is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. Balancing lushness and austerity, immersive textures and telling details, dramatic impact, and interiority, Cerrone’s multi-GRAMMY-nominated music is utterly compelling and uniquely his own.

Cerrone’s recent opera, In a Grove (libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann), jointly produced by LA Opera and Pittsburgh Opera, was called “stunning” (Opera News) and “outstanding” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) in its sold-out premiere run in March 2022. Other recent projects include A Body, Moving, a brass concerto for the Cincinnati Symphony; Breaks and Breaks, a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony; The Insects Became Magnetic, an orchestral work with electronics for the Los Angeles Philharmonic; The Air Suspended, a piano concerto for Shai Wosner; and Meander, Spiral, Explode, a percussion quartet concerto co-commissioned by Third Coast Percussion, the Chicago Civic Orchestra of the Chicago Symphony and the Britt Festival.

Upcoming projects include The Year of Silence, based on the story of the same name by Kevin Brockmeier, for the Louisville Symphony and baritone Dashon Burton; Beaufort Scales, an oratorio for voices, electronics, and video commissioned by Lorelei Ensemble; and Nervous Systems, a new clarinet quintet that will be toured throughout the US and Australia.

Cerrone’s first opera, Invisible Cities, a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist, was praised by the Los Angeles Times as “A delicate and beautiful opera…[which] could be, and should be, done anywhere.” Invisible Cities received its fully-staged world premiere in a wildly popular production by The Industry, directed by Yuval Sharon, in Los Angeles’ Union Station. Both the film and opera are available as CDs, DVDs, and digital downloads. In July 2019, New Amsterdam Records released his GRAMMY-nominated sophomore effort, The Pieces that Fall to Earth, a collaboration with the LA-based chamber orchestra, Wild Up, to widespread acclaim. His most recent release, The Arching Path (In a Circle Records), features performances by Timo Andres, Ian Rosenbaum, Lindsay Kesselman, and Mingzhe Wang and was nominated for a 2022 GRAMMY. Cerrone is the winner of the 2015-2016 Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition and is currently a fellow at the Laurenz Haus Foundation in Basel, Switzerland in 2022–2023.

Christopher Cerrone holds degrees from the Yale School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. He is published by Schott NY and Project Schott New York and in 2021 he joined the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Carrie Sun. christophercerrone.com.

When I was asked by the Milwaukee-based Present Music to create a new work for their annual Thanksgiving concert I have to admit I was initially without ideas. I was raised on the East Coast of the US, and while I have celebrated Thanksgiving most of my life, the holiday always carries a melancholic air with it: I associate Thanksgiving with returning home—and in doing so, returning to a place that has somehow lost the lustre and joy of my childhood. None of this initially seemed appropriate for a Thanksgiving concert in the midwest.

Around that sam time, I discovered the poetry of James Arlington Wright, and in particular his book from 1963, The Branch Will Not Break. The poems frequently cite Wright’s explorations of his native midwest, and I began to connect my own visits home on Thanksgiving with Wright’s trips to South Dakota, Ohio, and Minnesota.

In my own composition, I began teasing a story out of Wright’s poems. The piece begins with an unadorned and even pulse, an insouciant waiting conjured by the wistful ‘Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota’. Soon two men sing a plaintive melody, ending with the devastating conclusion of that poem.

But as I was composing, a secondary, more optimistic narrative emerged, one of communion with nature. I have been lucky enough to visit the midwest in recent years—particularly Wisconsin and Minnesota—and have been awed by its vast beauty. Wright, too, seems to draw inspiration from these landscapes. ‘Two Horses Playing in the Orchard’ is optimistic, joyous, if a little sad, with the very sentiment “Too soon, too soon” repeated ad infinitum in my setting.

So the narrative of the piece goes, lurching from the melancholy of ‘Two Hangovers’ and ‘Having Lost My Sons, I Confront The Wreckage Of The Moon: Christmas, 1960’ to the quiescent joy of ‘From a Bus Window in Central Ohio, Just Before a Thunder Shower’ and finally ‘A Blessing.’ In ‘A Blessing,’ I tried to imagine Wright moving away from his despair and towards a more optimistic narrative. It’s been suggested that ‘Lying in a Hammock’ was inspired by Rilke’s famous adage: ‘You must change your life.’ Similarly, I hope the piece traces an attempt of both the author and the composer to do just that.

The Branch Will Not Break was mostly composed at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH. I must give them special thanks for aiding in the creation of this work. The work was completed in Brooklyn and at the American Academy in Rome.

Special thanks go to Sarah Goldfeather, Timo Andres, Kate Maroney, Chad Kranak, Eliza Bagg, and Jonathan Woody for their assistance in workshopping the piece.

‘Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota’, ‘From a Bus Window in Central Ohio, Just Before a Thunder Shower’, ‘A Blessing’, ‘Two Horses Playing in the Orchard’, ‘Two Hangovers’, and ‘Having Lost My Sons, I Confront the Wreckage of the Moon: Christmas, 1960’ from The Branch Will Not Break © 1963 by James Wright. Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press.

- Christopher Cerrone

Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (NY Times), “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out NY), and praised for her “apocalyptic imagination” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), Missy Mazzoli has had her music performed by the Kronos Quartet, LA Opera, eighth blackbird, the BBC Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, Scottish Opera and many others. In 2018 she became, along with Jeanine Tesori, one of the first woman to receive a main stage commission from the Metropolitan Opera, and was nominated for a Grammy award in the category of “Best Classical Composition”. She is currently the Mead Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and from 2012-2015 was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia. Her 2018 opera Proving Up, created with longtime collaborator librettist Royce Vavrek and based on a short story by Karen Russell, is a surreal commentary on the American dream. It was commissioned and premiered by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and Miller Theatre, and was deemed “harrowing… a true opera for its time” by the Washington Post. Her 2016 opera Breaking the Waves, commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and Beth Morrison Projects, was called “one of the best 21st-century American operas yet” by Opera News. Breaking the Waves received its European premiere at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival; future performances are planned at LA Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and the Adelaide Festival. Her next opera, The Listeners, will premiere in 2021 at the Norwegian National Opera and Opera Philadelphia. In 2016, Missy and composer Ellen Reid founded Luna Lab, a mentorship program for young female composers created in partnership with the Kaufman Music Center. Her works are published by G. Schirmer.
missymazzoli.com

Vespers for a New Dark Age was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the 2014 Ecstatic Music Festival. This work, scored for three vocalists, violin, clarinet, multiple synthesizers, double bass, electronics and percussion, was premiered at Carnegie Hall on February 22, 2014 by the Victoire Ensemble, percussionist Glenn Kotche, and members of vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. This piece is a distorted, modern-day take on the traditional Vespers prayer service, in which poems by Matthew Zapruder replace the customary sacred text.

In all of his work Zapruder is able to wrangle elegant and surprising phrases out of the morass of modern culture. His poems are beautiful, haunting, and very much of our time; they explore the way we confront technology, ghosts, death, doubt and God in our “new dark age”. These fragmented, secular texts are juxtaposed with the rigid structure of a musical church service, complete with all its ritualistic repetition and call and response.

Percussionist Glenn Kotche rattles boundaries of the written score with his expansive virtuosity and supernatural energy. The instrumentalists of the ensemble Victoire, armed with synthesizers, organs, amplified strings and winds, further bridge the sonic gap between the new and old, the profane and the spiritual.

- Missy Mazzoli