Dante De Silva is a Los Angeles-based composer and musician. Starting from his early days in garage bands and continuing into his career as a composer and educator, Dante has always aimed to create music with as much emotional power as the music that sparked his initial love for the art form. To conjure those emotions, his compositions incorporate a characteristic balance of lyricism, simplicity, humor, fragility, and even savagery.

He has received commissions from pianist Gloria Cheng, Opera Parallèle, St. Matthews Music Guild, Arizona Women in Tune, the Verdehr Trio, the B Band, the HSU Percussion Ensemble, and the CSU Bakersfield Concert band, among others. In addition to his commissions, his works have recently been performed by Lyris Quartet, Brightwork NewMusic Ensemble, piano duo Hear Now Hear!, pianist Aron Kallay, and vocalists Diana Schwam and Chuanyuan Liu. Recently, Ryan MacEvoy McCullough released the first recording of the JI-tuned piano solo Four Years of Fog on False Azure Records.

The 2023-2024 season includes the premiere of Alone, Except for All the Ghosts for saxophone and electronics written for Jan Baker, a performance of the string quartet Hungry for the Asian Classical Music Initiative Conference, the premiere of Ashes for Trees for the Vipisa Trio, and a workshop of one-act opera Minute to Midnight with librettist Alan Olejniczak.

Dante holds composition degrees from UCLA and UC Santa Cruz and a piano performance degree from Humboldt State University. He currently teaches at UCLA and is an artistic director for the Los Angeles-based collective Synchromy. For more information, go to: www.dantedesilva.com

Composer, music theorist, and professor David S. Lefkowitz was born in New York City, where as a child he studied clarinet, bassoon, and piano. He holds degrees in music composition from Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, and The Eastman School of Music/University of Rochester.

David S. Lefkowitz has won international acclaim, having works performed in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia, the Ukraine, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Israel, and Egypt. He has won national and international competitions, including the Fukui Harp Music Awards Competition (twice), and the American Society of Composers, Authors, & Publishers (ASCAP) Grants to Young Composers Competition. In addition, he has won prizes and recognition from the National Asso-ciation of Composers, USA (NACUSA), the Guild of Temple Musicians, Chicago Civic Orchestra, Washington International Competition, Society for New Music’s Brian M. Israel Prize, the ALEA III International Competition, and the Gaudeamus Music Week. He has also been a Meet-The-Composer Composer in Residence.

Recent commissions include works for Irina Donskaia of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Grace Cloutier of the Hartford Conservatory, Melia Watras of the Corigliano Quartet, ’cellist Elinor Frey and pianist David Fung, violinist Petteri Iivonen, soprano Ursula Kleinecke and Colloquy, harpist Grace Cloutier, quintets for Pacific Serenades and the Synergy Ensemble, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Cantor Joseph Gole and the Cantor’s Assembly, the Harvard Westlake Orchestra, the Beijing National Opera and Dance Drama Theatre Company, and by the Beijing City Opera Company (China’s largest and best Beijing Opera company) to write the music for a thirteen-minute solo dance-drama; the resulting work for small chamber orchestra has been well received by audiences and artists on both sides of the Pacific. He has had music published by MMB Music, Yelton Rhodes Music, Zen-On Music, Pacific Serenades Music, and Fatrock Ink. He has recordings available or soon to be available on Yarlung, Fatrock Ink, Klavier, Japanese Victor, Yamaha, and Albany record labels.

As a music theorist Dr. Lefkowitz has researched “meta-theoretical” issues such as the process of segmentation (a component of post-tonal analysis) and the internal structure of set-classes, and he has written extensively on Schoenberg’s piano music. He has also done work on music theory pedagogy, culminating with his textbook Music Theory: Syntax, Function, and Form which is expected to be published by Schirmer Books soon.

Dr. Lefkowitz is also in demand as a guest lecturer, having given lectures or presentations in Russia, Spain, Taiwan, and Israel, and in Colorado, Texas, Hawaii, New York, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Vermont, Ohio, and California. He is a professor of music theory and composition at UCLA.

Peter Golub began playing the piano when he was six. Alongside his interest in music, in high school he developed a passion for the theatre, forming a troupe with a group of classmates and directing and acting in plays by Pinter, Ionesco and Beckett. His interest in music and theatre led to his ongoing interest in dramatic music as his career travels between film, theatre, and concert music.

Golub composed the score for Chloe Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me, shown at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and Frozen River, directed by Courtney Hunt, and winner of Jury Award for Best Film at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. The Laramie Project, directed by Moises Kaufman for HBO, was the opening night film at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and features a score performed by The St. Luke’s Orchestra. With James Newton Howard, he co-composed the score for The Great Debaters, directed by Denzel Washington and starring Washington and Forest Whitaker. He composed music for the documentaries Wordplay (starring Will Shortz, Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart) and I.O.U.S.A., both directed by Patrick Creadon and both shown at the Sundance Film Festival. His score for Stolen, directed by Rebecca Dreyfus, was awarded Best Music at the 2003 Avignon Film Festival. He also scored American Gun, directed by Aric Avelino starring Forest Whitaker, Marcia Gay Harden and Donald Sutherland and Sublime, directed by Tony Krantz, starring Thomas Cavanagh. In 2021 he scored Bernstein’s Wall, which was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival. (See the Film page for complete listing, or visit the Internet Movie Database.)

Broadway credits include: Time Stands Still (by Donald Marguiles, with Laura Linney; Daniel Sullivan, dir), Come Back, Little Sheba (directed by Michael Pressman, with S. Epatha Merkersen, who was nominated for the 2008 Tony Award), Hedda Gabler (directed by Nicholas Marin, with Kate Burton), and Suddenly Last Summer (directed by Mark Brokaw, with Blythe Danner).

Early in his career, Golub began working in the theatre in New York, composing numerous scores and working with some of the giants of the downtown theatre scene. During his ten-year creative partnership with Charles Ludlam, he was composer-in-residence at Ludlam’s legendary Ridiculous Theatrical Company, writing scores for such works as The Mystery of Irma Vep, Galas, Salammbo, and The Artificial Jungle. He and Ludlam wrote a dramatic scene for actor, mezzo-soprano and orchestra, The Production of Mysteries, which was performed by Lukas Foss and the Brooklyn Philharmonic He also worked on numerous shows with Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival, including Shakespeare in the Park productions of Twelfth Night (with Gregory Hines, Michelle Pfieffer and Jeff Goldblum) and Othello (with Raul Julia and Christopher Walken). His ongoing collaboration with writer/director Moises Kaufman, includes scores for Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde and The Laramie Project. He worked with the noted performance artist Ethyl Eichelberger, composing and performing in Ariadne Obnoxious at the Joyce Theater and several musical at La Mama. As a member of Joseph Chaikin’s Winter Project, he wrote and performed music for numerous productions at La Mama.

He has written two musicals: Amphigorey (with story and designs by Edward Gorey; Drama Desk Nomination) and The Idiots Karamazov (book by Albert Innaurato and Christopher Durang, lyrics by Mr. Durang). He’s also written scores for Playwrights Horizon, Manhattan Theater Club, Berkeley Rep, The Mark Taper Forum, the Huntington, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Old Globe, Seattle Rep, American Repertory Theatre, and the American Music Theatre Festival. With playwright Richard Nelson he wrote a musical theatre piece based on Chekhov’s Platonov called “Unfinished Piece for Player Piano”, which was performed at New York Stage and Film.

Golub’s recent concert works include: On Gossamer Wings (for chamber orchestra), 17 Preludes for piano; Suite for Solo Violin; 8 Miniatures for Violin and Piano; Six Dirty Limericks, for soprano and piano; Ghost Songs for baritone and piano (texts by Thomas Hardy) and Light Verse for soprano and piano. Other works include: Dark Carols for Chorus and Orchestra (with text by Philip Littell, recorded on the ECM label); Threaded Dances for flute and piano; Three Interludes for guitar (recorded on Gasparao Records by Robert Phelps); As Birds Do, Mother for ‘cello and oud. His music has been performed by Tashi, The Brooklyn Philharmonic, The Jubal Trio, and numerous chamber groups and soloists. He has composed four ballet scores in collaboration with noted choreographer Peter Anastos: The Lost World, commissioned by Edward Villella for the Miami City Ballet; The Gilded Bat (story and designs by Edward Gorey, for Ballet West; performed at the Kennedy Center); Trianon (for the Atlanta Ballet); and Straight Through the Heart (for the Milwaukee Ballet). (see complete catalogue of works under “Concert”).

As an undergraduate at Bennington College, he studied composition with Henry Brant, a pioneer in spatial music in the tradition of Charles Ives and a master orchestrator. (In addition to his huge catalogue of original works, Brant orchestrated film scores by Alex North, including A Streetcar Named Desire and Cleopatra.) In addition to studying the traditional piano repertoire, he focused on 20th Century works. He continued his training at the Yale School of Music where he studied composition with Toru Takemitsu and Jacob Druckman and earned a Doctorate. His work and friendship with Takemitsu, who in addition to his concert works was the composer of a large body of film scores, was pivotal in his development and continues to be an inspiration.

Since 1999 he has been the Director of the Sundance Film Music Program, where he runs the yearly Composers Lab, a workshop for aspiring film composers. He was awarded the Classic Contribution Award by BMI and a 2008 Vision Award. He is also the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship (given by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters) as well as grants from the National Endowment of the Arts (Opera/Musical Theater Program), Meet-the-Composer, and New York Foundation for the Arts. He serves on the Board of the American Music Center.

He has taught at Bennington College, Reed College, Columbia College and CAL Arts. He is currently a continuing lecturer at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music and teaches in the Screen Scoring Program at USC. Golub is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Kay Rhie (이규림) is a composer of contemporary classical music which often explores the issues of belonging and the science of acoustics. Born in South Korea, she grew up in Los Angeles and trained in both the West and the East Coast. Her immigrant experience since her teenage years has given her an artistic base as a hybridizer. She accesses a wide-ranging palette of inspiration from classical, film, European avant-gardes music as well as various literary and artistic traditions. In her choral work Tears for Te Wano, a 19th-century Maori chant and a 16th-century Renaissance motet are fused together while highlighting each distinct chant tradition. Her solo piano work Arirang uses a Korean folk tune as a descant, shrouds it in blues-infused harmony.

Rhie’s music in which “vehemence and reticence, intimacy and plainness co-exist” (American Academy of Arts and Letter) has found an increasing audience. Past highlights include performances by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the BBC Singers, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the Moscow Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, TM+, Ensemble X, Winsor Music, In Mulieribus, a commission by pianist Gloria Cheng, violinist Andrew Jennings among others.

Her current projects include a chamber opera Quake, a commission by Opera UCLA. A comedic reimagination of the ending of Odyssey, the opera asks two questions: what homecoming means for modern people and how one might break from fate. Featuring four soloists, four-member Greek Chorus and chamber orchestra, this 60-minute chamber opera is scheduled to open in 2022 by Opera UCLA in Los Angeles.

Another upcoming project is a commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra: Five Petals is about displacement from home and a desire to belong. Using the text from Theresa Hak Kyoung Cha’s ground-breaking Dictee, three Korean poets from the colonial period, and finally a modern Korean poet Hye-Soon Kim, Five Petals depicts a struggle to ground one’s identity in a land that was not their own. This performance has been rescheduled for the 2021-22 season in Walt Disney Concert Hall.

A recipient of the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Rhie was the Music Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University. Rhie has enjoyed honors and residencies from the Ojai Music Festival, London Festival of American Music, the Tanglewood Music Center (Otto Eckstein Composition Fellow) where she was the winner of the Geffen-Solomon New Music Commission, Seal Bay Chamber Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, and School, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East among others.

She began playing the piano at age seven in South Korea and continued her musical studies in Los Angeles. After she studied piano performance and composition at the University of California at Los Angeles, she received her Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in composition at Cornell University. Her composition teachers include Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, Paul Chihara, Ian Krouse, David Lefkowitz, John Harbison, Samuel Adler, Stephen Hartke, and Colin Matthews. She studied piano performance with Xak Bjerken, Malcolm Bilson, and Ick-Choo Moon.

Rhie currently teaches composition and theory at UCLA as Assistant Professor of Music.

Grammy-Award winning composer Richard Danielpour has established himself as one of the most gifted and sought-after composers of his generation. His music has attracted an international and illustrious array of champions, and, as a devoted mentor and educator, he has also had a significant impact on the younger generation of composers over the past 30 years. His list of commissions include some of the most celebrated artists of our day including Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Susan Graham, Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Gary Graffman, Anthony McGill, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, the Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets, the New York City, Pacific Northwest and Nashville Ballets, and institutions such as the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Maryinsky Orchestra, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and many more. With Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Danielpour created Margaret Garner, his first opera, which premiered in 2005 and had a second production with New York City Opera. He has received two awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters, including a Lifetime Achievement Award, a Guggenheim Award, the Bearns Prize from Columbia University, two Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, and The Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. He served on the composition faculty of Manhattan School of Music from 1993 to 2017. In 2017, Danielpour relocated to Los Angeles where he accepted the position of Professor of Music at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He is also a member of the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music where he has taught since 1997.

In April 2019, JoAnn Faletta lead the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus in performances of The Passion of Yeshua, where it was recorded by Naxos. The album was released in March of 2020 to critical acclaim and was nominated for three GRAMMYs in 2021, including Best Contemporary Classical Composition; it won a GRAMMY in the category of Best Choral Performance. In 2019, Danielpour composed five works, the most significant of them being A Standing Witness, a series of 14 songs which are settings of poems written by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rita Dove. Composed for mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and Music from Copland House, this 70-minute monodrama which remembers the last 50 years of our American history was premiered at the University of Chicago in October 2021 and later received performances at the Kennedy Center and at Tanglewood.

In 2020, The Oregon Bach Festival commissioned Danielpour to compose An American Mosaic as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It was also written to pay homage to the heroes of this crisis. Pianist Simone Dinnerstein gave a livestreamed premiere via YouTube and the corresponding album release through Supertrain Records in March 2021 garnered immediate critical acclaim while receiving over 3,000,000 streams on Apple Music alone and was recently nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Classical Instrumental Solo.

In 2021, Danielpour was commissioned by Orchestra Della Toscana to write a piece for the Dante anniversary, making him the first American composer in nearly 40 years to be commissioned by a major Italian Orchestra. That same year, clarinetist Anthony McGill premiered Danielpour’s Four Angels with the Catalyst Quartet. The work was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as part of a celebration of Black Lives Mattering in America. In September, he was given a lifetime achievement award from the Cremona Music Festival and later that Fall was awarded the Covel Chair from UCLA to support the composition and production of his new two act opera The Grand Hotel Tartarus, making him only the second recipient of this coveted award.

Upcoming premieres in 2023-24 include The Unhealed Wound, a cantata composed for baritone Eric Owens and mezzo-soprano Amanda Lynn Bottoms. This work, written in collaboration with Rita Dove, was commissioned by Skidmore College as part of a McCormick Residency in September 2023. In October 2023, the ROCO Chamber Orchestra in Houston will premiere the first of two newly commissioned works, Breaking the Veil, which was written as a tribute to the heroic women of Iran. ROCO will also premiere a second commissioned work, Triptych, which is a three-movement symphony based on The Divine Comedy of Dante. In February 2024, The Golden Bridge Chorus, conducted by Suzie Digby, will premiere Danielpour’s Agnus Dei in Los Angeles. On May 17, 2024, Danielpour’s full length opera The Grand Hotel Tartarus will receive its world premiere at the Freud Theater in Los Angeles.

Danielpour is one of the most recorded composers of his generation; many of his recordings can be found on the Naxos of America and Sony Classical labels. Danielpour’s music is published by Lean Kat Music and Associated Music Publishers. For more information about Richard Danielpour, please visit his website at: www.Richard-Danielpour.com