Emily Popham Gillins

Before the pandemic, Emily Popham Gilllins was busy subbing with the New York Philharmonic, recording film soundtracks, and performing with the Alcott Trio. This season she has enjoyed playing for healthcare workers at Bellevue Hospital, learning bucket list solo repertoire, and teaching her two young children at home. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Emily studied at the University of Indiana, the Juilliard School, and Manhattan School of Music. She has been a member of Ensemble Connect, Sejong Soloists, and the New York Chamber Soloists.

Jonathan howard katz

Composer and pianist Jonathan Howard Katz is gaining increasing recognition for the unique immediacy and expressive depth of his music, which speaks to audiences and performers alike. Harnessing this intuitive grasp of communication, combined with a rigorous technical command, he has developed a strong artistic voice that is recognizable through a diverse body of work.

Current projects include a violin and piano work commissioned by Emily Popham Gillins; a large-scale solo vocal work to be premiered jointly by Stephanie Lamprea, Sophie Delphis, Zen Wu, and Emily Solo; and a large cycle of solo piano works, titled Ipseities, each written for a different choreographer. The latter was conceived and created during the pandemic shutdown to connect with other artists while in quarantine, and will include two dozen works, totaling around two hours of music.

Dr. Katz’s music has been performed by the Mivos Quartet, Da Capo Chamber Players, Periapsis Music and Dance, Cygnus Ensemble, Ensemble Pi, and Alia Musica Pittsburgh; pianists Ursula Oppens, Jerome Lowenthal, Winston Choi, and Daria Rabotkina; violinists Ari Streisfeld and Caroline Chin; vocalists Mary Mackenzie, Chris Lysack, Emily Hughes, and Nils Neubert; and many others. His music has been heard at the Music of Now Marathon at Symphony Space, the Festival of New Music at Florida State University, the Inside/Out Series at Jacob’s Pillow Dance, the Here and Now Labor Day Festival at Bargemusic, the International Piano Competition of Orléans, and at venues such as Merkin Concert Hall, the Kozciuszko Foundation, Atlantic Music Center, Spectrum, Roulette, and the Glinka Museum (Moscow). Commissions and other support have come from Concert Artists Guild, New Music USA, the O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation, the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation, and numerous individuals.

One of Dr. Katz’s major artistic interests has been developing collaborations with choreographers and dancers in which the music is equal to the movement in importance and intricacy, and to date he has composed over a dozen works for dance in collaboration with nine choreographers. Recent collaborators include Seán Curran, Manuel Vignoulle, Kate Skarpetowska, Ask la Cour, Kyla Barkin, Da’ Von Doane, and Periapsis Music and Dance’s resident choreographers Erin Dillon and Hannah Weber. He is the artistic director and cofounder of Periapsis Music and Dance, curates the Periapsis Open Series in New York City, has taught music workshops and classes at the Peridance Capezio Center, and served as an adjunct teacher in the dance department at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

As a pianist, Dr. Katz was presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in their “Evenings with Schoenberg” series in 2006 and gave the Bloomington (IN) premiere of the original version of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in 2001. Winner of the 2007 Pittsburgh Concert Society Major Auditions and semifinalist in the 2009 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, he has appeared at the Aspen Music Festival, the Music Academy of the West, in Boston’s Jordan Hall, at PianoForte Chicago, on the Steinway Society of Western Pennsylvania series, and on the Music at St. Luke’s series in East Hampton.

As an educator, Dr. Katz has over a decade of experience teaching at the college level and was an adjunct lecturer in music theory at Northwestern for three years.  He was an instructor of secondary piano while at NEC and in addition has taught aural skills and keyboard harmony.  He has presented master classes in piano and composition and done extensive private teaching and tutoring.

As a scholar, Dr. Katz’s work with new piano music promises to be a major contribution to contemporary research.  His doctoral dissertation, The Piano Repertoire Project: An Annotated Reference to Solo Piano Music by Composers Born since 1970, documents 314 works by 172 composers and sheds scholarly light on an important and rapidly evolving body of work.

Dr. Katz studied composition primarily with Jason Eckardt and Tania León at the CUNY Graduate Center.  His principal piano teachers were Ursula Oppens, Gabriel Chodos, and Edward Auer.

STEPHANIE ANN BOYD, COMPOSER

Michigan-born, Manhattan-based American composer Stephanie Ann Boyd (b. 1990) writes melodic music about women’s memoirs and the natural world for symphonic and chamber ensembles. Her work has been performed in nearly all 50 states and has been commissioned by musicians and organizations in 37 countries. Boyd’s five ballets include works choreographed by New York City Ballet principal dancers Lauren Lovette, Ashley Bouder, NYCB soloist Peter Walker, and XAOC Contemporary Ballet’s Eryn Renee Young.  Eero, a ballet commissioned by Access Contemporary Music and Open House New York, was written for the grand opening of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport. Her music has been praised as “attractive lyricism” (Gramophone), “[with] ethereal dissonances” (Boston Globe), “[music that] didn’t let itself be eclipsed” (Texas Classical Review), “arrestingly poetic” (BMOP), and “wide ranging, imaginative” (Portland Press Herald).

Boyd’s music has been commissioned and performed by concertmasters of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Des Moines Symphony, the Faroe Islands Symphony, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Smith Symphony, the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, and principal players in the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.  Her music has been commissioned and/or played by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the New England Conservatory Philharmonic, the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, the New York Jazzharmonic, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, the Roosevelt University Orchestra, the Eureka Ensemble, the JVL Festival Orchestra, the Texas State University Symphony, the Cremona International Academy Orchestra, the UW La Crosse Symphony, the Detroit Civic Orchestra, and the El Paso Youth Symphony. Her work has been presented by the Thalia and her Sisters concert series, the Moirae Ensemble, and Sandcastle New Music in New York City; Æpex Contemporary Music in Michigan; Juventas New Music, Collage New Music, and the New Gallery Concert Series in Boston; Cincinnati Soundbox, and others. Stephanie has worked with conductors such as Andrew Litton, Lina Gonzales, Earl Lee, Nathan Aspinall, Cliff Colnot, Gill Rose, Julian Benichou, Kristo Kondakci, and Kevin Fitzgerald.

The 2020/2021 season includes commissions from the Wyoming Symphony, Astral Artists with cellist Tommy Mesa, violinist Megan Healy, pianists Lara Downes, Lise de la Salle, Marta Aznavoorian, Lucille Chung, Susie Maddocks, Adrienne Park, Diane Kaztenburg Braun and Music Street, Sarah Bob and the New Gallery Concert Series, Holly Roadfeldt, Marianne Parker, Eunbi Kim, the Kurganov-Finehouse Duo, and others. This season also includes performances by the Lincoln Trio, Juventas New Music, Jennifer Reason, Lisa Pegher, Shouthouse, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, including concerts at the Kaufman Center, the Boston New Music Festival, the Festival of New American Music, Pianoforte in Chicago, live on Chicago’s WFMT radio station, and elsewhere.

Stephanie holds degrees from Roosevelt University and New England Conservatory, and she was one of the last violin students of renowned pedagogue John Kendall.

http://stephanieannboyd.com