Featured Composers (26-27 Season)
Karim Al-Zand
The music of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand (b.1970) has been called “strong and startlingly lovely” (Boston Globe). His compositions are wide-ranging, from settings of classical Arabic poetry to scores for dance and pieces for young audiences. His works explore connections between music and other arts, and draw inspiration from diverse sources such as 19th century graphic art, fables of the world, folksong and jazz. Learn more
Sam Wu
Sam Wu's music "abounds in delicate colours, wisps of sound and sylvan textures" (Gramophone). Many of his works center around extra-musical themes: architecture and urban planning, climate science, and the search for exoplanets that harbor life. Invited to residencies at MacDowell, Zion National Park, and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, winner of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and the New York Youth Symphony's First Music Commission, Sam Wu also received Harvard's Robert Levin Prize and Juilliard's Palmer Dixon Prize. Learn more
Nicky Sohn
Selected as one of the "Cool 100" by Houston CityBook Magazine alongside icons such as Simone Biles and Megan Thee Stallion, composer Nicky Sohn has emerged as one of the most compelling and distinctive voices in contemporary classical music. With a style characterized by jazz-inspired, rhythmically driven themes and vivid orchestration, her music has been praised internationally as "undoubtedly the crowd pleaser of the evening" (YourObserver), "dynamic and full of vitality" (The Korea Defense Daily), and evoking "elegant wonder" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). Learn more