performed by the String Orchestra at South High School, Minneapolis. This orchestra comprises players with a range of experience on their instruments. This work was composed as part of a project for the McKnight Visiting Composers fellowship.

String Meditation (2018), for string orchestra (all levels)

Helen Feng is a composer, producer, pianist, vocalist, and singer-songwriter who finds creative anchors across disciplines. Her mission as an artist is to forge communities and genuine connections with openness, respect, awareness, curiosity, and compassion. She aspires to create music that is true to herself and advances healing and empowerment.

Having graduated from Deerfield Academy and studied for two years at Northwestern University, Helen is currently continuing her undergraduate education in music and psychology at the University of Southern California.

Jordan Randall Smith is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Susquehanna University, and Music Director of Symphony Number One and Hunt's Church. He is also Conductor of the Hopkins Concert Orchestra, and Creative Director of the International Florence Price Festival. Jordan's leadership of Mahler's Fourth Symphony was praised by the Baltimore Sun: "The third movement, in particular, was quite sensitively molded." Conductor Alan Gilbert called Jordan’s conducting, “impressive.”

A 2010 Bruno Walter Fellow at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Smith studied with Marin Alsop and Gustav Meier and conducted the festival orchestra in concert. Jordan has recorded six commercial releases and led over 50 world premieres.

Smith has mentored hundreds of young musicians in ensembles across the country and is currently the conductor of the Frederick Regional Youth Orchestra Symphonia. A Doctor of Musical Arts candidate in Conducting at the Peabody Conservatory, Jordan was invited to give a TED Talk at TEDxMidatlantic 2017 and is a contributor to Baltimore Magazine.

Learn more at http://www.jordanrsmith.com

Hey y'all! I compose, I perform in many different ways, and much of my practice involves social justice. I also am an advocate for young, upcoming Black composers around the world. Are you one? Please reach out to me! Enjoy my SoundCloud, and for more madness, check out my website, twitter, IG, and Vimeo links below. Don't be shy, say hi! Or don't be shello, say hello ...

Composer, Cellist, and Writer—Want to collaborate or commission a piece? Message me!

Through cyclical, everyday mundanities like cooking a next meal or answering a phone call from a loved one, we weave webs of positions towards ourselves and others that inevitably collide, creating the structure and flow of our lives. The significance of these ordinary moments often slips past our awareness, though in these moments’ constancy they do more to shape and represent our lives than the scarcer, high-intensity milestones that we look forward to or that stick out in our memory.

My intermedia sound installations and staged music theater works transport participants to dramatized recreations of these small moments. I use combinations of music and field recordings, video and lighting, performance and narrative, as well as site-specificity and audience interactivity to plunder these moments’ emotional depths, expose their intimacies, and elevate their meanings within our lives.

String Meditation (2018), for string orchestra (all levels)

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