Amber Vistein (b. 1984) is a composer and sound artist who delves deeply into the poetics of timbre, texture, and gesture. Praised for her conceptual “acuity” (Big, Red, and Shiny) and “blooming phrases” (New Music Box), they draw upon research in affect theory, phenomenology, aesthetics, sonic materialism, historical musicology, and psychoacoustics to compose music filled with storied textural details, shifting temporal effects, and affectively charged atmospheres. Their style is defined by the juxtaposition of a visceral gestural vocabulary alongside evocative textural constructions; cross-cutting registers from the autonomic to the atmospheric. This highly tactile approach to composition works to unearth invisible events, networks, and histories by introducing expressive imperfections—dysfluencies—into the musical sentence. These sites of rupture (a suspended trill, stutter, or broken-record loop) expose the submerged complexities of sound, the labor of its production, and its fragility.

Amber has recently had the pleasure of composing for the International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Chartreuse, Ensemble Dal Niente, Russel Greenberg of Yarn/Wire, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. She created site-specific sound installations for the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA and collaborated with video artist Justice to present the multi-media work Landscapes at the Peabody Essex Museum. They were an artist-in-residence with ArtsIceland in Ísafjörður, Iceland. And participated in NYU's Summer Film Scoring Workshop, EMPAC's Spatial Audio Workshop, and soundSCAPE composer-performer exchange in Cesena, Italy.

From 2017-19 Amber was a Composition Fellow with the American Opera Project’s Composers and the Voice program. They were commissioned by the Washington National Opera to compose a 20-minute chamber opera in collaboration with librettist Rebecca Hart as part of the American Opera Initiative program. This work, entitled The Barrens, premiered at the Kennedy Center in April 2021. Man Will Not Outlive the Weather—Amber’s first chamber opera for mezzo-soprano, ensemble and electronics—premiered in 2017. Their full-length opera-film, entitled Dark Exhalation, for four voices, ensemble, and electronics premiered in Spring 2022. Dark Exhalation is also a 2022 OPERA America Discovery Grant recipient in support of a lab production planned for 2023.

Amber holds a B.A. in Music & Philosophy from New College of Florida and an MFA in Sonic Arts from Massachusetts College of Art. They recently completed their PhD in Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University, where their scholarly research focuses on sonic materiality, embodiment, posthumanism, temporality, vocality, affect theory, and autonomic poetics. https://ambervistein.com/

Kevin Church (b.1987) was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. While attending school in California, Kevin played in local pit orchestras, performed with a Motown/Top 40 band named West Grand Blvd., created The Night Train Blues Band, in which he was the lead singer, saxophonist and harmonica player and was a student teacher for the College Park High School jazz band. He studied saxophone and flute with Mary Fettig (Stan Kenton Orchestra, freelance), clarinet with Diane Maltester (Oakland, Napa and Fremont Symphonies) and composition with Martin Rokeach (Saint Mary’s College, Composer’s Inc.). 

Currently, Kevin is a resident of Boston, MA, and is completing a BM in Composition at The Boston Conservatory, where he has studied with Marti Epstein, Curtis K. Hughes, and Jan Swafford. In April 2010, Kevin premiered his Two Preludes for orchestra, the score of which earned him a commission for a new work through the 2010 Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble Composition Competition; Gates of Horn and Ivory for wind ensemble was premiered and conducted by Eric Hewitt. Other recent commissions include the piece …Poetically, Man Dwells… which was played at The New Galley Concert Series in January 2011.


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