premiered by the National Sawdust Ensemble @ National Sawdust on June 4th, 2019- as one of the winners of their 2019 Hildegard Competition.

Lidiya Yankovskaya, Conductor
Allison Loggins-Hull, flute
Oran Etkin, clarinet
Sugar Vendil, piano
Ian Rosenbaum, percussion
Miranda Cuckson, violin
Jeffrey Zeigler, cello

Charles Hagaman, NS Technician

Openwork, knotted object // Trellis in bloom // lightning ache [2019] | National Sawdust Ensemble

[piece title] [year written] | [performing ensemble]

inti figgis-vizueta (b.1993) is a composer and educator who works to reconcile historical aesthetics and experimental practices with trans & Indigenous futures. Described as a “rising new music star” (LA Times), with “smooth and serrated melodies” (New York Times) and an “intriguing…highly integrated sound” (Gramophone), “wrought from a language we’d do well to learn” (Washington Post), inti has been commissioned and performed by leading artists including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Dallas Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, New World Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Reflektor, Aspen Music Festival, Ojai Music Festival, Spoleto Music Festival, Kennedy Center’s Sounds of US Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Wild Up, Roomful of Teeth, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, Kronos Quartet, Attacca Quartet, JACK Quartet, Music from Copland House, Crash Ensemble, violinist Jennifer Koh, and cellists Andrew Yee and Jay Campbell, among many others. inti’s work has been featured at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Hall Concert Hall, Symphony Center, REDCAT, National Concert Hall (IE), Southbank Centre (UK), Philharmonie de Paris (FR), Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ (NL), and Konzerthaus Berlin (DE). 

Upcoming projects include Earths to Come in VR for the Venice Film Festival, mad scramble for crumbs for Opera Saratoga, Metahaven’s film The Feeling Sonnets, and works for flutist Claire Chase, pianist James McVinnie, and cellist Andrew Yee with Roomful of Teeth. inti is the recipient of the Lotos Foundation Prize, ASCAP Foundation Fred Ho Award, National Sawdust Hildegard Award, Café Royal Foundation Music Grant and residency fellowships from Dumbarton Oaks, Civitella Ranieri, Juilliard Summer Percussion, and Music at Copland House.

inti has held faculty positions with Luna Composition Lab (21-24’), Wildflower Composers (20-22’), Fresh Inc Festival (22’), and Atlanticx Composition (21’). She regularly lectures on her music with recent visits to Harvard University, The Juilliard School, Peabody Conservatory, and CalArts, among many others. inti has curated programs for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella series, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Current Series, Wild Up’s Darkness Sounding, and American Composers Orchestra SONiC Festival. She is the 2024 Robert M. Trotter Lecturer for the College Music Society 67th National Conference. 
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inti studied with Marcos Balter, Felipe Lara, Donnacha Dennehy, and George Lewis. Her mentors include ﻿Tania León﻿, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón, Derek Bermel, and Andrew Norman, among many others. inti honors her Quichua bisabuela who was the only woman butcher on the plaza central and used to fight men with a machete.

Composer David Biedenbender’s music has been described as “simply beautiful” [twincities.com] and is noted for its “rhythmic intensity” [NewMusicBox] and “stirring harmonies” [Boston Classical Review]. “Modern, venturesome, and inexorable…The excitement, intensity, and freshness that characterizes Biedenbender’s music hung in the [air] long after the last note was played” [Examiner.com]. David has written music for the concert stage as well as for dance and multimedia collaborations, and his work is often influenced by his diverse musical experiences in rock and jazz bands as an electric bassist, in wind, jazz, and New Orleans-style brass bands as a euphonium, bass trombone, and tuba player, and by his study of Indian Carnatic Music. His present creative interests include working with everyone from classically trained musicians to improvisers, acoustic chamber music to large ensembles, and interactive electronic interfaces to live brain data. He has had the privilege of collaborating with and being commissioned by many talented performers and ensembles, including Alarm Will Sound, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Stenhammar String Quartet, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, U.S. Navy Band, Philharmonie Baden-Baden (Germany), VocalEssence, and Eastman Wind Ensemble, among many others. 

He is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Michigan State University. He holds degrees in composition from the University of Michigan and Central Michigan University, and has also studied at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the Aspen Music Festival, and in Mysore, India where he studied carnatic music. For more information, visit: www.davidbiedenbender.com.

Ben Morris is a composer whose music tells unconventional stories and crosses genre boundaries. He is Assistant Professor of Composition at Stephen F. Austin State University.