Emerging Composition Completion Grant Program
June 21-23, 2023, Workshop/Open-Reading Finalists
*Chosen for world Premiere Concert on September 21, 2023 – 7:30 PM – at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. Free admission. No reservations necessary.
*Bobby Ge (Princeton University) – The Floating World
Bobby Ge is a Chinese American composer and avid collaborator who seeks to create vivid emotional journeys that navigate boundaries between genre and medium. He has created multimedia projects with the Space Telescope Science Institute, painters collective Art10Baltimore, the Scattered Players Theater Company, and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Winner of the 2022 Barlow Prize, Ge has received commissions and performances by groups including the Minnesota Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the Albany Symphony’s ‘Dogs of Desire,’ the Harbin Symphony Orchestra, Interlochen Arts Academy, Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, Guangzhou Symphony Youth Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Youth Orchestra, Music from Copland House, the Pacific Chamber Orchestra, the Bergamot Quartet, the Boss Street Brass Band, and Mind on Fire. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at Princeton University as a Naumberg Fellow, and holds degrees from UC Berkeley and the Peabody Conservatory.
Program Note
“Living only for the moment, savoring the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms, and the maple leaves, singing songs, drinking wine, and diverting oneself in simply floating, unconcerned by the prospect of imminent poverty, buoyant and carefree, like a gourd carried along with the current of the river: this is what we call ukiyo.” – Asai Royōi, Kyoto native and Buddhist priest
I have long been familiar with ukiyo (translating to ‘the floating world’) prints. The ubiquitous Great Wave Off the Coast of Kanegawa was always attractive to me for its narrative intensity, but it was not until recently that I began to appreciate ukiyo’s most discussed feature: the evocation of motion. My piece The Floating World seeks to capture ukiyo’s energetic lust for life through its bubbling vitality. The music rarely sits still, perpetually moving from one harmony to the next as whirling lines spin their way through the ensemble. Every aspect of the piece, from its shimmering orchestration and effusive patterns to its rhythmic instability and melodic transience, is meant to evoke the wispy exuberance of ukiyo prints. This piece was begun while in residence at Copland House, Cortlandt Manor, New York, as a recipient of the Copland House Residency Award.
Ula Goldstein (McGill University) – Found in the Forest
Ula Goldstein composes music that evokes the interconnectedness of the natural world. She is inspired by French art music, including Debussy, Ravel, and Messiaen. Ula recently graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Music Composition. She is a classical mezzo-soprano and serves as a co-musical director of Soulstice a Capella at McGill. Ula also taught voice and piano at the West Island Music Academy and volunteered at School of Music Montreal, teaching voice. Her oeuvre includes a series of chamber works for woodwinds and piano, and she is currently working on an orchestral suite, “Found in the Forest”. Last year, she was selected as a “Call for Scores Winner” in the Lunart Festival, celebrating women in the arts. When not composing, Ula enjoys cycling and serves on the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee of the McGill Association of Student Composers. This winter, she will be undertaking a neuroscience and music research project at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) Lab at McGill.
Program Note
Found in the Forest is a three-movement orchestral suite depicting the invisible layers of plant and animal life.
“Vines and Twirls” opens with the melody of a spinning plant. After encountering a forest dweller, the vines begin to fold. The wind twists and whirls, a winter storm tumbling the frail plant into the grass. In a frozen reflection, the plant curls upwards, wistfully watching the snowfall.
“Umbra” is a microcosm of insects. A phantom-like presence sweeps through the forest floor. Pairs of glowing eyes flicker between the trees, illuminating the tangles of twigs and leaves. As the last ray of sun hovers over the forest, a chirping sound echoes into the night.
“Mongoose” is a tug-of-war. A hunt hanging in suspense, two equal forces are pulling at each end. In a battle of trickery, neither power can overcome the other.
*Patrick Holcomb (University of Rochester) – This City Was Once an Ocean
Patrick Holcomb is a composer based in Rochester, New York. Holcomb’s compositional honors include a 2023 Wayne Brewster Barlow Prize, the 2022 ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize, a 2022 Belle S. Gitelman Award, a 2021 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a 2021 American Prize in Composition, a 2020 BMI Student Composer Award, the 2019/2021 Jon Vickers Film Scoring Award, the 2019 Georgina Joshi Composition Commission Award, and the 2018 Richard K. Joseph Composition Prize. He has attended the American Composers Orchestra EarShot New Music Readings (in 2022), June in Buffalo (in 2022), the RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Workshop (in 2022), the Bowdoin International Music Festival (in 2021), the Brevard Music Center Summer Institute and Festival (in 2019 as a Composition Teaching Assistant), and Connecticut Summerfest (in 2017 and 2018).
Holcomb completed his undergraduate studies at Ithaca College, from which he graduated top of his class in the School of Music with a BM in Composition in 2018. He also earned an MM in Composition and an MM in Music Scoring for Visual Media from the Indiana University Jacobs
School of Music in 2021. At the Jacobs School, Holcomb served as an Associate Instructor of Music Theory and the Composition Department Graduate Assistant, the Assistant Director of the New Music Ensemble & Co-Coordinator of Music Composition. He studied with Claude Baker, Larry Groupé, Eugene O’Brien, and Aaron Travers at Indiana University; with Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann, Evis Sammoutis, and Dana Wilson at Ithaca College; and with Mark Camphouse prior to beginning his college education. Holcomb is currently pursuing a PhD in Composition at the University of Rochester Eastman School of Music as a student of Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and a recipient of the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull University Fellowship from
the University of Rochester.
A member of Mensa since age nineteen, Holcomb seeks to write music that is both intellectually and emotionally engaging. He cites the time he spent studying Hindustani (North Indian) music and performing tabla and Indian harmonium under the guidance of Denise Nuttall (a student of Zakir Hussain) as the Ethnomusicology Lab Assistant at Ithaca College as one of his largest compositional influences.
Program Note
This City Was Once an Ocean (2022–23) is a product of the age of climate anxiety—or, perhaps more relevantly, climate nihilism. The work unfolds like a dream (or a premonition) of the polar ice caps melting, thus allowing the ocean to cover the planet as it may have done billions of years ago. Although this is an apocalyptic event for the human species, the earth is ultimately indifferent to our survival.
The piece is set in seven brief interconnected movements that are constructed out of three distinct but related materials. The first, which opens the work in “Water,” is a primal and volatiledepiction of the ocean. Next, in “Light,” the metallic colors of the glockenspiel and the celesta create a kaleidoscopic texture suggestive of rays of sunlight. Finally, in “Ice,” the Water material is transformed into a static configuration that evokes the crystalline structure and awesome size of a glacier. The fourth, fifth, and seventh movements are comprised of each of the possible pairs of these materials. At the climax in the sixth movement, Water, Light, and Ice come into conflict as though fighting for dominance. Ice is ultimately obliterated, and at the end of the piece, Water
returns to its initial state while Light remains obstinately at its zenith.
Tommaso Saturnia (San Francisco Conservatory of Music) – Through the Planetary Nebula
Tommaso Saturnia is an Italian composer and concert pianist. His compositional style takes its roots from literature, philosophy and visual art, disciplines for which he dedicates a huge part of his daily routine. His works were performed in prestigious museums and venues, such as MUSE in Trento, MART and Philharmonic Hall in Rovereto, and Castle of Buonconsiglio, and received several awards. He wrote music for international industrial design exhibitions and in collaboration with writers and festivals. Recently, he attended as a lecturer the GATM “XVI International Conference of Theory and Musical Analysis,” with a research work on Vaughan Williams Pastoral Symphony. In 2023 he collaborated with the Kurdish soprano Pervin Chakar, writing a song to remember the massacre of Halabja. His chamber opera Ingenium, produced in 2021 with Trento Conservatory of Music, went sold out in all the three concerts. In July 2023, the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra will premiere his work “Clinamen” for large orchestra at the Ivan Vazov National Theater. Tommaso holds two Masters in Piano Performance, and a Bachelor in Composition (gained with full marks, cum laude, and an honorable mention from the jury) and he is currently a Master’s student in Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Program Note
One way to determine the end of Youth and the onset of Adulthood, it is said, is through the acquisition of a greater awareness of the real world, at the expense of an inhibition of the innate tendency to imagine and dream what reality can’t give us. It is as if, over time, that part of our mind has rusted, covered by a thick layer of dust, leading us to the idea that, at a certain point, that skill is no longer necessary. This leads us to think that imagining worlds and stories that have never been experienced is a childish activity that no longer deserves the attention of adults. However, reality shows us how wrong and dangerous this mind-set is. Our mind always needs loopholes, and if we don’t provide our brain with a relief valve, it will find some other ways, sometimes more trivial, other times sneakier and more harmful to our health. This work for chamber orchestra wants to give the audience the opportunity to return for a moment back in the years, projecting them into one of the areas of human exploration that more than any other has proved to be an inexhaustible well of incredible stories and extraordinary worlds.
Among various cosmic entities, a planetary nebula is of particular interest: it is formed in the late era of a red giant star: the force of gravity of the star is not able to contain the expanding mass of the star, and so a gigantic, colorful ocean of dust and gas forms all around the nucleus. This is my advice to the listener: imagine jumping into a space vessel and start a journey through one of these wonders of our reality, and navigate through stones, dust, gas and other unimaginable wonders. Become a child again, while you travel into the final life cycle of a star. Get out of the confines of reality and let the music transport your mind to uncanny landscapes, atmospheres, and colors. Leave the reins of everyday life and let yourself be amazed by your own imagination: this is the humble goal of this work.
Ethan Soledad (Rice University) – Intrusive Thoughts
Ethan Soledad. Bold, dramatic, with an exquisite attention to detail, Ethan Soledad (b. 1999) is a Filipino-American composer whose work aims to express emotions in their most raw form. An experienced singer, he incorporates drama in his work, emphasizing the importance of silence and one’s perception of time. Ethan’s music draws from a wide palette of compositional styles and colors ranging from impressionism and neoclassicism to post-minimalism and avant-garde. His musical style is marked by unapologetic expression, dynamic extremes, and the ability to do more with less but never shying away from doing more with more.
His music has been performed and recognized by ensembles such as New York Youth Symphony (First Music Commission Honorable Mention), the Greater Miami Youth Symphony, Choral Arts Initiative, Fifth House Ensemble, Bent Frequency, the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble (ECCE), Fear No Music, Crossing Borders Music, True Concord Voices and Orchestra, The Choral Project, the Beo String Quartet, and the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York.
He is a teacher at the Shepherd School of Music pre-college program, teaching music theory, composition, and aural skills to advanced high school students. Additionally he is a young artist at DACAMERA Houston, engaging in outreach programs with Harris county elementary and middle schools.
He graduated with his Bachelor of Arts in Music at Florida State University 2021 and is currently pursuing his Master of Music in Composition at Rice University studying under Shih-Hui Chen and Karim Al-Zand. His previous composition teachers include Liliya Ugay and Orlando Jacinto Garcia.
Program Note
Original version for dectet commissioned by the Albany (NY) Symphony Orchestra as part of the “Orchestrating for the 21st Century” workshop 2022. Expanded version for chamber orchestra Commissioned by the ArtZenter Institute for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.
Intrusive Thoughts – An intrusive thought is an unwelcome, involuntary thought, image, or unpleasant idea that may become an obsession, is upsetting or distressing, and can feel difficult to manage or eliminate. This psychological phenomenon is something I used to deal with on a regular basis when I lived back home with my family. These thoughts often took the form of very disturbing and violent images of self-harm which I would fixate on for several minutes at a time. It is under these circumstances in which I composed the first movement of the piece.
What I find most interesting about this is that when I finally moved away, I stopped getting these thoughts all together- so much so that I forgot I ever had them, and so whenever I would present the piece to people, I never mentioned how the piece relates to me personally, not because of any shame I had felt surrounding the topic but simply because I had completely forgotten why I wrote it. It was only months after I had moved that I finally remembered my reasoning behind composing the piece. This idea of remembering and consolidating with past traumas is explored in the second movement of the piece.
*Julie Zhu (Stanford University) – as swiftly and fading as soon
Julie Zhu is a composer, artist, and carillonist based in San Francisco. She entangles various media with and through music, from painting and sculpture to video and theater, and collaborates with artists from different fields to create experimental chamber experiences. Her scores range from hair cast in clear resin to just intonation software to traditional orchestration, and have been performed by Dal Niente, Ensemble Linea, EXAUDI, JACK quartet, Quasar, among others. As a carillonist, she has presented concerts and lectures throughout Europe and North America and was appointed carillonist at Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue in New York City in 2015. Zhu studied at Yale University (BA mathematics, BA art), the Royal Carillon School (Diploma carillon performance), Hunter College (MFA art), IRCAM (Cursus), and at present, she is a doctoral candidate in music composition at Stanford.
Program Note
as swiftly and fading as soon is about the weather and the solitary experience of playing bells in a tower to curious passersby.
The title comes from Emily Brontë’s poem High Waving Heather:
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.