2023 COMPOSITION FACULTY

Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann (b. 1973) is a composer whose music reveals an innately lyrical vein within a texturally and formally complex modernist framework. His musical interests are multifaceted, and his pieces often reflect his passion for revisiting classical models. From hockets, troped passacaglias and variation forms to works for electronics or Peruvian indigenous instruments, his oeuvre is as diverse as his cultural background. The son of a Peruvian scientist and a Brazilian teacher and visual artist of Austrian extraction, he was born in Lima, Peru. When the terrorist organization, the Shining Path, became stronger causing massive unrest in Peru, his family emigrated to Brazil in 1989. Initially intending a career as a violinist, he stopped playing due to the effects of focal dystonia. After moving to the United States in 1998, he completed his graduate degrees studying composition with Orlando García, Fredrick Kaufman, John Harbison and, with whom would become his greatest influence, the American composer Lukas Foss.

His music has been performed by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, São Paulo Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, Peruvian National Symphony, New England Philharmonic, Kiev Camerata, Klangforum Wien, Boston Musica Viva, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Da Capo Chamber Players, Pierrot Lunaire Ensemble Wien®, Seattle Chamber Players, Talea Ensemble, ALEA III and the Amernet, Borromeo, Mivos and JACK quartets. He has lived in Spain as a Fulbright Scholar and his awards include a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Fromm Music Foundation Commission, the Aaron Copland Award, Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellowship from Vitae – Associação de Apoio à Cultura. He has been in residence at the Copland House, MacDowell Colony and Atlantic Center for the Arts. He teaches music composition at Ithaca College and is the director of the Ithaca College Contemporary Ensemble. In addition, he is Head of Composition at VIPA, Valencia International Performance Academy.

Arlene Sierra is a London-based American composer whose music is lauded for its “highly flexible and distinctive style” (The Guardian), ranging from “exquisiteness and restrained power” to “combative and utterly compelling” (Gramophone). Notable premieres include Nature Symphony “memorable for its creation of wonderful sounds from a large orchestra” (Bachtrack.com) commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the BBC Philharmonic, Butterflies Remember a Mountain for the the Benedetti-Elschenbroich-Grynyuk Trio, described as “precisely and joyously imagined” (The Times, London) and performed in venues including the Concertgebouw and the BBC Proms, and a New York Philharmonic commission for chamber orchestra Game of Attrition, described by Time Out as “at turns spry, savage, sly and seductive… so enrapturing.” Sierra’s highly individual works have been nominated and awarded on several occasions, including the Takemitsu Composition Prize, a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, PRS Composers Fund and Women Make Music awards, and a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. Her orchestral showpiece Moler was nominated for a Latin GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

Arlene Sierra has composed works for the Albany, Seattle, and Utah Symphonies, the Tanglewood, Cheltenham, and Huddersfield Music Festivals, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Bremen Philharmonic Society, and ensembles including Lontano, Psappha, International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Carducci Quartet. She has worked with conductors including Thierry Fischer, Andris Nelsons, Susanna Mälkki, Oliver Knussen, Jac Van Steen, Shiyeon Sung, Odaline de la Martinez, Jayce Ogren, Grant Llewellyn, Stefan Asbury, and Ludovic Morlot, and ensembles including the Tokyo Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, Boston Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Österreichisches Ensemble für neue Musik, Chroma, New Juilliard Ensemble, the Fidelio, Peabody, and Horszowski Trios, and New York City Opera VOX.

Declared “a name to watch” by BBC Music Magazine, Sierra has been featured in portrait concerts at the Crush Room, Royal Opera House, London, the Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival, Vermont, Composers Now at NYU, Eastman School of Music, and the Composer Portraits Series at NYC’s Miller Theatre. Artist residencies and fellowships include Aldeburgh Britten-Pears, Aspen, Bowdoin, Fontainebleau, the Otto Eckstein Fellowship at Tanglewood, and the MacDowell Colony.

Her music is the subject of a series of portrait recordings by the esteemed Bridge Records label. Arlene Sierra, Vol. 1, recorded by the International Contemporary Ensemble, received rave reviews internationally and was featured by NPR Classical, which described its “remarkable brilliance of colour, rhythmic dexterity and playfulness.” The orchestral disc Game of Attrition: Arlene Sierra, Vol. 2 has been praised for “vividly scored, colorful works” by The New York Times and described by The Guardian as “remarkably sure-footed… quirky and individual” and “startlingly fresh and assured.” Gramophone Magazine has described Sierra’s latest release Butterflies Remember a Mountain – Arlene Sierra, Vol. 3 as “a wonderful chamber music issue that enthrals from first bar to last.” Other labels representing Sierra’s work include NMC, New Focus Recordings, and Coviello Classics.

As Utah Symphony Composer-in-Association Arlene Sierra worked closely with musicians and the community, creating a new work for youth orchestra, Butterfly House, and her most recent large-scale statement for orchestra, Bird Symphony, to audience and critical acclaim. Current projects include Birds and Insects, Book 3, commissioned by the Barbican Centre for pianist Sarah Cahill, and Kiskadee, a Toulmin Foundation commission for the Detroit Symphony with further scheduled performances with the Dallas, Illinois, Louisiana, and Wheeling Symphonies.

Born in Miami to a family of New Yorkers, Arlene Sierra holds degrees from Oberlin College-Conservatory, Yale School of Music, and the University of Michigan. An engaging speaker on composition and contemporary music, invited lectures and presentations include Oxford, Cambridge, New England Conservatory, Yale, Eastman, New York University, Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, and Yonsei and Ewha Universities (South Korea). She currently serves as Professor of Music Composition at Cardiff University School of Music.

Stratis Minakakis is a composer and conductor whose creative work engages issues of memory, cultural identity, and art as social testimony; it also explores the rich possibilities engendered by the interaction between arts and sciences.

As a composer, he has collaborated with leading performers and ensembles across Europe, North America, and Japan, such as The Crossing choir, the PRISM and Stockholm saxophone quartets, the Harry Partch ensemble, the Arditti String Quartet, Ensemble Counter)induction, Noh actress Ryoko Ayoki, recorder virtuoso Tosiya Suzuki, flutist Orlando Cela, and conductors Donald Nally and Rüdiger Bonn.

As a conductor, he has directed and coached numerous chamber music and orchestral ensembles in contemporary repertory, including works by Milton Babbitt, Katherine Balch, Henri Dutilleux, György Ligeti, Fabien Levy, Eric Maestri, John Mallia, Katarina Miljkovic, Dimitris Minakakis, Joan Arnau Pamiès, Y. A. Papaioannou, and Iannis Xenakis.

Also active in the field of music theory, his recent work focuses on interpretive analysis of the late string quartet manuscripts by Beethoven. This line of work builds upon the pioneering research of violinist Nicholas Kitchen on the expressive markings and articulations of Beethoven manuscripts. Other areas of interest include early Modernism, and the music of Xenakis and Ligeti.

He is the recipient of numerous artistic prizes, grants, and academic awards from institutions such as the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, the New England Conservatory, the Takefu International Festival in Japan, the Fondation Royaumont in France, the Center for Mediterranean Music in Greece, the Greek Composers Union, and the International Society for Contemporary Music. Deeply committed to music pedagogy, he was awarded the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania and the prestigious Louis Krasner Award at the New England Conservatory. 

He studied piano, theory, and composition at Atheneaum Conservatory (First Prize in Composition), Princeton University (Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude), the New England Conservatory (Toru Takemitsu Award in Composition, summa cum laude, Distinction in Performance), and the University of Pennsylvania (Nitze and Hallstead Prizes for Composition, Dean’s Scholar Award, George Crumb Fellowship). He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaches Music Theory and Composition at the New England Conservatory.

This star-studded ensemble counts with the participation of Giorgos Panagiotidis (Ensemble Modern; DE), Gregor Schulenburg (mam.manufaktur für aktuelle musik, Ensemble Extrakte, guest musician of Ensemble Modern; DE), Luis Fernández Castelló (Naxos recording artist; Spain), Mariel Roberts (Mivos Quartet, Wet Ink Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble; USA), and pianist Anna d’Errico (Ensemble Interface, Germany; Syntagma Ensemble, Italy).

Created in 2019 by VIPA’s Artistic Director, Carlos Amat, VICE was highly acclaimed by VIPA composers on its first presentation and it is today a much sought-after group among VIPA ensembles. Despite being a recently created group devoted to VIPA students, VICE relies its prestige on the overwhelming experience brought to Valencia by each of its members, providing a unique touch of quality for every piece they perform.

The Mivos Quartet, “one of America’s most daring and ferocious new-music ensembles” (The Chicago Reader), is devoted to performing works of contemporary composers and presenting new music to diverse audiences. Since the quartet’s beginning in 2008 they have performed and closely collaborated with an ever-expanding group of international composers representing a wide aesthetic range of contemporary composition. Recent engagements during the 2020/21 season have included performances and residencies at the Festival for New American Music, Asphalt Festival, the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and Boston University premiering newly commissioned works by Michaela Catranis and Benjamin Sabey. 

Mivos is invested in commissioning, premiering, and growing the repertoire of new music for string quartet, striving for rich collaborations with composers over extended periods of time. Recently, Mivos has collaborated on new works with Michaela Catranis (Fondation Royaumont), Chikako Morishita (rainy days festival), George Lewis (ECLAT Festival Commission), Sam Pluta (Lucerne Festival Commission), Eric Wubbels (CMA Commission), Kate Soper, Scott Wollschleger, Patrick Higgins (Zs), and poet/musician Saul Williams. For this work and the continuation of it, the quartet was the recipient of the 2019 Dwight and Ursula Mamlok Prize for Interpreters of Contemporary Music.

Beyond expanding the string quartet repertoire, Mivos is committed to working with guest artists exploring multi-media projects and performing improvised music. Mivos has worked closely with artists such as Cécile McLorin Salvant (Ogresse), Ambrose Akinmusire (Origami Harvest), Ned Rothenberg, Timucin Sahin, and Nate Wooley. In the upcoming season Mivos will begin a new project working with guitarist, composer, and 2019 MacArthur Fellow, Mary Halvorson.

Mivos has performed to critical acclaim on prestigious series such as Noon to Midnight (USA), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Jazz at Lincoln Center (USA), the New York Phil Biennial (USA), Wien Modern (Austria), the Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), rainy days festival (Luxembourg), Asphalt Festival (Germany), HellHOT! New Music Festival (Hong Kong), Shanghai New Music Week (Shanghai, China), Música de Agora na Bahia (Brazil), Aldeburgh Music (UK), and Lo Spririto della musica di Venezia (Italy). 

In addition to their performance season, Mivos is committed to the education of young composers and string players, and is regularly the quartet in residence at the Creative Musicians Retreat at the Walden School (USA) and the Valencia International Performance Academy and Festival (Spain). The quartet has conducted workshops at Columbia University, Harvard University, Boston University, UC Berkeley, US San Diego, Duke University, Royal Northern College of Music (UK), Shanghai Conservatory (China), University Malaya (Malaysia), Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (Singapore), the Hong Kong Art Center, and MIAM University in Istanbul (Turkey) among others. Along with their work at educational institutions, Mivos grants the Mivos/Kanter String Quartet Composition Prize, a yearly award to support the work of emerging and mid-career composers residing in the USA, and the I-Creation prize, a competition for composers of Chinese descent worldwide.

The members of Mivos are violinists Olivia De Prato and Maya Bennardo, violist Victor Lowrie Tafoya, and cellist Tyler J. Borden. Mivos operates as a non-profit organization dedicated to performing, commissioning, and collaborating on music being written today.