The Florida State University College of Music
Todd Queen, Dean
Elizabeth Avery, Sarah Eyerly, William Fredrickson, and Greg Jones, Associate Deans
The 22ndBiennial Festival of New Music
January 29-31, 2026
Committee for the Festival of New Music:
Clifton Callender and Evan Jones, Co-Chairs Deborah Bish, Geoffrey Deibel, Eren Gümrükçüoğlu, David Kalhous, Liliya Ugay, and Noël Wan
Schedule of Events
All events are free and open to the public unless otherwise indicated. Schedule details are subject to change.
Thursday, January 29, 2026
6:15 P.M.
Lindsay Recital Hall
7:30 P.M.
Opperman Music Hall
Pre-Concert Lecture
Julia Wolfe, featured guest composer
Opening Concert
Works by Davis, Gümrükçüoğlu, Junttila, Lindveit, Ugay, and Wolfe. Performances by Greg Sauer, George Speed, Benjamin Sung, Liliya Ugay, and the Burgin String Quartet
Friday, January 30, 2026
10:10 A.M.
Matinee Concert (a)
Opperman Music Hall Works by Neeley, Peck, Villane, and Uhm
11:15 A.M.
Matinee Concert (b)
Opperman Music Hall Works by Findley, Fleisher, Koh, Lee, and Logunov
2:00 P.M
Polymorphia Concert
Opperman Music Hall Works by Dunham, Heo, Novak, Stölzel, Temsittichok, Wolfe, and Young. Performances by Greg Sauer and Marcy Stonikas. Liliya Ugay, director.
4:00 P.M.
Dohnányi Recital Hall
7:30 P.M.
Guest Artist Masterclass
Julia Wolfe, featured guest composer
Guest Artist Concert
Opperman Music Hall Bang on a Can All-Stars
Schedule of Events
All events are free and open to the public unless otherwise indicated. Schedule details are subject to change.
Saturday, January 31, 2026
1:00 P.M.
Opperman Music Hall
4:00 P.M.
Dohnányi Recital Hall
6:15 P.M.
Lindsay Recital Hall
7:30 P.M.
Electroacoustic Concert
Works by Arrell, Callender, Dirks, Suhr, Tovar-Henao, and Wolfe. Performances by Qing Jiang, Cecilia Suhr, and Noël Wan. Eren Gümrükçüoğlu, electronics director.
Guest Artist Masterclass
Julia Wolfe, featured guest composer
Pre-Concert Lecture
Julia Wolfe, featured guest composer
Closing Concert (ticketed)
Ruby Diamond Concert Hall Featuring performances by the University Symphony Orchestra and University Wind Orchestra with special guest, composer Julia Wolfe.
Tickets for the closing concert may be purchased at tickets.music.fsu.edu.
Retrieve (2016)
Opening Concert
Thursday, January 29, 2026
7:30 P.M. | Opperman Music Hall
Greg Sauer, cello; George Speed, contrabass
Things You Can Magnetize (2024)
Nikkie Galindo and Jordi Banitt, flute fixed media
Julia Wolfe
Brian Junttila
Mother Tales (2021)
I. croon
II. perpetual delight
Benjamin Sung, violin; Liliya Ugay, piano
Deep Summer Folklore (2023)
Burgin String Quartet
Masayoshi Arakawa and Ioana Popescu, violin
Jeremy Hill, viola; Thu Vo, cello
Ex Antiphonis Unitas (2025)
Kaeden Parks, alto saxophone
Eren Gümrükçüoğlu, electronics
Sebastian and Venus (2025)
I. Sandro’s St. Sebastian
II. Venus of Willendorf
Liliya Ugay
Andrew Davis
Eren Gümrükçüoğlu
Sarah Ward, oboe; Dawson Huynh, clarinet
Ryan Lindveit
Nicholas Mackley, bass clarinet; Jennifer Fuentes, alto saxophone
Susanna Campbell, bassoon
Cha (2015)
Julia Wolfe
AJ Nguyen, soprano saxophone; Raymond Wilkerson, alto saxophone
Zachary Matthews, tenor saxophone; Ashton Stewart, baritone saxophone
Matinee (a)
Friday, January 30, 2026 10:10 A.M. | Opperman Music Hall
web_2 (2025) Ancel “Fritz” Neeley
Ian Guarraia and Will McCoy, vibraphone fixed media
Filament (2019)
Bailey Bryant, violin
Miniscope Multimedia Project (2025)
fixed audio and video
Charles Peck
SiHyun Uhm
Miniature Birds (2022)
I. Train of the Peacock
IV. Crested Owl
V. Wind-Up Bird
VIII. Great Eared Nightjar
IX. Swallow-tailed Kite
Wayne Pearcy, trumpet; Quin Nardone, piano
Nicholas Villane
Matinee (b)
Friday, January 30, 2026 11:15 A.M. | Opperman Music Hall
Evasive Maneuvers (2021) Scott Lee
Steven Higbee, clarinet; Logan Florence, guitar
Minims for Max (2023)
I. Silhouette
II. What’s in a Name?
III. Approach and Retreat
IV. Sessions with Roger
V. A is for Anton
VI. North/South Consonance
VII. Maxed Out
to till the ground (2024)
unheard (2022)
Dain Lee, piano
Carlos Guevara, guitar
Charlotte MacDonald, bass clarinet
Zachary Matthews, baritone saxophone
Study of Snowflakes (2025)
Robert Fleisher
Dylan Findley
Emily Koh
Alexey Logunov
Dawson Huynh, clarinet; Anthony Zamora, piano Bárbara Santiago, violin; Turner Sperry, cello
Polymorphia Concert
Liliya Ugay, director
Friday, January 30, 2026
2:00 P.M. | Opperman Music Hall
prisms and mirrors (2022) Paul Novak
Kathryn Lang, flute; Charlotte MacDonald, clarinet
Ethan Stefanski and Drew Jungslager, percussion
Liliya Ugay, piano; Rachel Lawton, violin; Thu Vo, cello
Thomas Roggio, conductor
private, stolen time (2024) Nina C. Young
Claire “Parky” Park, flute; Sarah Ward, oboe
Jenna Eschner, clarinet; Hannah Farmer, bassoon
Eric On, horn; Tim Thomas and Nick Bahr, percussion
Thong Truong, piano; Isabelle Scott, harp
İlayda İlbaş and Thomas Roggio, violin
Maya Johnson, viola; Param Mehta, cello
Manuel Torralba, conductor
Ebb and Flow (2025) Chawin Temsittichok
Sarah Ward, oboe; Jaxon Stewart, clarinet
Emelia Ulrich, violin; Jacob Grice, viola; Caleb Duden, contrabass
Manuel Torralba, conductor
Three Silent Things (2023)
1. November Night
2. Release
3. Triad
Ingrid Stölzel
Marcy Stonikas, soprano; Greg Sauer, cello
A Bell that Calls the Underground (2024) Wan Heo
Shelby Werneth, flute; Jaxon Stewart, clarinet
Elizabeth Grice, piano; Emily Palmer, violin
Jacob Grice, viola; Param Mehta, cello
Manuel Torralba, conductor
Flujo Textural (2024) Ben Dunham
Sam Malavé, flute; JJ Baker and Travis Beeton, percussion
Daniel Farias, piano; Mitchell George, cello
Manuel Torralba, conductor
singing in the dead of night (2008) Julia Wolfe
Claire “Parky” Park, flute; Charlotte MacDonald, clarinet
Jordan Brown, percussion; Alex Nagy, piano
Maya Johnson, violin; Turner Sperry, cello
Thomas Roggio, conductor
Guest Artist Concert Bang on a Can All-Stars
Friday, January 30, 2026 7:30 P.M. | Opperman Music Hall
Lick
Believing
Big Beautiful Dark and Scary
INTERMISSION
Julia Wolfe
The Games: A Science Fiction Opera Meredith Monk I. Spaceship arr. Michael Gordon
Gene takes a drink Michael Gordon
sunray
David Lang
Electroacoustic Concert
Saturday, January 31 2026 1:00 P.M. | Opperman Music Hall
Self-Censorship (2024) Cecilia Suhr
Cecilia Suhr, violin fixed and interactive audio and video
Arches and Strings (2024) Clifton Callender
I. Cadenza
III. Bisbigliando
IV. Ballade
Ghosts of Altamira (2023)
Noël Wan, harp
Elizabeth Milan, violin live electronics and video
Living With My Donkeys (2022)
Compassion (2001)
Eric On, horn fixed media
Seunghye Park, piano
Chris Arrell
Jewel Dirks
Julia Wolfe
salsa al vapor (2024)
Qing Jiang, piano fixed media
Felipe Tovar Henao
Closing Concert
University Wind Orchestra and University Symphony Orchestra
Saturday, January 31, 2026
7:30 P.M. | Ruby Diamond Concert Hall
University Wind Orchestra
Rodney Dorsey, conductor
Montréal at Night (2025) Joey Stempien
Where Do We Go from Here: Keane Southard Chaos or Beloved Community? (2021)
Soul Album (2024) Noah Hudson-Camack
I. Spun from the Elements
II. Quiet Storm
III. AUDACITY
Nick Nadal, conductor
INTERMISSION
University Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Jiménez, conductor
An Imperfectly Shaped Pearl (2025)
Guilherme Rodrigues, conductor
Devin Cholodenko
Tegoniá (2024) Nico Gutierrez
Expectations (2024) Hubert Howe
Thomas Roggio, conductor
Fountain of Youth (2019) Julia Wolfe
Featured Guests
Composer Julia Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She draws inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them. In the 2025-2026 season, the Houston Symphony gives the world premiere of Liberty Bell for orchestra, wherein Wolfe wonders how a piece of music could embody and communicate the elusive reach for the most basic tenet of the founding of the United States. Co-commissioners Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Nashville, Carnegie Hall, Louisville, and the Grant Park Orchestra give their premieres throughout this season and next. Wolfe’s unEarth, commissioned and premiered in June 2023 by the New York Philharmonic — a large-scale work for orchestra, men’s chorus, and children’s chorus that addresses the climate crisis — receives its UK premiere with the BBC Symphony in January. In February the Belgian National Orchestra gives the Belgian premiere of Fire in my mouth as culmination of a season-long celebration of her music at Bozar in Brussels. Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields, in a new arrangement for orchestra and chorus, is given its world premiere in Manchester, UK by the BBC Philharmonic in March—another culmination of a separate season-long celebration of her music by the orchestra.
Wolfe’s recent premieres include Pretty, in June 2023 by conductor Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic. Co-commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Pretty is a raucous celebration — embracing the grit of fiddling, the relentlessness of work rhythms, and inspired by the distortion and reverberation of rock and roll. Her Story, a 45-minute semi-staged work for orchestra and women’s chamber choir, received its world premiere in September 2022 with the Nashville Symphony, conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, the vocal ensemble Lorelei, and stage direction by Anne Kauffman. Co-commissioned by the Nashville Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and National Symphony Orchestra,
Her Story invokes the words of historical figures and the spirit of pivotal moments to pay tribute to the centuries of ongoing struggle for equal rights and representation for women in America.
The 2019 world premiere of Fire in my mouth — a large-scale work for orchestra and women’s chorus — by the New York Philharmonic with The Crossing and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, addresses the plight of young immigrant women working in New York City’s garment industry at the turn of the century. The work received extensive acclaim — one reviewer called it “a monumental achievement in high musical drama, among the most commandingly imaginative and emotively potent works of any kind that I’ve ever experienced.” (The Nation Magazine). The work is the third in a series of compositions about the American worker: 2009’s Steel Hammer examines the folkhero John Henry, and the 2015 Pulitzer prize-winning work, Anthracite Fields, a concert-length oratorio for chorus and instruments, draws on oral histories, interviews, speeches, and more to honor the people who persevered and endured in the Pennsylvania Anthracite coal region. Mark Swed of the LA Times wrote, Anthracite Fields “captures not only the sadness of hard lives lost…but also of the sweetness and passion of a way of daily life now also lost. The music compels without overstatement. This is a major, profound work.”
Wolfe was named Musical America’s 2019 Composer of the Year; she was also a 2016 MacArthur Fellow and received the 2015 Herb Alpert Award in Music. She is co-founder/co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can, and she is Artistic Director of NYU Steinhardt Music Composition. Her music is published by Red Poppy Music and G. Ricordi & Co., New York (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by the Universal Music Publishing Group.
Bang on a Can All-Stars
Formed in 1992, the Bang on a Can All-Stars are recognized worldwide for their ultra-dynamic live performances and recordings of today’s most innovative music. Freely crossing the boundaries between classical, jazz, rock, world and experimental music, this six-member amplified ensemble has consistently forged a distinct category-defying identity, taking music into uncharted territories. Performing each year throughout the U.S. and internationally, the All-Stars have shattered the definition of what concert music is today. Together, the All-Stars have worked in unprecedented close collaboration with some of the most important and inspiring musicians of our time, including Steve Reich, Ornette Coleman, Meredith Monk, George Lewis, Louis Andriessen, Terry Riley and dozens more. The group’s celebrated projects include their landmark recordings of Brian Eno’s ambient classic Music for Airports and Terry Riley’s In C, as well as live performances with Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Don Byron, Iva Bittová, Thurston Moore, Owen Pallett and others. The All-Stars were awarded Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year and have been heralded as “the country’s most important vehicle for contemporary music” by the San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times recognized them as “a fiercely aggressive group, combining the power and punch of a rock band with the precision and clarity of a chamber ensemble.”
Current and recent project highlights include their own new arrangements of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s landmark album 1996; David Lang’s before and after nature premiered with the LA Master Chorale; Julia Wolfe’s Flower Power for Bang on a Can All-Stars and orchestra,
premiered with the LA Philharmonic; a new live arrangement of Terry Riley’s iconic and inspirational A Rainbow in Curved Air, celebrating the legendary composer’s 90th Birthday year (2025); a recording of legendary composer/performer Meredith Monk’s MEMORY GAME; Can Dance, a multimedia concert of collaborations between composers, filmmakers and choreographers; performances of the band’s much beloved arrangement of Brian Eno’s classic Music for Airports; Road Trip, an immersive and visually stunning concert collaboratively-composed by Bang’s founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe; In C, a dance collaboration with Sasha Waltz & Guests based on Terry Riley’s minimalist classic; performances and recordings of Wolfe’s PulitzerPrize winning Anthracite Fields and groundbreaking Steel Hammer; a collaboration featuring Chinese superstar singer Gong Linna called Cloud River Mountain; and much more.
With a massive repertoire of works written specifically for the group’s distinctive instrumentation and style of performance, the All-Stars have become a genre in their own right. The All-Stars record on Cantaloupe Music and have released past recordings on Sony, Universal and Nonesuch.
FSU College of Music Composition Faculty
Clifton Callender is Professor of Composition at Florida State University, teaching composition, orchestration, and music programming and computation, and has studied at the University of Chicago, Peabody Conservatory, Tulane University, and King’s College, London. His works, which often draw on mathematics, are recorded on the Capstone, New Ariel, and Navona labels. Recent commissions include Chain Reactions, for the 75th commemoration of Chicago Pile 1 (the first nuclear reactor), Canonic Offerings and Hungarian Jazz, for the Bridges Conference on the Arts and Mathematics, gegenschein, for Piotr Szewczyk’s Violin Futura project, and Reasons to Learne to Sing, for the 50th Anniversary of the College Music Society. A recent composer in residence at Copland House, his music has been recognized by and performed at MACRO
Composition Contest, Third Practice, the Spark Festival, the American Composers Orchestra, SEAMUS, Forecast Music, Composers Inc., Studio 300, the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, the International Festival of Electroacoustic Music “Primavera en La Habana,” NACUSA Young Composers Competition, the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conferences, the World Harp Congress in Copenhagen and the ppIANISSIMO festival in Bulgaria. Recent works include a focus on the climate crisis, including a setting of Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s poem for the 2014 United Nations Climate Summit, Dear Matafele Peinam, and a work for solo piano, Meditations on a Warming Planet. Also active in music theory, he has published in Science, Perspectives of New Music, Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory Online, and Intégral and currently serves as co-editor of Perspectives of New Music.
Eren Gümrükçüoğlu, Assistant Professor of Composition at Florida State University, is a composer and improviser of acoustic/electroacoustic music and a music technologist. His research explores the dynamics of interaction between electronics and live instruments, generative systems, the utilization of non-western elements in concert music, jazz improvisation, and genre divisions with an emphasis on listening practices. He has collaborated with leading ensembles and performers including the JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Semiosis Quartet, Conrad Tao, Ensemble Suono Giallo, Quince Ensemble, Deviant Septet, yMusic Ensemble, New York Polyphony, Quince Ensemble, Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, and Metropole Orkest among others. His music has been performed around the globe and featured in national and international conferences and festivals such as June in Buffalo, SICPP, ilSUONO Contemporary Music Week, Taproot New Music, ROCC Conference, and SCI. In addition to his academic work, he composed, arranged, performed, and recorded music for film and TV in Hollywood and in Turkey. His studies and years of professional experience in the global music industry span film scoring, jazz composition and improvisation, live performance/touring, audio engineering, and all aspects of music production. His scores are published by Babel Scores, Paris.
Liliya Ugay is Associate Professor of Composition at Florida State University and serves as director of Polymorphia, FSU’s new music ensemble. Her work focuses on exploration of immigrant experience, female physicality, and motherhood, often through storytelling and
drawing inspiration from material tools, such as folk instruments and children’s toys, and has been described as “evocative” (The Washington Post), “exquisite and heartwarming” (Navona), “assertive, steely...[then] lovely and supple writing” (The Wall Street Journal) that “tugs at our heart strings” (OperaGene). She was commissioned and performed by Yale Philharmonia, Nashville and Albany Symphonies, American Composers Orchestra, New England Philharmonic, Raleigh Civic Symphony, The Next Festival of Emerging Artists; ensembles such as Aspen Contemporary Music Ensemble, icarus Quartet, Victory Players, Unheard-Of//Ensemble, Music from Copland House, Molinari Quartet, Ensemble Flageolet, ensemble vim, Antico Moderno, Omnibus, and Convergence; and soloists such as Paul Neubauer, Andrea Lam, Noël Wan, Sunmi Chang, Clara Yang, Melvin Chen, Robert Fleitz, and Min Kwon. Among the festivals that featured her compositions are Aspen, Norfolk, Chelsea, Darmstadt, New York Electroacoustic, American Composers Festival, MIFA, Boston New Music Initiative, Convergence, and Venice Biennale. Most recently she has worked with activist opera company White Snake Projects on the virtual opera “Fractured Mosaics” uncovering the experiences of AsianAmericans and the series “Let’s Celebrate” creating an opera about Nowruz (Persian New Year), as well as completing commissions for Borealis Wind Quintet and Redlands Symphony. Her operatic collaborations also include Washington National Opera and American Lyric Theater, for which she was a commissioned composer-in-residence. Ugay was a recipient of the awards from Music Teachers National Association (Distinguished Composer of the Year 2024), American Academy of Arts and Letters (2016), ASCAP Morton Gould (2019), International Alliance of Women in Music (2024), and grants from Opera America (2021) and National Endowment of the Arts (2020). Originally from Uzbekistan, she graduated from Yale University (‘16MM; ‘22DMA), receiving mentorship from Aaron Kernis, Martin Bresnick, Christopher Theofanidis, Han Lash, and David Lang.
Participating Composers
Chris Arrell is a composer and associate professor at the College of the Holy Cross. His compositions, praised for their unconventional beauty by New Music Box, The Boston Music Intelligencer, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, among others, have received commissions from organizations such as the Alte Schmiede (Austria), Boston Musica Viva, MATA (New York), and the Fromm Foundation (Harvard University). Arrell’s invitations include a portrait concert at the Alte Schmiede and selection as a featured guest composer for the Pellegrini Festival of New Music (Ball State), the University of Nevada—Las Vegas, the AURA New Music Ensemble (University of Texas—Houston), and Collide-O-Scope Music (New York). A winner of the Bent Frequency’s 2023-24 Underscore Call-forScores, Arrell holds additional prizes from the Ettelson Composer Award, Ossia Music, ISCM, the Salvatore Martirano Competition, the MacDowell and ACA colonies, and the Fulbright Hays Foundation. chrisarrell(dot)com
As an artist, Devin Cholodenko is deeply interested in the introspection of time and memory and what that means to the experience of reality. Other inspirations come from history, nature, extreme experiences, mythology, and personal identity. His music has been performed, read, and recorded across the United States and internationally by chamber ensembles such as JACK Quartet, HUB New Music, Momenta Quartet, Switch Ensemble, Arx Duo, TEMPO Ensemble, and Bent Frequency. His Orchestral collaborations include The Lexington Symphony, The New England Philharmonic, the Columbia Civic Orchestra, and the Frost Symphony Orchestra. His work has been featured as part of Composers Now, Red Note, June in Buffalo, Mizzou New Music Initiative, among other events and festivals. His work has earned recognition by the American Viola Society, The Art Music Society, NewEar, The Society of Composers, Creatives Rebuild New York and other organizations in various calls, competitions, and grants.
Andrew Davis is a composer and electric guitarist from Columbia, MD who has written for a variety of media both acoustic and electroacoustic. His works have been performed by groups such as the JACK Quartet, PRISM Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, Daedalus Quartet, the Argento Ensemble, loadbang, the Boston New Music Initiative, the Luna Nova Ensemble, the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, the Yale Concert Band, the Florida
State University Wind Ensemble, and the University of Texas New Music Ensemble. He has received honors from ASCAP, BMI, The Lyra Society, and ISCM-Texas among others. Additionally, his music has been heard at a variety of festivals, including the TUTTI Festival, RED NOTE Music Festival, Mizzou New Music International Composers Festival, New Music on the Point, and SEAMUS. He has held residencies at Atlantic Center for the Arts and ACRE. He currently teaches at Ursinus College.
Jewel Dirks: Although educated in music, I’ve spent most of my life in psychology as a counselor for the seriously mentally ill and teaching brain anatomy and neurology. I am surrounded by Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation, and am retired, old and arthritic. My consuming passions in life remain roaming the wilderness areas with my packgoats and composing music from natural sounds around me, e.g. coyotes, birds, trees. I explore different ways a sound can be heard through various sampling tools and effects, which I like to refer to as Electric Earth Music. I’m finding once I do that, I tend to return to the original animal or object with a completely new understanding of its nature.
Composer, vibraphonist, and improviser Ben Dunham (b. 2002) strives to create music that reflects both his environment and personal experiences, spanning a wide range of genres and mediums. Recent works include The Sixth Stream, a cross-genre work commissioned by the University of Miami All-Stamps Ensemble, and Glass, for pianist Renato Diz. Other works have been performed by The Rhythm Method, The _____ Experiment, Peridot Duo, and the USF Percussion Ensemble. As a jazz vibraphonist, Ben has performed at prestigious venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, Maurice Gusman Hall, Scope Art Gallery (Art Basel-Miami), and the Clearwater Jazz Festival. In September of 2023, he released his debut album Homesick and leads his own trio. Recognized by organizations like Tribeca New Music, DownBeat Student Awards, and YoungArts, Ben is currently pursuing an M.M. in Music Composition at the Peabody Conservatory, studying under Dr. Felipe Lara.
With music that “sweeps us away with its energy and liveliness,” (AM:plified Magazin, Germany) Dylan Findley’s music explores and expresses intangible truths through the convergence of heart, mind, spirit, and body without disregarding the power of irony and dry wit. His career has led him to premieres on three continents by top new music performers.
As clarinetist, he has performed and improvised music across the US and in Ireland and Colombia. Dylan has received commissions from the City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, the Barlow Endowment, the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, São Paulo Contemporary Composers Festival Orchestral Commissioning Project, and New American Voices. His works have been performed by the McCormick Percussion Group, Ensemble Mise-En, newEar, Transient Canvas, Galán Trio, members of the Cleveland Orchestra, Quarteto L’Arianna, Mnemosyne Quartet, Great Noise Ensemble, PULSE Trio, and the Frost Symphony Orchestra. He teaches at the College of Wooster.
Robert Fleisher’s music has been heard throughout the United States and in more than a dozen other countries, and has been released on as many record labels. His scores have been exhibited in the United States, France, and the Netherlands. Fleisher’s acoustic music has been called “eloquent” (Ann Arbor News), “lovely and emotional” (Musicworks), “ingenious” (The Strad), and praised for its “astoundingly attractive vertical sonorities” (Perspectives of New Music); his electro-acoustic works have been described as “fascinating” (Fanfare), “endearingly low-tech” and possessing “a rich, tactile texture” (The New York Times). The author of Twenty Israeli Composers (1997), he is also a contributing composer and essayist in Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21 (2008). Awarded multiple artist residencies in the U.S. and abroad, Fleisher’s music has also received support from the Illinois Arts Council and the Ruttenberg Arts Foundation. He is Professor Emeritus at Northern Illinois University.
Described as “a young musical promise” (La Vanguardia), Nico Gutierrez is a composer that consistently writes powerful, lush music for both multimedia and concert audiences. Born to Colombian parents, Nico embraces his heritage and infuses elements of his cultural upbringing into his music. His compositions have been performed by the Santa Fe Symphony, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá. An ambassador of Latin-American music, Nico has served as composer in residence for the Barcelona Festival of Song in 2014, 2019, and 2022 and has collaborated with opera companies like: Austin Opera, Fort Worth Opera, and Ópera de Colombia. Nico was also nominated for Best Overall Composition in the 2019 London Composition Awards and placed second for the Marion Brown Prize from Bowdoin College. His work can also be heard on several films and television series
for A&E, CBS, HBO Max and companies like Huawei and Netflix.
Wan Heo is a Chicago-based composer whose works have been performed in South Korea, Hong Kong, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the United States. Her music was commissioned and performed by Darmstadt Summer Course, Yarn/Wire, line upon line percussion, Unheard//Of, New Music On the Point, and VIPA among others. Wan’s percussion solo piece, Unveiled Future, has been published by Alfonce Production in Paris. Since 2020, she has been making field recordings at Buddhist mountain monasteries in South Korea. Her works inspired by this project were presented at SEAMUS, NYCEMF, Composition In Asia conference, and North American Saxophone Alliance regional conference. Wan holds B.M. in Composition from Ewha Womans University in South Korea and M.M. in Composition from Florida State University. She is currently a PhD candidate in Composition and Music Technology at Northwestern University under the guidance of Alex Mincek, Christopher Mercer, and Jay Alan Yim.
Hubert Howe was educated at Princeton University, where he studied with J. K. Randall, Godfrey Winham and Milton Babbitt. He was one of the first researchers in computer music, and Professor of Music at Queens College, where he taught from 1967 until 2011. He also taught at the Juilliard School from 1974 to 1994. He is currently Director of the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and he was Executive Director of the New York Composers Circle from 2013 to 2024. Recordings of his music have been released by Capstone Records, Ravello Records, Ablaze Records and Centaur Records.
Noah Hudson-Camack is a composer who seeks to blend elements from disparate eras of Western art music, jazz, and popular music in his work. Believing in diversity as strength within art, the sewing together of different genre aesthetics is as much an objective in his music as developing strong motivic content, rich harmony, and complex rhythm. He explores these connections in his solo, chamber, jazz, and wind symphony works. Noah premiered Fanfare and Flight at the 2023 College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) Conference with the Vanderbilt Wind Symphony. He also was a finalist for the Austin Symphonic Band’s Young Composer Competition and a winner of Vanderbilt University’s Wind Symphony Call For Scores with his piece Quiet Storm.
Emily Koh is a Singaporean composer based in Atlanta, Georgia whose music reimagines everyday experiences by sonically expounding tiny oft-forgotten details, and explores binary states such as extremities/ boundaries and activity/stagnation. She especially enjoys collaborating with creatives of other specializations. Emily is the recipient of awards such as the Copland House Residency Award, Young Artist Award (National Arts Council, Singapore), Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize (Asian Composers League), ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Prix D’Ete (Peabody), and others. Described as “beautifully eerie” (New York Times), and “subtly spicy” (Baltimore Sun), Emily’s music has been performed around the world, and is published by Babel Scores (Europe) and Poco Piu Publishing (worldwide). Emily is currently Associate Professor of Music Composition at the University of Georgia, USA.
Praised as “colorful” and “engaging” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Scott Lee’s music often takes inspiration from popular genres, exploring oddmeter grooves and interlocking hockets while featuring pointillistic orchestration and extended performance techniques. Lee served as the Bozeman Symphony’s first-ever Composer-in-Residence from 2021–2024, and has worked with leading orchestras including the Baltimore, North Carolina, and Portland Symphony Orchestras, and chamber groups such as the JACK Quartet, yMusic, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and pop artist Ben Folds. Recent commissioners include the Barlow Endowment, Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music Festival, and Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra. Notable honors include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, and winner of the Symphony in C Young Composer’s Competition. Lee is currently an Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Florida.
Ryan Lindveit is an American composer who takes inspiration from nature, art, science, technology, and personal experience in order to craft colorful and emotionally vivid musical journeys. Lindveit is grateful to his early musical mentors in the public school system in Texas as well as for the mentorship he received during his musical training in higher education at the University of Southern California (BM), Yale University (MM, MMA), and the University of Michigan (DMA). A committed educator, he has taught composition, music theory, orchestration, arranging, film music, and music technology privately and at the collegiate level. He currently serves on the faculty of the Natalie L. Haslam College of Music at the University
of Tennessee, Knoxville as Teaching Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition.
Alexey Logunov is a composer and pianist from Saint-Petersburg, Russia. He graduated in 2014 from Saint-Petersburg State Conservatory of Rimsky-Korsakov. In 2020, he earned a master’s degree in composition from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Alexey is now a doctoral student in the Composition Department at the Jacobs School. Logunov’s compositions have been performed at numerous festivals in Russia and internationally, including RED NOTE, Synesthesia Lab, Bang on a Can LOUD Weekend, Performing Media Festival 2024, SEAMUS@40, From Avantgarde to Present Days, Sound Ways, reMusik.org, Midwest Composers Symposium 2019. Alexey is a winner of a 2023 Georgina Joshi Composition Commission Award at Jacobs School of Music and a nominee for a 2024 American Academy of Arts and Letters music award. He was respectively a scholar of and a student of the X and XI International Young Composers Academy in Tchaikovsky-city and a participant of 2023 and 2024 Splice Institute.
Ancel “Fitz” Neeley is a multimedia composer and percussionist from Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti, Michigan. His music is inspired by cinematography, screenwriting, and the intersection of technology and nature. Fitz’s works often experiment with text as a means of exploring the familiar and unfamiliar facets of human connection and communication. He has worked with Tom Sherwood and the Modern Snare Drum Competition, Cameron Leach, the IGNIS Quintet, the Michigan Music Teachers Association, the University of Michigan Concert Band, Full Gremlin Quartet, Unheard-of Ensemble, and this.is.a.tangible.space. Fitz is the artistic director and one percussionist of FLYDLPHN, a mixed chamber sextet based in southeastern Michigan dedicated to commissioning and electro-acoustic performance. He also performs with his percussion and multimedia duo VIRID, and percussion trio Brain Pocket both of whom support the creation of new works by young, living, and underrepresented composers.
The “spellbinding” (Washington Post) music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak immerses listeners in shimmering and subtly crafted musical worlds full of color, motion, light, and magic. His recent projects engage with dreams and memory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. Novak has been commissioned by and
collaborated with orchestras, chamber ensembles, and musicians around the world. He has received awards from the Barlow Foundation, ASCAP, BMI, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and more. He is the co-artistic director and flutist of Chicago-based ensemble Mycelium New Music, and is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago. paulnovakmusic.com
Charles Peck is a composer whose music has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Albany and Columbus Symphonies, Alarm Will Sound, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, the JACK Quartet, and Sandbox Percussion. Recently awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Peck has also received commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, the McKnight Foundation, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Alarm Will Sound, the Bergamot Quartet, and Ji Hye Jung, among others. His music has been featured at a variety of venues and festivals, including Carnegie Hall, the Aspen and Cabrillo Festivals, the Mizzou International Composers Festival, and the Beijing Modern Music Festival. Peck is also a member of the composition faculty at the University of Pittsburgh.
Joey Stempien (b. 2004) hails from Rochester, NY, where he has established himself as an emerging young voice in jazz and contemporary composition. Having published his first original work for big band at age 17, his unique and visceral affinities for melody and soundscape continue to allure audiences wherever his music is heard. His compositions have been brought to life by the likes of the US Navy Commodores, Eastman Jazz Ensemble, and the US Army Field Band Jazz Ambassadors, and have been performed by acclaimed soloists including Carlos Eiene, Jon Hatamiya, and Bill Tiberio. He has been commissioned to write original works for school ensembles and consortiums and has taken on work as a video-game composer. He was named the winner of the Midwest Clinic’s 2025 Barbara Buehlman Prize in Composition for his wind ensemble work Montréal at Night.
Described as “a hugely prolific musician with a wide variety of skill sets” (newmusicbuff.com), Keane Southard is a composer whose music has been proclaimed as “a terrific discovery” (Bandworld Magazine) and “highly-professional and well-orchestrated” (Portland Press Herald). His music features a wide range of styles and approaches from traditional to experimental, systematic to free, and sacred to secular. He has been a recipient of many awards, most recently a residency at the Copland House
and winner of the St. Christopher Chamber Orchestra Third International Composer Competition (Lithuania). He has been a fellow at the INK STILL WET composer/conductor workshop at the Grafenegg Festival (Austria), the Intimacy of Creativity (Hong Kong), and the Bennington Chamber Music Conference. In 2013, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil and has also taught at Bennington College and Nazareth College. Keane earned his Ph.D. in composition from the Eastman School of Music.
Composer Ingrid Stölzel (b. 1971) has been described as having “a gift for melody” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and creating work that is “richly introspective” (BBC Music Magazine) and “downright beautiful” (American Record Guide). A melodist at heart, Stölzel’s compositions have been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles and soloists across the globe. She is the recipient of numerous international composition prizes and her works have been performed in some of the world’s most revered concert halls and festivals, including Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Kennedy Center, Seoul Arts Center, Thailand International Composition Festival, Beijing Modern Music Festival, to name a few. Stölzel was born and raised in Germany and is currently Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Kansas School of Music. ingridstolzel.com
Cecilia Suhr is an award-winning intermedia artist, multimedia composer, researcher, multi-instrumentalist (violin, cello, voice, piano, bamboo flute), and painter. Her honors include receiving the Pauline Oliveros Award (IAWM), a MacArthur Foundation DML Grant, an Honorable Mention from the American Prize, and medals from the Cambridge Music Competition and Global Music Awards, Best of Competition Winner Award from BEA, etc. Her music has been featured at ICMC, SEAMUS, NYCEMF, Mise-En Music Festival, New Music on the Bayou, Performing Media Art Festival, Hot Air Music Festival, Splice Festival, Mantis Festival, TENOR, EMM, SCI, BEAST Feast, and MoXsonic, and many more. She is the author of Social Media and Music (Peter Lang, 2012) and Evaluation and Credentialing in Digital Music Communities (MIT Press, 2014). She currently serves as a full professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Arts at Miami University Regionals.
Chawin Temsittichok is a Thai composer whose works explore the interconnectedness of musical phenomena, culture, and history. His works are distinguished by vibrant timbre and effervescent ambiance, emphasizing the connection between sounds and extramusical references. Chawin’s music often draws inspiration from personal impressions, natural phenomena, and technological innovation. Incorporating his foundation in Thai traditional music, Chawin navigates across different artistic domains, weaving together contemporary sonic landscapes and Thai traditional musical elements.
SiHyun Uhm is a composer, pianist, and multimedia artist based in Los Angeles and South Korea. Her work spans classical, electronic, pop, and film/game music, and she has been commissioned by National Sawdust, New Music USA, Yamaha, and the U.S. Air Force Academy Band. Honors include fellowships from the American Composers Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony, and awards from “The President’s Own” Marine Band and Arts Council Korea. A UCLA Ph.D. candidate in composition, SiHyun integrates neuroscience and multimedia, recently using brain data from freely moving animals to create immersive works. She also received the Davise Grant for a conservation-focused music project. Her work has been featured by KEAMS, CEAM, MOXsonic, and others. She holds degrees from Eastman (B.M.) and Juilliard (M.M.), and a diploma from Walnut Hill School for the Arts.
Nicholas Villane’s works strive to achieve energetic and goal-oriented musical journeys. Born in 1996 in California, Nicholas has resided in Florida for the past decade. His music incorporates broad influences shaped by the belief that music is a shared human experience, welcoming audiences regardless of musical background and knowledge. Through constant musical momentum and drive, Nicholas’s music shifts and warps motivic content, providing a sense of liveliness within a concise and cohesive form. Nicholas has had works read and recorded by members of Victory Players, Ensemble C Barré, Talea Ensemble, Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Icarus Quartet, ~Nois Sax Quartet, Momenta String Quartet, Polymorphia, and Ithaca College Percussion Ensemble. Nicholas holds a D.M. in Composition from Florida State University having studied under Dr. Liliya Ugay. He also holds a M.M. from Ithaca College, and a B.M. from Stetson University.
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 been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, BBC Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Aizuri Quartet, Sixtrum, and Matt Haimovitz. A winner of the 2015–16 Rome Prize and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, Young has been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Koussevitzky Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, Fromm Foundation, and BMI. Her recent and upcoming projects include works for Carnegie Hall, NY Phil, Philadelphia Orchestra, Decoda, and pianist Han Chen. A graduate of MIT, McGill, and Columbia, she joined the Juilliard School faculty in 2024 and is the Slee Visiting Associate Professor at the University at Buffalo. Her music is published by Peermusic Classical.
FSU College of Music Faculty Performers
Rodney Dorsey is Professor of Music at Florida State University where he conducts the FSU Wind Orchestra and guides the graduate wind conducting program. Dorsey came to FSU from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music where he conducted the IU Wind Ensemble and taught graduate conducting courses. Prior to his tenure at the Jacobs School, he served on the faculties of the University of Oregon, University of Michigan, DePaul University and Northwestern University. He also gained extensive experience teaching in the public schools of Florida and Georgia. Dorsey studied conducting with Mallory Thompson, John P. Paynter, and James Croft. He was a clarinet student of Fred Ormand and Frank Kowalsky. As a conductor, he has led performances at several prominent events including the American Bandmasters Association Convention, College Band Directors National Conference North/Northwest Regional Conference, and the Bands of America National Festival. He is active as a guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator in the United States. International engagements include Hungary, Canada, and Bulgaria.
Dorsey’s commitment to community has been demonstrated by his participation on the board of directors for Music for All and the Midwest Clinic. He currently serves as the president of the Midwest Clinic.
Other professional memberships include the College Band Directors National Association, National Association for Music Education, Florida Bandmasters Association, Kappa Kappa Psi, Tau Beta Sigma (honorary), Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated. Dorsey is also an elected member of the American Bandmasters Association. Most recently Dorsey was named a Yamaha Master Educator.
Praised for “spirited” (Boston Globe) playing and “vigorous and passionate” (New York Times) performances, Chinese-born pianist Qing Jiang enjoys a diverse career in solo, chamber, and contemporary music. As a concerto soloist, Jiang has appeared with the Britten-Pears Orchestra under maestro Oliver Knussen, and the Lanzhou Symphony under revered Chinese conductor Zushan Bian, as well as with the Chattanooga Symphony, Williamsport Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, and Arizona State University Orchestra. Passionate about chamber music, Jiang has performed with many leading artists, including Itzhak Perlman, Joel Krosnick, Joel Smirnoff, David Shifrin, Natalie Clein, and the Juilliard, Shanghai, Jasper, and Parker string quartets. She has held longstanding collaborations with cellist Michael Kannen, and violinist Ying Xue with whom she has performed at Yellow Barn and in Carnegie Hall at the invitation of celebrated violinist Christian Tetzlaff. Jiang has also performed extensively with Roger Tapping, Natasha Brofsky, and Laurie Smukler, including a multi-city China tour.
Jiang is artist faculty at the Kneisel Hall Festival in Maine, as well as recurring faculty at Yellow Barn, Yellow Barn’s Young Artist Program, and the Interlochen Chamber Music Camp. Other festival appearances include Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Aldeburgh, Perlman Music Program, and the Garth Newel Music Center. Curious and invigorated by collaboration, Jiang has appeared with fortepianists and Jazz improvisers, as well as with noted singers Susan Narucki, Ariadne Greif, and Lucy Fitz Gibbon. She has also worked with composers Jennifer Higdon, Jörg Widmann, Brett Dean, and Colin Matthews, and commissioned works by Zhou Tian, Juri Seo, Eric Nathan, and Daniel Temkin. A recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Award, Jiang trained at Arizona State University, Juilliard, and New England Conservatory, under Caio Pagano, Robert McDonald, Wha-kyung Byun and Patricia Zander. She currently serves as Associate Professor of Piano and Director of Keyboard Collaborative Arts, and previously taught at New England Conservatory, the Curtis Institute, and Bucknell University.
Alexander Jiménez is Professor of Conducting, Director of Orchestral Activities, and String Area Coordinator at Florida State University. He has recorded on various labels such as Naxos, Navona, Neos, Canadian Broadcasting Ovation, and Mark. Jiménez has a strong dedication to contemporary composers and has collaborated with renowned composers like Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Ladisalv Kubík, Anthony Iannaccone, Krzysztof Penderecki, Martin Bresnick, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Harold Schiffman, Louis Andriessen, and Georg Friedrich Haas. As a guest conductor, he has led performances in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, including appearances with prestigious orchestras like the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Brno Philharmonic, and the Israel Netanya Chamber Orchestra. He is equally comfortable conducting professional and educational orchestras, including regional and state honor orchestras in various states, as well as the NAfME All-Eastern Honor Orchestra in 2009. Jiménez has also worked with the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.
Under Jimenez’s leadership, the orchestral studies program at FSU has grown and gained recognition as one of the top programs in the country. The University Symphony Orchestra has been featured at conferences such as the College Orchestra Directors National Conference and the American String Teachers Association National Conference. The University Philharmonia has performed at the Southeast Conference of the Music Educators National Conference and the College Orchestra Directors Association National Conference in 2023. The national PBS broadcast of Zwilich’s Peanuts Gallery® featuring the University Symphony Orchestra was recognized as an outstanding performance in 2007. In 2023, the University Symphony Orchestra embarked on a tour, delivering acclaimed performances at the Steinmetz Concert Hall of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando, as well as in Santiago and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
In addition to his conducting work, Jiménez is also a busy adjudicator. He serves as an international ambassador for the European Festival of Music for Young People in Belgium and frequently adjudicates and provides clinics for Festival Disney. At FSU, he has received University Teaching Awards in 2006 and 2018, The Transformation Through Teaching Award, and the Guardian of the Flame Award, recognizing his outstanding mentorship. At the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan, Jiménez holds positions as a principal conductor of the Festival Orchestra, Blue Lake Camerata, and serves as artistic director. Jiménez also serves as conductor of the Tallahassee Ballet, has appeared on numerous occasions with the
Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, and was the music director of the Tallahassee Youth Orchestras from 2000 to 2017.
Professor of Cello Gregory Sauer joined the College of Music in 2006. A native of Davenport, Iowa, Gregory Sauer attended the Eastman School of Music and the New England Conservatory. His principal teachers included Ada Marie Snyder, Charles Wendt, Paul Katz, Laurence Lesser, Bonnie Hampton and Colin Carr. For eleven years prior to his arrival at FSU Sauer taught at the University of Oklahoma, where he was named Presidential Professor (2005). Praised for his versatility, Sauer performs in many different musical arenas. He has appeared in recital at the Old First Concert Series in San Francisco, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, the Brightmusic Concert Series in Oklahoma City, at universities and schools of music such as the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt, the Shepherd School at Rice University, the University of Iowa and the University of Tennessee, among many others. Sauer was a prizewinner in the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and Ima Hogg National competitions and has performed concertos with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony, the New American Chamber Orchestra, the Quad City Symphony, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, the Columbus (GA) Symphony, the Tallahassee Symphony, and the Missoula Symphony, among others. Sauer joined the Carpe Diem String Quartet in 2019, playing concerts in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Siena, Italy, and in the group’s first China tour.
Along with his brother, Thomas Sauer, he serves as co-Artistic Director of Chamber Music Quad Cities in their hometown of Davenport, Iowa. Other chamber music ventures have resulted in appearances at the Austin Chamber Music Center, the Snake River Music Festival, the Victoria Bach Festival, the Texas Music Festival, the Colorado Music Festival, and the Garth Newel Music Center. As a member of the Fidelio Quartet, a prizewinning group in the London International String Quartet Competition, he performed concerts in the UK, Germany, Italy, and the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals. He attended the Eastman School of Music and the New England Conservatory. His teachers included Ada Marie Snyder, Charles Wendt, Paul Katz, Laurence Lesser, Bonnie Hampton, and Colin Carr.
Associate Professor of Double Bass George Speed enjoys a career that combines teaching with solo, chamber, and orchestral performing. He joins the College of Music faculty after 14 years as Associate Professor of Double Bass at Oklahoma State University, where he received the 2009 Wise-Diggs-Berry Award for Teaching Excellence. For the past four summers, Speed has served on the artist faculty of the Brevard Music Center in Brevard, North Carolina. Orchestral playing is central to Speed’s career. Recently appointed principal bass with the Tallahassee Symphony, he served as Principal Bass of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic from 2005-2019. Speed was a regular player with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra for 17 years, including numerous television broadcasts and domestic and international tours. He has also performed with the Boston Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, and Handel and Haydn Society, among others.
Speed is passionate about both chamber music and solo performance. The Pierre Boulez Workshop at Carnegie Hall selected him to perform Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie, Op. 9 in Weill Recital Hall under Maestro Boulez in 1999. From 2005–2019 he performed regularly with the Oklahoma City-based chamber ensemble Brightmusic. In August 2018, Centaur Records released Speed’s recording of his Vivaldi cello sonata 1–6 transcriptions, with forthcoming print publication by Recital Music.
A native of Spartanburg, South Carolina, Speed earned the Bachelor of Music degree, summa cum laude, from Vanderbilt University, and the Master of Music degree from Boston University. Additional studies include two summers at both the Aspen Music Festival and the Tanglewood Music Center, where he received the Rose Thomas Smith Legacy Prize. His principal teachers were Edwin Barker, Edgar Meyer, and William Scott. Speed plays on a late-19th century Neapolitan bass by Carlo Loveri.
Associate Professor of Voice Marcy Stonikas has performed with major opera houses and symphony orchestras across North America, Europe, and Australia. Notable operatic engagements include multiple appearances with Seattle Opera as the title roles in Turandot, Fidelio, and Ariadne auf Naxos, Miss Jessel in Turn of the Screw, Gertrude in Hansel and Gretel, Magda Sorel in The Consul, and the High Priestess in Aida; Chrysothemis in Elektra with Minnesota Opera; Senta in Der Fliegende Hölländer with Cincinnati Opera; further performances of Turandot with Atlanta Opera, Opera Naples, and Cincinnati Opera, with covers of the role at
the Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago; Leonore in Fidelio with Volksoper Vienna and Princeton Festival; Third Norn in Götterdämmerung and Gerhilde in Die Walküre for her debut with Washington National Opera; her role and house debut in the title role in Salome with Utah Opera; Ariadne with Berkshire Opera Festival; Tosca with Arizona Opera and Opera Santa Barbara; Gertrude with San Diego Opera; and multiple performances with Wolf Trap Opera as Antonia in Les contes d’Hoffmann, Rosaura in Wolf-Ferrari’s rarely staged Le donne curiose, and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, which she also performed with Opera Santa Barbara. Stonikas also had the unique opportunity to perform the roles of Irene and Mary in the American premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera with Bailiwick Repertory Theatre in Chicago. Orchestral highlights include performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with San Antonio Symphony and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra; Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the South Dakota Symphony; and she sang a Blumenmädchen in Parsifal with the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez.
Stonikas received the Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from Oberlin Conservatory and the Master of Music in Vocal Performance from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. She was First Prize winner in the Wagner Division of the 2013 Gerda Lissner Foundational Vocal Competition, the Leonie Rysanek prize-winner of the 2013 George London Vocal Competition, and a finalist in Seattle Opera’s 2014 International Wagner Competition. She is also the recipient of a Shouse Career Grant and a Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation.
Professor of Violin at Florida State University, violinist Benjamin Sung is also a Faculty Artist and Violin Coordinator of the Brevard Music Center where he acts as Concertmaster of the Brevard Opera Orchestra. Recent concert highlights include the 2022 Brevard Music Festival; the 24 Caprices by Paganini during the COVID-shortened 2019–20 season; a complete Beethoven sonata cycle with pianist David Kalhous; and a TED talk for TEDx Fargo. In 2022, after sharing 10 years of concerts of the violinpiano repertoire, Sung and Kalhous are embarking on a new chapter of their partnership, called extension, an effort to present the greatest music of the existing repertoire along with newly commissioned works from today’s most exciting composers, both in live performance and recorded and streaming media. An enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music, Sung has recorded the music of composers Steve Rouse and Marc Satterwhite for Centaur Records, has performed and taught for
Studio 2021 at Seoul National University, and has worked with many of the greatest composers of this generation, including John Adams, Pierre Boulez, George Crumb, and Helmut Lachenmann. He recently released an album of new American works entitled FluxFlummoxed on Albany Records, hailed by Fanfare Magazine as “a brilliant performance of four superb works” with “impeccable intonation and tone production.” Sung has an upcoming new solo album featuring works by Sciarrino, Berio, Maderna, and Schnittke.
Sung has performed as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Camerata Romeu of Havana, Cuba, the Virtuosi of Festival Internacionale de Musica in Recife, Brazil, and the National Repertory Orchestra. He is equally in demand as a chamber musician, having shared the stage with great performers including pianist Monique Duphil, and cellists Antonio Meneses and Marcio Carneiro. He is a past winner of the Starling Award of the Eastman School of Music and the Violin Fellowship of the Montgomery Symphony, and an Aaron Copland Fund Recording Grant. Sung holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Oleh Krysa, and Master’s and Doctoral degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, from the studio of Nelli Shkolnikova. Sung also studied at the Professional Training Program at Carnegie Hall, the Lucerne Festival Academy, the New York String Seminar, and the Chamber Music Residency at The Banff Centre.
Lauded as “a huge talent [with] hidden power and amazing maturity” (Bart van Oort), Taiwanese-American harpist Noël Wan (1994) made her international debut with the Utrecht Symphony Orchestra in 2010. She has performed across North America, Europe, and Asia and has been featured as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, the Muziekgebouw, American Harp Society Summer Institute, World Harp Congress, and Yellow Barn Summer Music Festival. Among her international distinctions are Gold Medal and the Mario Falcao Prize in the 12th USA International Harp Competition; First Prize and the Forgotten Lore Prize in the 2010 Dutch Harp Festival Competition; Grand Prize in the 2014 Carmel Music Society Competition; and Second Prize in the 2013 Nippon International Harp Competition, 2015 Korea International Harp Competition, and 2021 Prix Orford Musique. Additionally, her artistic and scholarly work has been supported by the Illinois Distinguished Fellowship, Chimei Arts Foundation, Presser Foundation, and Ontario Arts Council.
Wan is an alumna of the University of Illinois (B.M., D.M.A.) and the Yale School of Music (M.M.), and her primary teachers include Ann Yeung, June Han, Chimei Hung, Erika Waardenburg, Dan Yu, Doug Rioth, and Linda Wood Rollo. As an educator and scholar, she has contributed to Harp Column, The Collective, and The American Harp Journal, where she has written on philosophy, music education, and feminism. Wan has taught at the University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Western University.
Festival Performers
Masayoshi Arakawa, violin
Nick Bahr, percussion
JJ Baker, percussion
Jordi Banitt, flute
Travis Beeton, percussion
Jordan Brown, percussion
Bailey Bryant, violin
Susanna Campbell, bassoon
Caleb Duden, contrabass
Jenna Eschner, clarinet
Daniel Farias, piano
Hannah Farmer, bassoon
Logan Florence, guitar
Jennifer Fuentes, alto saxophone
Nikkie Galindo, flute
Mitchell George, cello
Jacob Grice, viola
Elizabeth Grice, piano
Ian Guarraia, vibraphone
Carlos Guevara, guitar
Steven Higbee, clarinet
Jeremy Hill, viola
Dawson Huynh, clarinet
İlayda İlbaş, violin
Qing Jiang, piano
Maya Johnson, viola
Drew Jungslager, percussion
Kathryn Lang, flute
Rachel Lawton, violin
Dain Lee, piano
Charlotte MacDonald, bass clarinet
Nicholas Mackley, bass clarinet
Sam Malavé, flute
Zachary Matthews, tenor saxophone
Will McCoy, vibraphone
Param Mehta, cello
Elizabeth Milan, violin
Alex Nagy, piano
Quin Nardone, piano
AJ Nguyen, soprano saxophone
Eric On, horn
Emily Palmer, violin
Claire Park, flute
Seunghye Park, piano
Kaeden Parks, alto saxophone
Wayne Pearcy, trumpet
Ioana Popescu, violin
Thomas Roggio, violin
Bárbara Santiago, violin
Greg Sauer, cello
Isabelle Scott, harp
George Speed, contrabass
Turner Sperry, cello
Ethan Stefanski, percussion
Ashton Stewart, baritone saxophone
Jaxon Stewart, clarinet
Marcy Stonikas, soprano
Cecilia Suhr, violin
Benjamin Sung, violin
Tim Thomas, percussion
Thong Truong, piano
Liliya Ugay, piano
Emelia Ulrich, violin
Thu Vo, cello
Noël Wan, harp
Sarah Ward, oboe
Shelby Werneth, flute
Raymond Wilkerson, alto saxophone
Anthony Zamora piano
Piccolo
Moriah Emrich
Flute
Sam Malave
Kathryn Lang
Kendall Smith
Claire “Parky” Park
Oboe
Rebecca Keith
Jordan Miller
Sarah Ward (+ EH)
Bassoon
Hunter Fisher
Dakota Jeter
Elizabeth Novak (+ contra)
Clarinet
Harper Golden
Jenna Eschner
Charlotte MacDonald
Daniel Kim
Taylin Hamilton
Xavier Williams
Zhu Zhiyao
Hali Alex
Jariel Santiago
Reymon Contrera
University Wind Orchestra Personnel
Rodney Dorsey, Conductor
Bass Clarinet
Steven Higbee
Saxophone
Jack Blumer, alto
Kaiden Klingler, alto
Ash Stewart, tenor
Micah Mazzella, baritone
Trumpet
Noah Solomon
Sharavan Duvvuri
Jeremiah Gonalez
Avery Hoerman
Jordyn Myers
Will Rich
Horn
Gio Pereira
Eric On
Allison Hoffman
Jeason Lopez
Clare Ottesen
Trombone
Connor Altagen
Elijah van Camp-Goh
Landon Ellenberg
Bass Trombone
Maxwell Brower
Euphonium
Anthony Gonzalez
Adam Zierden
Tuba
Yoni Zegye
Colin Teague
String Bass
Jarobi Watts
Piano
Lujie Wang
Harp
Margaret Anne Altagen
Percussion
John “JJ” Baker
Caitlin Magennis
Waylon Hansel
Owen Montgomery
Jordan Brown
University Symphony Orchestra Personnel
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor
Violin
1
Jean-Luc Cataquet Santaella‡
Francesca Puro
Masayoshi Arakawa
Bailey Bryant
Stacey Sharpe
Abigail Jennings
Keat Zhen Cheong
Elizabeth Milan
Ioana Popescu
Emily Palmer
Rachel Lawton
Ilayda Ilbas
Mari Stanton
Sobin Son
Violin 2
Javaxa Flores*
Mariana Reyes Parra
Will Purser
Victoria Joyce
Hayden Green
Carlos Cordero Mendez
Katherine Ng
Samuel Ovalle
Noah Johnson
Quinn French
Alexa Dinges
Christopher Wheaton
Viola
Jeremy Hill*
Nathan Oyler
Harper Knopf
Emelia Ulrich
Maya Johnson
Abigayle Benoit
Jonathan Taylor
Yey Mulero Rivera
Spencer Schneider
Noel Medford
Hannah Jordan
Tyana McGann
Cello
Turner Sperry*
Jake Reisinger
Abbey Fernandez de Castro
Thu Vo
Sydney Spencer
Mitchell George
Noah Hays
Tia Stajkowski
Ryan Wolff
Natalie Taunton
Param Mehta
Jaden Sanzo
Bass
Jarobi Watts*
Paris Lallis
Kent Rivera
Connor Oneacre
Caleb Duden
Christian Maldonado
Flute
Paige Douglas*
Shelby Werneth
Jordi Banitt
Oboe
Rebecca Johnson**
Gracee Myers**
Steven Stamer
Andrew Swift
English Horn
Steven Stamer
Clarinet
Jenna Eschner**
Daniel Kim**
Hali Alex
Bass Clarinet
Steven Higbee
Bassoon
Hannah Farmer**
Josie Whiteis**
Hunter Fisher
Contrabassoon
Hunter Fisher
Horn
Kate Warren**
Gio Pereira**
Allison Hoffman
Eric On
Jeason Lopez
Trumpet
Noah Solomon*
Avery Hoerman
Johniel Nájera
William Rich
Trombone
Grant Keel*
Aryn Nester
Bass Trombone
Brent Creekmore
Tuba
Yoni Zegeye
Percussion and Timpani
Darci Wright
Gabby Overholt
Matthew Korloch
Timothy Thomas
Alex Aquino
Caleb Blakeslee
Harp
Noa Michaels
Keyboard Lujie Wang
Orchestra Manager Za’Kharia Cox
Orchestra Stage Manager
Carlos Cordero Mendez
Orchestra Librarians
Guilherme Rodrigues
Tom Roggio
Library Bowing Assistant
Victoria Joyce
‡ Concertmaster * Principal ** Co-Principal
SPECIAL THANKS
The Festival of New Music would like to extend sincere thanks to the following for their support:
Nick Smith, Cameron Downs, Grace Atkins, and the College of Music concert hall staff
The College of Music communications and production teams
The College of Music business office
Dr. Li Yeoh and the College of Music piano technology staff
Amy Diaz de Villegas and Stephanie Pieczynski (WFSU) and Associate Dean Greg Jones
