Category: 2023 Artists & Composers

Rising tenor Limmie Pulliam thrills audiences with his captivating stage presence and his “stentorian, yet beautiful,” sound. Pulliam was praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for his “full-throated vocal power, and intimate lyricism” in his debut at Livermore Valley Opera in Verdi’s Otello.

On December 17, 2022, Pulliam made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Radamès in Verdi’s Aida, which also served as his role debut. He recently reprised the role of Radamès with Tulsa Opera for their 75^th anniversary gala concert. Elsewhere during the season, he returns to The Cleveland Orchestra for his first performances as Dick Johnson in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. In concert, he debuts with the San Diego Symphony singing Verdi’s Requiem and makes his Carnegie Hall debut performing The Ordering of Moses in collaboration with his alma mater, The Oberlin Conservatory. He also joins pianist Mark Markham for a series of recitals entitled “Make Them Hear You: A Spiritual Journey” and will also be featured on “operatic greatest hits” concerts with the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra and Delta Symphony. ​

The 2021–22 season was highlighted by his highly anticipated Los Angeles Opera debut as Manrico in Verdi’s Il Trovatore, where he was lauded by the Los Angeles Times for his “healthy, focused, ringing tenor.” He followed that with a successful role debut as Turiddu in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana with Vashon Opera. Upcoming performances include his company debut with Livermore Valley Opera in the title role of Verdi’s Otello, his company debut in Fort Worth Opera’s A Night of Black Excellence concert, and his rescheduled appearance with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra as the tenor soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He is set to take the stage again as Verdi’s Otello in his highly anticipated debut with The Cleveland Orchestra.

Future engagements include a mainstage debut as Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca with Madison Opera, and international debuts with the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, Germany, in Verdi’s Requiem, and The Vienna Volksopera in Vienna, Austria, in John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary.

Visit Limmie Pulliam’s Website

Mitchell Carlstrom
Michael Jones
Kosuke Matsuda
Yongyun Zhang
Camilo Zamudio
Steven Schick, director

The New York Times has called red fish blue fish a “dynamic percussion ensemble from the University of California.” Founded more than 25 years ago by Steven Schick, the San Diego–based ensemble performs, records, and premieres works from the last 85 years of western percussion’s rich history. The group works regularly with living composers from every continent. Recent projects include the world premiere of Roger Reynolds’s Sanctuary and the American premiere of James Dillon’s epic Nine Rivers cycle with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). In the summer of 2011, red fish blue fish collaborated with George Crumb, Dawn Upshaw, and Peter Sellars to premiere the staged version of The Winds of Destiny. Eighth Blackbird invited red fish blue fish to join them in performances of works by American icons John Cage and Steve Reich at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The New York Times called their “riveting” John Cage performance the “highlight” of the program. In 2012 red fish blue fish presented four concerts of percussion music alongside Percussion Group Cincinnati at the John Cage Centennial Festival in Washington, DC, where they performed highlights from Cage’s collection of percussion works.

Recordings of the percussion chamber music of Iannis Xenakis and Roger Reynolds on Mode Records have been praised by critics around the world. Their recording of the early percussion works of Karlheinz Stockhausen received Germany’s award for the best recording of contemporary music in 2015.

red fish blue fish has had impact on new music percussion both by virtue of their many performances and acclaimed recordings, and also through their commitment to research and pedagogy as a resident ensemble at UCSD. The group’s numerous alumni of hold major teaching and artistic positions throughout the world.

Jon Reimer is a freelance theatre artist and educator. He holds a doctorate from the Joint Ph.D. program in Theatre and Drama at the University of California, San Diego and UC Irvine, and an M.F.A. in Directing from UC San Diego.

Born, raised, and educated in eastern Pennsylvania, U.S.A., Jon also earned a B.A. in Theatre Arts (Directing and Design) with a minor in Religion (Asian Studies) from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He is now based in Tokyo, Japan, where he lives with his husband and works as a drama teacher at the International School of the Sacred Heart.

Jon’s doctoral dissertation, “Proximal and Reminiscent Nostalgias: Queer Potentiality in Postwar Japan and the Post-Method American Theatre,” explores how an expanded understanding of nostalgia on postwar Japan can influence acting pedagogy and play analysis. Its chapters center around concepts of nostalgia, traditional and modern Japanese performance (particularly that of Yukio Mishima), active-listening-based acting techniques, and cross-cultural theatre. His current research is focused on inter- and intra-cultural Japanese performance and their relevance amongst international perspectives of performance.

Jon has served as a Visiting Professor in Theatre for the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego, an Adjunct Lecturer in the Japanese Program of the Department of Linguistics and Asian/Middle Eastern Languages at San Diego State University where he taught Japanese Popular Culture, and a Guest Lecturer in Theatre at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he taught Japanese Theatre, Pan-Asian Theatre, Dramaturgy/Play Analysis, and Theatre & Society.

Accomplishments he is most proud of in his life so far: completing his dissertation during a global pandemic, converting to Judaism at the age of 16, moving to and living in Japan multiple times, marrying his wonderful husband Andy, and traveling the globe to better understand others’ cultures and customs.

Visit Jon Reimer’s Website

Justin Robinson is a Grammy-winning musician and vocalist, cultural preservationist, and historic foodways expert. Robinson has used his wide range of interests and talents to preserve North Carolina’s African American history and culture, connecting people to the past and to the world around them.

Robinson grew up in Gastonia, NC. Influenced by the musical tastes of his grandparents, he grew to love a diversity of musical styles. He played with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, thereby working to preserve traditional forms of music, to introduce new generations to musical legends like Joe Thompson, and to remind audiences that the fiddle was, historically, an African American instrument. He wrote the song Kissin’ and Cussin’ for the group’s Grammy-winning album, Genuine Negro Jig, and continued to write music after leaving the group in 2011, releasing the album Bones for Tinder as Justin Robinson and the Mary Annettes in 2012.

In addition to preserving African American musical traditions, Robinson is known for his work as a culinary historian. He explores the ways that foods of the African diaspora shaped and influenced Southern foodways, and reveals how foods like rice, black-eyed peas, and okra can be traced directly to the African continent. Robinson is also committed to helping African Americans rekindle their ties to the land. He is a founding member of the Earthseed Land Cooperative, a collective in northern Durham “made up of farmers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and teachers who are currently engaged in creating alternative models for sustainability, equity, and cooperation within communities of color.”

Justin Robinson holds a BA in Linguistics from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MS in Forestry and Environmental Science from NC State University. He is a member of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina Board of Directors.

Joshua Rubin is a clarinetist and former artistic director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (iceorg.org). As a clarinetist, the New York Times has praised him as “incapable of playing an inexpressive note.” His interest in electronic music has led him to work to make these technologies easier to use for both composers and performers and to build platforms for collective management of ensembles.

He has collaborated with the foremost composers and performers of our time, and this season is featured in performances on modern and on historical clarinets in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Houston, Geneva, Bergen, and Berlin. He is on the faculty of the New School, Ensemble Evolution, and soundSCAPE Festival in Switzerland, teaching clarinet and electronic music. He maintains an artistic presence in New York and Los Angeles.

Visit Joshua Rubin’s Website

Percussionist, conductor, and author Steven Schick was born in Iowa and raised in a farming family. Hailed by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as, “one of our supreme living virtuosos, not just of percussion but of any instrument,” he has championed contemporary percussion music for nearly 50 years, and in 2014 was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame.

Steven Schick is music director emeritus of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, serving as its music director from 2006–22, and the artistic director of the Breckenridge Music Festival. He has guest conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, Ensemble Modern, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Asko/Schönberg Ensemble. He was artistic director of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (2010–18) and directed programs at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity from 2009–19, the last three as co-artistic director, with Claire Chase, of the Summer Classical Music program.

In 2020, Schick won the Ditson Conductor’s Award, given by Columbia University for commitment to the performance of American music. Schick’s publications include a book, The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams; and numerous recordings including the 2010 Percussion Works of Iannis Xenakis and its companion The Complete Early Percussion Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen in 2014 (Mode). The latter received Germany’s award for the best new music release of 2015.

Steven Schick is a distinguished professor of music and the inaugural holder of the Reed Family Presidential Chair at the University of California, San Diego.

Visit Steve Schick’s Website

Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, Aida Shirazi is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. In her works for solo instruments, voice, ensemble, orchestra, and electronics, Shirazi mainly focuses on timbre for organizing structures inspired by language and literature. Shirazi’s music has been featured at festivals and concert series, including Manifeste, Wien Modern, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Mostly Mozart, OutHear New Music Week, MATA, Marlboro Music Festival, Direct Current, Taproot, and Tehran Contemporary Music Festival. Her works are performed by Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Oerknal, Quince Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, among others.

Shirazi holds a Ph.D. in composition and music theory from the University of California, Davis. She has studied with Mika Pelo, Pablo Ortiz, Kurt Rohde, Yiğit Aydın, Tolga Yayalar, Onur Türkmen, and Hooshyar Khayam and participated in workshops and masterclasses by Kaija Saariaho, Mark Andre, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Riccardo Piacentini, and Füsun Köksal.

Shirazi is a 2022 graduate of IRCAM’s “Cursus Program in Composition and Computer Music.” She holds a B.M. in music composition and theory from Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) and a B.A. in classical piano from Tehran University of Art (Iran.) She has studied santoor (traditional Iranian hammered dulcimer) with Parissa Khosravi Samani. Shirazi is a co-founder and co-artistic director of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA.)

Visit Aida Shirazi’s Website

Niloufar Shiri is a kamancheh player, composer, and improviser from Tehran, Iran. Her music weaves Iranian musical structure from the Radif with timbres, textures,  noise, techniques, and perspectives of contemporary music. She focuses particularly on the investigation of timbral and textural components, as well as the sonic capabilities of the kamancheh, a bowed string instrument. Her distinctive language and approach explore the radical self-transformation that comes with displacement and the strive to reconnect to her sense of self as a woman.

She is a graduate of Tehran Music Conservatory, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine. She is artist in residence at Pomona College at Claremont

Visit Niloufar Shiri’s Website

Joshua Stauffer is a restless creative who performs music from over four centuries on a variety of plucked instruments. He began his career as an electric guitarist performing jazz and improvised music before transitioning to the classical guitar via contemporary works and chamber music. His diverse musical interests converged when he encountered the theorbo, a large lute that performs primarily basso continuo, or improvised accompaniment, in chamber and orchestral works from the 17^th and early 18^th centuries.

A keen interest in musical collaboration has taken Stauffer across the U.S. and around the globe, including concerts in Thailand, New Zealand, England, France, Switzerland, and Canada. He is a founding member and the executive director of Time Canvas, an ensemble dedicated to performing early music and new compositions on period instruments. Recent orchestral appearances include Portland Baroque Orchestra, Atlanta Baroque, and Ruckus, and performances as a guest artist at the Juilliard School, The Orchestra Now at Bard College, and the Festival de música de Santa Catarina, Brazil.

He received his Master of Music in historical plucked instruments at The Juilliard School in New York City. Previous studies include a Master of Music in classical guitar in the studio of Jason Vieaux at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and a Bachelor of Music in jazz guitar at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Visit Joshua Stauffer’s Website

Mazz Swift is a violinist, singer, composer, and conductor, weaving improvisation, classic African American musics, electronica, and mindfulness into their work. They have composed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Kronos Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Blaffer Foundation. Aside from enjoying a robust career as a performer, Swift is an educator. They have performed and taught free-improvisation workshops on six continents, most notably having traveled to Suriname, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Albania, and Siberia as “cultural diplomat” for the U.S. Department of State. 

Mazz Swift is also a performing member and teaching artist with the acclaimed Silkroad Ensemble. As part of that group, they spearheaded and developed Project MUSIC (Music, Uniting Strangers Into Community), through which they seek to develop abolitionist-minded and anti-racist programming alongside incarcerated people, designing our own liberation through presence and creativity. 

Swift is a 2021 United States Artist, and 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, continually creating orchestral compositions that involve “Conduction” (conducted improvisation — a system for group improvisation pioneered and trademarked by the late, great Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris), small ensemble works, and solo works that are centered around protest and freedom songs, spirituals, and the Ghanaian concept of Sankofa: looking back to learn how to move forward. 

Visit Mazz Swift’s Website

Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi has been described as a “musical alchemist” and a “musical polyglot” by the press. He left his native Italy to study jazz piano and early music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

He moved to Ireland in 2004, where he’s currently based and where he is active as a freelance musician. He is equally at home playing with jazz veterans Dave Liebman and Bill Frisell as he is with Irish traditional sean-nós singer Roisin El Safty and with tarantella specialist Lucilla Galeazzi. Turrisi has toured with Bobby McFerrin, played baroque operas with ensemble L’Arpeggiata, toured with the Silkroad Ensemble, interpreted the music of Steve Reich with Bang on a Can All Stars, accompanied flamenco star Pepe El Habichuela and Greek singer Savina Yannatou.

He has released five critically acclaimed albums as a leader and two as co-leader (Tarab, a cross boundary innovative ensemble that blends Irish and Mediterranean traditional music, and Zahr, a project that looks at connections between southern Italian traditional music and Arabic music).

His latest piano solo album Northern Migrations was described as “delicate, wistful, and wholly engrossing” by the Irish Times. Since 2018 he collaborates with American Grammy- winning singer and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens, on a duo project that seamlessly combines music from the Mediterranean with music from the African diaspora in the Americas. In 2019 Giddens and Turrisi released their critically acclaimed duo album There Is No Other. The album single “I’m On My Way” was nominated for a 2020 Grammy. Their 2021 second duo album They’re Calling Me Home was nominated for two Grammy awards and won as best folk album at the 2022 Grammy Awards.

His long list of collaborations include Bobby McFerrin, Dave Liebman, Gianluigi Trovesi, Bill Frisell, Rhiannon Giddens, the Silkoad Ensemble, Nils Landgren, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Gavin Bryars, Gabriele Mirabassi, Rolando Villazon, Lisa Hannigan, Savina Yannatou, Maria Pia de Vito, Theodosii Spassov, The King’s Singers, Veronique Gens, Philippe Jaroussky, Pepe el Habichuela, and Lucilla Galeazzi.

Visit Francesco Turrisi’s Website

Chou Wen-Chung was born in Yantai, China, in 1923, and moved to the United States in 1946. His earliest work, Landscapes, written in 1949, is often cited as the first composition in music history that is independent of either Western or Eastern musical grammar. The piece premiered in 1953 with the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, and launched the young composer onto a career which steadily gained in momentum over the next two decades.

His unique canon of work, a contemporary expression of the principles of traditional Chinese aesthetics, has had a momentous impact on the development of modern music in Asia and in post-colonial cultures. He exhorted young composers to study their own cultural heritage and warned: “If you don’t know where you came from, how do you know where you are going?” His students represent an international mix of accomplished composers, including the acclaimed Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Chen Yi and Bright Sheng. His vision for the music of the future, however, extends far beyond the preservation of any particular heritage. He foresaw a flourishing of creative output, benefitting from a “confluence” of many cultures, but grounded in an understanding of the history and traditions of each.

Visit Chou Wen-Chung’s Website

Michi Wiancko is a versatile and highly imaginative composer, violinist, and collaborator, whose multifaceted creative projects and organizational work prioritize artistic discovery, as well as community resilience and social change.

Recent chamber music commissions include works for Boston Chamber Music Society, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, Schubert Club, Accordo, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Anne Akiko Meyers, Ecstatic Music Festival, Aizuri Quartet, Parker Quartet, Friction Quartet, and the Jupiter Quartet, to name a few. She has composed three operas: Murasaki’s Moon (2019), commissioned by Met Live Arts, Onsite opera, and American Lyric Theater; Arkana Aquarium (2021), commissioned by Experiments in Opera; and The Stream (2022) commissioned by Baldwin Wallace and the Cleveland Lyric Theater. Wiancko has also composed music for short and feature-length films, commercials, and for her own band, Kono Michi.

A passionate collaborator, she has been fortunate to work and tour with renowned artists from across a vast musical spectrum: Gabriela Lena Frank, Missy Mazzoli, PaviElle French, Vijay Iyer, Steve Reich, Emily Wells, Laurie Anderson, William Brittelle, Kaoru Watanabe, Qasim Naqvi, Mark Dancigers, Satoshi Takeishi, Mazz Swift, Sandeep Das, Jessie Montgomery, Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Matt Berninger, Dolio the Sleuth, and Rench. A member of Silkroad Ensemble and the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, she has also performed with The Knights, A Far Cry, Mark Morris Dance Group, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, and International Contemporary Ensemble.

Described by Gramophone Magazine as an “alluring soloist with heightened expressive and violinistic gifts,” Wiancko made her violin solo debuts with the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performed her recital debut in Weill Hall, and released a solo album of new works on New Amsterdam called Planetary Candidate, as well as an album of the complete violin solo works of Émile Sauret on Naxos.

A native of California, she holds degrees from CIM and Juilliard, where she studied with Donald Weilerstein and the late Robert Mann, respectively. In addition to her composition and performing career, Michi Wiancko is director and curator of Antenna Cloud Farm, a music festival, arts retreat, and community organization based in western Massachusetts.

[Bio from the Silkroad Ensemble Website]