Composers

Founders

Biography

B. Allen Schulz

President Emeritus & Founder, Composer

Allen Schulz (b. 1964) is the great grandson of the famous vaudevillian and Chicago jazzman, Ollie Powers. He studied music composition at Wabash College, Yale University, and The City University of New York. His primary composition instructors were Eric Lund and Charles Dodge. Allen’s musical interests are eclectic and varied. His compositional activities range from music theater to experimental computer-generated music and beyond. His awards include the Enenbach Prize in Music Composition, The John Cage Prize in Experimental Music, and high honors in the University of Oregon Waging Peace Through Singing choral competition. Allen lives in Astoria, Queens, with his daughter and wife and their evil cat.

David Fetherolf

Founder, Composer

David Fetherolf’s works have been played in the United States, Europe, and Central and South America. He has received awards and grants from the American Music Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Helen F. Whitaker Fund, the Mamaroneck Schools Foundation and the Chase Manhattan Bank as well as several private grants and fellowships. His works have been premiered at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, at St. James Hall, London, and have been selected to represent his country by the United States Information Agency. He has been involved with five International Festival of New Music for Orchestra programs in Olomouc, Czech Republic and received commissions from groups as diverse as The Mamaroneck Schools Foundation (USA) and the Gamavilla Quartet (CZ). Fetherolf is one of the original members of Random Access Music, a group of composers in the New York City area who work under the aegis of the Astoria Music Society.

Guy Barash

Composer

Composer Guy Barash is “a risk-taker, willing to pull ideas from all disciplines as he jumps into the unknown.” (icareifyoulisten.com) Exploring time and memory perception within multi-metric environments and utilizing electronics, microtonality, and extramusical sources, Barash abandons the confines of genre, inventing a sound world uniquely his own. Recent accolades include performances at the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s Exploring 20th-Century Opera series, Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers 2016 showcase, MATA Festival 2015, an American Opera Projects fellowship, Composer-in-Residence position at Turtle Bay Music School, and Exploring the Metropolis’ Con Edison Composition Award. His series of compositions for solo instruments and real-time digital signal processing, Talkback, was hailed as being “at once divine, serene and haunting,” (The Queens Chronicle) and has been performed internationally. Barash is the founder/curator of cross-genre new music series Eavesdropping at Spectrum in NYC which was hailed as a “bold concert series” (icareifyoulisten.com). His debut album, Facts About Water, which chronicles a five-year collaboration with American author Nick Flynn, was released on Innova Recordings in 2014.

Seth Boustead

Composer

Seth Boustead is a composer, radio host, arts manager and writer, concert producer, in-demand speaker and visionary with the goal of revolutionizing how and where classical music is performed and how it is perceived by the general public. As a composer he has forged a unique and highly personal identity through pieces that are regularly performed and heard on radio broadcasts around the world. His piano concerto was recently premiered in Chicago to great acclaim.

As the founder and Executive Director of Access Contemporary Music, Seth is also the creator of the Sound of Silent Film Festival, the Thirsty Ears Festival – the country’s only classical music street fest, a chain of storefront music schools teaching creativity, a concert series in Chicago, the Discovery Series in New York and more than a dozen annual international commissioning projects in Chicago, Milwaukee, Mexico City and Barcelona.

Seth is the host and creator of Relevant Tones, the only internationally syndicated radio program about contemporary composers and the producer of the series Relevant Tones: Live at LPR. He also created the Concept Lab series at Cornelia Street Café and is a recent recipient of the prestigious Deems Taylor Award. Find more at sethboustead.com

Gilbert Galindo

Composer

Gilbert Galindo’s compositions offer the listener a kaleidoscope of textures, sounds, challenging harmonies, and crisp and vibrant melodies, providing a rewarding journey from the first notes to the last beat. Many are written for multi-combinations of instruments, solos, duets, trios, small ensembles to full-blown symphonic orchestral music, to the most personally poignant songs for voice and piano. A native of west Texas and having studied composition at Northwestern University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, his music has been heard nationwide and internationally by groups such as Ensemble Dal Niente, the Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, the New Thread Quartet, newEar, Parthenia, among others. He has received recognition and awards from the American Music Center, BMI, Meet The Composer, New Music USA, Northwestern University, and others. His music is available from Cuicatl Publications (BMI) and his recording of “Almost within reach…” for violoncello and piano can be found on New Focus Recordings.

Kamala Sankaram

Composer

KAMALA SANKARAM has been praised as “strikingly original” (NY Times) and “new voice from whom we will surely be hearing more” (LA Times). Recent commissions include Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, Opera Memphis, Opera on Tap, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Awards, grants and residencies include: Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, NY IT Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical, the Civilians, HERE, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center.  She is currently working with librettist Jerre Dye on THE PARKSVILLE MURDERS, the first opera written for virtual reality. Episode 1 is now available on Samsung VR.

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Also a performer, Kamala has been hailed as “an impassioned soprano with blazing high notes” (Wall Street Journal). She has performed and premiered pieces with Beth Morrison Projects, Anthony Braxton, and the Wooster Group, among others, and is the leader of Bombay Rickey, a critically acclaimed operatic Bollywood surf ensemble. Notable appearances with Bombay Rickey include: PROTOTYPE Festival, Tête-à-Tête Opera’s Cubitt Sessions in London, and Musikfest. She will next appear with the LA Philharmonic as explorer Gwen St. Clair in Meredith Monk’s opera ATLAS. Dr. Sankaram holds a PhD from the New School and is currently a member of the composition faculty at SUNY Purchase.

Frances White

Composer

Frances White is a composer of instrumental, vocal, and electronic music. Her music has been called “stunning” (American Record Guide) “moving” (Fanfare), “spectacularly beautiful”, and “so atmospheric and sensuous it is almost fragrant” (Musicworks). She is particularly known for her works combining live performers and computer-generated electronic sound spaces. Her music conveys intimacy and immediacy, with a tactile and deeply expressive approach which derives from a sincere belief in the transformative nature of sound. White studies the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute), and finds that its unique spiritual and sonic voice informs her work as a composer. A 2004 Guggenheim fellow, Frances White has received awards, grants, and commissions from organizations such as the the Fromm Foundation, the MAP Fund, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Ditson Fund, Prix Ars Electronica, the Copland Fund, the International Computer Music Association, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, The Crossing Chamber Choir, The Dale Warland Singers, and the Bang On A Can Festival, among many others. Most recently, the Momenta Quartet has commissioned her to write a new work for string quartet and shakuhachi, with funding from a New Music USA Project Grant and The Sparkplug Foundation. White’s music can be heard on CD on the Wergo, Centaur, Nonsequitur, Harmonia Mundi, Albany, Ravello, Mode, MSR Classics, and Bridge Records labels.