Meet the 2023 Composers
”The Mission: New Conductors, New Composers”
Performance February 11 & 12, 2023
Katherine Saxon
“Nunatak”
Katherine Saxon's music reflects on humanity’s relationship with and as part of the natural world, and the human imagination’s role in creating reality. She is both intuitive and guided by algorithmic processes. Her music has been featured at the Open Space Festival, The Atlantic Music Festival, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, New Music On the Bayou, and the Aspen Music Festival. She has been a Banff Musician in Residence, and a Composition Fellow at the Aspen Summer Music Festival and School. She has a PhD in Music from the University of California Santa Barbara.
Peter Longworth
“Manhattan Matins”
Described as “dazzlingly atmospheric” (Glasgow Herald), Peter’s music has been performed throughout Europe, as well as in the United States, Canada, and Japan. Commissioners of his work include the London Mozart Players, the Edinburgh Quartet, the Hebrides Ensemble, the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, and the Orchestra of Opera North. In 2018 his piece, "In the Golden Shadows of Dawn", was recorded by the Brno Philharmonic for Ablaze Records.
An alumnus of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Young Composers Programme and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s Composers Hub, Peter has taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama since 2018.
Michael Rosin
“Stellarium”
Michael Rosin is a composer, writer, and keyboardist. His philosophy is that music is just as much a science as it is an art. He is inspired by astronomy, balance, symmetry, and the natural order of the universe, once defined as Musica universalis, or the “Music of the Spheres.” He wishes to remind us that in the “Plato”-nic idea of classical education, math and music were one, and music had just as important a place in society as law or science. Over the past decade, Rosin has written for ensembles around Europe and the U.S.A. He was awarded the Duino Prize in Music Composition for his piano quartet Spira mirabilis in June 2022.
Sam Wu
“Aria”
Sam Wu's music deals with the beauty in blurred boundaries. Selected for the American Composers Orchestra's EarShot readings and the Tasmanian Symphony's Australian Composers' School, Sam also received an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. Sam’s collaborations span five continents, most notably with the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, Melbourne Symphony, New York City Ballet, The Kennedy Center, the Lontano, Parker, Argus, ETHEL, and icarus Quartets, conductors Osmo Vänskä, Benjamin Northey, and Lio Kuokman, and sheng virtuoso Wu Wei. From Melbourne, Australia, Sam (b. 1995) holds degrees from Harvard and Juilliard, and is a DMA candidate in Composition at Rice. His teachers include Tan Dun, Anthony Brandt, Pierre Jalbert, Chaya Czernowin, and Richard Beaudoin.
Daniel Godsil
“Cathedral Grove”
Daniel Godsil's music, which has been described by the San Francisco Classical Voice as having an “intense dramatic narrative,” draws from such eclectic influences as science fiction, thrash metal, and Brutalist architecture. His more recent work draws inspiration from the natural beauty of Northern California, his current home. Born and raised in central Illinois, Godsil (b.1982) holds his PhD. in Composition and Theory from the University of California, Davis. Godsil is a professor of music at Columbia College in Sonora, California.