The works of composer Dana Kaufman (b. Chicago, 1989) have been heard throughout North America, and in Estonia, the Czech Republic and Italy. Her music has been featured at venues/festivals such as soundSCAPE Festival; Opera on Tap Chicago; Estonian Music Days; Charlotte New Music Festival; Centro Musica Contemporanea di Milano; Ravinia Festival’s One Score, One Chicago series; Chosen Vale International Trumpet Seminar; Boston’s Jordan Hall; Women Composers Festival of Hartford and FETA Foundation Emerging Composers Concert Series; it has been performed by ensembles including Great Noise Ensemble, a very small consortium, Firebird Ensemble, Na Wai Chamber Choir, Wet Ink Ensemble and So Percussion.
Ms. Kaufman is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright Student Research Grant; 2017 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards Finalist; 2016 American Prize Honorable Mention in the Chamber Music Student Division and 2015 Semi-Finalist in the Opera/Theater/Film Division; Winner of the Ensemble Ibis Composition Competition; Honorable Mention/Finalist in the Boston Choral Ensemble’s Commission Competition; Finalist in the New American Voices Composition Competition; Amherst College Edward Poole Lay Fellowship; First Runner-Up in the 2014 Black House New Operas Project Composers’ Competition; First Place in the Music Institute of Chicago’s Generation Next Composition Competition; and was a winner of flutist Orlando Cela’s “Project Extended.”
Ms. Kaufman completed her MM at New England Conservatory and is a DMA Candidate and music theory instructor at University of Miami Frost School of Music, where she is the first Frost School of Music student to be a Dean’s Fellow. danakaufmanmusic.com
Ms. Kaufman is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright Student Research Grant; 2017 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards Finalist; 2016 American Prize Honorable Mention in the Chamber Music Student Division and 2015 Semi-Finalist in the Opera/Theater/Film Division; Winner of the Ensemble Ibis Composition Competition; Honorable Mention/Finalist in the Boston Choral Ensemble’s Commission Competition; Finalist in the New American Voices Composition Competition; Amherst College Edward Poole Lay Fellowship; First Runner-Up in the 2014 Black House New Operas Project Composers’ Competition; First Place in the Music Institute of Chicago’s Generation Next Composition Competition; and was a winner of flutist Orlando Cela’s “Project Extended.”
Ms. Kaufman completed her MM at New England Conservatory and is a DMA Candidate and music theory instructor at University of Miami Frost School of Music, where she is the first Frost School of Music student to be a Dean’s Fellow. danakaufmanmusic.com
J.L. Marlor is a freelance genre-bending composer and performer, known for her accessible narrative-based scores and commitment to radical art. Recently, Tenor Ryan Zettlemoyer premiered her work, 45/140 , a grotesque anti-ode to our Cheeto in Chief using exclusively the words disseminated through his twitter. Her opera ISKRA, detailing the coal protests of the turn of the century, won the Stoop Adesso prize. In 2016, Jessica was the first recipient of the Da Camera Singers Young Composers Competition. They premiered her piece, Our Flawed Garden, based on the poetry of Sylvia Plath this January. Jessica is a student of Virgil Thompson Prize winner, Kate Soper. Find her work online at jlmarlor.com.
Marc Hoffeditz is a composer of vocal and instrumental music searching to balance the humors of sarcasm, pathos, camp, and vulnerability.
He has made his mark (pun somewhat intended) on the indie opera scene with performances by Rhymes with Opera, Opera on Tap-Twin Cities, Hartford Opera Theatre, and Opera from Scratch (Nova Scotia). His song cycle/monodrama Ne’er was chosen for performance at the 2016 Minnesota Source Song Festival, where he worked with acclaimed American composer Libby Larsen.
Upcoming projects include a large scale concert opera/oratorio based on the Benghazi investigations and an extended work for high soprano and piano based on interviews with Kellyanne Conway. Marc has received degrees at the Boston Conservatory and Christopher Newport University, with principal teachers including Andy Vores, Marti Epstein, Dalit Warshaw, and Christopher Cook.
Hear his work online at soundcloud.com/marchoffeditz
He has made his mark (pun somewhat intended) on the indie opera scene with performances by Rhymes with Opera, Opera on Tap-Twin Cities, Hartford Opera Theatre, and Opera from Scratch (Nova Scotia). His song cycle/monodrama Ne’er was chosen for performance at the 2016 Minnesota Source Song Festival, where he worked with acclaimed American composer Libby Larsen.
Upcoming projects include a large scale concert opera/oratorio based on the Benghazi investigations and an extended work for high soprano and piano based on interviews with Kellyanne Conway. Marc has received degrees at the Boston Conservatory and Christopher Newport University, with principal teachers including Andy Vores, Marti Epstein, Dalit Warshaw, and Christopher Cook.
Hear his work online at soundcloud.com/marchoffeditz
Robin Haigh is a composer from London, whose music has been performed across the UK, as well as in America, France, Lithuania, and Taiwan.
He is particularly interested in dramatic music; his opera “The Man Who Woke Up” was premiered in London in 2015, followed by performances in Louisville in 2016 by Thompson Street Opera Company. More recent dramatic works include his “1936: An East London Uprising” for two narrators and large ensemble, commissioned by East London Music Group to commemorate the 80th anniversary of The Battle of Cable Street, and a new piece in collaboration with Austrian writer Raphaela Edelbauer to be performed in the basement of Shoreditch Town Hall in June 2017.
Robin studied at Goldsmiths, University of London with Dmitri Smirnov, and is now completing his Masters degree at the Royal Academy of Music with Edmund Finnis and David Sawer.
Find his work online at www.robinhaigh.com
He is particularly interested in dramatic music; his opera “The Man Who Woke Up” was premiered in London in 2015, followed by performances in Louisville in 2016 by Thompson Street Opera Company. More recent dramatic works include his “1936: An East London Uprising” for two narrators and large ensemble, commissioned by East London Music Group to commemorate the 80th anniversary of The Battle of Cable Street, and a new piece in collaboration with Austrian writer Raphaela Edelbauer to be performed in the basement of Shoreditch Town Hall in June 2017.
Robin studied at Goldsmiths, University of London with Dmitri Smirnov, and is now completing his Masters degree at the Royal Academy of Music with Edmund Finnis and David Sawer.
Find his work online at www.robinhaigh.com
Ross Crean jokingly says he “writes strange music that he likes to listen to when he is by himself, eating raw cookie dough in a dark closet,” but in truth, his music has been referred to as being “funny...and virtuosic” (Classic Concert Nova Scotia), having “exceptionally different, outstanding quality” (Download), and music that “stirs you deep, undertones of humanity” (Access Contemporary Music). A prolific collaborator with a focus on the evocative and lyrical, he has received commissions from and worked with numerous artists, including internationally renowned mezzo-soprano Heidi Skok (formerly with the Metropolitan Opera), The Mozart Ensemble at Oberlin College, Opera on Tap (Chicago and New York), and Loyola University Museum of Art. Ross is currently Resident Composer and Creative Director for Nebula Creatives, a multimedia firm based in Chicago. He is also a signee with PARMA Recordings and will be releasing the recording of his opera The Great God Pan in July 2017. Find his work online at www.rosscrean.com