*Tickets will also be sold at the door. Join us for a free pre-concert talk at 6:45pm!
The 2024-2025 season is sponsored by the Katherine L. Griem and Anthony G. Montag Charitable Fund.
Carlos Bandera - world premiere*
Carlos Bandera is a Chicago based composer whose music is characterized by a glacial unfolding of sonic landscapes. He often expands simple elements into large-scale musical structures, through which he explores the interplay of harmony, noise, and texture.
Bandera’s orchestral work Materia Prima, which premiered in 2023 at Carnegie Hall by the American Composers Orchestra, was described by the New York Classical Review as having “one of the most immersive and elegant transitions from nothingness to complexity that one has heard.” His music has been performed by groups such as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the American Composers Orchestra, the Albany Symphony, the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Dogs of Desire, ~Nois, Ensemble Linea, Hotel Elefant, Earspace, Hebrides Ensemble, Nebula Ensemble, and Omnibus Ensemble. In 2022, his piece Meristem was performed by the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra during their “On the Road” tour across South East England. He has been a fellow at Copland House’s CULTIVATE, Orchestra of St Luke’s DeGaetano Composition Institute, Composers Conference, and the Underwood New Music Readings, a resident composer at the Black House Collective New Music Workshop, and has attended the Delian Academy for New Music and Time of Music (Musiikin aika).
Bandera holds degrees from the Peabody Institute (MM) and Montclair State University (BM). He is currently pursuing a PhD in Composition and Music Technology at Northwestern University, where he has studied with Alex Mincek and Hans Thomalla and has been awarded the William T. Faricy Award.
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Ephraim Champion - world premiere*
Ephraim Champion is an active composer (stage & screen) and musician based in Chicago, Illinois. His music has been praised as “strongly individual,” “compelling,” and “distinctive” by the Chicago Classical Review.
In 2021, Gaudete Brass premiered Ephraim’s work, Scenes from South Shore, Chicago, at the Ear Taxi Music Festival in Chicago. The following year, Ephraim showcased his talents with Humanhood, premiered by Constellation Men’s Ensemble for their fifth annual NOVA concert series. In 2023, Ephraim’s promising career was solidified when he was selected as the second annual Hearing in Color/La Caccina Young Composer-in-Residence. During this residency, he wrote All Things Sublime and Colossal for the virtuosic women’s acapella ensemble, La Caccina, and A Stone of Hope (Martin’s Song) for the Music Institute of Chicago’s annual MLK Celebration Concert, featuring the talents of multi-Grammy nominated pianist, Marta Aznavoorian. The same year, he joined Slightly American Productions as their resident film composer, scoring the short films Girls in the Back of the Club and Rejection is God’s Protection.
Ephraim’s music made its international debut with the world premiere of his Suite for the F Horn & Tenor Saxophone at the 2023 World Saxophone Congress in Spain. Shortly after, The Yamaha Tuba Duo (featuring Tuba extraordinaire, Sérgio Carolino) commissioned Ephraim to write his next work, The Spectacle, which premiered in Fukuoka, Japan in March of 2024. In August, Ephraim’s piece, Vicariously Through You, was recorded as part of the upcoming Project Encore, Vol. 2 album, commissioned by world renowned classical saxophonist, Timothy McAllister.
Outside of music, Ephraim enjoys writing, watching movies/TV, and spending time with his amazing wife, Kianti, and their two adorable Yorkies, Heath & Ginger.
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Ania Vu - world premiere*
Polish of Vietnamese descent composer and pianist, Ania Vu (née Vũ Đặng Minh Anh) writes music that explores the interplay between the sound properties of the words and their meanings, musical energy related to form, and varied notions of time. She also enjoys crafting her own text that serves as a sonic, formal, and expressive guiding reference in her musical writing process.
Her music has been described by the Boston Globe as an exhibition of "artful vocal writing [that] ranges from percussive whispers to glinting, pure-voiced lines that [...] blended elegantly into the roiling cauldron of strings." Ania was the 2024 Composer-in-Residence at the Chelsea Music Festival and has received recognition and fellowships from the American Opera Project, ASCAP, Copland House, Tanglewood, the Boston New Music Initiative, and the I-Park Foundation.
She was the 2022-23 Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Chicago and a composer fellow with the "Composers & the Voice" program. As a passionate educator, she has been a Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, University of Chicago, and will join the faculty at Northwestern University in Fall 2024. Ania received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.M. in composition and theory from the Eastman School of Music.