Selected Composer, 2023: Johanny Navarro
Johanny Navarro has worked on commissions for music soloists like Andrea González Caballero, and organizations like Multicultural Music Group, Inc. and Boston Opera Collaborative; has also composed for ensembles like The Catholic University of America Symphony Orchestra, American Harp Society, Inc., New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy, Victory Players, and Coralia. Her music has been presented at Festival Casals, the Massachusetts International Festival of Arts, and the Puccini Chamber Opera Festival. Johanny has an ample catalog of diverse work and is deeply rooted in Afro-Caribbean musical aesthetics, essentially in Puerto Rican musical culture. Her opera ¿Y los Pasteles? Ópera Jíbara en dos actos, work for which she was awarded the Discovery Grant (2020) from Opera Grants for Female Composers by Opera America, premiered in July 2022 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She was recently a finalist for Atlanta Opera’s “96-Hour Opera Project” with the premiered of Atlanta: 1906 (2022) with libretto by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton. Navarro is a resident artist at the American Lyric Theater in New York, where she premiered The Magic Cabbage (2022) in collaboration with librettist Joshua Banbury.
2023 Finalists
Alicia Castillo
Jia Yi Lee
SiHyun Uhm
Selected Composers | Previous Seasons:
2022
Sofía Rocha (b. 1996) writes music of uncompromising emotional intensity while exploring cognition, randomness, rhythm, and counterpoint within post-tonal frameworks. She writes for all manner of performing forces instrumental, vocal and electronic. Upcoming projects include newly commissioned works for the 2022 Aspen Music Festival, Emory Symphony Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, and the New York Youth Symphony via their First Music Commissioning program. Sofía’s first orchestral work, Replier, was chosen as the winner of the 2020 New England Philharmonic annual call-for-scores and received its premiere in Spring of 2022 to rave reviews. The experience was described as ‘unforgettable’ and evocative of ‘the feeling of being confronted with something unknowably vast’ (The Boston Globe) as well as ‘music at its most elemental’ (The Boston Classical Review). She has also received honors from ASCAP, ACO/Earshot, Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music Youth Orchestra, OM/NI Composition Competition and Tenebrae New Music Ensemble. She has worked with ensembles including the Arditti Quartet, JACK Quartet, Fifth House Ensemble, New York Youth Symphony, DeCoda, loadbang, Brentano String Quartet, Castle of our Skins, Transient Canvas, Hypercube, arx duo, and Duo Entre-Nous as well as numerous solo performers.
Sofía received her master’s degree in composition from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory as a Chancellor’s Scholar and recipient of Elsberry & Gonder Family and Conservatory scholarships. While attending, she studied with Chen Yi, Yotam Haber, Paul Rudy and Zhou Long. Rocha was also the 2019 composer-in-residence for the Graduate Fellowship String Quartet at UMKC. She completed her undergraduate work at the Sunderman Conservatory of Music at Gettysburg College in 2019, receiving a BA in Music with Honors as a Wagnild Scholar and studying composition with Avner Dorman. She has attended June in Buffalo, Fresh Inc. Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, Divergent Studio, and the Hypercube Composition Lab as a composer, studying and taking master classes with composers such as Augusta Read Thomas, Hannah Lash, Hilda Paredes, Jeffrey Mumford, Alex Temple, Richard Danielpour, Aaron Helgeson, Amy Beth Kirsten, and David Serkin Ludwig, among others. Besides composing, Sofía is also an avid trombonist and conductor, having performed with numerous symphony orchestras, wind ensembles and jazz groups.
2021
Brittany J. Green
Brittany J. Green is a North Carolina-based composer, creative, and educator. Described as “cinematic in the best sense” and “searing” (Chicago Classical Review), Green’s music works to facilitate collaborative, intimate musical spaces that ignite visceral responses. The intersections between sound, video, movement, and text serves as the focal point of these musical spaces, questioning and redefining the relationships between these three elements. Her music has been featured at concerts and festivals throughout the United States and Canada, including TIME:SPANS, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and Boulanger Initiative’s WoCo Fest. Her music has been commissioned and performed by the JACK Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Mind on Fire, and Transient Canvas. Green’s music has been awarded the ASCAP Morton Gould Award and New Music USA Creator Development Grant. Green holds degrees from UNC-Pembroke and East Carolina University. She is a Deans Graduate Ph.D Fellow at Duke University.