(Art) Song Lab

Where Poets Composers & Poets Come Together

Filtering by Tag: Composer

Dubravko Pajalic

Dubravko Pajalic graduated from the Music Academy, Department of Musicology and Music Journalism, University of Zagreb, Croatia. He also studied Archival Studies and Informatics in Croatia, Austria and in Canada. He music studies include: the flute, guitar, choral conducting (Emil Cossetto, Jon Washburn) and composition (Stanko Horvat). Since arriving to Canada he has been conducting community and church choirs, and regularly attends music workshops. Dubravko’s compositions take on the format of a “bricolage" - works influenced by a diverse range of things and themes available (for example: a current mood or a mind-set ; or, simply a subconscious reflex to melodic material).

Jordan Key

Jordan Key is currently pursuing his PhD in composition at the University of Florida under Professor Paul Richards. Previously, he studied and taught at The University of Arizona, where he earned his Master of Music degree in Composition under Professor Daniel Asia. Jordan earned his Bachelor's degrees at the College of Wooster in Ohio under composer Jack Gallagher. Jordan has had a number of works performed. Significant are recent performances by internationally renowned organist Pamela Decker of his "Chorale Suite for the Crucifixion of Christ," the Vancouver Art Song Lab of his "Dream Season's Done," the Charlotte New Music Festival of "The Vision of Cataclysm" for flute quartet and percussion, and his work with the Florida Players at the University of Florida on theatrical music for Melancholy Play by Sarah Ruhl. Jordan's interests in early music, bagpipe music, and modern organ repertoire give his music a distinct contrapuntal and harmonic flare that is both rhythmically diverse and melodically compelling.

Nebal Maysaud

Nebal Maysaud was born in 1995 in Alexandria, Virginia. Born son of two Lebanese bakers, he did not grow up in a musical family but has found music on his own. His music is a convergence of Lebanese tradition, faith, queer liberation, and contemplation of our current society. He is not afraid to portray the suffering of those who are often silenced and firmly believes in the power of music to express the voices and needs of the oppressed, particularly among those with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. His music is influenced by many different artists of various traditions, including Vaughan Williams, Khalil Gibran, Arvo Part, Walt Whitman, Mahmoud Darwish, Guillaume de Machaut and J.S. Bach.

Nebal also has a huge interest in Religious Studies and is usually not afraid to integrate that into his music. Finding multiple ways to speak the mysticism of the universe to his audience. He emphasizes openness in his religious works, asserting that everyone, regardless of sexual or gender identity, class standing, or religious belief or lack thereof (including those outside the Abrahamic tradition), are open to the grace and mercy of the divine.

Nebal Maysaud has composed for a number of ensembles and won numerous awards, including the Alexandria Choral Society Carol Competition, where the Alexandria Choral Society performed his A Capella work, Winter Dusk in concert. Nebal was also a recipient of the first Kluge Young Composer’s Competition, in which his work, O Great Mystery, was performed in concert by the Alexandria Symphony. Nebal has was taught under famed Wind Band composer Mark Camphouse during high school before entering the studios of Joanne Metcalf and Asha Srinivasan. He is currently a composition student in the studio of Prof. Andrew Cole at the Lawrence Conservatory of Music in Appleton, WI. 

Graham A. Smith

Graham A. Smith recently completed his PhD in composition at York University in Toronto.  He was awarded a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship for his dissertation research which focuses on the requiem mass.  His dissertation was supervised by Michael Coghlan and includes an original requiem mass composition for large orchestra and chorus that has a duration of sixty minutes.  Graham also holds an MA in composition from York and a BMus from Queen’s University in Kingston.  While at Queen’s, Graham had the privilege of studying composition with John Burge and Marjan Mozetich. 

As a musician, Graham is active as a versatile freelance double bassist and electric bassist with more than a decade of professional performance experience in settings that include orchestral, jazz, chamber, singer-songwriter, musical theatre, folk, rock, and world.  Graham also maintains a private teaching studio in Toronto’s Christie Pits neighbourhood where he lives with his wife, professional cellist Erika Nielsen.

Sandro Manzon

Sandro Manzon (born April 2, 1991) is a Canadian musician/composer.  His music spans a variety of realms, focusing on forms of experimental, chamber and psychedelic soft-rock music.  His music has been performed in North America, Europe and Asia.  Sandro is also the frontman and contributing songwriter for the acclaimed psychedelic soft-rock band, f r o m h e r e.  

Sandro studied composition in Canada with notable composers such as Peter Hatch, Allison Cameron, Linda Catlin Smith, and James Harley.  Sandro has also attended composition workshops/lectures by renowned international composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki and Pierluigi Billone.   

In 2010, Sandro formed the band Edges, which features some of Toronto's renowned improvising and experimental musicians.  Sandro has also taught composition and improvisation workshops in Canada, and Vietnam.  

Sandro is currently situated in Montreal, Quebec but has spent time living and working as a musician in Spain, Vietnam and Canada.

Emily Joy Sullivan

Emily Joy Sullivan is a composer, choir director, and educator from Buffalo, NY. She holds a B.A. in Music, Magna Cum Laude, from Amherst College and an M.S. in Early Childhood and Childhood General Education from the Bank Street College of Education. Ms. Sullivan is currently working towards a Master's Degree in Music Composition at SUNY Fredonia, where she studies with Paul Coleman; she has also studied with Eric Sawyer, Peter Klatzow, and Robert Deemer. Ms. Sullivan’s music is characterized by lyricism and lush expressivity, and is deeply influenced by folk, pop, and world music. Ms. Sullivan loves writing musical theater, and is especially interested in writing for the female voice. She strives to incorporate her feminist principles into her compositions, writing songs that give characters agency and expressivity. 

Ms. Sullivan continues to teach, and has been active in directing and/or founding singing groups for the last ten years. She received a 2012 Davis Projects for Peace grant to bring together South African youths of different backgrounds through community choral singing. She also fundraised for and founded a youth choir in Queens, NY.  Her community choir in New York touched the lives of adults from dozens of countries, and continues to perform six years on. She is currently “spreading seeds” through her role designing and teaching Chorus and Music Theory curricula at the Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology.

Glenn Sutherland

Glenn Sutherland, composer of vocal, choral, and instrumental works, has studied composition with Michael Trew, Lane Price, and Jocelyn Morlock. His vocal, chamber and orchestral works have been performed by soloists and ensembles in Canada and in Europe. Performers include Melanie Adams (soprano), Heidi Krutzen (harp), the Grand River Chorus, Erato Ensemble, the McGregor-Nesselroad-Barnes Trio, the Vancouver Brass Project, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (Jean Coulthard Readings), and recently by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra as part of their 25th anniversary New Music Festival concert series. Winnipeg’s award-winning Esprit de Choeur featured their commission of three pieces in their June 2016 concert, as well as during the 2015 Tapestry International Festival for Women’s Voices. He has been published by Mayfair Music and Avondale Press. He is the 2016 winner of the Canadian Music Centre (Prairie Region) Emerging Composer competition.

When not composing, he is a conservation biologist, primarily focussed on issues involving endangered species.

Sammy Shatner

Sammy Shatner moved to Canada in 2011 from North Africa to pursue a post-secondary education in music. Having had no prior formal musical training, he completed the one-year Basic Musicianship Program at Douglas College and subsequently the two-year University Transfer Program. At Douglas College he studied classical guitar with renown performer and professor Michael Strutt, and composition with renown Vancouver-based composer and music professor Doug Smith. In 2015 he transfered to the University of British Columbia to continue his undergraduate degree in composition, studying with Stephen Chatman and Dorothy Chang. He has composed for various solo instrumentalists and chamber ensembles and has had works performed at Douglas College, the Vancouver Academy of Music, and the School of Music at UBC. He has also worked with UBC singers and poets from the Vancouver Thursdays Writing Collective to create new art songs under collaborative pianist and professor Rena Sharon, founder of the Vancouver International Song Institute. 

Sammy is currently completing the last year of his Bachelor of Music at UBC.

Zachary Kenefick

Zachary Kenefick is an artist usually located around Long Beach, California. He has studied poetry, sculpture, and composition at CSU Long Beach. His artistic output is often centered around the tension between virtuosity and amateurism and the role the institution and canon has on both. He enjoys working with technology and collaborative processes. He often works with dancers and visual artists, and enjoys large scale collaborations— recently taking up curation of eclectic concerts and gatherings as an element of his artistic practice. He plays the saxophone decently well and the banjo endearingly poorly.

Roisin Adams

Roisin Adams is a Vancouver based composer/arranger/pianist/educator. Upon completing her studies at Vancouver Community College, she was named the winner of the 2013 Contemporary Composition Competition, Chris Gage Memorial Award, Fred Bass Scholarship, and the Andres Espinoza Memorial Scholarship. In association with NOW Society, she curates a monthly series called, "Here and NOW" which is dedicated to fostering community within the improvised music genre. Recent highlights include participating in SFU'S LAUNCH! 2015 showcase of emerging artist and performing with contemporary Flamenco/Tap dancer Dayna Szyndrowski and harpist Elisa Thorn in their interdisciplinary project, Written on the Body. While not composing, Adams performs regularly as a soloist and in her independent project, Hildegard's Ghost. Roisin Adams is the recipient of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. She currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Jordan Alexander Key

Jordan Key, a resident of Arizona, has been studying composition since 2005. He has received performances from around the country, most recently featuring “Salve Regina,” performed by the College of Wooster’s Symphonic Choir in 2013 and "Vision of Cataclysm," by the Charlotte New Music Festival in 2014. His recent academic work has culminated in his thesis “Spirosony,” a study of spirituality through music, focusing primarily on experiences of music in chant+ In conducting his research, he spent residencies throughout a year at monasteries around the world, including the Abbey of Solesmes in France and the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

Adam Scime

Adam Scime has been praised as "…a fantastic success…" (CBC) and "Astounding, the musical result was remarkable" (icareifyoulisten.com). Awards received for his work include The Socan Young Composer's Competition, The Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music, Esprit’s Young Composer Competition, and the Electro-Acoustic Composer’s Competition. Recent notable
performances include Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, New Music Concerts, The Esprit Orchestra, l'orchestre francophonie, The Continuum Ensemble, a feature in the Emergents Series at the
Music Gallery, the Hamilton Philharmonic New Music Festival, the UofT New Music Festival, and broadcasts on CBC Radio. Future projects include a new Opera for FAWN and the Thin Edge
Collective, commissions for The Esprit Orchestra, the Array Ensemble and New Music Concerts for upcoming seasons. Adam is currently studying as DMA student with Gary Kulesha at UofT
and previously with Paul Frehner at UWO.

Lucas Oickle

Lucas Oickle is an award-winning Nova Scotian composer currently based in Vancouver. In late 2014 he was awarded the prestigious "2011 Canada Games Young Artist of Excellence Award" by the Nova Scotia Talent Trust, which carries a $10 000 monetary prize.

Other accolades include winning the spring 2013 TEMPO Call for Scores, the Penthelia Singers' inaugural 'Canadian Folk Song Arranging Competition', the Via Choralis 2014 Composition Competition, and the 'Green Dot Composer Competition'. Previously, Lucas was a composer-in-residence for the Bathurst Chamber Music Festival and was the inaugural "Featured Student Composer" of the NSYO's 12/13 season.

Mirae Hwang

Composer and pianist Mirae Hwang is currently pursuing a doctoral degree from College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati. She holds a master’s degree from College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati and bachelor’s degree in composition and information/multimedia culture from Seoul National University. As the winner in the 4th Eumyeon Composition Competition, she advanced to the final of the 3rd International Antonin Dvorak Composition Competition and her works have been selected for many festivals including Upbeat International Music School in Croatia, Midwest Composer’s Symposium, Lexington Philharmonic’s New Music Experience, Fresh Inc Festival, New Music on the Point Festival, soundSCAPE Festival. She has studied with Michael Fiday, Joel Hoffman, Douglas Knehans and Shinuh Lee.

Nicholas Kelly

Nicholas Ryan Kelly is a classically-trained composer of speculative fiction. He recently finished dual master's degrees in music composition and library/information studies at UBC and has since been roaming the Prairies, working as a librarian in Edmonton and Saskatoon and composing whatever strikes his fancy. In 2014, his compositional activities ranged from readings by the Vancouver and Victoria Symphony orchestras to commissions and compositions for elementary school band and community choir.

Colin McMahon

Colin McMahon is a young composer from London, Ontario completing his undergrad at the University of Western Ontario. He has studied under David Myska, Omar Daniel, and Peter Paul Koprowski. Colin, still in his formative years of a composer, is working on developing his style, with an emphasis on vocal music. He has had premiers with the Western Chamber Ensemble and Bass Ryan Vamos. Colin is also the Editor-in-Chief for Nota Bene, Undergraduate Journal of Musicology, which encourages and promotes the academic research of undergrads.

Jared Hedges

Jared Hedges (b.1993) studies music and English literature at Bethel University (St. Paul, Minnesota). His compositions have won awards from the Oregon Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the Music Institute of Chicago and Webster University, and his piece The Wanderers was heard on Chicago's fine arts and classical station WFMT 98.7. His song cycle, Nellie Bly at Blackwell’s Island was recently selected as part of the inaugural Source Song Festival, where he participated in workshops led by Libby Larsen. This past summer he partnered with musicologist Stephen Self on a project funded by a research grant to transcribe a fifteenth century music manuscript from the British Library. Jared is a music composition student of Jonathan Veenker.

Kaley Lane Eaton

Kaley Lane Eaton is an award-winning composer and vocalist currently based in Seattle, WA. Her work has been performed across the US and internationally, in venues ranging from Hong Kong concert halls, to the streets of Skid Row in Los Angeles. Eaton’s work is gaining a reputation for its unusual treatment of the vocal mechanism along with its use of electronic media, improvisation, and audience interaction. As a performer herself, Eaton believes deeply in the role of composer as collaborator, and strives to create works that include performers, audiences, and artists of diverse media as equal partners. Honors include a Boston Metro Opera Advocacy award, a Boston Metro Opera International Contempofest festival award and placement as a top ten finalist in the NATS Art Song Composition. Currently, Eaton is pursuing her DMA in Composition at the University of Washington School of Music and is a composition teaching artist with Seattle-based Arts Corps.

Brian Topp

Brian Topp is a first year doctoral student in composition at the University of British Columbia studying with Keith Hamel. Currently he is working on developing new software and technologies for use in the performance of live interactive electroacoustic music. Brian holds a Masters in Music Compsition from the University of Western Ontario studying with David Myska and Paul Frehner and received his Undergraduate in Music Theory and Composition from Acadia University with Derek Charke.

 

(Art) Song Lab was created and takes place on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.