Johanny Navarro

Young Puerto Rican composer Johanny Navarro is one of the most exceptional artists of her generation. Navarro has worked on commissions for important music soloists like Elisa Torres, Luis Miguel Rojas, and Andrea González Caballero, and organizations like Multicultural Music Group, Inc. and Boston Opera Collaborative; has also composed for ensembles like The Catholic University of America Symphony Orchestra, American Harp Society, Inc., New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy, Victory Players, and Coralia from the University of Puerto Rico.

Her piece Celebration for piano trio (2016), was selected by The Arts Club of Washington D.C. as a commemorative work for the celebration of its centenary. Videntes Stellam for choir and orchestra (2016) was premiered at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C. and televised on EWTN channel. With this majestic and colorful work, the composer made her debut with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, conducted by maestro Roselín Pabón at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum of Puerto Rico. Her first chamber opera, Frenesí (2017), was premiered in Washington D.C. The next year, it was presented at the Bertita y Guillermo L. Martínez Theater of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, and in 2019 achieved repositioning of its setting to opera al fresco, at the Ballajá Barracks in Viejo San Juan in a production of The Opera Theater. Consequently, Navarro was chosen as participant in the Puccini International Opera Composition Course in Lucca, Italia, where she was mentored by composer and director Giralomo Deraco. Her second chamber opera, Redención (2019), premiered at the Puccini Chamber Opera Festival 2021 in Italy.

Johanny Navarro has an ample catalog of diverse work and is deeply rooted in Afro-Caribbean musical aesthetics, essentially in Puerto Rican musical culture. Her music, moreover, has been presented in Cuba, Mexico, Spain and France. In 2020, featured as resident artist at the Massachusetts International Festival of Arts (MIFA) and her piece Celebration was part of the Casals Festival program. Her opera ¿Y los Pasteles? Ópera Jíbara en dos actos, work for which she was awarded the Discovery Grant (2020) from Opera Grants for Female Composers by Opera America is scheduled to premiere in July 2022 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Navarro is a resident artist at the American Lyric Theater in New York. https://johannynavarro.com/

Katherine Pukinskis

Katherine Pukinskis she/her (b. 1986) is a composer-scholar based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dr. Pukinskis has had works premiered by eighth blackbird, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Akron Symphony Chorus, and the Spektral Quartet, as well as by members of Ensemble Dal Niente and the Chicago Symphony Chorus. Commissioning ensembles include the San Antonio Symphony, Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Agarita Chamber Players, the Esoterics Choir, and Nuorten Kuoroliitto (Helsinki Finland).

An advocate of under-represented and under-respected voices in Western classical music, Pukinskis’s work often brings unlikely text or content into conversation in the concert hall. A 2016 commission by La Caccina sets a mosaic of unwelcome comments often directed at women in We Are: a 2019 project was started by a commission from the Esoterics in Seattle where Pukinskis excerpts from dissents written by the female Supreme Court Justices of the United States (A Choice Informed). The first piece in the project tackles the 2014 Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby case in which Associate Justice Ginsburg wrote a dissent against the ruling—Justice Ginsburg’s writing supports a woman’s right to make an informed choice. The second set of works, titled A Sense of Decency, was a commission from the Radcliffe Choral Society in Cambridge MA; the two-movement work for treble choir and string quartet attends to a woman’s right to access education, and the influence of religion on American veteran memorials. Additional pieces in the project set texts by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan in response to more recent legislation (TX SB-8).

In addition to an active engagement with present social climates, she acknowledges the deep individuality and personal exploration of writing music. From the composer: “In the broadest sense, nature, the human experience, and heritage are the three driving factors of inspiration for the creation of new music. I am gratified by the immediacy of effect when we listen to music, and I cherish its lingering forces well after the sound is gone. For me, no music is absolute; I do not live in a vacuum devoid of outside stimuli, nor can I exclude portions of myself in the act of creating music. While it is rarely my intention to compose a direct response to a specific experience, philosophy, or work of art, the moments of our lives leave a residue on our future thoughts. This residue is for me found predominantly in the natural world and in ancestral heritage--it is what sparks the inspiration to compose.

“It is extremely important to me in the creation of new music to take into great account what it feels like for the performer to realize these sounds, and what it does to the audience to watch musicians make music. Music is consumed not just with our ears, but, if we are willing, our whole selves. For this reason, physicality of performance often drives the crafting of gesture; always at the base of my composition is the question “what does this feel like to play? To hear?” Drawing upon our physical experiences in both the corporeally internal and the outside worlds, I aim to musicalize such physical experiences; music, just like film or dance, has the power to move us in ways that reach well beyond our seats in a concert hall.”

Both her work in composition and research explore storytelling and voice—tracking how words and ideas travel in music, through bodies, across the world, and over time. Dr. Pukinskis is an Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at Carnegie Mellon University. She has previously taught at Amherst College, the Longy School of Music, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University. Her scholarly research revolves around notions of cultural identity, diaspora, traditional folk and choral music, and activism, with particular emphasis on choral traditions in Latvia and 20th-century American Art Song. She has presented her research across the United States and Europe in conferences, pre-concert lectures, and invited talks.

Kevin Day

Kevin Day (b. 1996) is an award-winning, multi-disciplinary composer, jazz pianist and conductor. Internationally acclaimed as one of the world’s leading musical voices, Mr. Day’s work is known as a vibrant exploration of diverse musical traditions from contemporary classical, jazz, R&B, Soul and more. A unique voice in the world of classical music, Mr. Day takes inspiration from a broad range of sources, including romanticism, late 20th century music, jazz fusion and gospel. Across all areas, his work explores the complex interplay of rhythm, texture and melody across genres.

Mr. Day burst onto the musical scene in 2018 with his Concerto for Euphonium, which has since gone on to become a Classic FM sensation and has been recently performed by the United States Marine Band. Since then, some of the world’s top instrumental soloists, wind bands, chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras have commissioned and performed his works, including the Cincinnati Opera, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Winds, Nu Deco Ensemble, Boston Brass, Capitol Quartet, Puerto Rican Trombone Ensemble, Syrinx Quintet, Sheffield Chamber Players and many others throughout the United States, Canada, Austria, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia and Japan. Mr. Day is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Copland House Residency Award, the MacDowell Fellowship for Music Composition, the BMI Composer Award, the TCU Alumni Outstanding Young Professional Award, a three-time ASCAP Morton Gould Finalist, a finalist for the ABA Sousa-Oswald Award, a finalist for the NBA Revelli Award, and many more. Mr. Day’s original opera, Lalovavi: An Afro-Futurist Opera in Three Acts, will premiere at the Cincinnati Opera as the lead work in its ground-breaking new Black Opera Project. The work is the first of three commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera as part of its initiative to engage Black creators in developing new works celebrating Black stories. As part of the project, Mr. Day is collaborating with renowned director Kimille Howard and librettist Tifara Brown, who’s recognized as one of the country’s leading performance poets. Other recent works include his acclaimed Concerto for Wind Ensemble and Birds in the Cathedral, as well as Ignition, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Low Brass and Unquiet Waters, commissioned by Jordan VanHemert.

In addition to his work as a composer, Mr. Day also enjoys an active career as a jazz pianist. Passionate about collaborations that reimagine and advance the future of jazz as an art form, he brings his extensive musical background to the stage and studio as improviser and collaborator. He’s currently working on a debut solo album. His music has been featured on numerous high profile releases, including albums by Thomas Mesa and Michelle Cann, The Alias Chamber Ensemble, Jeremy Wilson, Jarrett McCourt, and Nicki Roman.

Madeline October Wildman

MMadeline October Wildman (she/her) is a trans feminine descendant of European settlers and immigrants to America whose feet touch the earth in Waawiiyaataanong a.k.a Detroit MI — land of the Anishinaabe people. She creates work centered in relationships, exploring how art can strengthen interpersonal connection and serve our communities. As a musician, composer, and spoken word artist, the performance space is her primary venue for community building. In an average month you can find Madeline hosting open mics, performing in interdisciplinary arts festivals, contributing to singing circles, and employing audience participation in the concert hall. She has a professional background in performing arts community engagement and applies similar strategies in her personal creative practice: facilitating collaboration and partnership, fostering skill and resource sharing, and championing experiences that are participatory and mutually beneficial. These priorities are reflected within her work, often focusing on interpersonal relationship, human relationship to the earth, relationship to our in-groups, and relationship to the self.

The driving purpose in her artistic practice is to inspire creativity in others. Madeline’s work is the product of countless artists who have poured bits of themselves into her, each of them amplifying her own voice. Madeline positions her work as a part of a larger movement of reclaiming and celebrating creativity, especially in response to a history of hierarchy and exclusion in the arts industry. She understands her voice not as something that lives in her alone, but rather in and amongst a community of artists and within a larger collective human consciousness. Madeline’s work affirms that creativity is inside us and inside of the world; it is a reciprocal, inexhaustible gift.

As a composer, her work has been featured in concerts nationally and internationally, including venues such as National Sawdust, the International Double Reed Society Conference, HERo Women’s Conference, Third Place Music Festival, Refugia Festival, and universities and recital halls across the country. She performs bassoon prolifically as a chamber musician most notable with her ensembles Front Porch and slapslap. She is a poet and spoken word artist published with Button Poetry, The Poetry Room, Therapeutic edgelands, and elsewhere. She earned her bachelor’s degree in bassoon performance at the University of Michigan (2019), studying with Jeffrey Lyman.