Jan 28, 2023

*Tickets will also be sold at the door. Masks strongly encouraged.

Hailed as "an artist taking wholehearted risks" (New Music Box) and “[one of Chicago’s] most interesting sound explorers” (Bandcamp), composer Sam Scranton has presented work nationally and internationally at festivals, conferences, and performance series such as the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Indexical, Composit, NUNC! 3, New Music Gathering, Frequency Festival, the International Conference on Music and Minimalism, Outer Ear Festival, and Omaha Under the Radar.  Sam's music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Borealis Festival Radio Space, WFMT, and released by Parlour Tapes+. The CCO commission of Sam's piece Cold Damp Orange 41 was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Mathew Arrellin (pronounced: A-rre-yín), born in El Paso, Texas in 1993, is a composer and cellist currently based in Chicago. He has written solo and chamber works, which have been performed by Ensemble Dal Niente, the Mivos Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, ~Nois, the Low Frequency Trio, the Fonema Consort, New Music New Mexico, Ben Roidl-Ward, and himself, among others. His music has been performed in festivals such as the Valencia International Performance Academy (VIPA, 2016), June in Buffalo (2018), and the SCI National Conference (2019).

Mathew has taught courses at Northwestern, such as first year aural skills, class composition for majors and non-majors, and in the Spring of 2020, he taught a general music class of his own design titled “Music and the Visual Arts,” which explored the historical and conceptual intersections between the two disciplines. Mathew holds a bachelor’s degree in music theory, composition, and cello performance from the University of New Mexico, where his cello teacher was David Schepps and his composition teacher was José-Luis Hurtado. He received his PhD in Music Composition and Technology at Northwestern University in 2022 where he studied  with Jay Alan Yim, Alex Mincek, and Hans Thomalla.

Mathew's piece Overpainted Photographs for flute & orchestra features flutist Dalia Chin as soloist. The CCO commission of this work was also made possible by a grant from the National Endownment for the Arts. In addition to these two world premieres, we will present Elegiac Gestures for string orchestra by Chicago composer Martha Horst and In a World of One Color...the Sound of Wind by James Falzone.

About the Soloist:

Born and raised in Costa Rica, currently calling Chicago home. Dalia is a sound explorer. Often using flutes as a basis for explorations, but also no stranger to using voice and the sounds of the world around her. Dalia strives to intuitively create music as a performer, improviser, and collaborator.

She believes in forging deep connections between her, collaborators, and audience which allows to communicate the essence of a work at the highest level of excellence and whenever possible invite community participation in the creation of works.

Collaboration and aesthetic variety are at the center of her work as a soloist and chamber musician. It is through collaboration and work with composers such as Mesias Maiguashca, Julio Estrada, Fernanda Aoki Navarro, Darlene Castro, Tiffany Skidmore, James Dillon, Bethany Younge, Stratis Minakakis, Ivan Sparrow Ayub, Julia Wolfe, David Lang, Pablo Santiago Chin, that her work as a soloist and creator of sounds has grown. Dalia’s work with ensembles, such as Fonema Consort where she is a founding member, and as a guest flutist with Eighth Blackbird, Fulcrum Point, Fifth House, Unsupervised, and Chicago Composers Orchestra, offer an active platform for chamber music collaborations.

Dalia received her music degrees from University of Costa Rica, Florida State University, and DePaul University studying with Maria Luisa Meneses, Eva Amsler, and Mary Stolper.