COMPOSERS HUB COHORT 2019

We are extremely excited to welcome our 2019 participants to LunART's educational program "From
Page to Stage: Emerging Composers!" This program is created for women composers at the beginning of their careers. These 6 talented composers will participate in a master class and private composition lessons with composer-in-residence Valerie Coleman, as well as workshop their music with festival musicians. The program culminates with a concert on Saturday 6/8 at 2pm showcasing their works!

Claudia Sofia Alvarez is a Peruvian composer born in Lima. She is pursuing a bachelor's degree in Music Composition at the National University of Music in Peru, under Professor Nilo Velarde. Her last works and performances include the music scoring of the short film “The hope prize” for International Film Festival for Human Rights at Bogotá, Colombia, the premiere of two works at the Contemporary Music International Festival of Lima, the music scoring of contemporary dance performance “Out of it” featured in the Independant Dance Festival of Lima, the premiere of a work by the German duo “Lux Nova”, developed in the Contemporary Music Workshop at the National University of Music in Peru, and a coming premiere in september at the VIII Encounter between composers and instrumentalists in the National University of La Plata (Buenos Aires, Argentina). Last year, she was selected as one of the 15 participants of the National Music Composition Educational Program of the Culture Ministry in Cusco, where she attended workshops imparted by Mesías Maiguashca (Ecuador), Tim Rescala (Brasil) and Rodolfo Acosta (Colombia). Her music combines sound resources such as polymodality and some philosophical concepts or personal experiences in order to search for a subjective truth through expression of being.

Veronica Cator is a rising junior music composition major studying with Dr. Clint Needham at Baldwin Wallace University. She is involved in a jazz a capella group, a music honors fraternity, and several other organizations on campus. Veronica is very interested in music that tells a story, and looks forward to a career in collaborative music making, be it music theater, dance music, or some other artform.

 Anna Marcus-Hecht  is a graduating senior at the Ithaca College School of Music. She is pursuing her Bachelors in Music Composition in the studio of Evis Sammoutis. She has previously studied under Jorge Grossmann, Dana Wilson, and Daniel Pesca, as well as with Gabriele Proy through the IES Vienna program. Anna’s music focuses heavily on expressing emotion through narrative and imagery, using the music to tell the audience a compelling, moving story. She also frequently works with political themes in her music, using the medium as a way to convey her beliefs of social justice and opinions on the political landscape. On top of her contemporary classical work, Anna writes scores for film and television, video games, and musical theater. Her first original musical, Time’s Apprentice, is set to be performed April 2019, and she is planning on pursuing either composing for visual media or composing for musical theater after graduation.

Nikea Randolph is an adjunct college professor at Columbia College in SC- teaching Music History and Music Appreciation. Nikea earned her bachelor’s degree in Music from Columbia College, studying piano with Dr. Alan Weinberg and composition with Dr. Randolph Love. She later studied composition with Dr. John Fitz Rogers and Dr. David Kirkland Garner at the University of South Carolina while earning her masters in music composition. Nikea hopes to pursue a PhD in Musicology in the near future.

Shelby Caroline Scott is a composer and Kansas native. She attributes her interest in pursuing music as a career to the rich musical environment in which she was raised that emphasized education in the arts. When writing, Shelby enjoys portraying themes of ambiguity and duality and creating an organic unfolding of musical material. She often works with and explores the
possibilities of modal harmonies and engages rhythmic playfulness. Her works were selected for the 2018 season of the Atlantic Music Festival, and in 2017 she collaborated and premiered a new piece with the notable contemporary ensemble, Triplepoint Trio. She currently studies with Dr. Ingrid Stolzel at the University of Kansas and is on course to receive a BM in both Composition and Theory.

Emily Joy Sullivan is a composer, educator, and choral director based in Buffalo, New York. Her music is characterized by rhythmic drive and lush expressivity, and is deeply influenced by folk, pop, and world music. Ms. Sullivan’s works have been performed in New York, Chicago, Vancouver, Valencia, and Cape Town, South Africa. Ms. Sullivan recently received a Master’s degree in Music Composition at SUNY Fredonia, where she studied with Rob Deemer, Paul Coleman, and Jamie Leigh Sampson. She is currently an adjunct professor of Music Theory at Fredonia. Ms. Sullivan holds a BA in Music from Amherst College, where her feminist musicology thesis was “Envoicing Eve: Femmes Fatales in Carmen, Salome, and Lulu.” She is committed to creating music in a collaborative spirit, and has worked with librettists, poets, choreographers, and instrumentalists to create modern, relevant art in community together. Most recently, Ms. Sullivan completed a commission for the genre-bending band The Oscillators. She is currently working on a musical theater project retelling fairy tales from the heroines’ points of view.