nina C. Young, who has lived between New England and L.A., studying at MIT, teaching at USC, and now co-directing Tanglewood’s composition program. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, her piece urges action resonating with the urgency of rising seas threatening homes on both coasts. Boston-based Nomi Epstein makes her Collage debut with a new commission, with, beginning “with a sense of stillness in both body and mind ” The connection is deeply personal: she grew up hearing Collage rehearse in her family home, as Frank Epstein’s daughter
Nomi’s meditation leads to Steven Stucky’s Ad Parnassum, inspired by Klee’s painting of the same name and borrowing its title from J.J. Fux’s treatise on counterpoint, Gradus ad Parnassum (1725). Stucky evokes the painting’s “play of light and shadow” while imagining its temple-like structure beneath a blazing sun. Composed for Boston Musica Viva and premiered in Cambridge in 1998, the piece reflects Stucky’s own bicoastal life, split between his work with the L A Philharmonic and teaching in New York A decade after his passing, his influence is still felt across today’s program—whether directly, as a mentor to Young, Gibson, and myself, or indirectly, as a tireless advocate for contemporary music.
“Tribute to Frank Epstein,” presented at the conclusion of Collage’s May 4, 2025 concert. Musicians Pictured: Heather Braun, Christopher Oldfather, Jan MüllerSzeraws, Alexis Lanz, and Eric Nathan, Collage New Music’s Artistic Director.
PROGRAM NOTES
Curtis K. Hughes, Vestibule III (2013)
bass clarinet, marimba
Vestibule III composed in late 2013, is one of a series of short, related duos that seem to exist in a state of perpetual transition between contrasting textural and stylistic worlds. In each case, the two instruments take a decidedly non-linear tour of a set of interrelated ideas, acting sometimes in tandem and sometimes in opposition to one another. The title refers to the fact that this series of compositions explores musical ideas that are self-contained, but are also thematically connected to a much larger project (for chamber orchestra) which is currently in progress, and they are thus “entryways” into what will soon be a much larger musical “chamber.” In each case, there is at times an almost claustrophobic sense of obsessive repetition and inhibition, exemplified here by the driving material that frames the piece However there are also glimpses and hints of a kind of ecstatic and sensuous larger musical construction, which inspires sentiments that verge on lyrical tenderness. The music is dedicated to the duo Transient Canvas, whose remarkable virtuosity, sensitivity and versatility were extremely inspirational.
– Curtis K. Hughes
Joan Huang, A Flowing Brook in Yunnan (2020)
solo piano
About a year ago, Susanne Kessel came to our home mentioned about her “Beethoven” project, I was inspired by her enthusiasm. The theme of the second movement “Scene au bord du ruisseau” of Beethoven’s Pastorale Symphony was the initial “water source ” of my little piano piece. Then Beethoven’s theme gradually becomes “A Flowing Brook in Yunnan”, a wellknown Chinese folk song The continuation of Beethoven’s “brook” to China’s “brook” symbolizes Beethoven’s spirit is immortal and the water is universal
– Joan Huang
Sarah Gibson, I prefer living in color (2017)
Bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, percussion, piano
I prefer living in color, is inspired by David Hockney's Snails Space, a gigantic painted landscape of shapes with a shifting light installation created to represent Los Angeles's Mulholland Drive. This vivacious artwork impacted the melodic structure and energy in my piece. Beginning with a lyrical melody and morphing to a rock band-like groove, I was imagining the many vibrant colors of Hockney's painting shifting in and out of foreground and background. These musical structures represent both the changing landscapes in Hockney's painting and also the energizing curves and changing views found along Mulholland Drive.
– Sarah Gibson
Christopher Cerrone, South Catalina (2014)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion
South Catalina draws its inspiration from two sources. First is the amazing work Swarm by the London-based artist collective, rAndom International. The interactive sculpture responds to sound impulses with a blast of asynchronous lights When seeing the work at the entrance to the Frenkel Art Foundation, I immediately knew I would write a piece of music where sharp and loud attacks in the piano and percussion would inspire a flurry of wild and improvisatory gestures from the rest of the ensemble.
I spent much of the fall of 2013 living in Los Angeles, preparing for the inaugural production of my opera, Invisible Cities. One of the things that struck me about living in Southern California is the amazing light. Every day, without fail, is amazingly bright, and while this can be initially enchanting for an East Coaster, it can also feel oppressively out of sync with one ’ s mood. South Catalina draws on both of these sensations with its driving optimism but also its relentless forward movement. The title is drawn from the street in the Koreatown neighborhood of LA where I lived.
– Christopher Cerrone
Nina Young, Rising Tide (2015)
flute, clarinet (bass), percussion, piano (with 2 e-bows), violin, viola, cello
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in the shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves Or lose our ventures.”
– William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Act IV Scene III)
Nomi Epstein, with (2025)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano
with was commissioned by Collage New Music’s new director, Eric Nathan, just after the torch was passed to him from my father. This commission is especially significant and personal to me since Collage has been part of my life since before I can remember–listening to rehearsals from the top of the basement stairs of my house when I was a child. These early memories were part of the rich musical world my parents shared with me which undoubtedly led me down the path to becoming a composer and starting my own ensemble
As in most pieces I write, with is shaped by experiences, explorations, and the innate and cultivated preferences I have toward sound, notation, structure, and practice.
– Nomi Epstein
Steven Stucky, Ad Parnassum (1998)
flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, percussion, piano
Written for the 30th anniversary of Boston Musica Viva (1998), Ad Parnassum is a single-movement construct of murky, mysterious tone. Stucky slowly builds his material in tension, layering motifs and falling back, building and falling back, until finally reaching a hammering crescendo, then quietly fading back into the ether. Steven Stucky conducts Ensemble X (a contemporary music group he co-founded in 1997) in Ad Parnassum, as it appears on the Albany album In Shadow, In Light.
Musicians Pictured: Heather Braun, Christopher Oldfather, Jan Müller-Szeraws, Alexis Lanz, Sarah Brady, and Frank Epstein, Collage Founder
COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES
The music of Curtis K. Hughes (b. 1974) is characterized by its rhythmic restlessness, its harmonic adventurousness and its often volatile mix of diverse stylistic elements and political subtexts. It has been described as "fiery" in the New York Times, "well crafted" in the Phoenix, and "colorfully scored" in the Boston Globe. A professor of composition at the Boston Conservatory from 2008-2020, Curtis was a student of composers Lee Hyla and Evan Ziporyn, and is a graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory, and of the New England Conservatory (NEC), which honored him in 2010 with its Outstanding Alumni Award.
Curtis's most recent endeavors have included new works for Hinge Quartet, RAHA Duo, Tony Arnold & Jacob Greenberg, New Gallery Concert Series, Transient Canvas and Guerilla Opera, who also premiered Say it Ain't So, Joe, his 2009 opera about the 2008 Vice Presidential Debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden (now available on Cauchemar Records).
Curtis's music has been performed across the US and internationally, from Los Angeles to Berlin, from Vermont's Yellow Barn to Bulgaria's Here/Now New Music Festival. He was a 2005 fellow at Tanglewood, and has served as composer-in-residence for Collage New Music and the Radius Ensemble. Recordings of his music for the Albany, GM, New Focus, and Cauchemar labels are available at all major online music retailers.
Joan Huang grew up and received her early music education from her parents in Shanghai, China. As a teenager during China’s Cultural Revolution, she had the opportunity to learn folk music from local farmers when she was sent to a farm to do heavy labor for 3 years. Later, Huang was among the few applicants selected from a large pool of candidates when the Shanghai Conservatory of Music reopened after the Cultural Revolution and became the first woman in the Conservatory’s history to receive a MA in composition.
In 1986 she continued her musical education at UCLA. forging a compositional style that fuses traditional Chinese musical language with contemporary Western techniques. She has received several awards, including 2 from Phi Beta Kappa for international students, Tanglewood Music Festival fellowship and 2 Aspen Music Festival Scholarships. Ms. Huang received her PhD from UCLA in 1991. Her The Legend of Chang-e won the first prize of "1994 Marimolin's International Composition Contest”. Huang’s music has been commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and Boston Musica Viva, Ying Quartet, Southwestern Chamber Music, Earplay New Music Ensemble, Piano Spheres, San Francisco Bridge Chamber Virtuosi,
New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, and among many others. Her multi-media work Shanghai Trilogy was premiered during the 2010 Shanghai International Expo. Her featured album Festive River was released by Cambria Music in 2017. Recent premiers and performances are A Flowing Rivers in Yunnan by Gloria Cheng (2020), Eighteen Melodies for Hujia by West Edge Opera (2020), Tujia Dance by UCLA Philharmonia (2019), Songs of Nudan at the International Taoism Conference (2019), Broken Kaleidoscope (2018) in Germany.
Recently she finished a chamber work entitled Yellow Crane (2023) commissioned by the legendary trumpeter Malcolm McNab and the piano quintet entitled Khorobre Sertse (2024). Ms. Huang’s orchestral work Tujia Dance was performed recently by Music Academy of the West recently in Santa Barbara and the Nashville Symphony in Nashville, conducted by Maestro Anthony Parnther. And Her chamber music Images of Gusu was performed by Ensemble Kujoyama in Kyoto, Japan in March this year. She just received a commission to write a chamber ensemble piece Phoenix Nirvana for Ensemble Synchromy in August 2025.
Sarah Gibson was a Los Angeles based composer and pianist whose works draw on her breadth of experience as a collaborative performer. Her compositions reflected her deep interest in the creative process across various artistic mediums especially from the female perspective.
She received a Copland House Residency and commissions from the League of American Orchestras and the Toulmin Foundation,the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Summer Music Festival & School, Grossman Ensemble, and Seattle Symphony, among others.
Gibson’s music has been described as “expansive” (LA Times) and has been performed by the BBC & Los Angeles Philharmonics, Atlanta, Seattle, and New Jersey Symphonies, Jennifer Koh, Departure Duo, HOCKET, and at various venues across the United States and in Europe. As a pianist, Sarah has performed with many of these ensembles as well as with Wild Up, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and the Atlanta Symphony where she debuted under the direction of Donald Runnicles in 2005.
Sarah was co-founder of the new music piano duo, HOCKET, which has been lauded as "brilliant" by the LA Times' Mark Swed, and was a core artist for the inimitable Los Angeles Series, Piano Spheres
Sarah received degrees in Piano and Composition from Indiana University and the University of Southern California. She was the Assistant Director for the esteemed Los Angeles Philharmonic Composer Fellowship Program and Assistant Professor in Composition/Theory at the California State University, Long Beach Bob Cole Conservatory of Music where she also directed the New Music Ensemble.
Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984) is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations.
Recent works include Beaufort Scales, an oratorio commissioned by Lorelei Ensemble; In a Grove, an opera coproduced by LA Opera and Pittsburgh Opera that made its New York debut at the PROTOTYPE Festival in 2025, where The New York Times praised: "Cerrone's coolly caressing music, with its eerie haze of electronic and acoustic textures, deepens the mystery and leaves listeners suspended between ambiguity and wonder"; Don't Look Down, his latest album featuring Sandbox Percussion; Breaks and Breaks, a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony; A Body, Moving, a brass concerto for the Cincinnati Symphony; The Year of Silence for the Louisville Symphony and baritone Dashon Burton; The Air Suspended, a piano concerto for Shai Wosner; and The Insects Became Magnetic for the LA Philharmonic.
His first opera, Invisible Cities, was a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Cerrone is a triple-GRAMMY nominee, with nominations for The Pieces that Fall to Earth, The Arching Path, and Beaufort Scales. He won the 2015–2016 Samuel Barber Rome Prize and was a resident at the Laurenz Haus Foundation in Basel, Switzerland from 2022–2023.
Christopher Cerrone holds degrees from Yale and the Manhattan School of Music. He is published by Schott NY and Project Schott New York, and joined the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music at The New School in 2021. He lives in Jersey City with his wife and their young son.
Composer and sonic artist Nina C. Young (b.1984) creates works, ranging from acoustic concert pieces to interactive installations, that explore aural architectures, resonance, timbre, and the ephemeral. Her music has garnered international acclaim through performances by the American Composers Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Phoenix Symphony, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Aizuri Quartet, Sixtrum, Matt Haimovitz, and others.Winner of the 2015-16 Rome Prize and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, Young has received recognition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Koussevitzky Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, the Fromm Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, and BMI.
Young’s current interests are increasingly collaborative and multidisciplinary in nature, and engage with issues of sustainability, historical narratives, experiences with contemporary technologies, women ’ s rights, and virtuosity.
In 2023, the American Composers Orchestra with vocalist Sidney Outlaw premiered the Carnegie Hall commissioned work Out of whose womb came the ice: a monodrama for baritone, orchestra, electronics, and generative video, commenting on the ill-fated Ernest Shackleton Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
Other recent projects include Tread softly that opened the NY Philharmonic’s Project 19 series, Violin Concerto: Traces for Jennifer Koh from the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, to hear the things we cannot see for Hub New Music featuring the poetry and recorded voice of Rosie Stockton, and Nothing is not borrowed, in song and shattered light - an immersive audio-visual installation experience commissioned by EMPAC (The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer) that showcases their High-Resolution Wave Field Synthesis Loudspeaker Array and recordings by the American Brass Quintet. Upcoming projects include a new work for the artist-led collective Decoda, and a piano concerto for Han Chen.
A graduate of MIT and McGill University, Young completed her DMA at Columbia University. In 2024 Young joined the faculty of the Juilliard School and is also the Slee Visiting Associate Professor in Music Composition at the University at Buffalo. Prior to joining the faculty of the Juilliard School, Young was an Associate Professor of Music Composition at the USC Thornton School of Music. She serves as Co-Artistic Director of New York’s Ensemble Échappé and is excited to begin a long-term summer engagement as faculty and co-program coordinator of composition at the Tanglewood Music Center. Her music is published by Peermusic Classical.
The music of Boston-based composer Nomi Epstein has been described as “magical, otherworldly” (The New York Music Daily). Centered around her interest in sonic fragility, her work invites both performer and listener to enter into the sound world through focused listening. Structures emerge from the subtleties of each sound and their placement, even if indeterminate, in sonic/temporal space. Her music has been performed throughout the US and Europe, working with ensembles such as SurPlus, ICE, Wet Ink, Mivos Quartet, Wild Rumpus, the Industry, Apartment House, Dedalus, Southland, and counter)induction.Composer portrait albums include “sounds” (New Focus Recordings, 2020), “cubes” (Sawyer Editions, 2023), and her most recent release, “shades” (Another Timbre, 2024), described in The Wire as “fragile beauty that clearly arises from her cohesive and firmly coordinated compositional orientation.”
An active practitioner and advocate of experimental music, she is the founder/director of the critically acclaimed, experimental music ensemble a•pe•ri•od•ic, in which she also performs.
Her curatorial work includes large scale festivals as in the Chicago area 2012 centennial John Cage Festival, the 2014 Chicago Wandelweiser Festival, the 2017 Galina Ustvolskaya Festival, in addition to experimental music concerts in the US and abroad involving guest composers and performers from across the globe
She continues to research, write, and lecture on post-Cagean, notated, experimental music. Epstein currently serves as Associate Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music, and as a certified practitioner leading Deep Listening® Workshops.
C poser Steven Stucky (1949-2016), whose Second erto for Orchestra brought him the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in , received commissions from countless orchestras, rming groups, individuals and foundations at home and d. The New York Times described his Second Concerto chestra - commissioned by the Los Angeles rmonic and premiered by the orchestra in March, 2004as “ an electrifying piece [that] stands apart from academic disputes about style and language, and strives for direct communication.”
Notable world premieres in recent seasons included Symphony (2012) at the Los Angeles Philharmonic; The Stars and the Roses at the Berkeley Symphony; Say Thou Dost Love Me (2012) for a cappella chorus with the New York Virtuoso Singers; Take Him, Earth at the American Choral Directors Association national conference; Rhapsodies (2008) by the New York Philharmonic at London’s BBC Proms; August 4, 1964 (2007-08) by the Dallas Symphony; the Chamber Concerto (2010) by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; and the Piano Quintet (2009-10) at Portland’s Chamber Music Northwest festival. Other past highlights include high-profile repeat performances of Silent Spring (2011), which the Pittsburgh Symphony toured to seven key European cities; Andantino quasi Allegretto (Schubert Dream) by pianists Emanuel Ax and Yoko Nozaki for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (2011); the Chamber Concerto (2010) by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra under conductor Roberto Abbado; the "Elegy" from August 4, 1964, which the Dallas Symphony reprised at home and in Germany; and Radical Light (2006-07), which London’s Philharmonia Orchestra revived in Bonn. Stucky’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Second Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2004
An active teacher and mentor to young composers, Stucky served on the Warsaw jury of the Witold Lutoslawski Competition for Composers. His highlyesteemed expertise on the late composer ’ s music was recognized with the Lutoslawski Society’s medal and an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for his critical biography, Lutoslawski and His Music (1981). He was consultant to the Philharmonia Orchestra’s 2013 centennial celebrations of the composer in London.
As conductor, Stucky frequently led the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group and Ensemble X, a contemporary music group he founded in 1997. With the former, he led soloist Michala Petri in the US premiere of his recorder concerto, Etudes (2002), and conducted world and regional premieres of works by many of his contemporaries, such as Donald Crockett, Jacob Druckman, William Kraft, Witold Lutoslawski, Christopher Rouse, Joseph Phibbs, and Judith Weir
Stucky was permanently employed as Composer-in-Residence of the Aspen Music Festival and School, having previously held that post in 2001 and 2010, in addition to serving as director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble in 2005. He was appointed as the first Barr Institute Composer Laureate at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Among his other honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bogliasco Fellowship, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the ASCAP Victor Herbert Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His first Concerto for Orchestra was one of two finalists for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Stucky taught at Cornell University from 1980 to 2014, chairing the Music Department from 1992 to 1997, and then served as Cornell's Given Foundation Professor of Composition, Emeritus. He was Visiting Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music and Temple University, and Ernest Bloch Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Stucky was a member of the faculty of the Juilliard School from 2014 to 2016.
Born on November 7, 1949 in Hutchinson, Kansas, Stucky was raised in Kansas and Texas He studied at Baylor and Cornell Universities with Richard Willis, Robert Palmer, Karel Husa, and Burrill Phillips Mr Stucky passed away on February 14, 2016 in Ithaca, New York.
PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES
Flutist Sarah Brady hailed as “intensely expressive” (New Music Box) and “colorfully agile” (The Arts Fuse), is principal flute with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and frequently performs with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Boston Pops, Boston Ballet, Boston Lyric Opera and Odyssey Opera. A core member of the Radius Ensemble and Collage New Music, she has collaborated with the Talea Ensemble, The Cortona Collective, Sound Icon, Boston Musica Viva, the Firebird Ensemble and the Silk Road Ensemble.
After earning an undergraduate degree as a full scholarship student at the University of Connecticut, Sarah received her graduate degrees from the Longy School of Music under the tutelage of Robert Willoughby. Prizewinner in the Pappoutsakis Flute Competition and the National Flute Association’s Young Artist Competition, Sarah served the Commissions Coordinator and Chair of the New Music Advisory Committee for the National Flute Association. Her solo, chamber and over 80 orchestral recordings including a 2019 GRAMMY award winning opera recording, can be heard on BMOP/Sound, Albany, New Focus, Naxos, Oxingale, Cantaloupe and Navona Records labels. Associate Professor of Flute at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Sarah also runs the Contemporary Classical Performance Program (CCMP). For more information please visit: www.Bradyflute.com
Canadian violinist Catherine French, a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1994, has established herself as a versatile and accomplished soloist and chamber musician in addition to her distinguished orchestral career. Ms. French garnered the grand prize at the Canadian Music Competition, the C.B.C. Radio Competition and the National Competitive Festival of Music,Canada’s three major music competitions She has performed as soloist with many leading Canadian orchestrasand given recitals throughout North America andArgentina. Ms. French was featured with the Juilliard Orchestra and James de Preist, the Boston Pops and John Williams, and at Carnegie Hall in her debut with David Gilbert.
Lauded for her “superbly lyric” playing and her “amazing level of artistry” by Strad Magazine, Ms. French is a dedicated member of the Calyx Piano Trio and Collage New Music. Her avid interest in chamber music has led to performances at the Marlboro, Banff, Pórtland and Carolina chamber music festivals, quartet tours of Germany and China and annual concerts as part of the Prelude series at Tanglewood and the Curtisville Consortium. Ms. French has recorded for Albany Records and is featured in Donald Sur’s Berceuse for Violin and Piano with pianist Christopher Oldfather
Catherine French began Suzuki violin at age four then continued her studies under the esteemed Canadian pedagogue Dr Lise Elson Ms French graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor’s of Music degree and a Performer’s Certificate, then earned a Master’s degree from the Juilliard School. Her teachers were Miriam Fried, Felix Galimir and Joel Smirnoff. Ms. French has played with Collage New Music since the mid-1990’s.
Violist Jason Fisher is a founding member and co-artistic director of A Far Cry A child of the Northwest, Jason grew up in Seattle and is a proud enthusiast of rainy days. He first picked up an instrument at age 11 in elementary school when the orchestra teacher told him they needed “somebody to play the viola.” Jason went on to study with Helen Callus, Victoria Chiang, Katherine Murdock, and Roger Tapping, and is a graduate of Peabody Conservatory, and the Longy School of Music A Carnegie Hall Fellow and a Peabody Singapore Fellow, he has toured Europe, Asia, Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic and has given concerts at Vienna Musikverein, Singapore Esplanade, The Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall. Jason has performed with Pink Martini, Jake Shimabukuro, Itzakh Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Kiri Te Kanawa, and with members of the Florestan Trio, and the Æolus, Brentano, Cleveland, Emerson, Mendelssohn, and St. Lawrence String Quartets.
Principal violist of Boston Baroque, Jason plays period viola with the Handel and Haydn Society, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, The English Concert, ACRONYM Ensemble, The Thirteen, Sound Salon, Teatro Nuovo, Opera Lafayette, Relic, and The Sarasa Ensemble. He has spent recent summers on viola and viola d’amore at the Staunton Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Connecticut Early Music Festival, and the Aston Magna Music Festival. Jason is on viola faculty at The Rivers School Conservatory where he also serves as Director of the Chamber Music Lab. He is the Artistic Program Lead for Portland Summer Ensembles, a chamber music workshop for advanced-level teenagers in Oregon. Jason plays on an English viola by Richard Duke, 1768, and a recently commissioned copy of that instrument in period setup by Timothy Johnson.
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.
Known for his distinctive style and thoughtful musicianship, percussionist Craig McNutt has become a vital performer in the realm of percussion performance. He has been featured as a soloist with the Rhode Island Philharmonic (Russell Peck’s Harmonic Rhythm) and Collage New Music (Steven Mackey’s Micro-Concerto). He has collaborated with some of the most celebrated composers of the 20th and 21st
centuries, including Elliott Carter, Lukas Foss, John Cage, Bernard Rands, Gunther Schuller, George Rochberg, Charles Fussell, John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, and Lee Hyla, and performed under the direction of many noted conductors, including James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, Simon Rattle, Roger Norrington, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Robert Spano, Oliver Knussen, Reinbert de Leeuw, and John Williams.
As a performer, Mr. McNutt 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 Boston Landmarks Orchestra. He is Principal Timpanist of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, and performs regularly as Principal Timpanist with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Emmanuel Music, and Opera Boston. In the contemporary music genre, Craig is a featured percussionist for Collage New Music and ALEA III, and has performed with Boston Musica Viva and Dinosaur Annex. Equally at home in the field of historical performance, he regularly performs on baroque timpani with the period instrument groups Boston Baroque, Handel and Haydn Society, and Boston Cecilia.
A Massachusetts native, Mr. McNutt holds degrees from the Hartt School of Music and Yale University, and has completed additional studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. He is a two time alumnus of the Tanglewood Music Center, and has also spent summers studying at the Aspen Music Festival, and as a fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. Currently Mr. McNutt teaches at The New England Conservatory Preparatory School, The Music School of The Rhode Island Philharmonic, and WellesleyCollege He has also served on the faculty of the Berklee College of Music.
A multidimensional pianist, pedagogue, and scholar, Donald Berman has won tremendous acclaim for his "stupendous abilities, both athletic and intellectual" (Boston Sunday Globe) and performances hailed as "stunning, adventurous, and substantive" (New York Times).
With an emphasis on presenting American music of the 20th and 21st centuries, Berman's inventive recital programs
ed on the U.S.'s biggest stages for contemporary music o Ca eg e s Weill and Zankel Halls to National Sawdust and (Le) Poisson Rouge as well as major venues across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. An enthusiastic commissioner of new music, he has added more than 200 works to the contemporary canon many of which he performs alongside classical repertoires to provoke new and fascinating revelations and connections across periods and styles.
Berman's body of work as a recording artist demonstrates the breadth and depth of his engagement with the music of our time. His albums have included numerous world-premiere recordings as well as illuminating performances of previously unknown works of 20th-century American composers, including Charles Ives (The Unknown Ives, Vols. I & II), Carl Ruggles (The Uncovered Ruggles), and Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions (Americans in Rome). As concerto soloist and chamber musician, Berman's discography includes collaborations with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (George Perle: Serenades), soprano Susan Narucki (This Island, The Light That Is Felt: Songs of Charles Ives, and the Grammy-nominated The Edge of Silence), and the Borromeo Quartet (The Worlds Revolve).
Upcoming albums include a survey of Elena Ruehr songs with baritone Stephen Salters and a new recording of Ives's Concord Sonata and Impression of the St. Gaudens in Boston Common, was released on Avie Records during the composer ' s sesquicentennial celebrations in 2024
A former fellow of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Berman currently serves as Chair of Keyboard Studies at Longy School of Music of Bard College and leads Tufts University's New Music Ensemble. He is also the General Editor of three volumes of Ives's Shorter Works for Piano a titanic project representing 30 years of work and President and Treasurer of the Charles Ives Society, where he is leading an extensive expansion of the Society's digital archives on charlesives.org.
Berman's trajectory as a musician and scholar was set in motion by four important teachers: Mildred Victor, George Barth, John Kirkpatrick (who premiered Ives's Concord Sonata in 1939), and legendary pedagogue Leonard Shure.
Eric Nathan’s (b. 1983) music has been called “ as diverse as it is arresting” with a “constant vein of ingenuity and expressive depth” (San Francisco Chronicle), and “thoughtful and inventive” (The New Yorker) A 2013 Rome Prize Fellow and 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, Nathan has garnered acclaim internationally through performances by Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra,
Recent projects include three commissions from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Opening (2021), co-commissioned by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress, was premiered by the MSO and broadcast nationally on PBS. He has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Barlow Endowment, Fromm Music Foundation, Tanglewood Music Center, and Aspen Music Festival, and has been honored with a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Nathan has completed residencies at Yellow Barn, Copland House, and American Academy in Rome, and is a 2022 Civitella Ranieri Foundation fellow
Nathan’s most recent album, Some Favored Nook, was released in 2023 on New Focus Recordings. He serves as Associate Professor of Music at Brown University and is currently the Artistic Director of Collage New Music, a Boston’s oldest contemporary music ensemble, now in its 53rd season. He was Composer-in-Residence of the New England Phiharmonic for six seasons (20192025). He received his doctorate from Cornell, studying with Steven Stucky. Eric Nathan’s compositions are available worldwide for rental and sale by Just a Theory Press. Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Koh, Stefan Jackiw, and Gloria Cheng. His music has been featured at the New York Philharmonic’s 2014 and 2016 Biennials, Carnegie Hall, and the Aldeburgh, Tanglewood, and Aspen festivals.
Special Thanks to Our Donors!
Represents donors who have given from June 2024 to August 2025
Conductor’s Circle ($5,000+)
Dianne & Michael Blau
Ferdinando Buonanno
Mary Epstein & family
Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation
Dani Maddon & Geoff Steadman
Amy & Carl Nathan
David Oswald, In honor of Frank Epstein & Eric Nathan
Soloist’s Circle ($3,000-$4,999)
Alice M. Ditson Fund
The Amphion Foundation
Ann B. Teixeira Trust
Composers’ Circle ($1,500-$2,999)
Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc.
Anonymous, In Honor of Susan DeLong
Elsa Miller
Eric Nathan & in memory of Gary DeLong
David Josephson
Korean Cultural Society of Boston
Benefactor ($1,000-$1,499)
Birgit Blyth
Katie & Paul Buttenwieser
Susan DeLong
Frank & Mary Epstein
Fellow ($500-$999)
Richard & Deborah Cornell
Julie I Rohwein
Ruth & Ken Scheer
Meghan Titzer
Donald & Majorie Forté
Doane Perry & Karen Carmean
Ruth & Ken Scheer
Stephen D. Senturia
Andrew J. Nathan & Joanne
Carolyn Davies, in honor of Bauer her mother, Beverly H. Davies
Chris Oldfather & Fredrica
Charles & Esther Lee Kimerling Foundation Wyman
Marjorie Merryman
Lia G. Poorvu
Patron ($250-$499)
Peter Child Ronan Lefkowitz & Phuong Pham
Jingmian Gong
Robert Kusner & Denise Kim
Elvira Lang-Anderson
Sponsor ($100-$249)
Randolph Hawthorne & Carliss Baldwin
Anne Black & Frank Cunningham
Yu-Hui Chang
William Cooper
John A. Carey
Cathy French
Joan Huang
Mark Kagan
John & Irene Kochevar
Patricia Ann Krol
David Stang
Matthew Sur
Sarah Tenney
Sidney O’Gorman
Donna Pentalers
Sam Rechtoris
James & Willemien Ricci
Anthony De Ritis
Christopher Krueger
Donald Steven
Rena Subotnik Revocable Trust
Joshua & Connolly Tolkoff
Deborah Valenze
Alfred Lerdahl Yehudi Wyner
Andrew List
Donors up to $99
Max Abelson Yuen Jong Kwan
Blackbaud Giving Fund
Carol B. Caro
Eugene Lewis
John Rodney Lister
Eric Chasalow Shulamit Ran
Phil Cornell Lucinda Leveille
Bruce Creditor
Eric Moe
Mark DeVoto Owen Sidney Richardson & Tamar Diesendruck
Mark Faber
Ruth Grabel
Carol and Michael Kort, in honor of Frank Epstein
Elizabeth Richardson
Judith Soffer
Matthew Sur
Korean Cultural Society of Boston FALL CONCERT
Resonance of Freedom
Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Korean Independence
This concert is organized by the Korean American Diaspora Foundation in partnership with the New York Classical Players, and is generously supported by the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Boston.
Friday, October 3, 7:30 pm
New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall
290 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA
Program
Beethoven | Coriolan Overture, Op. 62
Beethoven | Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 Emperor
Texu Kim | The Grass Still Grows (들풀): A Cantata for Memory, Community, and Hope* (premiere)
*commissioned by Korean Methodist Church & Institute Free Admission with Registration at www.kcsboston.org
Want to support Collage?
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation our website: www.collagenewmusic.org/donate
You can also donate by check, payable to Collage New Music PO Box 230150 Boston, MA 02123
2025-2026 JULIE I. ROHWEIN COLLAGE FELLOW
Gaston Gosselin (b. 1999) is an American composer whose music is a playful yet thoughtful exploration of outward joy and inner reflection. His work has been commissioned and performed by groups such as the Eureka Ensemble, South Florida Youth Symphony, Lès Art Nouveau Chalumeaux, as well as the University of Cincinnati Cello Society for the 2023 Ascent International Chamber Music Festival. Gaston’s compositions have been recognized by the Emil and Ruth Composition Award from the National Federation of Music Clubs, the Molly Garrett & June Fooshee Collegiate Grant from the Music Club of Hollywood Florida, and Mu Phi Epsilon from whom he received the Ruth Dean Morris Scholarship, the Original Composition Award in Divisions I, II, and III, and as a finalist for the Morton Gould ASCAP Awards He has been a fellow with notable festivals such as the Mostly Modern Festival (USA), Mostly Modern Festival (Netherlands), Lake George Music Festival, Iceberg Institute, and Cortona Sessions for New Music. Gaston resides in Boston, MA, where he works as the Executive Director of Beacon Ensemble. He holds a BM in Music Composition from the University of North Texas, where he studied with Sungji Hong, Kirstin Soriano, and Bruce Broughton.
PAST COLLAGE FELLOWS
Jingmian Gon, 2024-2025 • Len Tetta, 2023-24 • Lingbo Ma, 2022-23
Brian Sears, 2020-22 • Benjamin Park, 2019-20 • Joseph Sowa, 2018-19 Yi Yiing Chen, 2017-18 • Talia Amar, 2016-17 Katherine Balch, 2015-16 • Stephanie Anne Boyd, 2014-15
In memoriam
Collage New Music honors the memory of Marvin Miller. Founder Frank Epstein offers this remembrance: "Marvin Miller, loyal husband of board member Elsa Miller, always accompanied Elsa to our Collage concerts. Even near the end when just walking was difficult he climbed up the stairs to get to our concerts. He was a loyal fan and a strong supporter of our activities. He will be missed."
JOIN COLLAGE AGAIN THIS SEASON
Concert II: Clocks for Seeing
November 2, 2025 at 3:00pm
Longy School of Music, Pickman Hall
Pre-Concert Talk at 2:00pm with Artistic Director Eric Nathan and composers
Jeffrey Means, CONDUCTOR
Tony Arnold, SOPRANO (2025-26 Artistic Partner)
World premiere of Collage commission by Eric Chasalow and Gaston Gosselin (2025-2026 Julie I. Rohwein Collage Fellow).
Additional music by: György Ligeti, Inga Chinilina, Anthony Cheung, Olivier Messiaen
Concert III: Missing Words
March 1st, 2026 at 3:00pm
Goethe-Institut Boston
Pre-Concert Talk at 2:00pm with Artistic Director Eric Nathan
Anna Handler, CONDUCTOR (Boston Symphony Orchestra Assistant Conductor)
Concert Premiere by Eric Nathan
Concert IV: Mosaics of Home
April 26, 2026 at 3:00pm
Longy School of Music, Pickman Hall
Pre-Concert Talk at 2:00pm with Artistic Director Eric Nathan and featured composers
Eric Nathan, CONDUCTOR
Tony Arnold, SOPRANO (2025-26 Collage Artistic Partner)
World premieres of Collage Co-Commissions with Eighth Blackbird and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble by JaRon Brown, Erin Gee, April Dawn Guthrie, Eric Nathan, Angélica Negrón and Juri Seo. Additional music by Christopher Trapani
Tony Arnold
Anna Handler
Eric Nathan