Lydia’s Big Professional Announcement: Composer Competition Winners, 2019

Lydia’s Big Professional Announcement: Composer Competition Winners, 2019

Frame | Work News & Updates

 

Dear Framers,

Lydia here. Drum roll, please! 

 

I am thrilled to announce the winners of the 2019 Frame Dance Composer Competition, and eagerly anticipate the work that the company and I will do with them in the coming performance year. 

 

Frame Dance is dedicated to working with 100% new music in all of its productions and has held to this commitment since its inception. As a means to access outstanding new music, Frame Dance has held an annual competition for the past nine years to select music for its upcoming season. The winning composers’ music becomes the basis of a new original work at Frame Dance in film and/or live performance. This has given us opportunities to work with over 24 contemporary composers. Our commitment to new music benefits Houstonians by exposing the work of new composers to local audiences. This successful competition has attracted exciting composers from across the world to collaborate with Frame Dance. A list of past winners can be found here.

 

Let me give you a quick taste of what you’re in for this year. First, the panel consisted of Charles Peck (2017 winner), Daniel Harrison (2018 winner), and Patrick Moore (Axiom Quartet cellist and frequent collaborator with Frame Dance), and me. We reviewed about 200 pieces of music and chose four. That’s stiff competition, people. On the call for music we indicated that we were looking for at least one piece of music for cello (because of our upcoming collaboration with Patrick), and we selected:

 

-a surprising and engulfing electronic piece by Jake Sandridge,  

-a meticulously crafted dynamic trio for cello, violin, and piano by Jack Frerer, 

-a highly restrained and delicately suspenseful piano piece by Paul Kerekes, and 

-a heavenly and shadowy piece for cello and playback by Hannah Selin.

 

Learn more about them below. I look forward to creating new dances with their music this season. Frame Dance our performances are really like multiple concerts woven into one—dance, music, theater, visual art… are you on our email list and in the loop on our performance announcements? 

 

In Art,

Lydia

 

 

As a composer, sound artist, and performer of contemporary music, Jake Sandridge creates sound as a method of expressing themes of memory, transformation, nature, and comfort. He understands and experiences art as a unique space that allows for the suspension of disbelief where audience and performers can experiment with the juxtaposition of ideas that might originate from dissimilar places. Mr. Sandridge is a doctoral student in the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. 

 

Winning piece: Garden of our Own

 

Composer, violist and vocalist Hannah Selin juxtaposes acoustic instruments with electronic sounds, field recordings and recorded interviews to imagine new and unlikely sound-spaces. Her compositions range from solo instrumental and chamber music with and without electronics, to songs, music for dance, orchestral music and sound installations.

 

Winning piece: Hirondelle

 

 

Paul Kerekes is a composer/pianist based in New York City who often confronts and blurs the space between composition and performance. Omnivorous, he can often be found premiering pieces with his piano sextet Grand Band or his quasi-rock-band composer-performer-collective, Invisible Anatomy. As consummate collaborator, he plays well with others and feeds off the exchange of creative energy. 

 

Winning piece: Vantages

 

 

 

The “exuberant” and “delicious” (Boston Musical Intelligencer) music of Jack Frerer (b. 1995) has been performed across the US, Australia, Europe and Asia, and will performed this season by ensembles including the Nashville Symphony, the Arapahoe Philharmonic, the Albany Symphony’s “Dogs of Desire” ensemble, and the UT Austin Wind Ensemble, among others. Jack is the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Morton Gould Composers Award from ASCAP, the Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composers Award, and the Brian Israel Prize from the Society for New Music.  He is a Tanglewood composition fellow for 2019, a composer for the New York City Ballet’s 2019 Choreographic Institute, and is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Arapahoe Philharmonic. Jack studied with John Corigliano and Robert Beaser at The Juilliard School, and was awarded a Benzaquen Career Advancement Grant upon graduation. 

 

Winning piece: Stutter Step

Frame Composers: Where are they now?

Composers Tuesday Tunes

D. Edward Davis 2014 Film Score WinnerDAVIS-karst-headshot

Since Shamed, currently in production with Frame Dance, Eddie has been busy with a number of creative projects. In July and August 2014, he studied composition with Wandelweiser founder Antoine Beuger in Düsseldorf, Germany (where he also attended concerts and looked for birds). His work has been recently performed by the Da Capo Chamber Players (for philip von zweck), Dalia Chin and Kate McDuffie (when we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe), and the Callithumpian Consort (curving tide). His current projects include new pieces for the Laramie County Community College New Music Ensemble (Cheyenne, Wyoming) and Musica Nova (Tel Aviv, Israel).

 

DAVIS-concert-image

In January 2015, Eddie co-founded the Experimental Music Study Group, which curates discussions and performances in the Durham/Chapel Hill-area. He is completing his dissertation work at Duke University, where he currently teaches a class about Sonic Ecology.

 

 

 

Frame Composers: What are they up to now?

Composers
METRODances
METRODances

Charles Halka, Winner of the Frame Dance Music Composition Competition 2012

“After the birth of my beautiful daughter at the end of the summer, I started a new job teaching composition and music theory at Stephen F. Austin State University.  Around that same time I was chosen as Musiqa‘s first “Composer+Intern”, a kind of composer-in-residence position through which I was commissioned to write three new works for their current season (the next one is at the CAMH on February 26!).  It was a joy to finally be able to bring to life Imaginary Spaces, which debuted as METRODances, with Frame Dance Productions.  The project had been in the works for quite some time, so it was really great to have it come alive and to get support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.  Most recently, my orchestra work Impact got its U.S. premiere by the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, and my opera collaboration with composer-librettist (and Houston native!) Impact got its world premiere by the Mexican National Symphony in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City in May 2014. John Grimmett and I were selected by Fort Worth Opera for its prestigious Frontiers program and showcase.  Our opera, And Jill Came Tumbling After, will be workshopped and performed in Fort Worth in May.”

 

 

 

 

Winners Announced

Composers

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 Frame Dance Music Composition Competition!  Their work will be presented by Frame Dance throughout 2015.  Many thanks to all who submitted and our incredible panel.

First Place: Alex Freeman

Blueshift

for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussionAlex Freeman

Alex Freeman (b. 28 April 1972) is a recipient of the 2014 McKnight Composer Fellowship. His music has garnered acclaim and commissions from the Jerome Foundation, ASCAP, The American Scandinavian Foundation, the Sibelius Academy, American Composers Forum and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Born in Raleigh, NC, He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Boston University’s School of Fine Arts, and the Juilliard School, where he completed his doctoral studies in 2004. His doctoral research led him to Finland, via Fulbright Fellowship, where he lived for six years, studying at The Sibelius Academy and freelancing, before he assumed his current position of Assistant Professor of Music in Composition at Carleton College in Northfield, MN. His chamber works and choral music are performed regularly in the US and abroad.

Recordings of his music have been released by Albany Records, Innova Recordings, and Navona Records, including, most recently, a CD of complete his piano works by Albany Records, Inner Voice, a recording of his chamber work, Blueshift, by Parma Recordings, and internationally acclaimed recordings of his choral works by The HOL Choir and Tapiola Children’s Choir. His degrees are from The Juilliard School, Boston University, and The Eastman School of Music.

 

Second Place: Gabriel José Bolaños Chamorro

Miniatures

For Steel String Guitar Duet

Gabriel José Bolaños Chamorro (b.1984 Bogotá, Colombia) is a Nicaraguan-American composer and guitarist. He is pursuing his PhD at UC bolanosDavis, and is currently studying with Mika Pelo.

He received a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 2007 where he studied composition with Fabien Lévy and Sebastian Currier, and orchestration with Tristan Murail. He has also worked as a freelance musician in New Haven, CT, and was a professor of theory, analysis and guitar at the Casa de los 3mundos music academy in Granada, Nicaragua. His work draws upon a variety of interests including linguistics, spectralism and the physical properties of sound, psychoacoustics and geology.

 

Third Place: Joel Love

Lightscape

for string quartet

Joel-Love_webThe music of Joel Love explores an eclectic mix of genres, from short video pieces to works for chamber and large ensembles. It creates colorful landscapes of sound through the use of image, melody, and extended tonality, and seeks to reveal the connection between music and spirituality.

Joel was recently commissioned to compose a new work, Lightscape, for the opening of light artist James Turrell’s The Color Inside, which was unveiled in October of 2013.  Molly Glentzer from the Houston Chronicle wrote that the music evocatively captures the emotion of The Color Inside.” PARMA Recordings selected Lux and Synchronicity in Purple Minor for publication in their 2013 and 2012 Anthology, respectively.  In May of 2013, Aurora Borealis was selected as a finalist in the 3rd International Franck Ticheli Composition Contest.  In 2010, Real Fiction received a Compositional Excellence Citation by the New York Youth Symphony. In 2009, Da Camera of Houston presented Joel with an Aspiring Artist Award and the commission of Just One Person.

Joel’s works have been performed by The Aura Contemporary Music Ensemble, The California State University Los Angeles Wind Ensemble, Da Camera of Houston’s Young ArtistsThe Boston New Music Initiative, the Ohio State University Wind Symphony, the Texas A&M University Symphonic Winds , the Lamar University A Capella Choir and Wind Ensemble, the University of Texas Wind Symphony, and exhibited at many art galleries throughout the United States.  Joel’s first work for wind ensemble, Aurora Borealis, was recently selected for performance at the 2013 SCI National Conference.  In a recent review of 2013 SXSW events, Capital Public Radio’s Nick Brunner commented that “The Peace of Wild Things” was a “gorgeous piece of music, wafting along into the ether.”

His film scores include the documentary film Stitched, official selection at the 2011 Carmel Art and Film Festival, as well as a short film Kidfellas, “Best Musical Score” at Houston’s 2011 48-Hour Film Project. Other notable collaborations with artists from other disciplines feature a city-wide public art exhibit with artist Karyn Olivier, Inboud: Houstonand a 3-month installation by Prince V. Thomas, On Joy, On Sorrow at the Houston Center for Photography, praised by the Houston Chronicle as ”a beautiful piece that feels cleansing to watch.”  

Joel recently completed a DMA in Composition from the University of Texas at Austin and holds degrees from The University of Houston’s Moores School of Music (M.Music) and Lamar University’s Mary Morgan Department of Music (B.Music).

 

Film Score Winner: Leah Reid

Ring, Resonate, Resound

7 channel acousmatic compositionReid

Leah Reid (b. 1985, New Hampshire) writes vibrant compositions that examine the innermost nature of sounds. Reid’s work is noted for its exploration of time, timbre and texture. Reid holds a D.M.A. and M.A. in composition from Stanford University and a B.Mus in composition from McGill University. She was awarded the Pauline Oliveros Prize for her piece “Pressure” for viola and electroacoustic media. Reid has had works performed in the United States, Canada and Europe with premieres by Livia Sohn, Geoff Nuttall, the Jack Quartet, Sound Gear, Talea, Seth Josel, the Pheonix String Quartet and McGill’s Contemporary Music Ensemble. Reid’s principal teachers include Mark Applebaum, Jonathan Berger, Brian Ferneyhough, and Sean Ferguson.

Reid currently teaches at the University of the Pacific and continues her research on the compositional applications of multidimensional timbre representations.

 

 

 

The Panel included Robert Honstein, Robert McClure, Charles Halka, Micah Clark and Frame Dance Artistic Director Lydia Hance.

Frame Dance Composers: What are they up to now?

Tuesday Tunes

As we get ready to announce the winner of this year’s Music Composition Competition, we thought we’d let you know what the past winners are up to now.  We think they’re outstanding.

Starting with the most recent, today’s update is on Robert Honstein, 2014 Winner.

robert honstein

Robert Honstein

Robert’s recent collaboration with New York based early music ensemble, The Sebastians, has been released as an album, ‘Night Scenes from the Ospedale’. The disc weaves together selections from Vivaldi’s L’Estro Armonico with a new suite of night music by Honstein. In these companion pieces Robert imagines “Night Scenes” from the Ospedale della Pietà where Vivaldi worked as performer, composer, and teacher. These evocative interludes comprise “a kind of music barely heard, melting into the stillness of empty rooms and dimly lit hallways” and exist in stark juxtaposition with the bold, exuberant Vivaldi concerti. Stream sample tracks and order a copy here (https://www.sebastians.org/shop/)

Tuesday Tunes

Tuesday Tunes

blanton_musicians

 

The 2015 Frame Dance Music Composition Competition submissions are closed. We are actively reviewing and thrilled about the submissions this year!   Here’s a look at some of our previous winners, and remember that it could be you for 2015!  Next week, we will tell you what the past winners are up to now…

Previous Winners

 

2014

First Placemusic3

Robert Honstein an index of possibility, for percussion trio

Second Place

Matthew Peterson

Rain Dances, for quadrophonic mixed media

Third Place

Jonathan Russell

Five Two Tango, for two violins

Film Score Winnermusicc

D. Edward Davis

cliff nesting, for alto saxophone with the sounds of Black-legged Kittiwakes near Seward, Alaska

2013 Winner

Robert McClure

2012 Winner

Charles Halka

2011 Winner

Micah Clark

 

 

 

 

Tuesday Tunes

Composers Tuesday Tunes

musiccLast week for submissions to the Frame Dance Music Composition Competition!

We’re calling all composers to submit to our annual music competition to find a collaborator for one of our live dances, and/or one of our dance films. We’ll be using the winner’s music in one of our pieces for the Spring season.

We do not accept works previously licensed to third-party publishing companies.  This requirement, of course, does not limit works that are self-published where the composer has not entered into a licensing relationship with a third party.music3

The entry fee is $15.00. Composers may submit one, two, or three pieces for the single entry fee.

Submission Guidelines
Works may be written for solo, duet, trio, quartet, or quintet.
Acoustic works that utilize electronic playback are also acceptable.
Electronic music is accepted and encouraged.

Deadline is January 9, 2015

Winner will be announced January 30, 2015 

SUBMIT HERE.

Frame Dance’s Annual Music Competition

Composers Tuesday Tunes

It’s back!

Frame Dance Music Composition Competition

Photo by Sil Azavedo
Photo by Sil Azavedo

We’re calling all composers to submit to our annual music competition, for a chance to find a collaborator for one of our  live dances, and/or one of our dance films. We’ll be using the winner’s music in one of our pieces for the Spring season.

We do not accept works previously licensed to third-party publishing companies.  This requirement, of course, does not limit works that are self-published where the composer has not entered into a licensing relationship with a third party.blanton_musicians

The entry fee is $15.00. Composers may submit one, two, or three pieces.

Submission Guidelines
Works may be written for solo, duet, trio, quartet, or quintet.
Acoustic works that utilize electronic playback are also acceptable.
Electronic music is accepted and encouraged.

Deadline is January 9, 2015

Winner will be announced January 30, 2015 

Submit here.

 

 

Past Winners:music2

2014

First Place

Robert Honstein

an index of possibility, for percussion trio

 

 

Second Place

Matthew Peterson

Rain Dances, for quadrophonic mixed media

 

Third Placemusic3

Jonathan Russell

Five Two Tango, for two violins

 

Film Score Winner*

D. Edward Davis

cliff nesting, for alto saxophone with the sounds of Black-legged Kittiwakes near Seward, Alaska

*Frame Dance is currently in production for an upcoming film, and has selected cliff nesting, as the musical score for the film

 

Shannon Adams2013 Winner

Robert McClure

2012 Winner

musicc

Charles Halka

2011 Winner

Micah Clark

 

 

 

image David DeHoyos
image David DeHoyos

 

 

Good Luck! We look forward to presenting your music!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday Tunes

Tuesday Tunes

We’re getting really excited about this year’s Music Composition Competition. This is the fifth year! We’ve been beyond honored to work with not only ridiculously talented composers, but kind, funny, collaborative people.  Today was inspired by this, which makes me realize how important it is to be inspired by your collaborators, but also to have fun.  These are some fun promo videos we made for a show in 2013.

 

Talking to the composers about their music:

Ecouter: Another Afternoon with the Composers from Frame Dance Productions on Vimeo.

Composer silliness:

Ecouter: An Afternoon With The Composers from Frame Dance Productions on Vimeo.