Eight Philadelphia area composers selected to work with violinist Min Young Kim
ACF Philadelphia is pleased to announce the names of eight Philadelphia area composers who will workshop their compositions with violinist Min Young Kim this winter. These artist were selected from an open call for scores earlier this fall. Each composer will receive one on one time with Min Young Kim as well as a reading recording of their workshop.
Richard C. Brodhead
Ellen Fishman
Anagha Kapsi
Heather Mease
Robin Meeker-Cummings
Cyrano Jett Rosentrater
Theodore Irvin Silar
Michael Robert Smith
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
A native of Philadelphia, where he heard his first compositions performed during his secondary school years, Richard C. Brodhead (he/him) earned his Bachelor’s degree as a Scholar of the House in music composition at Yale University, and his Master’s degree in composition at the University of Pennsylvania, where his principal teacher was Richard Wernick, a central and abiding influence on his work. Brodhead’s compositions—works for symphony orchestra, vocal and choral music, chamber music for a variety of solo instruments and ensembles, and works for dance—have been presented by such organizations as the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Network for New Music, among many others. From 1986 until his retirement from teaching in 2013, Brodhead served on the faculty of Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, where he also held a number of administrative positions, including Associate Dean and Acting Dean.
Ellen Fishman (she/her) creates multimedia performances for audiences who crave new experiences at the intersection of art, music and technology. After awarded a 2017 Opera America Grant for Female Composers for the development of Marie Begins, a pilot of this interactive opera was produced as an online series featuring Grammy nominated soprano, Lauren Worsham. Since then, Marie Begins was premiered to a national audience through a broadcast with live interaction by the Westminster Choir College Opera Theatre after workshop performances at the Opera America New Works Forum and at Arizona State University. Other interactive or immersive works include Ruptures for piano and 360 audio recently performed by pianist Marilyn Nonken at NYU and Remix Interactive, a work for live orchestra and an interactive iOS light show in partnership with Drexel University ExCITe Center and Play On, Philly! Ellen is a graduate of Peabody Conservatory, UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University.
Anagha Kapsi (she/her) is a high school junior attending the University Scholars Program at PALCS. She has been playing violin for the past 11 years and is currently studying with Lee Snyder. She is also the violinist of the Gray Charitable Trust Piano Trio at the Settlement Music School. As a composer, Anagha’s compositions have been performed at the 2016 and 2018 Music School of Delaware graduation ceremonies. In 2015, she composed a string quartet for the 'Sound of Silent Voices Project' to give voices to children silenced during the Holocaust. Anagha is the associate principal of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra and the co-concertmaster of the Delaware County Youth Orchestra. She is also a Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth (PMAY) Artist. Anagha is a member of the Colburn School’s first national cohort of the Fortissima program. Anagha was featured on NPR’s From the Top, Show 392.
Heather Mease (she/they) is a composer and electronic musician whose work focuses on the appropriation of media, recorded materials, and found objects as a means for exploring material culture, waste, and the consequences of nostalgia. Heather is a doctoral candidate in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia.
Robin Meeker-Cummings (he, they) is a composer, sound artist, and improviser. They spent years active in the Philadelphia experimental and new music scenes organizing concerts and performing improvised electronics. In the Summer of 2018, they attended a 9-day long Program in the countryside near Barcelona focused on sound art with found sounds. Robin has recently been performing improvised electroacoustic music. Using found objects, bells, and parts of wind instruments they create thick textures and pointillistic gestures with the use of live processing. Robin's development in electroacoustic composition has been encouraged by attending the Splice festival. They took classes about composing for electroacoustic instrumentation and had one of their pieces premiered at this festival. Robin has been working with multichannel spatialization and had a piece for 4.1 speaker orientation premiered at the ICMC in NYC in the summer of 2019.
Cyrano Jett Rosentrater (he/him), 14, attends ninth grade at Masterman School in Philadelphia. For music performance, Cyrano has studied with Scott Wagner (violin), Dr. Ariane Alexander (piano), and currently with Kimberly Fisher (violin). For music composition and theory, Cyrano has studied with Dr. Alexander and Dr. Thomas Whitman. Some orchestras that Cyrano is currently a part of are the Philadelphia Young Artists Orchestra, and the All-City HS Orchestra, being concertmaster of the latter. Cyrano has composed music for chamber, orchestra, solo, concerto, and art song. In 2019, Cyrano was a recipient of a Marian Anderson grant for young artists. He is also a Philadelphia Primavera Artist. Cyrano was the winner of the state MTNA Junior Composition Competition thrice and received second place in the Northeast Regional Competition twice in recent years.
Theodore Irvin Silar (he/him): “I’ve been a bricklayer, cab-driver, auto-worker, film promoter, professor. I’ve played rock 'n' roll at high school hops, blues in Texas roadhouses, country in rural fire halls, jazz piano in smoky cocktail lounges, sung Bach in Saxony and twelve-tone music a capella. I’ve studied with students of Nadia Boulanger and Roger Sessions. My aspiration has always been to write Classical Music for Everyday People.”
Michael Robert Smith (he/him, b. 1989) is an award-winning composer of contemporary concert music. His music has been commissioned and performed by The Crossing, Chorosynthesis, Mouthscape, the SFCM New Music Ensemble, soprano Winnie Neih, The Glassbrook Vocal Ensemble, Pianist Josh Wilson, The Commonwealth Club of California, cellist Nadia Geier, and violinist Sam Weiser. Michael has won multiple awards and prizes, including the 1st place prize in the SFCM Biennial Choral Composition competition, 2nd place prize in the SFCM Biennial Art Song Competition, and the Commonwealth Club of California’s Fanfare Commission, which was premiered by members of the San Francisco Symphony for the grand opening of the Club’s new building. In addition to composing, Michael is an active choral performer and church musician, as well as a conductor. He has performed with many prestigious institutions including the New York Philharmonic, The London Philharmonia, the Philadelphia Orchestra (featured soloist), and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra as a member of the Westminster Symphonic Choir.
A founding member of the acclaimed Daedalus Quartet, violinist Min-Young Kim enjoys a career that highlights her versatility as a performing musician. As first violinist of the Daedalus Quartet, she performs regularly throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia, and has been presented by many of the world’s leading musical venues including Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Concertgebeouw in Amsterdam. In addition, she has toured with Musicians from Marlboro, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and East Coast Chamber Orchestra and has performed in chamber music festivals across the US, France and Singapore. An advocate for the music of our time, Ms. Kim enjoys working closely with composers and has commissioned and premiered many new works including those of Fred Lerdahl, Anna Weesner, Huck Hodge, and Wolfgang Rihm. She can also be heard on historical violin in the baroque orchestras, Tempesta di Mare and Apollo’s Fire, with whom she recorded and performed as a soloist. A dedicated teacher, Ms. Kim holds degrees from Harvard, Juilliard and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and currently teaches at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.