REGINA CARTER, VIOLINIST

NEA Jazz Master and Grammy-nominated artist Regina Carter explores the power of music through the voice of the violin in a wide range of genres, including jazz, R&B, Latin, classical, blues, country, pop, and African. A recipient of the MacArthur “genius” award and a Doris Duke Artist Award, as well as a two-time Pulitzer Prize jurist, she has been widely hailed for her mastery of her instrument and her drive to expand its possibilities.

In 2018 Regina was named artistic director of the New Jersey Performing Arts All-Female Jazz Residency, a unique summer immersion program for aspiring women jazz professionals. She is currently on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and has been artist in residence at the Oakland University School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, resident artist for San Francisco Performances, and resident artistic director for SFJAZZ.

Guy de Chalus, dancer & artist

As an artist, musician, and teacher, Guy de Chalus has devoted almost half of his life to the preservation of the traditional folk music of Haiti as well as the musics of other parts of the Caribbean. He speaks Kreyol (Haitian), a language he learned while serving the Haitian community in NYC.

Dogs of desire, ensemble

Dedicated to exploring and celebrating the intersection between the raucous terrain of American popular culture, traditional Western instrumental music, and music traditions from around the world, the Albany Symphony’s 18-member new music ensemble, Dogs of Desire, has commissioned and performed more than 200 new works by America’s most exciting emerging composers. 

Marie A. Douglas, composer

Marie A. Douglas (b. 1987) is an arranger, multi-genre composer, and conductor who has been noted for the arrangement and orchestration choices within her works for various ensembles, which some have received Grammy nominations. Her music focuses on affording quality voice leading, memorable rhythms and unique and interesting textures for musicians at all levels of music performance. Marie is inspired by the music of modern African American and minority music composers such as R. Nathaniel Dett, Quincy Jones, Duke Ellington, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Lili and Nadia Boulanger and many others. Marie enjoys arranging, transcribing, and orchestrating the music of others, in addition to her own compositions.

Horacio Fernández, composer

Horacio Fernández Vázquez, who goes by the stage name Horatio on the Beat, is a classical composer by day and an urban music producer by night. He writes music that embraces and fuses urban and western classical traditions, particularly those coming from Latin America. His music has been widely performed and acclaimed around the world by leading artists such as The Juilliard Orchestra, Zlatomir Fung, the Pittsburgh Ballet, Jeffrey Milarsky, the 5 de Mayo Philharmonic among many others. He has received commissions from Miguel Ángel Villanueva, Joel Sachs, Simón Gollo, the Albany Symphony, the University of Illinois and National Sawdust. He has won prestigious awards such as the Arturo Márquez Competition, the James Galway Festival Composer Competition and The Juilliard Composer’s Competition. His teachers and mentors include Robert Beaser, Alan Belkin, Gonzalo Macías and Arturo Márquez.

Jack Frerer, composer

Described as “exciting”, “combining boom-crash orchestration with woozy portamenti and jazz elegance” by The New York Times, and “a theatrical spectacle” by Vogue, the music of Jack Frerer (b. 1995) has been commissioned and performed by the New York City Ballet, the Albany, Nashville and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras, the Australian and Metropolitan Youth Orchestras, Decoda and Metropolis ensembles, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the wind ensembles of UT Austin, UNT, MIchigan and Cornell, among others. Jack is the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Morton Gould Composers Award from ASCAP, the Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composers Award, and the Brian Israel Prize from the Society for New Music. He was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, a composer for the New York City Ballet’s 2019 Choreographic Institute, and Composer-in-Residence with the Arapahoe Philharmonic. Jack studied with John Corigliano at The Juilliard School where he now serves on the faculty of its Pre-College division, and is currently a graduate student at the Yale School of Music where he studies with Chris Theofanidis, David Lang, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Martin Bresnick. He currently teaches composition and orchestration at Yale College.

Adolphus Hailstork, composer

Adolphus Hailstork received his doctorate in composition from Michigan State University, where he was a student of H. Owen Reed. He had previously studied at the Manhattan School of Music, under Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, at the American Institute at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger, and at Howard University with Mark Fax. Dr. Hailstork has written numerous works for chorus, solo voice, piano, organ, various chamber ensembles, band, orchestra, and opera. Significant performances by major orchestras (Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York) have been led by leading conductors such as James de Priest, Paul Freeman, Daniel Barenboim, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maezel, Jo Ann Falletta and David Lockington. This March, Thomas Wilkins conducted Hailstork’s AN AMERICAN PORT OF CALL with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph, speaker & artist

Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a 2017 TED Global Fellow, an inaugural recipient of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative, and an honoree of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship. He is also the winner of the 2011 Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, and an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. In pursuit of affirmations of Black life in the public realm, he co-founded the Life is Living Festival for Youth Speaks, and created the installation “Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos” for Creative Time. Joseph’s opera libretto, We Shall Not Be Moved, was named one of 2017’s “Best Classical Music Performances” by The New York Times. His evening length work, /peh-LO-tah/, successfully toured across North America for three years, including at BAM’s Harvey Theater as a part of the 2017 Next Wave Festival. His piece, “The Just and the Blind” investigates the crisis of over-sentencing in the prison industrial complex, and premiered at a sold out performance at Carnegie Hall in March 2019.

Christian Quiñones, composer

Christian Quiñones is a Puerto Rican composer who explores personal and vulnerable stories through the lens of cultural identity. From sampling to auto-tune, and to body percussion, Christian is interested in interacting with existing music to create intertextual narratives. He has received commissions from the New York Youth Symphony, Dogs of Desire (Albany Symphony), Transient Canvas, the icarus Quartet, the Bergamot String Quartet, Chromic Duo and the Victory Players where Christian was the 2018-2019 composer in residence. He obtained his BM in Music Composition at the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico, studying composition and orchestration with Alfonso Fuentes, and in 2019 Christian was a recipient of the Graduate College Master’s Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where studied with Carlos Carrillo and Reynold Tharp. Currently, Christian is a Ph.D. President’s fellow at Princeton University where he studies with Steve Mackey, Donnacha Dennehy, Nathalie Joachim, Juri Seo, and Tyondai Braxton.

Kyle Rivera, composer

The music of American composer Kyle Rivera (b. 1996) is dynamic, intriguing, and energetic. Through the use of bold gestures and nuanced effect, he creates musical narratives that are vibrant and compelling. Kyle often draws upon his Caribbean heritage and the diverse cultural environment he grew up to craft the soundscapes of his music. He continually seeks out a wide variety of sonorities in order to explore and convey the human experience. Kyle is a Connecticut-based composer currently studying at the Yale School of Music towards a Masters in Music Composition. He earned a BM in Music Composition and Viola Performance from the University of Houston with a Minor in Kinesiology. His principal teachers for composition were Katie Balch, Dr. Rob Smith, and David Ludwig. As a composer, his music has been performed across the United States and internationally in Russia, the UK, and Thailand. Future projects collaborations with the Albany Symphony, Yale Percussion Group, and a commission from the Aspen Music Festival.

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), composer

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) is a Black, Haitian-American composer who sees composing as collaboration with artists, organizations and communities within the farming and framing of ideas. He is a prolific and endlessly collaborative composer, performer, educator, and social entrepreneur. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (New York Times), Roumain has worked with artists from J’Nai Bridges, Lady Gaga and Philip Glass to Bill T. Jones, Marin Alsop and Anna Deavere Smith. Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic and African-American music influences, Roumain takes his genre-bending music beyond the proscenium. He is a composer of solo, chamber, orchestral, and operatic works, and has composed an array of film, theater, and dance scores.

David Schiff, composer

Composer and author David Schiff was born in New York City on August 30, 1945. He studied composition with John Corigliano and Ursula Mamlok at the Manhattan School of Music, and with Elliott Carter at the Juilliard School where he received his D.M.A.. He holds degrees in English literature from Columbia and Cambridge Universities. His major works include Solus Rex, for bass trombone and chamber ensemble commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and premiered by David Taylor, and 4 Sisters, a concerto for jazz violin and orchestra, which premiered in Cambridge, England in 1997 and received its American premiere with Regina Carter and the Detroit Symphony in January 2004. Schiff is the R.P. Wollenberg Professor of Music at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Christopher Theofanidis, composer & educator

Christopher Theofanidis (b. 12/18/67 in Dallas, Texas) has had performances by many leading orchestras from around the world, including the London Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists, the National, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit Symphonies, and many others. He also served as Composer of the Year for the Pittsburgh Symphony during their 2006-2007 Season, for which he wrote a violin concerto for Sarah Chang. Mr. Theofanidis holds degrees from Yale, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Houston, and has been the recipient of the International Masterprize (hosted at the Barbican Centre in London), the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, six ASCAP Gould Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship to France, a Tanglewood Fellowhship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Charles Ives Fellowship. His orchestral concert work, Rainbow Body, has been one of the most performed new orchestral works of the last ten years, having been performed by over 100 orchestras internationally.

Adia Tamar Whitaker, dancer & artist

Artistic Director of the Àṣẹ Dance Theatre Collective, Adia Tamar Whitaker, has performed contemporary vernacular movement, modern and Afro-Haitian dance in the U.S. and abroad for 16 years. Adia completed a BA in Dance at San Francisco State University (2000), the Professional Division U.S. Independent Studies Program at The Ailey School (2001), was Choreoquest Resident Artist @ Restoration Dance Theater (2004), a Ford Foundation Special Initiative for Africa Grant Recipient (2004), an Urban Bush Women Apprentice (2005) and a Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography @ FSU Creative Entry Point Choreographic Fellow (2006). In 2011, Whitaker along with her other cast members received an Isadora Duncan Award for her performance in a choreopoem she wrote, directed, choreographed and costumed called “Ampey!” Adia was a co-choreographer and touring cast member of “Scourge”, a choreopoem written by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, featuring choreography by Rennie Harris and Stacey Printz. “Scourge” toured in the U.S. and abroad for two years. She has been teaching Afro-Haitian Dance Workshops throughout the U.S. and abroad for the past ten years.