2024 Missouri Composers Project

Dreamlike Lyric

Phillip Martin studied composition with Leslie Bassett and William Albright  at the University of Michigan and with Normand Lockwood at the University of Denver. 

For most of his career, Martin concentrated on chamber music, particularly music for cello and piano. That changed when, in 2008, he discovered a contest calling for operas based on Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. The winner was to be premiered at the Twain house by Hartford Opera Theater. "What idiot," Martin thought, "is going to write an entire opera for a contest? I've got to be the only one." Whether or not he was. in fact. the only one we'll never know. But his submission, "Tom Sawyer - A Chamber Opera," did win and was premiered in April, 2010. Since then, Martin has written two additional short operas, "Fall Back" and "Family Plan," which Hartford Opera Theater also premiered.

Martin currently lives in Scarsdale, New York. When not composing, he acts as Chief Technology Officer of Gargoyle Strategic Investments, a hedge fund based in Englewood, New Jersey.

Composer Yun LI’s work combines her years of research on traditional music within a highly expressionistic and inventive musical language. Elements from experimental music and earlier sources are woven together and transformed through her own personal experiences to create impactful listening spaces.

Yun’s works include pieces for various settings and instrumentations, with recent commissions from and performances by artistic groups such as Ensemble Con Tempo Beijing, Tianjin Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Academia China, Guangxi Symphony Orchestra, China National Traditional Orchestra, Cincinnati Soundbox, China-ASEAN Contemporary Ensemble, suona virtuoso Yazhi Guo, etc. LI was previously Composer-in-Residence of China-ASEAN Contemporary Ensemble, and  has been selected as an active participant in various workshops, including the Beijing Science Foundation Project “Research on Contemporary Chinese Opera” (2018), the Shanghai International Composition Workshop (2019), and the Seal Bay Music Festival in Maine (2023). She was an orchestral prizewinner of the 27th Autumn in Chengdu International Music Season (2021), and the prize winner in the instrumental music category of the Fourth Annual Gansu Yellow Bell Music Prize (2023). Several of her musical pieces, arrangements and academic essays have been published in core journals in the field, as well as included in college textbooks across China.

Yun LI graduated with her Bachelor of Music from the China Conservatory of Music in 2018, and was directly accepted to pursue her Master's degree on full scholarship there in the same year, continuing her studies with composer Gao Weijie. She is a current DMA candidate in composition at the University of Missouri Kansas City, where she is advised by Chen Yi and Zhou Long.

Dreamlike Lyric

Yun Li