First Mondays: June Virtual Gala

This month we have a very special program we're presenting as apart of our "First Mondays" series. This month will be a virtual gala presenting the work of Richard Festinger, Hendel Almetus, Andrew Conklin, and Josiah Catalan. This performance will be accompanied by commentary from Andrew Conklin and will be premiering live on our YouTube channel at 7pm (PST). Pieces that will be presented: Richard Festinger - "Upon the Viol" for solo cello. Performed by Thalia Moore. Josiah Catalan - "Light, Smoke and Siren Glow of Mist" for flute and viola. Performed by Tod Brody and Ellen Ruth Rose. Andrew Conklin - "I Am Not Prokofiev" for piano. Performed by Brenda Tom. and a new solo flute work by Hendel Almetus to be performed by Tod Brody. RICHARD FESTINGER: Composer Richard Festinger has achieved international recognition for his extensive catalogue of vocal and instrumental compositions. Writing for the 2011 Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Frank J. Oteri describes Festinger’s music as "notable for its combination of propulsive energy with an impeccable sense of poise and balance." Since 1990 he has been a professor of composition at San Francisco State University, where he is also Artistic Director of the Morrison Artists chamber music series. Before turning to composing, he led his own groups as a jazz performer. Festinger received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in composition from the University of California, Berkeley, and in the mid-1980’s was one of the co-founders of Earplay. His music is published by C.F. Peters Corporation and Wildcat Canyon Press. His works have been recorded for the Centaur, Bridge, CRI and CRS labels. He has received major awards and commissions from the Jerome Foundation, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Argosy Foundation, the Barlow Foundation, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Philadelphia Music Project, Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, and the American Composers Forum. He is a recipient of the George Ladd Grand Prix de Paris, and has received both the Walter Hinrichsen Award and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. JOSIAH CATALAN: Josiah Tayag Catalan is a Filipino-American born in New York City and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recently, his compositional interests have become centered around the intersects of merging alternative modes of temporality and harmony by fusing elements that stem from influences in traditional, avant-garde, popular, and Southeast Asian musics. First prizes were awarded to Josiah from the NACUSA Young Composer's Competition as well as the Sacramento State Festival of New American Music Student Composer's Competition. He has also been a finalist in competitions such as the Thailand International Competition Festival and ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer's Awards. Josiah's music has been commissioned and performed internationally by individuals and groups such as the Empyrean Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Mise-en, Lydian and Arditti String Quartets, the MANA saxophone quartet, percussionist Chris Froh, violist Ellen Ruth Rose, and violinist Miranda Cuckson. Presently, Josiah is pursuing his Ph.D. in music theory and composition at the University of California, Davis. During his time there, he has studied composition with Sam Nichols, Kurt Rhode, Mika Pelo, and Pablo Ortiz. ANDREW CONKLIN: Andrew Conklin is a composer, songwriter, singer, and multi-instrumentalist who makes music that engages both with American vernacular idioms and contemporary classical practices. He has appeared as a composer or performer throughout the United States and Europe, and his music has garnered recognition from diverse voices spanning the worlds of popular and classical music. Andrew’s music is influenced by and indebted to the American folk musics that began to be documented in the early 20th century with the advent of newly accessible recording technology. In particular, his work draws inspiration from the recordings of these musics, which often feel like serendipitous snapshots of unique and wonderful sonic moments whose spontaneity can seem to be, on its face, incompatible with conventional ideas of what a composer does. Several of his recent projects, including Field Reports (New Focus Recordings, 2019) and Song Collector (Bot Cave Records, 2020), seek to mediate between these two modes of music making. HENDEL ALMETUS: Hendel Almétus received a Ph.D. in composition from UC Davis in 2012. He was born in Haiti where he began his musical training at the age of 12. He earned a bachelor’s in music composition from the Houston Baptist University and a master’s in composition from the Eastman School of Music. At Eastman he developed an interest in computer music, particularly in the area of synthesis and has, since then, used various sound synthesis software for some of his compositions. At the 2008 Image Movement and Sound festival in New York, he collaborated with a film maker and a choreographer in a multimedia work called Polarity that was performed at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has written for ensembles of various sizes that occasionally include electronics. His music has been performed by the Empyrean Ensemble, Schola Cantorum, and various ensembles from the Eastman School of Music.