Composers

Martin Brody    Gôn-Yong Lee    Polina Medyulyanova   
Owen Underhill    Bo Holten   

Martin Brody (Boston MA)

Martin Brody has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and commissions from the Fromm Foundation. He has been resident composer at the American Academy in Rome, La Mortella in Ischia, and the Ligurian Study Center. In addition to concert music, Brody has collaborated on numerous film and television scores, including the films of John Sayles. He is Catherine Mills Davis Professor of Music at Wellesley College, where he has been on faculty since 1979. In 2007 he took over the directorship of the arts division of the American Academy in Rome.

"The possibility of making a new work for CrossSound is especially exciting because of the ensemble designated for the commission. This colorful, heterogeneous, and unorthodox combination is characteristic of CrossSound—even emblematic of what makes the festival so special. It suggests the crossing of local, national, and global boundaries, the integration of beautiful but disparate sounds, and the dialogue among and merging of cultures. CrossSound’s southeast Alaska locale provides the perfect setting for the kind of border crossings that the organization promotes. It is a place of extraordinary, inspiring beauty, but also of a heterogeneous community that values cultural exchange and unites around its cultural events. It is a privilege to be part of this community and to engage in the kinds of intercultural encounters that the CrossSound festival and organization produce, while at the same time enjoying a new music compositional challenge and the opportunity to work with diverse and outstanding professional colleagues."

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Gôn-Yong Lee (Korea)

Dr. Lee was born in Pyongannam-do, Korea, on September 30, 1947. Growing up in Seoul, he began composing at the age of twelve. Lee played oboe in school band in Seoul Middle School, and studied composition with Dal-Sung Kim at High School of Music and Arts and Sung-Jae Lee at Seoul National University. In 1976 he went to Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where he studied composition with Heinz Werner Zimmermann at Frankfurter Musikhochschule. After completing his studies in Germany he returned to Korea, where he taught composition at Hyosung Women's University and Seoul National University. Since 1993 he has been teaching at the Korean National University of Arts, where he became President in 2005.

"I had an opportunity to write a piece for CrossSound and visit Alaska in 2006. I was asked to use six instruments for my piece, including Korean kayagûm, Yup’ik cauyaq, solo double bass and three western instruments. This work was challenging to me because the instrumentation was quite unusual and asked for an imagination of new sound, mixing traditional European, traditional Korean, Alaskan, and even some Asian (because the double bass soloist was a Japanese music expert) elements.

During my stay for rehearsals and premiere of the piece, I met musicians who came to the festival from America, from Germany, from Japan, from Greece and so on—besides local musicians. The visit was rather short but enough to realize the unique character and the importance of the CrossSound contemporary music festival. It is a new place far from the old centers of musical culture, like New York, Paris, and even from Seoul and Tokyo. It is a place where eastern and western music and traditional and contemporary music are coming across. Culturally it does not lean to a specific trend or tradition but stands neutral and independent. I find it is a good space where a new musical culture could be cultivated. I think this is the idea of CrossSound and believe the activities of the festival will produce many meaningful results for the music of the future. I am very glad to have another opportunity to join with CrossSound."

Polina
Medyulyanova (Tashkent, Uzbekistan)

Born April 4, 1974, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Polina Medyulyanova composes mostly chamber, choral and vocal works. Since 2005 she has been based in Amsterdam, where she is associated with the Sweelinck Conservatory.

Polina is the daughter of the conductor Viktor Medyulyanov and pianist Natalya Gienko, and granddaughter of the composer Boris Gienko and pianist Tatyana Gienko. She started music lessons with her grandfather at age four and wrote her first composition at age eight. She then studied composition with Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky at the Uspensky Academic Lyceum in Tashkent, where she graduated in 1992. She graduated from the Mukhtar Ashrafi Conservatory of Music in Tashkent in 1997, and finished her studies in composition with Felix Yanov-Yanovsky at the State Conservatory of Uzbekistan in Tashkent in 1999. Her honors include Second Prize in the Gaudeamus Competition in 2003, Second Prize in VI Fanny Mendelssohn Competition in 2006, and Honorable Mention in the Golden Hanukiya Competition in Russia in 2005. Her music has been performed in France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Russia, and Uzbekistan. Most of her works are held in a fund owned by the Uzbekistan State TV Company in Tashkent.

Medyulyanova plays chang (Uzbek dulcimer), organ, and piano. In 2006 she founded two active duos, one with singer Antje Siefert of Germany, and the other with violinist and composer Tania Sikelianou of Greece. Both ensembles are busy performing classical and modern music.

"For me as a composer it is great pleasure to be invited to write for and play in a project that touches on the music of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska. In my creative process I always try to forge a kind of synthesis between old church music from different religious traditions, folk music, and modern tendencies. This combination always gives me inspiration and the impulse to research new ideas and projects. I am always looking for musicians to work with who are interested in the same things. Given Alaska’s history as a Russian territory, and the Orthodox church’s relationship with Alaska Natives, as well as my own background growing up as a musician in Tashkent, the invitation from Alaska is extremely interesting for me and I look forward to playing a part in this year’s CrossSound programs."

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Owen Underhill (Vancouver B.C.)

Owen Underhill lives in Vancouver, B.C., where he is active as a composer, conductor, and teacher. As a composer, Underhill has amassed a substantial catalogue of more than sixty works, including an opera, large-scale works for dance, several works for orchestra, choral music, and a large body of chamber music for diverse groups. His most recent compositions include World of Light (2007) for tenor and symphony orchestra, Sakalaka (commissioned and premiered at the 2007 CrossSound Festival), and A Middle English Songbook (2006) for choir and ensemble. His Canzone di Petra (2004), a piece for flute and harp, won the 2007 Western Canadian Music Outstanding Composition Award. As a conductor, Underhill has appeared with the Turning Point Ensemble, CBC Radio Orchestra, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and the Vancouver New Music Ensemble. He is Artistic Co-Director of the Turning Point Ensemble, a large chamber ensemble of outstanding Vancouver musicians dedicated to the celebration of twentieth century music and new music. Underhill is Vice-President of the Canadian Music Centre, and serves on the faculty of the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.

"I have composed a series of songs/madrigals based on a selection of poems by Aleutian poet Jerah Chadwick. All of the poems I have chosen address the striking landscape of Unalaska in particular, and the effect of land, water, wind, and birds on the place and its people. The poetry of Jerah Chadwick is remarkable in the way it makes you feel, see, and taste this stark landscape and its effect on the solitary individual. Here are a few words from “After Eden,” one of the poems featured in the CrossSound program:

Scrim of green
over rock, seeded
by storm, this volcano
top land Noah's ravens kept
to themselves, where I watch fledglings muscle through adults in convoy, plunge
to tide flat.

As my piece is written for four singers plus an ensemble of seven instruments, I have the opportunity to express the poetic voice with the singing voice, and the sharp edges and various features of the landscape with the instruments. My intention is to interweave solo voice settings with group voice settings for specific poems as appropriate. This will create some variety and allow for a multilayered interpretation of the words."

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Bo Holten (Denmark)

After studying musicology at the University of Copenhagen and bassoon at the Royal Academy of Music, Danish composer Bo Holten (1948) worked some years as a music teacher and critic at various newspapers in Copenhagen. Holten is equally well known as a conductor and composer. He enjoys an international reputation as a leading specialist in early music, especially with regard to vocal polyphony. In 1991 he was appointed Guest Conductor of the BBC Singers, London, with whom he has worked on a regular basis every year, giving some 70 concerts, hosting radio programs, and producing CD recordings, including works with Symphony Orchestra and several BBC Programs. In 1979 he founded the vocal group Ars Nova with whom he made more than 500 concerts and 20 CD recordings over 17 years. In 1996, he founded the vocal ensemble Musica Ficta with whom he has now conducted about 250 concerts and theatre performances, and recorded 18 CDs.

Holten is also a prolific composer of more than 100 works. Among these are five operas, including nr. 3 “Operation Orfeo,” which, with 89 performances worldwide, ranks as the most frequently performed contemporary Danish opera. His fifth opera "Gesualdo," written for a period band, a madrigal group, and "modern" opera singers, met with general acclaim in 2003. He has also written 2 symphonies, 4 concertos, and two musicals. Among his most widely performed music are the 30 á cappella works that span his whole composing career. He has also written songs, chamber music compositions, and several film and television scores.

Bo Holten was a member of the State's Music Council 1979-83 and chairman of the music committee of the State Arts Council 1990-93. He has received several distinguished awards, including the Herman Sandby Prize 1980, Rostrum of Composers, Paris 1982, Danish Composers Association's Anniversary Grant 1983, The Art Council's Production Reward 1984, and the Mogens Wöldike Prize 1984.

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Martin Brody    Gôn-Yong Lee    Polina Medyulyanova   
Owen Underhill    Bo Holten