ROBERT ANNIS • FERDINANDO BUONANNO • KAREN CARMEAN
CHARLOTTE DOBBS • 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
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 2) 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 composer Gabriela Ortiz’s residency 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,
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.
Tonight’s program, New Beginnings, features 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. The concert features two newly commissioned world premieres, from Wang Lu and John Harbison, that connect Collage’s past and its future.
For our following three concerts, we welcome back Collage’s longtime friend, soprano Tony Arnold, in the newly created role of 2024-25 Artistic Partner.
Our November program, I Shall Be Brave: A Celebration in Song, is an intimate vocal recital featuring Tony and an all-star 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, culminating in the Boston premiere Mark Campbell’s and my dramatic song cycle, Some Favored Nook, a work that speaks to the themes of friendship, national division, morality and conscience
In March, at 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 and to be holding the baton this evening. 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
Frank Epstein, Founder Eric Nathan, Artistic Director
The Ferdinando S. Buonanno Concert
Sunday, October 6, 2024, 7:30pm
Pickman Hall, Longy School of Music of Bard College
Presented in partnership with Longy School of Music
Heather Braun, violin
Jan Müller-Szeraws, cello
Sarah Brady, flute
Alexis Lanz, clarinet
Seychelle Dunn-Corbin, saxophone
Christopher Oldfather, piano/harpsichord
Michael Weinfield-Zell, percussion
Eric Nathan, conductor
Concert I: New Beginnings
Wang Lu Shout-out (2024)
(b.1982)
World premiere; Wang Lu’s work was commissioned by Collage New Music in honor of Eric Nathan’s inaugural concert as Artistic Director, with the generous support of David Josephson.
Vijay Iyer
Run (2015) (b.1971)
Jan Müller-Szeraws, cello
Juri Seo
Rondeau, Ostinato, and Fantasia (2018) (b.1981) Boston premiere
— Intermission —
J.S. Bach
Aria from Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (1741) (1685-1750) Christopher Oldfather, harpsichord
John Harbison Prelude – Variations (2024) (b.1938) World premiere
Wang Lu’s work was commissioned by Collage New Music in honor of Eric Nathan’s inaugural concert as Artistic Director, with the generous support of David Josephson. A biography of Dr. Josephson appears after PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES.
* * *
Shout-out honors the Boston-based ensemble Collage New Music, celebrating 52 years of musical brilliance and its inaugural season under the baton of new Artistic Director Eric Nathan. This piece pulses with an irresistible drive, weaving through contrasting ideas to capture the thrill and anticipation of countless inventive years to come. It echoes the vibrant legacy of New England’s rich tapestry of American music, adding a new verse to its storied lineage.
—Wang Lu
Vijay Iyer, Run (2015)
solo cello
Cellist Matt Haimovitz commissioned Vijay Iyer and five other composers to write overtures to the six solo cello suites of J.S. Bach. Haimovitz premiered the new works, including Iyer’s Run, on October 22, 2015, as part of the cellist’s residency at the Miller Theatre in New York City.
* * *
Bach’s solo string music sounds oddly futuristic even today. I first heard the cello suites when I was a child, and I remember noticing the mystical hush that this music could bring over listeners—a strange, beautiful reminder of melody’s power.
When Matt approached me last year [2014], I was daunted at first: how could I create an “overture” for something already so complete, so familiar? Eventually the C major suite offered some answers of its own. The instrument itself is already essentially “in C,” its open strings ringing out in that tonality, so I decided to follow up on Bach’s own use of the instrument’s inherent resonances. I was influenced by how he would vault the listener through the music, using vibrant dance impulses to sustain a sometimes majestically slow harmonic rhythm. Studying Bach’s original manuscripts, I saw how underspecifying timbre and articulation would allow the performer to find a more personal interpretation.
It dawned on me that this “overture” should herald the whole work without revealing too much of it. In this way, my piece became compact, active, resonant, and continuous—a brisk, eventful run through the woods. Thank you for listening.
—Vijay Iyer, New York City, August 28, 2015
Juri Seo, Rondeau, Ostinato, and Fantasia (2018) clarinet/bass clarinet, saxophones, violin, cello, piano/harpsichord, percussion Collage is proud to continue a partnership with the Korean Cultural Society of Boston. Composer Juri Seo’s participation in the Collage Composers Colloquium on October 5 and this evening’s season-opening concert is co-sponsored by the Korean Cultural Society of Boston.
* * *
Rondeau is based on a form of Medieval poetry called rondeau simple, a repetitive ABA’AA’’B’AB verse-refrain form. In my instrumental version, the A “verse” is transformed every time it comes back. The penultimate B “refrain” bursts into a virtuosic yet comical harpsichord solo that leads to a strange Medieval jazz groove. The inspiration comes from the Ars Subtilior, a brief and obscure fourteenth-century experiment in seemingly pointless rhythmic complexity.
The ground bass from the Baroque period usually outlines the tonic and the dominant. The bassline in Ostinato spans a tritone. A quick tritone substitution allows for a snappy return to the tonic. (Special thanks to my jazz piano teacher Pascal Le Boeuf!) The interjecting sections in a compound meter contain complex metric modulations that change the rhythmic character of the principal material when it returns. An explosion in spectral harmony marks the climax, and a lighthearted coda follows. Ostinato contains a secret quotation from Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, the origin of the special instrumental combination of which Latitude 49 is a cool version.
Fantasia, like the eighteenth-century instrumental music from which it takes its name, is composed as if it were improvised. In my Fantasia, the meandering structure takes us from an opening flourish in the harpsichord to a serene undulating harmony, then to an impetuous fugue in the unfortunate key of A-flat minor. A brief recap closes the piece on a peaceful note.
Rondeau, Ostinato, and Fantasia were commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University. It was written for, and dedicated to, Jani, Chris, Hudson, Andy, Max, and Tim of Latitude 49.
—Juri Seo
John Harbison, Prelude – Variations (2024)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano
John Harbison’s work was commissioned by Collage New Music in honor of Eric Nathan’s inaugural concert as Artistic Director * * *
This prelude was written for collage (it’s lower-case spelling and its very origin thanks to its brave founder, Frank Epstein), led with unmatchable insight by Music Director David Hoose over his long and successful tenure and now under new leadership for the next generation in the capable hands of Eric Nathan.
It also answers my long-ago promise to Richard Festinger and Earplay— disrupted and delayed by covid—to complete a companion piece to my Chaconne in honor of Andrew Imbrie’s 80th birthday, which was written in 2001 for the same combination of instruments.
This piece is a series of variations on a subject given in the bass line, with the theme stated tutti at beginning and end to bookend the short movement. In between are diverse contrapuntal variations for each of the instruments.
I’m happy to offer this brief new piece both to welcome Eric Nathan as he steps into his new role shepherding Collage into its future, and to at last provide the companion piece to my Chaconne for Earplay. It is a gift to cherished friends over our long musical journey together.
Short Stories was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University, and was composed for Collage New Music, Frank Epstein (Founder) and David Hoose (Music Director), in honor of Collage’s 50th anniversary.
Short Stories is about life at home—the beautiful, intimate, ordinary, little things that fill daily life that we may not always notice. The music draws on experiences from my time at home during the pandemic, including my learning to play the harmonica. As I composed, I thought of my chamber musician friends, many of whose lives also shifted during this period, needing to make music primarily at home, alone. Soloists within their own chambers.
Short Stories is structured in four musically interconnected stories that are each a mediation on a unique all-encompassing world. I use the term “short story” in reference to the intensity of experience I’ve felt when reading short stories, which often stay with me longer than novels I’ve read, and may not seem or be that short at all—they are worlds unto themselves. The “stories” themselves are purely musical ones, told by the instruments. Each movement celebrates specific instruments as soloists, highlighting each member of the ensemble in turn. The work is substantial in scope, totaling 35 minutes—I think of it like a symphony (or complete book) in terms of its emotional breadth across a central theme, looking at life from a different vantage point in each movement.
Here are some thoughts that guided me as I composed:
I. Cello: Cellists playing J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites for just themselves. Me sitting alone at home watching the evening rain streak down the window and imagining I was somewhere far away. The feeling when music that I’m composing suddenly comes to life and I truly meet it for the first time.
II. Clarinet and Violin: The daily pas-de-deux between my dog and the rabbits in the yard. A chase—graceful, swift, eager, playful, frustrated. Coexisting, never quite meeting.
III. Piano: The sounds of my wife practicing J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations wafting upstairs through the floorboards of my studio as I sit down to compose. Her escape into Bach, mine into my music. Embracing sounds.
IV. Piccolo and Percussion: Birds singing outside my window—always. The garage band jamming down the street. What if they spoke to each other? Life seems on pause, nature keeps moving on. What do the birds say about it all?
—Eric Nathan
COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES
Composer Wang Lu creates music that reflects influences from urban environmental sounds, linguistic intonation and contours, traditional Chinese music, and freely improvised practices, all through the prism of contemporary instrumental techniques and new sonic possibilities. Her works have been performed internationally by orchestras and ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic and Ensemble Intercontemporain, among others. She has received the Berlin Prize in Music Composition from the American Academy in Berlin, the Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation and the Library of Congress, and the Fromm Foundation at Harvard. Wang Lu was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2014. Her portrait albums, Urban Inventory (2018) and An Atlas of Time (2020), were released to critical acclaim.
Wang Lu is an Associate Professor of Music at Brown University, after receiving her doctoral degree in composition at Columbia University and graduating from the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music. Since 2022-23, Wang Lu is a mentor at Luna Composition Lab that provides mentorship, education, and resources for young female, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming composers ages 13-18.
Described by the New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” composer-pianist Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in 21st-century music. A composer and pianist active and revered across multiple musical communities, Iyer has created a consistently innovative, emotionally resonant body of work over the last 25 years, earning him a place as one of the leading music-makers of his generation.
His honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, three Grammy nominations, the Alpert Award in the Arts, the Greenfield Prize, a Dutch “Edison” Prize, and two German “Echo” awards; he was also voted DownBeat Magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year four times. He has been praised by Pitchfork as “one of the best in the world at what he does,” by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.”
Iyer’s musical language is indebted to the great composer-pianists from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, the rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa, and the African American creative music movement of the 60s and 70s. In February 2024 Iyer released Compassion (ECM Records), the second recording by his much-admired trio with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh. Other recent releases include Love in Exile (Verve, 2023), a Grammy-nominated collaboration with vocalist Arooj Aftab and bassist Shahzad Ismaily; Uneasy (ECM Records, 2021), the acclaimed first trio session with Sorey and Oh; Far From Over (ECM, 2017) with the awardwinning Vijay Iyer Sextet; and A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke (ECM, 2016) a suite of duets with visionary composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith.
Iyer is an active composer for classical ensembles and soloists, with works premiered by Brentano Quartet, Imani Winds, Parker Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Silkroad Ensemble, Sō Percussion, International Contemporary Ensemble, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Oregon Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, and virtuosi Matt Haimowitz, Mishka Rushdie Momen, Claire Chase, Inbal Segev, Sarah Rothenberg, Shai Wosner, and Jennifer Koh. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project produced a portrait album, Trouble (BMOP/sound 2024), comprising three of Iyer’s orchestral works. Iyer recently served as composer-in-residence at London’s Wigmore Hall, music director of the Ojai Music Festival, and artist-inresidence at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. His scores are published by Schott Music.
A tireless collaborator, he has written big-band music for Arturo O’Farrill and Darcy James Argue, remixed classic recordings of Talvin Singh and Meredith Monk, joined forces with legendary musicians Henry Threadgill, Reggie Workman, Zakir Hussain, and L. Subramanian, and developed interdisciplinary work with Teju Cole, Carrie Mae Weems, Mike Ladd, Julie Mehretu, and Prashant Bhargava. Iyer is a tenured professor at Harvard University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies. He lives in New York City. He is a Steinway artist.
Pronunciation: VID-jay EYE-er
Juri Seo is a Korean-American composer and pianist based in Princeton, New Jersey. She seeks to write music that encompasses extreme contrast through compositions that are unified and fluid, yet complex. She merges many of the fascinating aspects of music from the past century—in particular its expanded timbral palette and unorthodox approach to structure—with a deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and classical form. With its fast-changing tempi and dynamics, her music explores the serious and the humorous, the lyrical and the violent, the tranquil and the obsessive. She hopes to create music that loves, that makes a positive change in the world— however small—through the people who are willing to listen.
Her composition honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and the Andrew Imbrie Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, the Ilshin Composer Prize, and the Otto Eckstein Fellowship from Tanglewood. She has received commissions from prominent organizations including the Fromm Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Goethe Institut, and Tanglewood. She has released three portrait albums: Toy Store with Carrier Records, and Mostly Piano and Respiri with Innova Recordings. She holds a D.M.A. (Dissertation: Jonathan Harvey’s String Quartets, 2013) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied with Reynold Tharp. She has also attended the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome, first year of corsi di perfezionamento with Ivan Fedele) and Yonsei University (Seoul, B.M.). She is Associate Professor of Music at Princeton University.
Juri lives in Lawrenceville, just outside of Princeton, with her husband, percussionist Mark Eichenberger, and a little mutt named Roman.
Pronunciation: Jew-ri Suh
John Harbison’s concert music catalog of almost 300 works is anchored by three operas, six symphonies, twelve concerti, an organ symphony, and a ballet, six string quartets, numerous song cycles and chamber works, and a large body of sacred music that includes cantatas, motets, and the orchestral-choral works Four Psalms, Requiem, and Abraham. He also has a substantial body of jazz compositions and arrangements. Harbison has received commissions from most of America’s premiere musical institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. As
one of America’s most distinguished artistic figures, he is recipient of
merous awards and honors, among them Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, a Kennedy Center Friedheim First Prize, the Heinz Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Harvard Arts Medal.
Recent works include the monodrama If (Boston Musica Viva, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center), the organ symphony What Do We Make of Bach? (for the Seattle and Minnesota orchestras), and the Sonata for Viola and Piano (commissioned as an 80th birthday gift by a secret admirer for a consortium of seven violists). In 2022, Collage New Music and soprano Kendra Colton gave the world premiere of Harbison’s Winter Journey, a Collage 50th anniversary commission, setting poems of Louise Glück.
Harbison is currently at work on new chamber pieces—a work for Earplay, and a viola quintet—and he recently completed a new choral work, Hidden Paths (settings of Frost poems for children’s choir). A second volume of his pop and jazz songs (After Hours II ) will be published this year, along with a collection of a capella arrangements of jazz standards and originals. His cadenzas for various Mozart and Beethoven concertos, for piano and violin, will also soon become available. Harbison’s opera The Great Gatsby is due for major revival in 2025.
His music is widely recorded on leading labels. Recent CD releases include two new all-Harbison albums on BMOP/sound: Concertos for String Instruments (viola, bass, and violin/cello double), and Diotima, an album of works for orchestra alone and with voice that also includes Milosz Songs and Symphony No. 6 (Dawn Upshaw, soprano). Other recent recordings include Symphony No. 4 (National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic/Naxos), Violin Sonata No. 1 (Cho-Liang Lin & John Kimura Parker/Naxos), Late Air (Kendra Colton & Kayo Iwama/Oberlin), Simple Daylight & Piano Sonata No. 2 (Lucy Fitz Gibbon & Ryan McCullough/Albany), String Quartet No. 6 (Lark Quartet/Bridge), Requiem (Nashville Symphony/Naxos), Vocalism (Mary Mackenzie/Albany), and his cadenzas to Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in G major (David Deveau/Steinway). What Do We Make of Bach: Portraits, Essays, Notes, Harbison’s first book, was published in late 2018 (ARS Nova). Harbison recently penned a collection of jazz essays and is at work on a new series of composer reminiscences (publication forthcoming).
Harbison has been composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Academy in Rome, and numerous festivals. He received degrees from Harvard and Princeton before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where in 1995, after many teaching awards, he was accorded MIT’s highest faculty honor—Institute Professor—and in 2022 achieved Emeritus status. For many summers
since 1984 Harbison taught composition at Tanglewood, serving as head of its composition program from 2005 to 2015, often directing its Festival of Contemporary Music. With Rose Mary Harbison, the inspiration for many of his violin works (Violin Concerto, Four Songs of Solitude, Crane Sightings, Violin Sonata No. 2), he has been co-Artistic Director of the annual Token Creek Chamber Music Festival since its founding in 1989. He continues as Principal Guest Conductor at Emmanuel Music (where for three years he served as Acting Artistic Director), and he is a past music director of Cantata Singers. Harbison founded MIT’s Vocal Jazz Ensemble in 2010, serving as coach and arranger, and he is pianist with the faculty jazz group Strength in Numbers (SIN).
Eric Nathan’s 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, 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.
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 52nd season, as well as Composer-in-Residence with the New England Philharmonic. He received his doctorate from Cornell.
PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES
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.
Dr. Seychelle Dunn-Corbin is a Boston-based saxophonist known for her inclusion, dedication, and advocacy of African American artistry in performance and education. Prior to her work in the Greater Boston area, Seychelle worked in education for the Baltimore Public School system and is an alumna of Morgan State University; a Historical Black College. While attending MSU, Seychelle studied with accomplished composers Dr. James Lee III and Dr. Nkeiru Okoye, as well as jazz saxophonist Tim Green and pianist Dr. Stephanie Bruning. Upon completing her studies and earning both a B.A. and M.A. degree in music, Seychelle furthered her education at Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, earning her graduate performance diploma while studying with classical saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky. It was at Longy that Seychelle was able to refine her skills as a classical musician. In 2019, she completed her Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Saxophone Performance from Boston University. Currently, Seychelle performs with the Area 9 Saxophone Quartet and NorthStar Duo, in addition to serving as faculty at Bunker Hill Community College and Longy School of Music of Bard College. Seychelle has joined the Community Music Center of Boston as the Senior Director of the Community Music School.
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.
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.
See Eric Nathan’s biography under COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES.
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.
Michael Weinfield-Zell is a Boston-based classical and contemporary percussionist and drum set player. Michael has been invited to perform as featured soloist at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, at the Korean Broadcasting Station in Seoul, the Kennedy Center, Naumberg Bandshell in New York’s Central Park, and the Pérez Art Museum in Miami. Notable collaborations include those with So Percussion, Ensemble ACJW (Juilliard/ Carnegie Hall), and the electronic music duo Matmos. He has worked with conductors Simon Rattle and David Robertson, and major symphonic ensembles that include the Kansas City Symphony and Grand Teton Music Festival. He has held appointed positions with the Florida Grand Opera as well as the Honolulu and Annapolis symphonies. Michael performs regularly with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Callithumpian Consort, Portland Symphony, Orchestra of Emmanuel Music, Back Bay Chorale, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Atlantic Symphony. He recently completed a doctorate in performance at Boston University, and he holds degrees from Peabody Conservatory and from the Yale School of Music, where his primary teacher was Robert van Sice.
THANK YOU
David Josephson is Professor Emeritus of Music at Brown, where he taught for forty-four years. Born and raised in Montreal, he earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Columbia, where he also taught, directed the wind ensembles, and was an editor of Current Musicology. At Brown he founded and directed an Early Music Group, chaired the Music Department, built the Orwig Music Library, and initiated an artists-in-residence program anchored by a resident string quartet. His early scholarship on Renaissance music led to his first book, a study of the Tudor composer John Taverner. He later published essays on the composer-pianist Percy Grainger and inaugurated the annual Grainger Lecture series at the University of Melbourne. His recent work has focused on the musical diaspora forced to leave Nazi and fascist Europe, about which he has published several articles as well as a monograph on one of the few women in the cohort, Kathi Meyer-Baer. His interests beyond music include political and social history, biography and psychoanalysis, architecture and design, geography, the English language, gardens, cars, wine, and The True North and free.
IN MEMORY
Charles Blyth, who passed away May 26, 2024, earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University, taught at Brandeis and Columbia universities, and was a specialist in Middle English. He was also one of the most extraordinary afficionados of new music, traveling all over the world to catch concerts that interested him, especially any that promised the music of Elliott Carter or Pierre Boulez. For a short period during Collage New Music’s early years, Charlie served as the ensemble’s board president, and he remained on the board for decades beyond that. Even after stepping down, he remained a constant and devoted listener at our concerts.
Charlie’s opinions about music were passionate and unflinching. As much as he was likely to express great enthusiasm for some composition he had heard, he was just as prone to let fly an unvarnished judgment about one he didn’t like, often minutes after a concert that the musicians had spent hours and hours studying, practicing and rehearsing. But his opinions were always honest and deeply felt, and we will miss Charlie’s extraordinary level of engagement, as well as his youthful, smiling and lanky presence.
Frank Epstein, Collage President
David Hoose, Music Director emeritus
Special Thanks to Our Donors!
Represents donors who have given from June 2023 to September 2024
Conductor’s Circle ($5,000+)
Ferdinando Buonanno
Nancy Lubin / Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation
David Oswald
Soloist’s Circle ($3,000-$4,999)
The Amphion Foundation, Inc.
Ditson Foundation, Columbia University
Ann B. Teixeira
Composers’ Circle ($1,500-$2,999)
Frank & Mary Epstein
David Josephson
Julie Rohwein & Jonathan Aibel
Meghan Titzer
Benefactor ($1,000-$1,499)
Dianne & Michael Blau
Katie & Paul Buttenwieser
Susan DeLong
Elsa Miller
Fellow ($500-$999)
Robert & Ellen Vickers Annis
Charles & Birgit Blyth
Richard & Deborah Cornell
Robert J. Henry
Charles & Nancy West Husbands
Charles & Esther Lee Kimerling Foundation
Patron ($250-$499)
Donald Forte, Jr.
Elvira Lang-Anderson
Michele Millon
Francoise Moros
Doane Perry & Karen Carmean
Carolyn Refsnes Kniazzeh
Ruth Scheer
Marjorie Merryman
James Olesen & Lynn Nowels
William J. & Lia G. Poorvu
David Rakowski & Elizabeth Wiemann
Fredrica Wyman & Chris Oldfather
David Stang
Matthew Sur
Special Thanks to our Donors!
Represents Donors who have given from September 1, 2022, to April 13, 2024
Benefactor ($1,000+)
Jonathan Aibel & Julie
Sponsor ($100-$249)
Rohwein
Amphion Foundation, Inc
Elaine Bresnick
Deena & Michael Blau
John Carey
Ferdinando S Buonanno
Peter Child
Katie & Paul Buttenwieser
Brandeis University
Catherine French
Jim Habor
John Carey
Robert Craft Igor Stravinsky Foundation
Ditson Foundation
Amy Lieberman
Frank & Mary Epstein
Eric Moe
Richard Festinger
Joel Moerschel
Harvard University
Carolyn Refsnes Kniazzeh
Amy Nathan
Susan DeLong
Elsa Miller
Francoise Moros
David Oswald
Doane & Karen Perry
Ruth Scheer
Meghan Titzer
Samuel Rechtoris
Randolph Hawthorne & Carliss Baldwin
Fellow ($500-$999)
Robert & Ellen Annis
Ricci-Insinger Family Trust
Robert J Henry
Epp Sonen
Betty Hillmon
Charles & Birgit Blyth
Luke Blackbur n
Linda & Lionel Kimerling
Donald Steven
Charles and Esther Lee
Beth W iemann & David Rakowski
Frank Cunningham &
Joan Huang-Kraft
Anne Black
Stephen Jaffe
John Kochevar
John & Rosemary Harbison
Pat Kroll
Patron ($250-$499)
Chris Krueger
Peter Child
Fred Lerdahl
Donald Forte, Jr.
Arthur Levering
Sponsor ($100-249)
Carliss Y. Baldwin & Randolph G Hawthor ne Fund
Donors up to $99
Elaine Bresnick
Catherine French
Haig & Brigette Boyadjian
Jim Habor
Elizabeth Canick
Betty Hillmon
Eric Chasalow
Joan Huang-Kraft
Phil Cornell
Stephen Jaffe
Kimerling Charitable Fund
Rena F. Subotnik
Marjorie Merryman
Sarah Tenney
W illiam J and Lia G Poorvu
Frederica Wyman & Christopher Oldfather
James Olesen & Lynn Nowels
Josh & Connolly Tolkoff
Benjamin Zander
Joan Tower
Michelle Millon
David Stang Ann B Teixeira
Chris Krueger
Robert Weisskoff & Ann Marie Lindquist
Majie Zeller
Mark Kagan & Nancy Shafman
Elvira Lang
Epp Sonen
Donald and Ann Stevens
Carol Kort & Michael
Amy Lieber man
Alfred Lerdahl
Melanie Lahti
Arthur Levering
Eric Moe
Rodney Lister
Pamela Painter
Joel Moerschel
Rena F Subotnik
Sarah Tenney
Joshua & Connolly Tolkoff
Joan Tower
Robert Weisskoff & Ann Marie
Lindquist
Jim Kiely
Bruce & Susan Creditor
John Kochevar
Amy Nathan
Tom Stephenson
Deborah Raptopoulos
Marijane Zeller
Pat Kroll
Ruth Grabel
Donors up to $99
Anonymous
Haig & Brigitte Boyadjian
Elaine Bresnick
Elizabeth Canick
Eric Chasalow
Phil Cor nell
David Stevens Want to support Collage?
Ricci-Insinger Family Trust
Bruce M. & Susan P.S. Creditor
Mark DeVoto
Harriet Eckstein
Edward Ginsberg
Ruth Grabel
Michael G & Carol L. Kort
Rodney Lister
Pamela Painter
Matthew Sur
Lynn Torgove
Want to support Collage?
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation on our website: www.collagenewmusic.org/donate
You can also donate by check, payable to Collage New Music, and send it via postal mail to P.O. Box 230150, Boston, MA 02123
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation on our website: www.collagenewmusic.org/donate You can also donate by check, payable to Collage New Music, and send it via postal mail to P.O. Box 230150, Boston, MA 02123
2024-25 COLLAGE FELLOW
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’s new work for Collage premieres on March 2, 2025.
PAST COLLAGE FELLOWS
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
Concert II. I Shall Be Brave: A Celebration in Song
November 3, 2024, at 3:00pm, Longy School of Music
Special recital by Tony Arnold, soprano (2024-25 Collage Artistic Partner)
Lucy Shelton, soprano
William Sharp, baritone
Seth Knopp, piano
Music by Hildegard von Bingen, Sofia Gubaidulina, Bernard Rands, Amy Beach, Margaret Bonds, Florence Price, and Eric Nathan (Boston premiere, Some Favored Nook)
Concert III. Between Words and Worlds
March 2, 2025, at 7:30pm, Goethe-Institut Boston
Anna Handler, conductor
Tony Arnold, soprano
Music by Kareem Roustom, Olga Neuwirth, Gabriela Ortiz, Jingmian Gong (world premiere), Gabriella Smith, and Jörg Widmann
Concert IV. We Carry Our Homes Within Us
May 4, 2025, at 7:30pm, Longy School of Music
David Hoose, conductor (Music Director Emeritus)
Tony Arnold, soprano
Music by John Heiss, Yehudi Wyner, Reinaldo Moya, Michael Gandolfi (world premiere), Yaz Lancaster (Boston premiere), and Marcos Balter
Scan the code to visit collagenewmusic.org/2024-25-season for further details and tickets.
