Checking in: one season at a time
Fall/Winter 2024-2025
RESEARCH: Plenary at the Arts in Society Research Network Conference, May 2025
I am so excited to be giving a plenary address, “(In)Hospitable Bodies: Sounding a Space Between New Music and Medicine,” for the Arts in Society’s 2025 conference “The Art of Hospitality.” The conference will also feature the premiere performance of One in Four, One in Eight by the Agarita Chamber Players.
This project has been many, many years in the making, and to be able to premiere the composition as part of this conference and to fold the concert in with this plenary address is the kind of research-into-creative-practice melding that feeds me most in my professional work.
The conference will take place May 28-30, 2025.
PREMIERE: The Sidereal Day at the Sewickley Music Club, Carnegie Mellon Pre-College
The Sidereal Day is a four-movement cycle of art songs for soprano and piano. It provides an alternate viewpoint of the cycle of a day, beginning with sunset and carrying through to dawn the following morning. I am so excited for Katy Shackleton-Williams and Ellen Rissinger to give the premiere of this set on May 14, 2024 at the Sewickley Music Club in Sewickley, PA. Ms. Shackleton-Williams performed the piece again with Sung-Im Kim at the piano in July at Carnegie Mellon’s campus during their Pre-College program.
PUBLICATION: Baltic Musics Beyond the Post-Soviet
Many of our contributors to the Baltic Musics: After the Post-Soviet conference in January 2022 came together to shift their presentations into articles for a forthcoming edited volume with the University of Tartu Press. My colleague and co-editor Jeffers Engelhardt and I have been working since the end of the conference to imagine next steps, and we are so proud of this volume; it provides a unique snapshot of a key, pivotal moment in Baltic and Soviet-related research.
The volume is published and available for purchase or to read open-access.
NEW PIECE: Time-Lapse of a Wanderweg
I was asked by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to contribute a piece to a Discovery and Drinks concert they are hosting in May 2025. This particular concert features works for chamber ensembles from Pittsburgh composers (Amy Williams and Eric Moe who are faculty at the University of Pittsburgh are also on the program), and each of us will offer a bit of a pre-performance walkthrough of how our compositions "work,” accompanied by excerpts performed by the musicians, and then at the end of each session, the PSO members will perform the composition in full.
Time-Lapse of a Wanderweg takes its title from a core memory I have from almost 15 years ago, where I was in Luzern (Lucerne) Switzerland, and I left the city to go for a long run. I followed signs that said Wanderweg for miles and miles as the town disappeared behind me and my environment was replaced with green grass, quiet streets, even cows! Back then it was an experience of adventure into an unknown, but today I crave the moment because of the morphing of quiet and solitude that I found as I moved further away from the city. This piece (written for modified Pierrot-ish ensemble) captures that transition from the immediate, bustling, and slightly chaotic city life through to a kind of depth and peace that comes from distance and time.
Details for the concert will be shared here as they become available.
PREMIERE: Of Life There Is for Duquesne University Choirs
On October 26, Of Life There Is will be premiered by Duquesne University’s Voices of Spirit choir at their fall concert. The concert is at 7:30pm at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh (South Hills area).
In the months leading up to the concert, I’ll be checking in with the choir as they learn the piece and make it their own.
Details about the concert and a link to ticket information can be found at this link. ($10 suggested donation at the door.)
NEW COMMISSION: Meri, a Wind Quintet* for Camerata Nova
Through the generous support of the University Research Council Grant at Western Illinois University, I’m excited to start work on a 12-minute work for WIU’s faculty wind quintet, Camerata Nova. Camerata Nova’s instrumentation is a unique one in that the saxophone substitutes for the typical horn part. I’m really looking forward to the collaboration this year, with a premiere slated for early 2025. The ensemble will also record the piece in Spring 2025 and take it on tour.
The piece’s working title, Meri, is Estonian for “The Sea.”
NEW COMMISSION: Of Life There Is for Duquesne University Choirs
This summer I composed a new piece for Voices of Spirit, a select group of 32 young singers at Duquesne University. The piece will be premiered in Fall 2024 under the direction of Dr. Caron Daley, performed on Duquesne’s campus, and in Washington, DC. You can read more about the piece by clicking the link in this description.
RESEARCH: Workshop Presentation at the College Music Society National Conference
In November 2024, I will travel to Washington DC to co-present a workshop with Dr. Caron Daley titled “A Feminist Approach to Commissioning, Creating, and Rehearsing New Works.” As part of the commissioning project also noted in this News section, Dr. Daley and I will be leading conference participants through a methodology for supporting the creation of new musical work by living composers which engages feminist practices at each stage of the collaborative process.
PROJECT: with Agarita Chamber Players
I am so excited to finally be setting down roots with Agarita Chamber Players. This year, I’ll be writing a concert-length piece for the quartet. The piece draws inspiration from women’s health advocacy and the stigma associated with talking about and asking for help.
The work will premiere in the 2025-2026 season. Project details can be found here.
RESEARCH: Presentation at the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies International Conference
In June 2024 I will be presenting a talk titled “Directions in Baltic Music Scholarship Beyond the Post-Soviet” at the AABS conference with Jeffers Engelhardt (Amherst College), my co-editor for Baltic Musics Beyond the Post-Soviet. AABS is a multi-disciplinary conference that extends well beyond the arts into economics, government, and STEM fields; we are very much looking forward to situating our work as a point of entry into new scholarship on Baltic musics and sounds that move along decolonizing paths.
PROJECT: (In)Hospitable Bodies supported by the Carnegie Mellon Center for Arts and Society
In January 2024 I began a three-year project in the Center for Arts and Society’s Hospitality Initiative, titled (In)Hospitable Bodies.
From the CAS website: “Embedded in the CAS ideology is the concept that as a research center we will be productive. We will engage in activities that produce work. The process of making the work, activities and speakers around the topic and the final projects will be available to the public. Since 2008 every three years CAS has reinvented itself with a new themed initiative to fund and produce new work. In each initiative, two CMU faculty coordinators, one an artist and the other a scholar, select projects that engage in a focused exploration of a selected topic.”
To read more about the project I am heading up, and the fascinating projects of my colleagues, click here.
PERFORMANCE: TRĪS DAINAS at the University of Chicago Choral Union
The Choral Union at the University of Chicago will be performing my three-movement work, Trīs dainas, no Mēness un Saule at their fall concert on November 15, at 7:30pm. Details for the performance can be found at this link.
AWARD: 2024 MAP Fund Grantee for One in Four, One in Eight
I am so excited to finally announce that I am a recipient of a grant from the MAP fund! The MAP fund is supporting a dream collaboration (many years in the dreaming and hoping) with the Agarita Chamber Players of San Antonio. I will be composing a 60-minute piano quartet that upends and disrupts some elements of the typical classical concert space, and investiages two topical arenas: classical music’s slow progress in supporting women composers, and the societal expectation that a woman’s body be a hospitable place to create new life. The piece will premiere in May 2025 (in Pittsburgh) with additional Pittsburgh performances in Fall 2025, and San Antonio concerts will be held during the 25-26 concert season. I am so, so grateful for the MAP fund’s support of this project and so many other exciting and important projects from artists in many different disciplines.
You can read the MAP Fund’s press release here.
PERFORMANCE: Puddle and Pivot at the Carnegie Mellon Chamber Music Series
The Akropolis Reed Quintet will be in residence at Carnegie Mellon in February 2025! I’m so excited for ARQ to work with our composers and performers, giving masterclasses, entrepreneurship lectures, and doing student composer readings.
In addition to their student-facing work, they will also be featured on the School of Music’s Chamber Music Series on February 13, where they’ll perform works by Felix Mendelssohn, Jeff Scott, Stephanie Ann Boyd, and they will resurrect two pieces they commissioned from me, Puddle and Pivot. Tickets for the concert are free but must be reserved, and a livestream will be available as well.
I’m so excited to work with these amazing musicians again, and even more excited for our students to get some time with them.
NEW SCORES: Winter: Outside, In, Cantos Nuevos, and Sonata for Oboe and Piano in the shop!
I have been working on getting some scores settled and ready for purchase, and I’m excited to announce some new works (Winter: Outside, In) and some old favorites have made their way into the Score Store. Cantos Nuevos, a four-movement set of Federico García Lorca poems for soprano and piano, as well as Sonata for Oboe and Piano (for, you guessed it: oboe and piano, in two movements) are now available for purchase. Click the “Score Store” link to purchase, or either of the title links above to learn more about and listen to these two pieces.
Recent News
RESEARCH: Keynote at the College Music Society’s International Conference
In July 2023 I joined the College Music Society’s International Conference as their keynote speaker. For 10 days, we traveled through the Baltic nations—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—hearing presentations of papers, recitals, as well as collaboration and performances with Baltic scholars. My keynote lecture was called “The Road of Song: Body-Place Memory and the Latvian Song Festival.” Read more here.
PREMIERE: Winter: Outside, In for choir, orchestra (and special guests!)
Over the summer and early fall of 2023 I composed a new piece for the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic and Choirs which will premiere on December 6, 2023 under the baton of Daniel Curtis.
The piece came from a call/offer/challenge from Mr. Curtis to compose something festive, which captured the essence of the December season as the School of Music closes out its fall semester.
Winter: Outside, In is a 12-minute work which sets texts from both Mathilde Blind and Eliza Cook, capturing elements of the dark, cold, blustery winter outdoors and the warm, festive celebrations by the fire inside.
The piece will premiere on Wednesday December 6 at 8pm at Soldiers and Sailors Hall in Pittsburgh, PA, and be performed again on December 7 in the Great Hall of the College of Fine Arts at noon.
To read more about the piece, and find links to livestream the performance, click here.
PERFORMANCE: The Mother Trees at the Arvo Pärt Center
After a successful premiere performance of The Mother Trees at the ACDA National Conference in February 2023, the Mägi Ensemble will be performing the piece at the Arvo Pärt Center in Laulasmaa, Estonia in January 2024. I am so excited for Mägi to bring the piece to such a beautiful place; I was able to visit Laulasmaa and the Arvo Pärt Center in July 2023, and I felt a deep connection to this place as an intersection point of music and nature in the Baltics. It’s a special place; a special hall, a special part of the world, and I hope to make music there again.
PUBLICATION: Pivot and Puddle
In December 2022, Pivot and Puddle were released into the Akropolis Collection, the publishing company for the Akropolis Reed Quintet. Head over to their website to purchase your score and parts (hard copy or digital download) today!
PERFORMANCE: Puddle and Pivot
The Contemporary Ensemble at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Music will be performing Puddle and Pivot at their February concert in 2023.
For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.
Older News
Research Publication:
Corralling the Chorale
January 2022: I am so excited to announce the publication of a six-author symposium titled “Corralling the Chorale” in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy. Five colleagues and I have culled together some thoughts on how to consider decentering the chorale in undergraduate music studies. You can read the full article (open access) here.
New Piece: Pivot for Akropolis Reed Quintet
The commissioning collaboration with Akropolis Reed Quintet was created as a two-part idea, so there was always a second piece on the horizon after Puddle (2020). This Spring, I worked on a companion piece for Puddle. While the first was constructed with necessary distance and individual recording sessions in mind, Pivot links the musicians together, its success dependent on their live, real-time, dynamic engagement with one another.
Pivot and Puddle will premiere at Akropolis’s Together We Sound Festival this summer.
New Piece: Puddle for Akropolis Reed Quintet
Puddle was a summer commission from Akropolis Reed Quintet. The piece was written as a direct engagement with some particulars about our recent bout of “staying put” while also trying to find ways to connect and reconnect with one another. You can expect to hear this piece live (digitally) sometime this spring.
Rising Voices: Workshops
In April 2021 I will be presenting workshops at Harvard University’s Treble Choral Festival, Rising Voices. This virtual, weekend festival brings together treble choirs from all over the country to share in music making, learning, adventure, and collaboration.
I presented workshops about composing with the singer in mind and working with text as part of the pre-compositional process. I had a great weekend working with these bright, young music-makers!
PREMIERE: The Mother Trees
at ACDA 2023!
Fall 2022: I’m so excited to be writing a new piece for the Mägi Ensemble, which they will premiere in 2023 at the National Conference for the American Choral Directors Association in 2023. Mägi has performed some of my works before, but this is my first time writing specifically for them. I’m really looking forward to digging into the middle spaces between forest conservation and research, Latvian stories about trees, and treble voices for this brand new work.
Performance: Es savai māmiņai at Baltic Musics Conference
In January, I co-hosted a conference at Amherst College called Baltic Musics After the Post-Soviet. It was a three-day symposium for scholars from all over the world. We considered the complications of music-making in this present-day geographical space, and the frictions around identity, globalization, and trauma (among many other topics).
As part of the conference, we invited Seattle-based Mägi Ensemble to perform some music by Baltic composers (their specialty!). A trio from the ensemble performed my 2018 work Es savai māmiņai.
A Sense of Decency: Radcliffe Choral Society
The Radcliffe Choral Society is excited to present UNCHARTED, featuring two virtual world premieres: A Sense of Decency and Planetarium. Composed by Dr. Katherine Pukinskis, A Sense of Decency sets excerpts from a dissent and an opinion written by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Planetarium by Jenny Yao ‘22 brings to life a poem by Radcliffe College alumna Adrienne Rich ‘51, celebrating the work of 18th-century German astronomer Caroline Herschel. The premieres will be accompanied by the Grammy award-winning Parker Quartet, Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at the Harvard University Department of Music. In addition to the virtual recordings, UNCHARTED will include visual artwork created by singers in the Radcliffe Choral Society and high school students, behind-the-scenes footage of the RCS virtual choir experience this past fall, and introductions from the composers themselves.
Composing in residence:
Artemisia Trio
As part of my work as Visiting Assistant Professor at Amherst College, I’ll brought Artemisia, a vocal trio based in Chicago, in to work with some undergraduate composers during the Spring semester. The trio and students decided on a dual theme of “isolation and identity” for their end-of-semester concert; I joined my students in composing a brand-new work for Artemisia, and the trio will premiere the new pieces alongside some of their existing repertoire at an on-line concert in May 2021.
(Never) Bright Enough was the piece I wrote for Artemisia this Spring.
Performance: Three Latvian Folk Songs
Ensemble Uncaged at the Longy School of Music (Cambridge MA) performed Three Latvian Folk Songs for Baritone and Piano. Performance was live streamed from Pickman Hall.
Summer 2021 and 2022 Teaching: Divergent Studio
I spent two weeks each June on the faculty for Longy’s summer program, Divergent Studio, for performers and composers. It was a great setting to explore collaboration, making, and learning about music in diverse, challenging, and exciting ways.
Performance: “The Sea Cow” Spring 2022
Back in 2018 soprano Liz Pearse asked me for a piece about an animal (to complement a Poulenc set she was preparing). I collaborated with poet M.C. St. John who wrote this amazing text about a manatee called “The Sea Cow.” Liz has performed this piece a number of times in the past few years, and she just did it again on her most recent Birthday Celebration Recital in Winona, MN. It has been so fun to watch (and hear) this piece really become Liz’s as she digs in with it more and more.
You can listen to Liz’s most recent performance of “The Sea Cow” (and other musical beasties!) here.
Guest Panelist: Composing a New Canon: Making Music for Soprano-Alto Choirs
I am so excited to be joining a panel hosted at Harvard Women’s Week. The Thursday afternoon event will open with a panel discussion with composers of the genre, followed by breakout sessions centered around different aspects of composition. Click here for more info.
Performances:
The Stretch: for bassoon, oboe, and voice
In May 2022 I finished a piece for a commission consortium run by Drs Galit Kaunitz and Jacqui Wilson, the hosts of Double Reed Dish—check out their podcast! It’s a great resource for reed players as well as musicians of other inclinations.
Galit and Jacqui will give the premiere performance of the piece on September 16 at Washington State University. You can watch live! (Link here.)
I’m also excited that ROCO, the commissioning ensemble for the piece, will be performing the piece on November 4 in Houston TX. Link to information here.
The piece is in three movements (~12-14 minutes) for oboe, bassoon, and voice, and features text adapted from a poem by Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard.
New Job: Carnegie Mellon University
This fall I joined the School of Music faculty at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Fine Arts as an assistant professor in composition and theory.
It is a fun and weird thing to return to my alma mater in this new capacity, and I am so looking forward to settling into Pittsburgh in a more permanent way. There’s something special about this city, and I’ve known it since I first came to visit in 2003.
PREMIERE: Mise-en-scène, Duo for Violin and Viola
Fall 2022: Mise-en-scène was premiered at the Five-College New Music Festival in September. Read more about the piece at the composition page linked here.
RESEARCH:
Keynote: Bringing Intersectionality into Analysis
I was invited to give a mini keynote for the Committee on the Status of Women’s session at the annual conference of the Society for Music Theory (SMT) this November (2022) in New Orleans! In addition to my presentation, I will be a respondent for a set of lightning talks on the topic given by other Society members. The session will also feature live performance and breakout sessions to work together on analyses. This is a big year for the field of music, as the annual conferences for the American Musicological Society (AMS) and Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) will hold their events concurrently in the same space as the SMT. I’m hoping for lots of cross-pollination across the disciplines as a way to connect and learn from one another.
RESEARCH: Paper Presentation at Society of Music Theory’s National Conference
In November 2023, I’ll travel to Denver CO to give a paper at the Society of Music Theory’s National (joint) Conference (with the American Musicological Society).
While at SMT, I’ll present a paper titled “Interpretive Agency: Flexibilities, Constraints, and Departures in Reena Esmail’s Jhula Jhule.” (To read the abstract for the paper, click here.) In addition to the paper, I’ll also be present in my role as a member of the Committee on Disability and Accessibility, supporting the committee’s session which features lightning talks, workshops, and discussions.
RESEARCH: ICDS6 Paper Presentation
In August 2023 I presented a paper titled “The Ownership Continuum: Creating and Tracing Interpretive Agency in Music” at the 6th International Conference of Dalcroze Studies in Pittsburgh, PA. The conference’s theme is Ecologies of practice in music and movement.
PERFORMANCE: The Stretch at Colorado State University
Colorado State University Music faculty Pablo Dos Santos Hernandez, Oboe, and Cayla Bellamy, Bassoon are joined by mezzo-soprano Nicole Asel to perform The Stretch on one of their Virtuoso Series concerts, March 6 at 7:30pm Mountain Time.
For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.
RESIDENCY: Marble House Project
In June 2023 I’ll be headed to the Marble House Project in Dorset Vermont for a three-week residency where I’ll be working on an expansion of The Mother Trees which premieres in February 2023.
Marble House is the perfect place to explore cultural and environmental sustainability in this choral project, as I live, create, and tend the farm at a residency whose mission “is founded on the belief that the act of creating, whether in the studio or in nature, is how human potential expands and community thrives.”
