Inaugural Composing Inclusion Composer Commissions Announced

Jasmine Arielle Barnes is a promising composer/vocalist who has performed and had her music performed all over the world. She is a multifaceted composer who embraces any writing style of music using a variety of instrumentation and specializes in writing for the voice. A full-time composer, Barnes is managed by UIA talent and is a second year resident artist for American Lyric Theater. Barnes has held residencies as a composer fellow at Chautauqua Opera (2021 season), as well as a residency with All Classical Portland. She has held the privilege of being commissioned by numerous organizations such as The Washington National Opera, Aspen Summer Music Festival, LA Opera, Bare Opera, CityMusic Cleveland, LyricFest Philadelphia, Baltimore Choral Arts, Resonance Ensemble, Tapestry Choir. Burleigh Music Festival, Symphony Number One, Baltimore Musicales, amongst others.

New Mexico, composer Nicolas Lell Benavides’ music frequently explores the intersection of place and cultural themes of Latinidad in the Southwest. He has worked with groups such as the Washington National Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, West Edge Opera, Nashville Opera, MassOpera, Friction Quartet, Khemia Ensemble, and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. Upcoming projects include an opera with librettist Laura Barati as part of MassOpera’s New Opera Workshop with support from Opera America, a premiere of Tres minutos with librettist Marella Martin Koch through Music of Remembrance and support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Clovis Foundation, and a new commission through West Edge Opera’s Aperture to develop a full-length work about civil rights icon Dolores Huerta. His upcoming album, Canto Caló, will feature Friction Quartet and mezzo-soprano Melinda Martinez Becker, with support from ACF’s Innova Recordings, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, and New Music USA. Photo credit: Vivian Sach

(b. 1995) is an award-winning bassist, composer, songwriter, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist from Detroit, Michigan. In May 2019, Davis became the first African-American woman to receive a Bachelor's Degree in Music Composition from Michigan State University as well as the first Michigan State student to receive a Bachelor's Degree in Music Composition and Jazz Studies concurrently. She has also performed and worked with artists such as Micheal Dease, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Wycliffe Gordon and The Black Excellence Trombone Choir, Ingrid Jensen, Etienne Charles, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Craig Harris, Maria Schneider, Jerome Jennings and William Delisfort. Additionally, she is the proud leader of her own band “Composetheway.” Since recently completing a Master's Degree in Jazz Studies at Michigan State University, she has moved to Brooklyn, New York, is one of two inaugural Jazz Leader Fellowship recipients from the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, has been featured on the PBS Limited Series “Music for Social Justice,” and is a teaching artist for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Photo credit: Liberty Fets

"Called “stark, haunting elegance” with “intimate focus” by The Washington Post, the music of Colombian-born composer/sound maker James Díaz strives to create unique sonic textures, sound masses, and interactive environments. Deeply influenced by the concept of psychedelia, his music also draws from elements of graphic design, Latin-America landscapes, and photography. Serving as the 2019 composer-in-residence for the Medellin Philharmonic, James premiered "RETRO", his concerto for orchestra and electronics. His music has been performed by orchestras such as the WDR Sinfonieorchester, Basel Sinfonietta, National Symphony of Colombia, American Composers Orchestra, Medellin Philharmonic, Xalapa Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Symphony, Bogotá Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke's, and EAFIT Symphony, and by ensembles such as Longleash, Yarn/Wire, Sō Percussion, and National Sawdust Ensemble, among others. James is currently working on his studio album “[speaking in a foreign language]” with violinist Julia Suh." Photo Credit: James Díaz

Thomas Flippin is a guitarist/composer immersed in contemporary American classical music. Through his classical guitar ensemble, Duo Noire, as well as his work on the theorbo, banjo, and electric guitar, Flippin has premiered dozens of new works across the United States. Concert highlights include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, American Repertory Theater, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, Whitney Museum Biennial, and The Art Institute of Chicago. Flippin’s work is currently being toured by renowned American classical guitarist Benjamin Verdery. Flippin’s quartet for Duo Noire and members of The Cleveland Orchestra received a premiere recording in Severance Hall. Several of his works are published by the Guitar Foundation of America. Flippin graduated with honors from the University of Chicago, where he received the Olga and Paul Menn prize for undergraduate music composition. He holds a Master’s and Artist Diploma from the Yale University School of Music. Photo Credit: John Rogers

Lauren McCall is a composer and music educator from Atlanta, Georgia. She studied for her master’s degree in music composition at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she is a Ph.D. student studying music technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Lauren has had compositions performed around North America and Europe. This includes her piece for piano, Shake the Earth, which was performed in Morehead, Kentucky, at Morehead State University’s Contemporary Piano Festival, along with being performed in Eugene, Oregon, at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers’ Symposium. Lauren enjoys collaborating with technologists, musicians, and artists including Maggie Kane, owner of Streetcat.media, and the Alter Ego Chamber Opera. Recently she was also a Fromm Fellow with the Fifth House Ensemble. Along with composing, Lauren enjoys playing classical music and jazz on the clarinet and piano, spending time in nature, spending time with family and friends, and traveling. Photo credit: Alexandria McCall

Patricia Martinez(AR) is an active composer, interdisciplinary artist and performer. Her creative interests are focused on new music composition and interdisciplinary projects, especially contemporary music theatre, new opera, symphonic and chamber works. Her works won important prizes such as JukeBoxx New Music Award; Argentine Government’s; Casa de las Américas; International Young Composers' Meeting; American Prize or Ibermúsicas/Iberescena. She received commissions, grants and residences including: International Music Theatre Competition/Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt; Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik; Music Current; American Composers Forum; Ensemble Recherche/Goethe-Institut;Teatr Wielki w Warszawie or Experimental Center of The Colón Theater. She participated at events and Festivals in America, Europe, and South Africa, including: MATA Festival, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Darmstädter Ferienkurse or ISCM. Patricia is a professor of composition at the CSMCBA, UNQ and the UNAM. She holds a Doctoral and Master degree in Music Composition (Stanford University) and she completed the annual course in Computer Music (Ircam). Photo credit: Bárbara Scotto

Andrés Soto is a Costa Rican composer with an active career both in the world of concert music and in the entertainment industry. He has written music for several feature films, documentaries, shorts and video games, while also maintaining a prolific output of orchestral works commissioned by many ensembles around the world. In 2022, the Nashville Symphony gave the North American premiere of his piece “Heredia por Media Calle” and in 2021 the Florida Orchestra played his orchestral tone poem “Bailongo”, both conducted by Enrico López-Yáñez. Other projects this year include an album recorded at Capitol Records for Universal Music, an upcoming video game with an ecological message, and music for the prestigious Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach, CA. His interest in education has led him to give guest lectures and masterclasses at several universities and institutions in the US, Latin America, and Spain. His orchestral music is published by Symphonica Productions. Photo credit: Ignacio Guevara

Elijah J. Thomas (he/him/his) is a Black Philadelphia-born, Harlem-based multi-instrumentalist, educator and composer/experimentalist. He has studied improvisation with Dick Oatts, Tim Warfield, Jr. and Walter Bell, and composition with Dr. Cynthia Folio, Kevin Rodgers, and Dr. Maurice Wright. Elijah creates “enuff music”: music for Black healing and spiritual transcendence. Elijah has held numerous teaching positions and has led four recorded projects: enuff music, vol. i (EP, released with Off Latch Press), Our Search (LP), Three Contemplations for Jason Moran (EP) and The Unity of Sound with The NeW Quintet (LP). Elijah is Musical Director of the global street band performance organization HONK! NYC, whose mission is to “make events that reclaim, reuse, and redefine public space and connect communities through music-making, pageantry, audience participation, and education.” Photo credit: Zamani Feelings

Trevor Weston’s honors include; the George Ladd Prix de Paris from the University of California, Berkeley, a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and the Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the MacDowell Colony.Carnegie Hall co-commissioned Weston’s Flying Fish, with the American Composers Orchestra, for its 125 Commissions Project. The Bang on a Can All-Stars premiered Weston’s Dig It, for the Ecstatic Music Festival in NYC. Weston’s work Juba for Strings won the 2019 Sonori/New Orleans Chamber Orchestra Composition Competition. Weston won the first Emerging Black Composers Project sponsored by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Symphony. Dr. Weston is currently Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at Drew University in Madison, NJ and an instructor for the MAP and Pre-College programs at the Juilliard School, NYC. Photo credit: Bill Cardoni