fnmc bylaws revision june 2020
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Composer finalists
MELISSA DUNPHY
Born to refugee parents and raised in Australia, Melissa Dunphy immigrated to the United States in 2003 and has since become an award-winning and acclaimed composer specializing in vocal, political, and theatrical music. She first came to national attention in 2009 when her large-scale choral work the Gonzales Cantata was featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, National Review, Comedy Central, and on Fox News and MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, where host Rachel Maddow described it as “the coolest thing you’ve ever seen on this show.” The Gonzales Cantata was subsequently staged as an opera by American Opera Theater and played a sold-out run in Baltimore, and has been performed in Chicago, Texas, and twice in the Pacific Northwest.
Dunphy's first song cycle Tesla's Pigeon has been recognized with several awards, including first place in the 2012 National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Composition Award. Her choral work What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? won the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Composition Competition and has been performed around the country by ensembles including Chanticleer, Cantus, and the St. Louis Chamber Chorus, who recorded it for their album American Declarations (Regent Records). Dunphy has also received awards from ASCAP, the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, Boston Metro Opera, and Boston Choral Ensemble and her commissions include pieces for Resonance Ensemble, Choral Arts Philadelphia, PhilHarmonia, Opus Anglicanum (UK), Cornell University Chorus, Susquehanna University, mezzo-soprano Maren Montelbano, the Kennett Symphony Children’s Choir, and Piedmont Children's Choir. She is the recipient of a 2020 Opera America Discovery Grant for Alice Tierney, a new opera commission by Oberlin Conservatory, set to premiere in 2023.
Dunphy has been composer-in-residence for the Immaculata Symphony Orchestra (2010), Volti Choral Arts Lab (2013-2014), Volti Choral Institute (2016), and the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus (2015-2018). In addition to her concert and choral music, she is a Barrymore Award-nominated composer and sound designer working with Philadelphia-area theatres such as InterAct, Theatre Exile, People’s Light, Azuka Theatre, and Simpatico Theatre, and she has been Director of Music Composition at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center National Puppetry Conference since 2014.
Dunphy has a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.M. in Theory and Composition from West Chester University, and is a lecturer in composition at Rutgers University. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Matt; the Dunphys are currently the owners and developers of the Hannah Callowhill Stage, a new performance venue in Old City Philadelphia which they hope to open in 2020, and co-hosts of the popular podcast The Boghouse about their adventures in Philadelphia colonial archaeology.
Example Works:
I Don't Recall, excerpt from The Gonzales Cantata
Handshake, A Scherzo
Born to refugee parents and raised in Australia, Melissa Dunphy immigrated to the United States in 2003 and has since become an award-winning and acclaimed composer specializing in vocal, political, and theatrical music. She first came to national attention in 2009 when her large-scale choral work the Gonzales Cantata was featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, National Review, Comedy Central, and on Fox News and MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, where host Rachel Maddow described it as “the coolest thing you’ve ever seen on this show.” The Gonzales Cantata was subsequently staged as an opera by American Opera Theater and played a sold-out run in Baltimore, and has been performed in Chicago, Texas, and twice in the Pacific Northwest.
Dunphy's first song cycle Tesla's Pigeon has been recognized with several awards, including first place in the 2012 National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Composition Award. Her choral work What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? won the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Composition Competition and has been performed around the country by ensembles including Chanticleer, Cantus, and the St. Louis Chamber Chorus, who recorded it for their album American Declarations (Regent Records). Dunphy has also received awards from ASCAP, the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, Boston Metro Opera, and Boston Choral Ensemble and her commissions include pieces for Resonance Ensemble, Choral Arts Philadelphia, PhilHarmonia, Opus Anglicanum (UK), Cornell University Chorus, Susquehanna University, mezzo-soprano Maren Montelbano, the Kennett Symphony Children’s Choir, and Piedmont Children's Choir. She is the recipient of a 2020 Opera America Discovery Grant for Alice Tierney, a new opera commission by Oberlin Conservatory, set to premiere in 2023.
Dunphy has been composer-in-residence for the Immaculata Symphony Orchestra (2010), Volti Choral Arts Lab (2013-2014), Volti Choral Institute (2016), and the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus (2015-2018). In addition to her concert and choral music, she is a Barrymore Award-nominated composer and sound designer working with Philadelphia-area theatres such as InterAct, Theatre Exile, People’s Light, Azuka Theatre, and Simpatico Theatre, and she has been Director of Music Composition at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center National Puppetry Conference since 2014.
Dunphy has a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.M. in Theory and Composition from West Chester University, and is a lecturer in composition at Rutgers University. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Matt; the Dunphys are currently the owners and developers of the Hannah Callowhill Stage, a new performance venue in Old City Philadelphia which they hope to open in 2020, and co-hosts of the popular podcast The Boghouse about their adventures in Philadelphia colonial archaeology.
Example Works:
I Don't Recall, excerpt from The Gonzales Cantata
Handshake, A Scherzo
EMMA O’HALLORAN
Emma O’Halloran is an Irish composer and vocalist. Freely intertwining acoustic and electronic music, O’Halloran has written for folk musicians, chamber ensembles, turntables, laptop orchestra, symphony orchestra, film, and theatre. For her efforts, she has been praised by I Care If You Listen editor-in-chief Amanda Cook for writing “some of the most unencumbered, authentic, and joyful music that I have heard in recent years,” and has won numerous competitions, including National Sawdust’s inaugural Hildegard competition and the Next Generation award from Beth Morrison Projects.
O’Halloran’s music aims to capture the human experience, exploring complex emotions felt in specific moments in time. This approach has found a wide audience: her work has been featured at the international Classical NEXT conference in Rotterdam, the Prototype Festival in New York, Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, and MATA Festival. Additionally, her music has been performed by Crash Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Khemia Ensemble, ~Nois Saxophone Quartet, the Refugee Orchestra Project, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, amongst others.
O’Halloran was recently named a 2020 MacDowell Fellow, and an artist-in-residence at Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. She holds a PhD in Music Composition from Princeton University, and is currently working as a freelance composer in Brooklyn. Current and future projects include a collaborative and interdisciplinary work with LA-based ensemble Wild UP, and an opera called Trade that will be developed, produced and toured internationally by Beth Morrison Projects.
Example Works:
Pencilled Wings
Dying is a Wild Night
JENNIFER JOLLEY
Jennifer Jolley (b. 1981) is a West Texas-based composer of vocal, orchestral, wind ensemble, chamber, and electronic works.
Jennifer's work draws toward subjects that are political and even provocative. Her collaboration with librettist Kendall A, Prisoner of Conscience, has been described as "the ideal soundtrack and perhaps balm for our current 'toxic'…times" by Frank J. Oteri of NewMusicBox. Her piece Blue Glacier Decoy, written as a musical response to the Olympic National Park, depicts the melting glaciers of the Pacific Northwest. Her partnership with writer Scott Woods, You Are Not Alone, evokes the fallout of the #MeToo Movement.
Jennifer's works have been performed by ensembles worldwide, including the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Wind Symphony, Dulciana (Dublin, Ireland), Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra (New York, NY), and the SOLI Chamber Ensemble (Alba, Italy residency). She has received commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, University of Texas Wind Ensemble, the Quince Ensemble, and many others.
Jennifer deeply values the relationship that is created between composers and the communities with whom they collaborate. She has been composer-in-residence at Brevard College, University of Toledo, the Vermont Symphony, the Central Michigan University School of Music, and the Alba Music Festival in Italy. Most recently she was the Composer-in-Residence of the Women Composers Festival of Hartford in 2019. She promotes composer advocacy and the performance of new works through her opera company North American New Opera Workshop, her articles for NewMusicBox, and her work on the Executive Council of the Institute for Composer Diversity and the New Music USA Program Council.
Jennifer's blog —on which she has catalogued more than 100 rejection letters from competitions, festivals, and prizes—is widely read and admired by professional musicians. She is particularly passionate about this project as a composition teacher, and enjoys removing the taboo around “failure” for her students. Jennifer joined the composition faculty of the Texas Tech School of Music in 2018 and has been a member of the composition faculty at Interlochen Arts Camp since 2015.
Example Works:
Flight 710 to Cabo San Lucas
Foot Tapping Song
TAKUMA ITOH
Takuma Itoh spent his early childhood in Japan before moving to Northern California where he grew up. His music has been described as "brashly youthful and fresh" (New York Times). Featured amongst one of "100 Composers Under 40" on NPR Music and WQXR, he has been the recipient of such awards and commissions as: the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Music Alive: New Partnerships grant with the Tucson Symphony, the Barlow Endowment, the Chamber Music America Classical Commission, the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize, six ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Leo Kaplan Award, the American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, the Symphony in C Young Composer Competition, the New York Youth Symphony First Music, The New York Virtuoso Singers, Maui Arts & Cultural Center, and the Renée B Fisher Foundation.
In 2018, Itoh was instrumental in creating an innovative education program, Symphony of the Hawaiian Birds, which brought over 8,000 young students to hear new orchestral compositions alongside original animations while raising awareness of Hawaii's many endangered forest bird species.
Itoh's music has been performed by the Albany Symphony, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Ensemble Échappé, Ossia New Music, the New York Youth Symphony, Symphony in C, the Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra (Poland), the Shanghai Quartet, the St. Lawrence Quartet, the Cassatt Quartet, the Momenta Quartet, Invoke Quartet, Sara Davis Buechner, Jeffrey Jacob, Joseph Lin, Ignace Jang, Syzygy Ensemble (Australia), H2 Quartet, Kyo-Shin-An Arts, the Music from Copland House, the Varied Trio, Kojiro Umezaki, HUB New Music Ensemble, Duo Yumeno, Post-Haste Reed Duo, Pro Musica Nipponia, and Linda Chatterton. In addition, his works can be heard on Albany and Blue Griffin Records, and is published by Theodore Presser, Resolute Music, and Murphy Music Press. In 2015, Itoh scored the music for the short film "Salesi" directed by Garin Nugroho and Vilsoni Hereniko that was featured at the Honolulu Film Festival.
Itoh has been a fellow at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, Cabrillo Composer Workshop, Wellesley Composers Conference, Copland House CULTIVATE, Pacific Music Festival and the Aspen Music Festival. He holds degrees from Cornell University, University of Michigan, and Rice University. His past teachers include Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, Shih-Hui Chen, Anthony Brandt, Pierre Jalbert, and Karim Al-Zand.
Since 2012, Itoh has been teaching at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa where he serves as an Associate Professor of Music.
Example Works:
Wavelengths
Adaptation Variations
HANNAH KENDALL
Described as ‘…intricately and skillfully wrought’ by The Sunday Times, Hannah’s music has attracted the attentions of some of the UK’s finest groups including London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, and Philharmonia Orchestra, with performances at the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, The Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio Theatre, The Place, Westminster, Canterbury, Gloucester and St Paul’s Cathedrals, Westminster Abbey and Cheltenham Music Festival. Hannah's works have also been broadcast on BBC Radio, including 'Composer of the Week' in March 2015, and 'Hear and Now' in October 2016. In 2015, Hannah won the Women of the Future Award for Arts and Culture. Recent projects include a one-man chamber opera, 'The Knife of Dawn', premiered at London's Roundhouse in October 2016. Based on the Guyanese/Caribbean political activist and poet Martin Carter, set to a new libretto by award-winning author Tessa McWatt, and directed by John Walton, it was described as being 'dramatically intense and atmospheric, a powerful snapshot of a poet incarcerated in British Guyana' by The Stage. Also, 'The Spark Catchers', an orchestral piece for Chineke!, which was premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in August 2017 as part of the BBC Proms, described as 'imaginatively intricate' by the Financial Times, and ‘Verdala’ for London Sinfonietta, conducted by George Benjamin at the 2018 Proms, described as having a 'strikingly original form' by the Daily Telegraph; and 'Disillusioned Dreamer' for Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, California, which the San Fransisco Chronicle described as '...teem(ing) with passages of brilliant instrumental colors...and harmonies boast(ing) surprising edges and a rich inner life...' This season, Hannah will be working with Minnesota Orchestra; TAK Ensemble, New York; London Sinfonietta; European Union Youth Orchestra and Paraorchestra.
Hannah is deeply committed to contemporary culture as a whole and often works collaboratively with artists from other art forms. She has developed a fruitful creative relationship with Poet Rick Holland, setting Fundamental for choir and brass quintet, described as being ‘a hugely accomplished work’ by Music OMH and a number of other poems from Rick's recently-published collection Story the Flowers. Hannah also worked closely with choreographer Symeon Kyriakopoulos in creating Labyrinthine, which was premiered at The Place as part of the Resolution! Festival in 2009. Hannah also joined forces with Gallery Libby Sellers in developing 'Middlegame' for solo piano, which took inspiration from the Gallery's GAMES exhibition. Commissioned by the Richard Thomas Foundation, the work was premiered at the space by Andrew Matthews-Owen and expanded into a three-movement piece, 'On the Chequer'd Field Array'd' that was performed by Andrew at the Purcell Room in May 2013. The work was selected as a Premiere of the Year by Classical Music Magazine.
Born in London in 1984, Hannah went on to graduate from the University of Exeter with First Class Honours in Music, having studied composition with Joe Duddell. Hannah also completed a Masters in Advanced Composition with Distinction from the Royal College of Music studying with Kenneth Hesketh and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Royal College of Music Study Award and the RVW Trust. Hannah is currently based in New York City as a Doctoral Fellow in composition at Columbia University.
Example Works:
Vera
Disillusioned Dreamer
REENA ESMAIL
Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces.
Esmail’s work has been commissioned by ensembles including the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Kronos Quartet, Imani Winds, Richmond Symphony, Town Music Seattle, Albany Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Girls Chorus, The Elora Festival, Juilliard415, and Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Upcoming seasons include new work for Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Amherst College Choir and Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, and Conspirare.
Esmail is the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s 2020-2023 Swan Family Artist in Residence, and Seattle Symphony’s 2020-21 Composer-in-Residence. Previously, she was named a 2019 United States Artist Fellow in Music, and the 2019 Grand Prize Winner of the S & R Foundation’s Washington Award. Esmail was also a 2017-18 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow. She was the 2012 Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (and subsequent publication of a work by C.F. Peters)
Esmail holds degrees in composition from The Juilliard School (BM’05) and the Yale School of Music (MM’11, MMA’14, DMA’18). Her primary teachers have included Susan Botti, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Theofanidis and Martin Bresnick, Christopher Rouse and Samuel Adler. She received a Fulbright-Nehru grant to study Hindustani music in India. Her Hindustani music teachers include Srimati Lakshmi Shankar and Gaurav Mazundar, and she currently studies and collaborates with Saili Oak. Her doctoral thesis, entitled Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians explores the methods and challenges of the collaborative process between Hindustani musicians and Western composers.
Esmail was Composer-in-Residence for Street Symphony (2016-18) and is currently an Artistic Director of Shastra, a non-profit organization that promotes cross-culterual music connecting music traditions of India and the West.
She currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
Example Works:
Nadiya
Canticle for Dawn
