Will Huff is a Chicago-based composer who works in medical economics in order to eat and pay the rent.

A podcast for worship leaders who know that the gospel is so good, it has to be sung. Find us at biblicalworship.com and doxologyandtheology.com

Joseph Norman recently completed the Doctoral Degree in Music Composition at the University of Iowa where he also had been Research Assistant/Composer/Sound Technician to the Department of Dance for three years. Dr. Norman was advised by Dr. David Gompper. Previously, Dr. Norman studied with Dr. Joshua Levine, Dr. Nomi Epstein, and Dr. Lawrence Fritts. Dr. Norman has participated in private lessons with Laura Elise Schwendinger, Richard Causton, Mikhail Malt, Grégoire Lorieux, Ketty Nez, Dimitri Papageorgiou, Elanie Lillios, David Lang, Joseph Dangerfield, Augusta Read Thomas, and Louis Karchin. 

Dr. Norman's music has been performed at the Exchange of Midwest Collegiate Composers UMKC and University of Colorado in Boulder, the Midwest Composers Symposium in the University of Michigan and the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, SCI at the University of Iowa, and the Alba Music Festival in Alba, Italy. He has also had works read and premiered by the JACK Quartet, Accroche Note, LIGAMENT, Sonic Apricity, the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa, and LOUi, the Lap Top Orchestra also from University of Iowa. Additionally, Dr. Norman has composed collaboratively with actors, dancers, choreographers, and filmmakers. He is also active as a performer with experimental music duo Aligned at Variance and has taken part in IRCAM's Electroacoustic workshop in 2017.

Dr. Norman completed his Master's Degree in Music Composition at the University of Maryland while under the tutelage of Dr. Thomas DeLio and Dr. Lawrence Moss. Prior, he received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music Composition and Classical Guitar Performance from St. Mary's College of Maryland. While there Mr. Norman studied composition with Dr. David Froom and Dr. John Leupold, and classical guitar performance with
Dr. Orlando Roman.

Dr. Norman explores novel formal conceptions that involve organizations/transformations of multiple conceptual strata. These strata differentiate, recontextualize, and evolve towards individuated trajectories over the course of each piece. Each strata can comprise one of myriad parameters from pitch, timbre, time, texture, space, register, to density. Aesthetically, he values music that is evocative of visceral reactions and represents sonic transformation.  Dr. Norman's influences include: Chaya Czernowin, Rebecca Saunders, Brian Ferneyhough, Tristan Murail, György Ligeti, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Giacinto Scelsi, and Anton Webern.

Approaches: generative/algorithmic sound art, sonic improvisation, live-signal processing.

Ultimately my aesthetics stem from avant-garde jazz in one way or another.

I am quite out of practice these days, but my compositions have been performed at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in NYC, the FSU Festival of New Music, and the Queens New Music Festival.

The works of Boston-based composer, Joshua Shank (b. 1980), have been widely performed by educational and professional ensembles alike.  His music has been called “jubilant…ethereal” (Santa Barbara News-Press) and “evocative and atmospheric” (Gramophone).  The Boston Classical Review  called his Magnificat for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo “powerful” and “emotionally charged.”

His music often features the human voice and focuses on social justice or the amplification of marginalized communities.  His work, capable of anything, celebrated the nationwide passage of marriage equality in the United States, and his oratorio, "Magnificat for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo," tells the story of the organization of Argentine mothers who campaigned for their children who had been “disappeared” by the military junta that formally governed the nation.  His work, "Primavera en silencio," is based on American conservationist Rachel Carson’s landmark writing on climate change, and his "alleluia (from quarantine)" was commissioned by a consortium of 35 ensembles from across the United States as a way to raise money for gigging musicians whose livelihoods have been decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

He has been commissioned by ensembles such as True Concord Voices & Orchestra, Lorelei Ensemble, and The Choral Project. From 2004-2014 he served as Composer-In-Residence for the Minneapolis-based professional choir, The Singers: Minnesota Choral Artists, where he collaborated annually to expand and invigorate the repertoire for professional-caliber ensembles through innovative programming as well as new works written specifically for the choir.  In 2002, he became the youngest composer ever awarded the prestigious Raymond W. Brock Composition Award by the American Choral Directors Association. The winning piece, "Musica animam tangens" (“Music touches the soul”), was premiered in Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center and has since been performed and recorded all over the world.  His music was featured in the 2009 documentary about the extensive choral tradition in the Upper Midwest, "Never Stop Singing," and his published works have sold over 150,000 copies worldwide. 

Joshua received his undergraduate degree in Music Education from Luther College where he studied conducting with Weston Noble.  He has also earned master’s and doctoral degrees in Musicology and Composition from the University of Texas at Austin where he studied with Charles Carson, Yevgeniy Sharlat, Donald Grantham, and the late opera composer Daniel Catán.  A fierce advocate for students’ access to music education, he served as a public school teacher in Minneapolis/St. Paul for many years and he has taught on the faculties at Gonzaga University, Valley City State University, and Eastern Washington University.

The music of composer Nina C. Young (b.1984) is characterized by an acute sensitivity to tone color, manifested in aural images of vibrant, arresting immediacy. Her experience in the electronic music studio informs her acoustic work, which takes as its given not melody and harmony, but sound itself, continuously metamorphosing from one state to another. Her musical voice draws from elements of the classical canon, modernism, spectralism, American experimentalism, minimalism, electronic music, and popular idioms. Her projects, ranging from concert pieces to interactive installations, strive to create unique sonic environments that can be appreciated by a wide variety of audiences while challenging stylistic boundaries, auditory perception, and notions of temporality. 

Young’s works have been presented by Carnegie Hall, the National Gallery, the Whitney Museum, LA Phil’s Next on Grand, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series. Her music has garnered international acclaim through performances by the American Composers Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Phoenix Symphony, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Aizuri Quartet, Either/Or, the JACK Quartet, wild Up, and Yarn/Wire. Winner of the 2015-16 Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, Young has also received a Koussevitzky Commission, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Salvatore Martirano Memorial Award, Aspen Music Festival's Jacob Druckman Prize, and honors from BMI, IAWM, and ASCAP/SEAMUS. 

IN 2019 Carnegie Hall commissioned "Out of whose womb came the ice" with the American Composers Orchestra: for baritone, orchestra, electronics, and generative video, commenting on the ill-fated Ernest Shackleton Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914-17.  Other recent projects include "Tread softly" that opened the NY Philharmonic’s Project 19, a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh from the Philadelphia Orchestra, and "The Glow that Illuminates, The Glare that Obscures" for the American Brass Quintet alongside an immersive audio-visual installation version commissioned by EMPAC showcasing their wavefield synthesis audio system.

A graduate of McGill University and MIT, Young completed her DMA at Columbia University. She is an Assistant Professor of Composition as USC’s Thornton School of Music.  She serves as Co-Artistic Director of New York’s Ensemble Échappé.  Her music is published by Peermusic Classical.

ninacyoung.com

Former Lecturer of Composition and Theory at the University of Iowa

Carl Schimmel is a composer based in Iowa and Illinois.  Praised by The New York Times as “vivid and dramatic,” his recent music is dense with literary and musical references, often humorous, and combines intensity of expression with a structural rigor which is influenced in part by his mathematics background.  In weaving his musical narratives from poetry, art, and even unusual words, he strives to construct emotional and culturally complex sound worlds that excite the listener’s imagination.

Winner of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, Columbia University’s Joseph Bearns Prize, the Lee Ettelson Award, and the 2017 Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Schimmel has received honors and awards from many organizations, including the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Copland House, New Music USA, and ASCAP.  His works have been performed in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Merkin Hall in New York, Severance Hall in Cleveland, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, and at other venues throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.  He has received performances and commissions from the American Composers Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, California EAR Unit, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, North/South Consonance, Quintet Attacca, the Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, and many others.  A graduate of Duke University (Ph.D.), the Yale School of Music (M.M.), and Case Western Reserve University (B.A. Mathematics and Music), he is Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Illinois State University in Normal, IL.

Please visit http://www.carlschimmel.com.

The mission of the Frost Bands is to provide an environment that promotes performances of wind and percussion music of the highest quality. The goal of these performances is to foster the highest level of music-making, music learning and musical experience for performers and audiences alike, creating an environment in which teachers, performers, and patrons share in the promotion and furtherance of wind band music.

Patrick Harlin’s “aesthetics capture a sense of tradition and innovation…” (The New York Times). His music is permeated by classical, jazz, and electronic music traditions, all underpinned with a love and respect for the great outdoors. His works have been performed by the St. Louis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, the Rochester and Calgary Philharmonic Orchestras, Collegium Cincinnati, and Calidore String Quartet, among others.  Patrick was recently chosen as the inaugural composer in residence with the Lansing  Symphony Orchestra (2019-2022).
 
Patrick’s interdisciplinary research in soundscape ecology—a field that aims to better understand ecosystems through sound—has taken him to imperiled regions around the world, including the Amazon rainforest and the Book Cliffs of Utah. His baseline recordings for ecological impact studies are also the fodder for artistic inspiration. These pieces draw parallels between the sounds of the natural world and those of the concert hall, seeking to bring awareness to the importance of sound in our environment.
 
Patrick’s work in this field has been supported by a Graham Sustainability Institute Doctoral Fellowship, Theodore Presser Award, and a University of Michigan Predoctoral Fellowship, resulting in an ongoing body of works called The Wilderness Anthology. 
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Recent CD releases include American Rapture by the Rochester Philharmonic, My Time is Now featuring #tbt and the premiere recording using George Gershwin's Steinway piano, and River of Doubt with the Atlantic Classical Orchestra.   
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Patrick holds a B.Mus from Western Washington University, and an M.M. and D.M.A. from the University of Michigan.  He has studied with Alexei Girsh, Roger Briggs, Evan Chambers, Bright Sheng, and Michael Daugherty.  He  was raised in Seattle, Washington, and is currently an adjunct faculty member at the University of Michigan.

Zack Stanton is following