ETCHINGS ‘26
JULY 5th-12th.
Since 2009, Etchings has been one of the premiere music festival academies for emerging composers, hosting guest composers Kaija Saariaho, Georg Friedrich Haas, Francesco Filidei, Lee Hyla, Philippe Hurel, David Rakowski, Franck Bedrossian, Martin Brody, Stefano Gervasoni, Philippe Leroux, and many others.
Fellows are welcomed into our ensemble’s community and afforded opportunities that cultivate their creativity and imagination in supportive ways.
Festival and Concert Events:
BOMBYX Center for Arts and Equity. Florence, MA.
GUEST COMPOSERS:
Melinda WAGNER, David SANFORD, Kate SOPER, Julia WERNTZ, Stratis MINAKAKIS, and Michael DJUPSTROM.
GUEST ARTISTS:
JESALVA/KLEIJN Duo.
Melinda Wagner
Celebrated as an “...eloquent, poetic voice in contemporary music...” [American Record Guide], Melinda Wagner’s esteemed catalog of works embodies music of exceptional beauty, power, and intelligence. Wagner received widespread attention when her colorful Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. Since then, major works have included Concerto for Trombone, for Joseph Alessi and the New York Philharmonic, a piano concerto, Extremity of Sky, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony for Emanuel Ax, and Little Moonhead, composed for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as part of its popular “New Brandenburgs” project.
Among honors Wagner has received is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP. Wagner was given an honorary doctorate from Hamilton College, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Melinda Wagner was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017.
A passionate and inspiring teacher, Melinda Wagner has given master classes at many fine institutions across the United States, including Harvard, Yale, Eastman, Juilliard, and UC Davis. She has held faculty positions at Brandeis University and Smith College, and has served as a mentor at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Atlantic Music Festival, and Yellow Barn. Ms. Wagner currently serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music.
David Sanford
Born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1963, David Sanford received degrees in music theory and composition from the University of Northern Colorado, New England Conservatory, and Princeton University where he received the PhD in music composition and completed his dissertation, “’Prelude (Part 1)’ from Agharta: Modernism and Primitivism in the Fusion Works of Miles Davis”. During these years, he studied composition and theory with Richard Bourassa, Robert Ehle, Arthur Berger, Pozzi Escot, Jim Randall, Claudio Spies and Steve Mackey. He is the founder and director of the David Sanford Big Band (formerly the Pittsburgh Collective), a twenty-piece contemporary big band.
Sanford’s honors include the Rome Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute, an Arts and Letters Award, an Ives Scholarship and a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awards from BMI, ASCAP, and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and a Composer Portrait concert at Miller Theater. He was composer-in-residence at Concert Artists Guild and at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music (through BMI), guest composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference, and a chosen participant in the African American Composers Forum with the Detroit Symphony. He has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Chamber Music America for the Meridian Arts Ensemble, the Zéphyros Winds, and the Festival of New Trumpet Music, from the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Meridian Arts Ensemble and for cellist Matt Haimovitz and the Pittsburgh Collective, the Barlow Endowment for pianist Lara Downes, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust for Speculum Musicae, and from Castle of our Skins and Winsor Music, Astral Artists, the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Princeton University Orchestra and Jazz Ensemble, the Empyrean Ensemble at UC Davis, and the Mana Saxophone Quartet. In addition, his works have received performances by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra under Kent Nagano, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra under Marin Alsop, the Detroit Symphony under Leslie Dunner, the Peabody Modern Orchestra under Cliff Colnot, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Chicago Symphony Chamber Players, and the U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, among many others.
Sanford’s works have been recorded by artists including Speculum Musicae, Matt Haimovitz, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, pianist Lara Downes and New York Philharmonic cellist Eric Bartlett. The title track of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s recording of the composer’s works, Black Noise, was named one of “The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2019” by the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/arts/music/best-classical-music.html); the Pittsburgh Collective’s CD Live at the Knitting Factory, featuring his compositions and arrangements was named one of the albums of the year in Jazziz magazine; and Haimovitz’s disc Meeting of the Spirits with his cello ensemble UCCELLO, which featured seven jazz arrangements and one composition by Sanford, received a four-star review from downbeat magazine, and was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Sanford has taught at the University of Chicago and Amherst College, and is currently Elizabeth T. Kennan Professor of Music at Mount Holyoke College teaching theory, composition, music and film, and jazz history. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with his wife, architect Mary Yun, and their two children.
Kate Soper
Kate Soper is a composer, performer, and writer. She has been described by The Boston Globe as
"a composer of trenchant, sometimes discomfiting, power” and by The New Yorker as "one of the great originals of her generation." Praised by The New York Times for her "lithe voice and riveting presence," she performs frequently as a new music soprano. Soper is a co-director and vocalist for Wet Ink, a New York-based new music ensemble dedicated to seeking out adventurous music across aesthetic boundaries. Recent and upcoming projects include the release of her operas The Hunt and The Romance of the Rose on New Focus Recordings, and Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus, a commission for soprano and orchestra which she will perform with Gustavo Dudamel and the New York Philharmonic in May 2025.
Julia Werntz
Through her music, her writings, and her teaching, Julia Werntz has become recognized as a leading voice in the field of microtonal music. Her compositions have been performed at concert series, festivals and venues around Europe and the Northeastern United States, such as the Stockholm New Music Festival, Unerhörte Music and the BKA Theater in Berlin, the Tage für Neue Musik at the Darmstadt Akademie für Tonkunst, the Week of Contemporary Music, Bucharest, the Here/Now Festival in Sofia, the UK Microfest 3 and UK MicroFest 2019, the Hamburg Klangwerktage, New York’s Vision Festival, Boston’s Enchanted Circle and Extension Works, Pittsburgh’s Music on the Edge, and the series of groups such as Ensemble SCALA (2019 and 2020), Ecce Ensemble, Ludovico Ensemble, Kamraton Ensmeble, Ensemble New Babylon, Loadbang, Firebird Ensemble, Prana Duo, DuoKaya, Patchtax, Peridot Duo, Auros Group for New Music, and NotaRiotous.
Her manual on microtonal ear training and composition, Steps to the Sea: Ear Training and Composing in a Minute Equal Temperament, was published in December 2014 in the German book 1001Microtones, and subsequently made available as a stand-alone book in the US, with Frog Peak Music. (See here for more details.) She has published articles on microtonal and other contemporary music in Perspectives of New Music, The Sonneck Society Bulletin, ParisTransatlantic, NewMusicBox, and New World Records. She has given lectures at institutions such as the Royal Academy of Music in London (part of the UK Microfest 4), the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater Hamburg, Wesleyan, Tufts and Brandeis Universities, the Hartt and Longy Schools of Music. Werntz is currently Professor of music at Berklee College of Music, where she teachers Ear Training, Theory, Microtonal Ear Training and Composition, and she teaches both Microtonal Practice and Understanding Microtonal Music (an analysis course) at the New England Conservatory of Music. From the mid-1990s to its closing in 2018, she was Artistic Director of the Boston Microtonal Society and co-founded the BMS chamber ensemble, NotaRiotous.
Stratis Minakakis
Stratis Minakakis is a composer, conductor and pedagogue whose work engages with memory, cultural identity, and art as social testimony; it also explores the rich possibilities engendered by the interaction between arts and sciences.
Described as “emotional, to the point of viscerality” (Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project) and “an alluring haze” (New York Times), his music has been commissioned and performed by leading contemporary music soloists and ensembles across Europe, North America, and Japan, including the Grammy award-wining Crossing Choir, Prism Saxophone Quartet, and Partch Ensemble. Other notable recent collaborators include saxophonist Don-Paul Kahl, violinist Gabriella Diaz, cellists TJ Borden and Annie Jacobs-Perkins, Duo Axis, bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward, the Valencia International Contemporary Ensemble, pianist Jihye Chang, Court Circuit, Ergon Ensemble, soprano Nina Dante, flutists Dalia Chin and Orlando Cela, Ensemble du Bout du Monde, Ensemble Counter)induction, percussionist Harrison Honor, and baritone Tyler Bouque. Upcoming projects include a concerto for two pianos tuned one quarter-tone apart and wind orchestra, commissioned by Stephen Drury, a concerto for baritone saxophone and chamber ensemble, commissioned by Don-Paul Kahl and the Kuraia Ensemble, a new work for Duo Entre Nous, and a new work for the Loadbang ensemble.
As a conductor, Stratis Minakakis has directed and coached numerous chamber music and larger ensembles in contemporary music. Performance highlights include the U.S. premiere of Sciarrino’s monumental Quaderno di Strada (Alinèa Ensemble), the Boston premiere of Ligeti’s Nouvelles Aventures (Alinèa Ensemble), and the world premieres of Mathew Rosenblum’s Gymnopédies Nos. 3-7/Kiki Wears Tasha (NotaRiotous Ensemble), Ken Ueno’s New Lilacs and his own Skiagrafies (Partch Ensemble; Prism Saxophone Quartet; released on XAS records) and John Aylward’s opera Oblivion (Nina Guo, soprano; Lukas Papenfussclein, tenor; Tyler Bouque, Cailin Marcel Manson, baritones; ECCE ensemble; released on New Focus Recordings). His list of world or Boston premieres also includes works by Katherine Balch, Isaac Blumfield, Linxi Chen, Xiaofeng Jiang, Fabien Levy, Julien Malaussena, John Mallia, Katarina Miljkovic, Dimitris Minakakis, Ezra Sims, and Samuel Taylor.
A highly sought-after instructor and lecturer, he has been teaching in the Composition and Music Theory Departments of New England Conservatory since 2008. Alumni of his studio have pursued distinguished international careers and received prestigious awards, including the Rome Prize and the Voix Nouvelles Prize. His pedagogical interests extend to innovative curriculum building in the areas of 21st-century musicianship and computational creativity. As a member of the “Theory Reimagined” team, he was instrumental in creating the “Music Literacy and Musicianship" curriculum at New England Conservatory. As the Co-Chair of NEC-NEXT, he coordinated the development of the Computational Creativity Program and introduced the Computer-Assisted Analysis and Composition elective course. He has presented lectures on his music, as well as the music of Xenakis, Ligeti, Lachenmann and Carter in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Recent engagements include the Third Program of the Greek National Radio, the Valencia International Performance Academy, Ithaca College, Mannes Conservatory, and the University of California, Berkeley.
His compositional and academic work have been supported by grants and fellowships from the New England Conservatory, the Pew Center of Arts and Heritage, Fondation Royaumont, the International Society of Contemporary Music, the Aikaterini Laskaridou Foundation, and the George and Elizabeth Crumb Fellowship in Music Composition. He was awarded the Composition Prize at the Takefu International Festival. During his doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania he received the Nitze Prize in Composition (2007, 2008), the Dean’s Scholar Award (2007), and the Hallstead Prize in Composition (2005, 2006). He also received the Prism Young Composers’ Award of Prism Saxophone Quartet (2005) and the Toru Takemitsu Award of the US-Japan Society of Boston (2004). His pedagogical work at the New England Conservatory has received two Board of Trustees Commendations (2024, 2021) and the prestigious Louis Krasner Award for Teaching Excellence (2015), the youngest faculty to have ever received this award in the history of the institution. At the University of Pennsylvania he received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching (2007) and the Teaching Award by Graduate Students (2007).
Stratis Minakakis completed his PhD in Composition at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior studied include a MM in Composition at the New England Conservatory (summa cum laude, distinction in performance, Pi Kappa Lambda) and an AB at Princeton University (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa). He currently lives in Sudbury, Massachusetts with his family and teaches Composition and Music Theory at the New England Conservatory.
Michael Djupstrom
Composer and pianist Michael Djupstrom's work captured first prizes in the international composition competitions of the UK's Delius Society, the American Viola Society, the Chinese Fine Arts Society, and has received awards from institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Charles Ives Fellowship), Pew Center for Arts & Heritage (Pew Fellowship), S&R Evermay (Grand Prize, Washington Awards), Music Teachers National Association, College Band Directors National Association, New Music USA, American Composers Forum, Académie musicale de Villecroze, Symphony in C, and the Columbia Orchestra, among many others. MacDowell awarded him one of its prestigious artist residencies for the composition of his String Quartet No. 2, "Romanian", commissioned by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music for the acclaimed Dover Quartet.
Other recent commissions have come from the Eugene Symphony Orchestra, Santa Rosa Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra Association, National Cherry Blossom Festival, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Great Falls Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Tanglewood Music Center, Music From Angel Fire, Curtis Institute of Music, Lyric Fest, New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program, Lake George Music Festival, Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus, International Opera Theater, and the Lyra Society, among others.
Djupstrom's music has been performed and broadcast across the USA as well as in the UK, France, Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Romania, Austria, Germany, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Chile, Colombia, Taiwan, China, and Japan. In recent seasons, his special interest in Romanian classical music led to performances at the George Enescu Festival of McGill University, a recital highlighting contemporary Romanian and American works at the annual Meridian Festival in Bucharest, and to advanced Romanian language study with the assistance of a Romanian government scholarship. A 2020 grant from the S&R Evermay Foundation helped share this excitement for Romanian music through the creation of a new chamber music series in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.
As a pianist, Djupstrom's passion for chamber music has led to concerts for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the British Library, Brooklyn Art Song Society, Astral Artists, Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music, Yale University, and many other presenting organizations worldwide. As an ensemble member, he has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philadelphia-based new music ensemble Relâ̂che. His festival appearances include Hong Kong's "Intimacy of Creativity," Tanglewood, Music From Angel Fire, Brevard, and the Académie musicale de Villecroze, and he has performed in major metropolitan cities throughout the world, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington DC, Houston, Atlanta, Hong Kong, Paris, London, Madrid, Bucharest, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Montréal, and Aix-en-Provence. Djupstrom has recorded for American Public Media's popular "Performance Today" radio program, Radio Television Hong Kong's Radio 4, and the Equilibrium, American Modern, and Meyer Media labels.
A committed music educator, Djupstrom teaches chamber music at the University of Pennsylvania and maintains a private composition and piano studio. Previously, he taught composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, theory and orchestration for Boston University, ear training for the University of Michigan, and piano at Settlement Music School. He has been a guest teacher and presenter at the National University of Music of Bucharest, International Saxophone Academy, Rowan University, Rice University, Westminster Choir College, Shasta Community College, International School of Brussels, Montana State University, Paris Conservatory, and Yichao Music Training Center in Shenzhen, China.
Djupstrom received BM and MA degrees from the University of Michigan, where he studied with composers Bright Sheng, William Bolcom, Susan Botti, Karen Tanaka, and Eric Santos. Djupstrom pursued further studies in Paris with Betsy Jolas, whom he later worked for as musical assistant. He also holds an Artist Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he was a student of Jennifer Higdon and Richard Danielpour. He lives in Philadelphia.
Jesalva/Kleijn Duo
Jesalva and Kleijn have carved out a shared practice that continuously morphs their beings, bodies, presents, and pasts—both as women and as string players—into a mix of heavy instrumentalism, conceptual theater, and experimental sound worlds. Seemingly tethered to their instruments as extended creative limbs, both welcome and loaded, they clearly consider their entire selves as the source of their creative practice.