Julia Soojin Cavallaro, composer and mezzo-soprano, enjoys a richly varied career in art song, choral music, oratorio, and opera. She has premiered several of her own works at Tufts University in collaboration with composer and pianist John McDonald. Born and raised in the Boston area, Ms. Cavallaro grew up in an Italian/Korean American household filled with music and art. A graduate of Harvard College and Boston University, she has performed with many leading ensembles in the U.S., including the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Opera Collaborative, and most recently, New Camerata Opera in New York City.
Kelly Krebs is a Minneapolis-based composer who loves writing for singers. After a 20-year creative hiatus, Krebs returned to composing in 2015. He was selected as a composer for the MNSong Program at the 2017 Source Song Festival and in 2018, he was part of the Composer-Librettist Studio with Nautilus Music-Theater. He is currently working on the musical “Norman!” – a wildly imaginative, tragicomic prequel to the events in the classic Hitchcock film PSYCHO.
Christopher Reiche Boucher is a performer and composer in Victoria BC known for his enthusiasm for performing and composing for unusual instruments and performance situations. His compositions have been performed by the Emily Carr String Quartet, Negative Zed Ensemble, Pembroke Symphony Orchestra, ContaQt, and Quatuor Bozzini. In June 2017, he completed a solo 24 hour performance of Erik Satie’s Vexations in Prince George at the Casse-Tête Festival of Experimental Music. Reiche Boucher performs in Victoria at A Place to Listen and with the Victoria Composers Collective. When not composing he is the librarian for the Victoria Symphony.
Michael Trew has wide performing and composing experience in a variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, rock and the healing arts. He began studying Composition with Cortland Hultberg at UBC, graduating with a BMus in (1972). Subsequently he obtained a Professional Teaching Certificate (1976) before returning to obtain a Master's (1980) and Doctorate (1986) in Music Composition. His teachers included Stephen Chatman, Paul Reale, and Elaine Barkin. Currently Michael teaches piano, theory, history, and composition privately, is a performer, and accompanies vocal artists in Vancouver. Original works have most recently been performed by Adrian Verdejo, Tom Shorthouse, Michael Murray, Erato Ensemble, Turning Point Ensemble, Jeremy Berkman and Dave Thomas, as well as Nu:BC.
Robert Strobel (b. 1988) has composed works both electronic and acoustic. His work Prairie Dog Rhapsody received a special mention at the Alfred Schnittke Composer's Forum and Competition and as a result was published by Aldebaran Editions. His music has been broadcast twice on WPRB Princeton in Marvin Rosen’s 25-hour new music marathon, and once on Hawaii Public Radio, in the program “Singing and Other Sins.” Among the commissions he has received include an LDS Barlow Commission. Recently, his work, Refugees was selected for the SCI CD Series.
Martha Helen Schmidt is a composer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree at Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, and her Master’s degree from Ithaca College. Both degrees were in music theory and composition. Ms. Schmidt has studied with Nadia Boulanger, Louise Talma, Karel Husa, Steven Stucky, and James Ming.
She is published by Theodore Presser and through Martha Helen Schmidt Music. Ms. Schmidt has taught piano, flute, voice, and theory/composition at the elementary, secondary, and college levels. She loves writing Art Songs and has had premieres in the United States as well as in Paris and Fontainebleau, France. She currently teaches secondary vocal music in the Twin Cities area.
Composer Glenn Sutherland has studied with Michael Trew, Lane Price, and Jocelyn Morlock. His instrumental, choral and works for voice have been performed by soloists, ensembles and orchestras both in Canada and in Europe. Winnipeg’s award-winning Esprit de Choeur, performed a commissioned piece as part of the 2015 Tapestry International Festival for Women’s Voices. He was the CMC’s Emerging Composer (Prairie Region) competition winner for 2016, and has been published by Mayfair Music and Avondale Press.
Carolyn A. Quick (b. 1994) is a native northwest composer and vocalist. Her music has been described as “sensitive” and “evocative” of “streams of light” (Canadian Music Centre BC), often mixing elements of tonality and lyricism to create rich textural landscapes; and her compositions feature a wide variety of both instrumental and vocal ensembles including works for choir, wind ensemble, symphony orchestra, and various other chamber groups.
Her works have been read and premièred throughout North America and Europe by various ensembles including the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Erato Ensemble, the Illini Strings, and the Vancouver Opera’s Young Artist Program.
Jonathan Daniel is a young Kansas City-based composer with a penchant for the weird, the whimsical, and the philosophical. A Choral Scholar and Oxbridge student at William Jewell College, he currently studies musicology and philosophy. He completed a year at Regent’s Park College (University of Oxford, U.K.) studying with David Stuart. He currently studies with Ian Coleman and Anthony Maglione. Known in the Kansas City area for his choral singing and choral compositional voice, Jonathan’s choral music has been performed and recorded by groups like the William Jewell College Choral Scholars (Liberty, MO) and The Choral Project (San Jose, CA).
Judy Specht composes music for solo instruments and ensembles, and electronic scores for theatre. She began playing piano at age 5, eventually adding accordion and flute, which she played for many years while performing as a multi-instrumentalist with the theatre troupe, The Trollsons. She has an A.R.C.T. degree (piano) and holds B.MUS and M.MUS degrees (composition) from UBC. She taught theory at the University of Ottawa and at Douglas College/Langara, and piano at her own studio in Vancouver before retiring to Gabriola Island to devote herself to composing and listening to the seagulls and the surf.
Toronto-based composer Patrick McGraw was born in the United States but has made Canada his home since 2001. An early interest in the sciences led him to a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology, but the pull of his other great love, music, proved irresistible and he returned to school to study composition with David Mott and Gary Kulesha. He was awarded the Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music for his string quartet Glass in 2014. Although music is now his primary focus, he remains active in the sciences as a teacher.
Steven Webb is a Toronto based performer, composer, and audio engineer, who recently completed his Masters in Composition at the University of Toronto under the direction of Dr. Christos Hatzis. Steven has written music for a variety of films and commercials, as well as for contemporary dance and classical performance. His compositions and arrangements have been performed across North America and Europe, and include performances by: The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, The UofT Symphony Orchestra, The University of Guelph Symphonic Choir, Prairie Voices Choir, Exultate Chamber Choir, and at the Conservatory of Music Giuseppe Tartini in Trieste, Italy. As a film composer, Steven has worked on a variety of projects including ‘Chopin’s Heart’ for The National Screen Institute, which played at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, ‘Period Piece’, winner of the best Canadian Short Film at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, and ‘Scheduled Violence’ for MTS On Demand. He currently works as a full time composer, audio engineer and collaborative pianist.
Arturo Fernandez is a native of Miami, Florida. He has had his compositions performed by groups such as the Ludovico Ensemble, the Fifth Floor Collective, and the Boston Conservatory orchestra under the direction of Yoichi Udagawa. He has also had compositions premiered at various summer music festivals, including the New York Summer Music Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, Sienna Summer Music in Italy, and ASL 2014. He is a graduate of the Boston Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and is a recent doctoral graudate of the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati.
Katerina Gimon is an award-winning and emerging Canadian composer, improvisor, and experimental vocalist based in Vancouver. Recently named as one of Canada's hot 30 classical musicians under 30 by CBC, her compositions have been broadcast and presented across Canada, the United States (most notably at Carnegie Hall), and Europe. Katerina currently serves on the board of The Association of Canadian Women Composers and is an Associate Composer at the Canadian Music Centre (currently the youngest associate). She continues to performs regularly as part of experimental mixed-media ensemble Chroma of which she is a founding member (vocals, extended vocals, and electronics).
