No Extra Notes

Jeremy Podgursky

October 25, 2009, 4:05 pm
Filed under: Composers

Jeremy Podgursky

Born: August 21, 1975

Current Location: Bloomington, In

Bio:

Jeremy Podgursky is a composer of chamber, orchestral and electronic/electro-acoustic music. He received his B.M. in music composition/piano in 2001 from the University of Louisville, studying privately with Fred Speck, Marc Satterwhite, and Steve Rouse. In 2007, he completed the Grawemeyer Fellowship in music composition (M.M.) at the University of Louisville under the guidance of Steve Rouse and John Gibson. Upon completion of his master of music degree, he taught music theory/aural skills and private composition lessons at the University of Louisville. While teaching on the collegiate level, he also implemented and taught multiple after-school composition programs in Louisville, KY-area public high schools. Jeremy recently began the Jacobs School of Music Doctoral Fellowship (D.M.) at Indiana University where he is studying with Don Freund and John Gibson. He is also an Associate Instructor, and is currently teaching Notation and Calligraphy as well as private composition lessons.

Jeremy’s music has been featured in venues and festivals in the United States, the Netherlands and Japan. He has received performances by professional groups such as Arsenal Trio, Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, Juventas! New Music Ensemble, cellist Dana Winograd, and the North/South Consonance Chamber Orchestra. Recent awards include first-place winner of the 2007 National SCI/ASCAP commissioning award, honorable mention in the 2008 Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute, winner of the Northridge Prize (Cal State University Northridge) for orchestra, and participant in the 2009 American Composers Orchestra/EARSHOT readings with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (Delta David Gier, conductor).

Jeremy is the founder/singer/songwriter/guitarist for the psychedelic/indie rock band The Pennies. Having shared the stages with the likes of My Morning Jacket, Mike Watt, The Grifters, Superchunk, Archers of Loaf, and the Apples in Stereo, The Pennies have entertained audiences all over the country and in Europe. The Pennies’ complete discography includes the self-titled 7” EP, Decorate the Atomic Art four song CD, Come, We Go debut album/CD, and 10,000 Things ten song CD, as well as several compilation releases.

The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of No Extra Notes.

Theme Music composed by Sarah Horick

Yotam Haber

October 19, 2009, 12:56 am
Filed under: Composers

Yotam Haber

Born: October 27, 1976

Current Location: Rome, Italy

Bio:

Yotam Haber, 32, was born in Holland and is a citizen of Israel and the United States. He was the Frederic A. Juilliard/Walter Damrosch 2007-2008 Rome Prize Fellow in Music at the American Academy in Rome, composing death will come and she shall have your eyes, a work that explores the music of the Roman Jewish community.

Haber attended Indiana University and completed a doctorate in composition at Cornell University in 2004. He received ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Awards in 2002 and 2004. In 2004, he also won the second bi-annual ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize for the wind ensemble work, Espresso, which was premiered at Carnegie Hall. He has been a Fellow at the Aspen andTanglewood music festivals, and been in residence at the Aaron Copland House, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Macdowell Colony and the Rockefeller Bogliasco Center. His music has been performed in prestigious halls throughout Europe and across the U.S. including the Buffalo and Colorado Symphony Orchestras. Haber resides in New York City and is a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow. Most recent performances include the Volans Trio performing Stendhal Syndrome in conjunction with Dutch Artist Maria Barnas in Berlin, Rome, and Leiden; Flux Quartet performing Torus at Bargemusic in New York, and the Knights Ensemble premiering A Wine-Dark Sea, and hailed by New Yorker critic Alex Ross as “deeply haunting.”

He recently had a premiere of two works commissioned by Pritzker-prize winning architect Peter Zumthor and has received a 2009 Meet the Composer commission for a large-scale work for the NYC-based Knights Ensemble.

Photo Credit: Ada Haber

The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of No Extra Notes.

Theme Music composed by Sarah Horick

Steven Rice

October 11, 2009, 10:50 pm
Filed under: Composers

Steven Rice

Born: 1979

Current Location: Baltimore, MD

Bio:

Described as “surreal” music “to bewilder, amuse, and provoke”, the works of composer Steven Rice (born 1979) have drawn increasing recognition; he took 1st Prize in the 2005 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award and received a 2009 ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer Award. His music has been performed throughout the United States by ensembles such as the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and Juventas, as well as at concerts where he and Heike Burghart Rice perform music for organ and electronics. Rice’s composing has been supported by the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Rice studied at Bowling Green State University (M.M.), with Marilyn Shrude, Elainie Lillios, and Mikel Kuehn. At the Eastman School of Music, he has studied with Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez and Robert Morris.

All music is published by riceklang

The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of No Extra Notes.

Theme Music composed by Sarah Horick

Call for Composers 02

October 6, 2009, 1:10 am
Filed under: News

“Composer Takeover 02″

-No Extra Notes, the new podcast featuring interviews and music from up-and-coming composers, is posting an open call for for composers to participate in the first “Composer Takeover”. Three composers will be selected to be featured on the January 3rd podcast and will be allotted 15 minutes per composer to create there own podcast including their background and recording(s) of their work.

Selection will be based not only on the quality of the compositions but also on the quality of recordings. Keep in mind that this is an audio broadcast only, so please choose your submissions accordingly. No Extra Notes will only be able to air recordings supplied by the composers and will not offer to organize any live performances or new recordings of the works. The first Composer Takeover can be seen here.

Submission Guidelines

Materials must be emailed to: noextranotes@gmail.com

A complete submission includes a 2 music recordings in .MP3 format, a headshot and a .PDF document containing the following information:

- Date of Birth
- Current Location
- Brief Bio
- Website Link

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2009

Selected composers will be announced November 15, 2009 and will be featured on the blog and podcast in alphabetical order.

Nicholas Omiccioli

October 4, 2009, 9:57 pm
Filed under: Composers

Nicholas Omiccioli

Born: 1982

Current Location: Kansas City, MO

Bio:

Nicholas S. Omiccioli (b. 1982) has received degrees from Heidelberg University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is the assistant director of Musica Nova at UMKC under the direction of Zhou Long. Mr. Omiccioli currently studies composition with James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Paul Rudy, and additionally with João Pedro Oliveira. His initial teachers include Brian Bevelander and Mark Olivieri. Mr. Omiccioli has received many awards including winner and judge’s choice in the 2007, 2008, and 2009 UMKC Chamber Music Composition Competitions, 2009 DuoSolo Emerging Composer Award, Kansas City Chorale Crescendo Competition, Brian M. Israel Prize, Ars Nova Composition Award, and the Dance Rochester! Composer/Choreographer Competition. His music has been performed by DuoSolo, the Kansas City Chorale, Society for New Music, Heidelberg New Music Festival, Regional and National College Music Society Conferences, as well as numerous SCI Conferences at the National, National Student, and Regional levels. During the summer of 2009, Mr. Omiccioli will be a fellow at the 65th Annual Composers’ Conference at Wellesley College. In addition to composition, Mr. Omiccioli studies guitar with Douglas Niedt and teaches at the UMKC Academy of Music and Dance.

The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of No Extra Notes.

Theme Music composed by Sarah Horick

Robert Raines

September 27, 2009, 11:22 pm
Filed under: Composers

Robert Raines

Born: Irrelevant

Current Location: The United States

Bio:

Composing every day. Even when it hurts.

Theme Music composed by Sarah Horick

Steven Snowden

September 21, 2009, 12:37 am
Filed under: Composers

Steven Snowden

Born: May 3, 1981

Current Location: Austin, Texas

Bio:

Steven Snowden creates music for a diverse array of media including theater, dance, film, multimedia installations, and the concert stage. Along with composition, he performs and promotes new music for horn, works as a freelance graphic and web designer, and constructs instruments from found objects for use in electro-acoustic improvisation and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Raised in rural Southwest Missouri, Snowden began composition studies in 2002 at Missouri State University, received a Master’s degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is currently a doctoral composition fellow at the University of Texas at Austin.

Recent awards in composition include the George Lynn Memorial Prize, the Cecil Effinger Award, and a 2009 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award.

Theme Music composed by Sarah Horick

Reiko Yamada

September 13, 2009, 3:15 pm
Filed under: Composers

Reiko Yamada

Born: 1978

Current Location: Montreal

Bio:

Composer Reiko Yamada was born in Hiroshima, Japan. She holds a B.A. in Jazz Composition from the Berklee College of Music and a M.A. in Classical Composition from Boston University, having studied under Vuk Kulenovich, Theodore Antoniou, Samuel Headrick, Lukas Foss and others. Her compositions include solo, chamber, choral and orchestral music, as well as collaborative projects with jazz musicians, dancers, visual artists and writers.

Yamada is the founder (2005) and artistic director of the JYUGOYA Ensemble. Her works have been performed on major stages in the United States (including the Boston Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall) as well as in Europe and Japan, where she led the JYUGOYA Ensemble on a three-city tour. She has been an Artist in Residence at Wildacres (NC), the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation (NM) and the Millay Colony for the Arts (NY), and held master classes in Turkey and Japan. She will be pursuing doctoral studies in composition at McGill University starting next Fall.

For more information about the composer, please visit www.reikoyamada.com-

Theme Music composed by Sarah Horick

Composer Takeover 01

September 6, 2009, 1:38 pm
Filed under: Composers

Sang Mi Ahn

Born: 1979

Current Location: Bloomington, IN

Bio:

Sang Mi Ahn received her BM from Yonsei University, Korea and MM from Indian University. She has studied with Cheong Mook Kim, Jie Sun Lim, Claude Baker, and Don Freund. Her Psalm 30 for Chamber Orchestra received honorable mention for the Libby Larsen Prize at the 2009 Competition of The International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) and has been performed at the 2009 Midwest Composers Symposium at the University of Michigan. Her choral anthem Let Us Hope When Hope Seems Hopeless was selected as a finalist for the 2008 Contemporary Vocal Ensemble Choral Music Competition at Indiana University. In 2003, her chamber works have been chosen to represent Yonsei University at Nong 21, a joint composition recital organized by Seoul National University and the Korean National University of Arts. Sang Mi is a pianist and has performed in most of her composition recitals. She is currently a doctoral student in composition at Indiana, where she studies with P.Q. Phan.

Ryan Carter

Born: April 13, 1980

Current Location: New York, NY

Bio:

Praised by the New York Times as “imaginative…like, say, a Martian dance party,” Ryan Carter’s music has been performed throughout Europe and North America by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Nieuw Ensemble, NOW Ensemble, Margaret Lancaster, and many others. Recent commissions have come from Carnegie Hall, Present Music, The Milwaukee Children’s Choir and the Calder Quarte, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Meet the Composer. Recent awards include the Lee Ettelson Award, the Aaron Copland Award, and several ASCAPlus Awards; Ryan was also a finalist for the 2005 Gaudeamus Prize. Ryan holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and SUNY – Stony Brook, where his primary teachers included Richard Hoffmann, Pauline Oliveros and Daniel Weymouth. Ryan spent 2007-2008 studying with Louis Andriessen and Gilius van Bergeijk at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (the Netherlands) and is currently pursuing doctoral work as a MacCracken Fellow at New York University.

Ryan Jesperson

Born: 1981

Current Location: Kansas City, MO

Bio:

Ryan Jesperson (1981) is a composer whose music is steeped in the modern practice of blurring genres and skewing expectations. With a taste for eccentric rhythms and dissonant chord progressions, Ryan’s music alludes to his jazz and rock roots while still staying firmly ensconced in the modern classical tradition. Ryan holds an MM and an AD from the University of Hartford, and a BM and BA from Washington State University. Currently, Ryan is pursuing his doctorate at the University of Missouri- Kansas City where he is a Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellow. His principal compositions teachers include Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Larry Alan Smith, Robert Carl, Stephen Gryc, Charles Argersinger and Gregory Yasinitsky. Ryan is currently studying with James Mobberley.

Ryan’s compositions have been performed across the country and abroad, with performances at multiple SCI and NACUSA concerts, the CMU New Music Festival, the Nebraska at Kearney New Music Festival, and the ReJoyce Festival among others. His chamber opera, Words for the Dead, was premiered in 2004 at Washington State University. Recent performances include Violin Sonata by Sarah Washburn and Tamila Azadaliyeva in New York City, fragments and memories by Radu Clipa in Bucharest, Romania, Farbenmusik by Kari Johnson at the CMS Great Plains Conference, and Concerto for Flute by Sophia Tegart and the UMKC Orchestra in Kansas City, MO. Upcoming performances include Birdsongs at the Nebraska at Kearney New Music Festival, the premiere of Euphonium > Plutonium by Nate Gay in Kansas City, MO, and a performance at the Kalv Festival in Kalv, Sweden. Ryan is also currently working on his first CD release with the vocalist Ashly Evans. His compositions Humanity Divine and Birdsongs will be featured on the upcoming disc.

The winner of the 2009 British Trombone Society Composition Contest, the 2008 UMKC Orchestra Composition Competition, and honorable mention in the 2008 NACUSA Young Composer Awards, Ryan has also won awards from the College Music Society, the Lional Hampton Jazz Festival, FASR, and Phi Beta Kappa. His list of commissions include the Honors String Quartet, the Miklos Quartet, trumpeter Chris Belluscio, violinist Sarah Washburn, vocalist Ashly Evans and trombonist Radu Clipa. Also an educator, Ryan was a member of the music faculty at the Hartford Conservatory and taught at the University of Hartford. Ryan is published through Sound Music Publications and Warwick Music, as well as his own imprint, Jazzperson Music. You can find out more at www.ryanjesperson.com.

Theme Music composed by Sarah Horick