We are thrilled to announce our 2012-2013 Con Edison Composers-in-Residence.  The following eight composers will be in residence in four facilities:

 

Bloomingdale School of Music – Elizabeth Lim and Jeff Myers

Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy – Gabrielle Herbst and Molly Herron

Flushing Town Hall – Jeff Fairbanks and Theodore Metz

Turtle Bay Music School – Guy Barash and Patrick Grant

 

The Con Edison Musicians’ Residency: Composition Program is funded by Consolidated Edison, Credit Suisse, the George L. Shields Foundation, the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, AOH Foundation, DJ McManus Foundation and individuals. The Con Edison Musicians’ Residency: Composition Program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and Office of Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

We thank the New York Foundation for the Arts for generously donating the use of their space during the panel process.

 

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Guy Barash is “a compelling composer/sound artist… already making some serious contributions to the New York new music scene.” (Urban Modes) Barash is a versatile musician, active as a composer, arranger, curator and performer. He holds a Master’s degree Cum Laude in Music Composition and Theory from NYU Steinhardt School’s Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions. His honors include grants and awards from ASCAP, NYFA, and Jerome Foundation.  Barash’s compositions have been performed in various venues including: Greenwich House, The Stone, Galapagos Art Space, and The Contemporary Music Biennial – Tel Aviv Museum. Currently, Barash curates the acclaimed modern music series, Eavesdropping, at The Tank, NYC.

 

Jeff Fairbanks has been deemed a “rising multi-faceted star if not musical voice on the New York scene” (@CriticalJazz). Fairbanks has won an array of awards and grants from ASCAP, BMI, New Music USA, Aaron Copland Fund, and others. He leads the 17-piece ensemble, Project Hansori, which performs his fusion of Jazz and East Asian folk music. Its 2011 debut recording Mulberry Street (BJU Records) won several major awards and garnered international critical praise. Fairbanks has been commissioned by a range of ensembles and his music has been performed at European Jazz festivals and throughout the US. As a trombonist he has toured Asia, Europe, Latin America and throughout the US.

 

Patrick Grant is a composer, performer, and producer based in New York City. He has created music for theater, dance, and film, as well as having produced numerous concerts and pieces for radio and new media. Grant’s music combines classical rigor with contemporary electronics, traditional instruments with those found in popular music, and often incorporates the instruments and techniques of the Balinese gamelan. In December 2011, he composed and produced the acclaimed “Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars,” arguably the first electric guitar parade ever, throughout the streets of Lower Manhattan for the inaugural Make Music Winter New York.

 

Gabrielle Herbst resides in Brooklyn. She studied Composition and Voice at Bard College. As a featured vocalist, she performed with Zeena Parkins, Elliott Sharp, and Marina Rosenfeld in the Whitney Biennial, Da Capo Chamber Players, and at La MaMa E.T.C. Her compositions premiered at Roulette, The Stone, Cabinet Magazine’s Exhibition Space, Club Helsinki, Zebulan and HERE Arts Center. A recipient (with Allie Avital Tsypin) of the 2011 Artist Residency at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center and New York Theater Workshop, her upcoming projects include commissions from the Olympia Film Festival, new music ensemble Contemporaneous, and Experiments in Opera at Issue Project Room.

 

Molly Herron composes in a wide array of styles for everything from orchestra to flower pots. She is a frequent collaborator and has worked with playwrights, choreographers, and scientists. Past projects have included pieces for the JACK Quartet, Cygnus Ensemble, NYU Contemporary Ensemble and arrangements for the folk group The Great Republic of Rough and Ready, along with many others. Most recently she has worked with ECCE at La Pietra Forum in Florence. Herron recently completed her Master’s degree at NYU Steinhardt School’s Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions where she studied with Joan La Barbara and Michael Gordon.

 

Elizabeth Lim is a doctoral candidate at the Juilliard School, where she also completed her Master’s degree in Composition and was a student of Dr. Robert Beaser and Dr. Samuel Adler. She completed her undergraduate studies at Harvard University, where she was named one of her class’s “Most Outstanding Seniors in the Arts.” At Juilliard, her work for orchestra, Paranoia, won the annual Juilliard Orchestra Composition Competition; it was conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky and performed in Alice Tully Hall. More recently, Lim received a commission from VocalEssence in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In addition, she is working on several other works to be premiered in San Francisco and New York City this coming fall.

 

Theodore Metz is a contemporary percussionist and composer from Alabama who earned his Bachelor of Music degree with honors from William Paterson University and his Masters of Music degree from SUNY Purchase. He has performed with Wires Under Tension, Slow Six, Dr. T.V.Gopalakrishnan, Mimi Goese and Ben Neill, Qian Yi, DBR and the Mission, Christopher Tignor, Super Marimba, Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra, North Jersey Orchestra, New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, Brooklyn Riders, and has toured the United States, Canada, India, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Japan, and China. His playing has been called “mesmerizing from beginning to end, robotic in its precision but organic in its warmth”(Adequacy). He is currently teaching music technology at William Paterson University, and performing and composing for multiple artists of varying genres.

 

Jeff Myers has been called “Striking…and harmonically rich” by the New York Times and “…brilliant and powerful…” by The Classical Voice of New England. His work has been performed by New York City Opera, L’Orchestre National de Lorraine, American Composers Orchestra, JACK Quartet, New York Youth Symphony, American Lyric Theater and more.  Maren of Vardø, Myers’ second operatic collaboration with librettist Royce Vavrek, will be premiered by Center City Opera (PA) in the Spring. The grand-prize winner of Hilary Hahn’s violin encore contest, Myers will have his work The Angry Birds of Kauai performed and recorded by Ms. Hahn next year.