Artists

ZVONIMIR NAGY is a Croatian-born, American composer, performer, and music scholar based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He earned a Doctor of Music degree in composition from Northwestern University, and also studied music at Texas Christian University and at the Academy of Music in Zagreb, Croatia.

www.nagymusic.com

Ron Nagorcka (born 1948) composes in his hand-built solar-powered studio in a remote forest in Tasmania (the island state off Australia's south coast) where the natural world provides him with much of his inspiration. He has been exploring both music and nature since his childhood on an Australian sheep farm and studied music - including pipe organ, harpsichord, and composition - at the University of Melbourne and the University of California, San Diego. In the 1970s he was a prominent and influential figure in Melbourne as an innovative composer, teacher, keyboard performer and improviser with electronics. He was also one of the first non-indigenous musicians to master the didjeridu and pioneered its use in classical composition.

After moving to Tasmania in 1987, his unique and distinctive rhythmic and harmonic style soon gained him a popular local following, and since the late1990s, his audience has greatly expanded, with successful concerts in Japan, Rome, London, New York, Los Angeles, Sweden and Norway in recent years.

Akemi Naito is a composer based in New York City. Born in Tokyo, she studied composition at the University Division of the Toho Gakuen School of Music and was a member of the school’s faculty from 1980 to 1991. Following her earlier activity as a composer in Tokyo, she received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council that enabled her to move to New York City in 1991.

Naito’s works have been featured in music festivals around the world, including The Second Aoyama Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop) at the Tessenkai Noh Theater in Tokyo; Clásicos en Verano in Madrid; Fribourg International Festival of Sacred Music; Music Festival Valendas in Switzerland; Mersin International Music Festival in Turkey; International Bayan Festival in Moscow; International Congress of Percussion in Poland; a number of times at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC); Gaudeamus Music Festival in Amsterdam; Melbourne Festival; Musica Scienza Roma; Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival; Japan Society Spring Festival and Music from Japan Festival in New York City; Foro Internacional de Música Nueva in Mexico; and Music Today International Festival in Tokyo. Her marimba piece, Memory of the Woods, which was written for William Moersch in 2000, has received numerous performances both in the United States and internationally.

Naito is a recipient of awards and grants from organizations including the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center (currently called New Music USA); the Recording Program of the Aaron Copland Fund for Music for her album in conjunction with Cygnus Ensemble; the Bellagio residency from the Rockefeller Foundation; Chamber Music America; the New York Foundation for the Arts; ASCAP Standard Awards; Meet the Composer Fund; the first Aaron Copland Award from the Copland House residence; and resident fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, and Millay Colony for the Arts.

Her recent work, Emily Brontë – Through Life and Death, A Chainless Soul, a poetic mono-opera based on selected poems by Emily Brontë, was premiered at the Tenri Gallery of Tenri Cultural Institute in New York City in January 2018. Opera Wire acclaimed the production, describing it as “A Fitting Celebration of Brontë’s Genius” and “a wonderful example of the beauty that can be found when words mingle with music, each giving the other new life and meaning.”

Her album Mindscape was released by Bridge Records in 2006 and Strings & Time was released by CRI in 1997. In addition, her compositions can be heard on Toshiba EMI, ALM, URTEXT, New Focus Recordings, and Camerata Tokyo. Her works have been published by HoneyRock in the United States, AUGEMUS in Germany, and SONIC ARTS in Japan.
www.akeminaito.com

Composer Anne Neikirk is drawn to creative processes that involve interdisciplinary work. Her background in vocal music instilled a particular interest in the relationship between music and the written word. Past awards and grants include the Presser Music Award, an American Composers Forum Subito Grant, and inclusion in the Society of Composers CD Series. Neikirk has presented her work at conferences including those of the Society of Composers, the College Music Society, the Society of Electroacoustic Music in the United States, and the American Harp Society, among others. Her music is distributed by ADJective New Music, LLC.

Neikirk received her DMA in Composition from Temple University, preceded by an MM from Bowling Green State University and a BA in Music from Hamilton College. Upon completing her education, she worked as an adjunct faculty member at Temple University and at the University of Delaware. In 2016 she began as an Assistant Professor of Composition/Theory at Norfolk State University in Virginia. She has served on the Executive Boards of the College Music Society (Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Chapters) and the Society of Composers, Inc.

The New Hudson Saxophone Quartet possesses a rare combination: a dedication to playing accessible new American music, combined with a beautiful, blending saxophone sound. Their repertoire can range from newly commissioned works by Robert Kyr, David Noon, Elias Tanenbaum, Dexter Morrill, Steve Rosenhaus and Ron Mazurek, to original repertoire by 19th-century American composer Caryl Florio and Russian Romantic Alexander Glazounov, to classic Hollywood Sax Quartet versions of popular song standards. Deeply involved with education, the four members are on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, New York University, Rutgers, William Paterson University and Montclair State University, and regularly are asked to present residencies and master classes as part of their annual touring schedule. The members of the Quartet all are veteran chamber musicians and accomplished soloists, with credits that include the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, The Absolute Ensemble, and the Kirov and Juilliard Orchestras, as well as jazz musicians Clark Terry, James Moody, Muhal Richard Abrams and Milt Hinton. They bring their widely varied experiences toward a dedication to beautiful ensemble, a pure sound, and the ability to turn on a stylistic dime.

Composer/pianist Ketty Nez joined the Boston University School of Music in 2005. Her ethnographic chamber opera, The Fiddler and the Old Woman of Rumelia, was premiered in 2011 by Xanthos Ensemble, and staged by Juventas Ensemble in 2012. Her portrait CD with Albany, Listen to a Wonder Never Heard Before!, was released in 2010. Ketty's first opera, An Opera in Devolution: Drama in 540 Seconds, was premiered at the A*Devantgarde Festival in Munich in 2003. A visiting composer/scholar at Stanford Universityís Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) in 2001, Ketty studied at IRCAM in 1998-9, after working for two years with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam.

VJEKOSLAV NJEŽIĆ (Brežice, Slovenia, 1973) graduated in composition from the Music Academy in Zagreb in 1999. He finished his masters in Composition and Music Technology in 2005 at the Faculty of Arts, Media and Technology in Hilversum, Netherlands. From 1997 to 1999 he was a fellow of the City of Zagreb and for the academic year 2003/04 he won the HUYGENS scholarship awarded by Nuffic, the Dutch organization for internationalization in higher education. He attended seminars in Semmering (1996), Radziejowice (1997), and Darmstadt (1998), as well as the choral music seminar in Luxembourg (1997) and electronic music seminars in Szombathely (1999) and Grožnjan (2000). He taught from 2001 to 2005 at the University of Osijek and has been teaching at the Music Academy in Zagreb since 2000, where he is currently Full Professor at the Department of Composition and Music Theory. He worked as the editor of the edition Ars Croatica of the Croatian Composers' Society (2002-2003) and as a music producer. He is the author of more than 40 works of orchestral, chamber, vocal, electronic, stage, and film music.
Awards: First prize at the Vienna-Prague-Budapest International Summer Academy, Semmering, Austria - Springtime, for violin and cello (1996); finalist at Concours européen de composition, Amiens, France - Voce me, for female choir (1997); Rector's Award of the University of Zagreb - Suoi piccoli piedi di neve, for harpsichord and wind ensemble (1998); Porin Award for Best Production of Classical Music Album (2012 and 2017).