Year Composer Festival
January 6 - 13
Austin, Texas
An 8-day festival celebrating new work and the composers/performers who make it
The 2023 festival is an opportunity for up to six composers and one early-career composer/performer ensemble to create, workshop, document and premiere new works in Austin, TX.
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Composers
Two 90-minute workshops with line upon line on their work
A three-hour recording block dedicated to their work
Unedited audio and video footage from said three-hour recording block
The premiere performance of their work on the final festival concert
Two lessons, one with each of the faculty (Aaron Cassidy and Kate Soper)
A daily field-related talk
Housing in Austin, TX (We can’t be responsible for finding housing for partners/spouses/etc. Sorry!)
Ensambles
Two three-hour recording blocks to use as they see fit
Unedited audio and video footage from said recording blocks
Time with line upon line and faculty composers (Aaron Cassidy and Kate Soper)
A daily field-related talk
Housing in Austin, TX (We can’t be responsible for finding housing for partners/spouses/etc. Sorry!)
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Composers
Composing an 8-10’ percussion trio for an agreed upon instrumentation, and submitting a performance-ready score by November 6, 2022
Performing an 8-10’ solo set on an evening concert
Sharing for ca. 30’ on your work and/or work you’re excited about
Paying a $250 non-refundable acceptance deposit
Your own travel to, from and within Austin
Ensambles
Performing a ca. 60’ evening concert
Sharing for ca. 30’ on your work and/or work you’re excited about
Your own travel to, from and within Austin
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Composers
May 29, 2022 at 11:59 PM CST: Application deadline
June 10, 2022: Decision notification
June 17, 2022 at 11:59 PM CST: $250 non-refundable acceptance deposit due
June 10 - November 6, 2022: Virtual collaborative period
November 6, 2022 at 11:59 PM CST: Score deadline*
January 6 - 13, 2023: Winter Composer Festival
*If performance-ready score is not submitted on time, festival participation will be revoked, without exception.
Ensambles
May 29, 2022 at 11:59 PM CST: Application deadline
June 10, 2022: Decision notification
January 6 - 13, 2023: Winter Composer Festival
The festival is designed to:
Highlight the fundamental importance of making new things and doing so together
Move traditionally academic activities outside of academia
Foster the interchange of ideas between composers
Expand concepts of what percussion is and can be
Showcase this city we are proud to call home
Faculty
Aaron Cassidy
Aaron Cassidy is an American composer and conductor. His compositions have been presented in hundreds of performances across 27 countries by groups including ELISION, Ensemble Musikfabrik, EXAUDI, Ensemble SurPlus, ensemble recherche, Ictus Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, and the Kairos, Diotima, and JACK string quartets at major festivals including Donaueschingen, Ultraschall, Warsaw Autumn, Huddersfield, Darmstadt, Gaudeamus, and Tage für Neue Musik Zürich, and has been supported through grants and commissions from the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, Südwestrundfunk, American Music Center, British Council, PRS Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, AHRC, Haupstadtkulturfonds Berlin, allerArt Bludenz, RMIT Gallery, and the London Cultural Olympiad 2012. Recordings of his work are available on 10 commercial releases from NEOS, NMC, HCR, and New Focus Records.
As a conductor, Cassidy has appeared with Ensemble Musikfabrik, ELISION, Ensemble Interface (as IEMA), International Contemporary Ensemble, the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble, and the University Symphony Orchestra and New Music Ensemble at the University of Huddersfield. Cassidy joined the staff of the University of Huddersfield in 2007 and currently serves as Professor of Composition and Director of the Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM).
Kate Soper
Kate Soper is a composer, performer, and writer whose work explores the integration of drama and rhetoric into musical structure, the slippery continuums of expressivity, intelligibility and sense, and the wonderfully treacherous landscape of the human voice. She has been hailed by The Boston Globe as "a composer of trenchant, sometimes discomfiting, power" and by The New Yorker for her "limpid, exacting vocalism, impetuous theatricality, and mastery of modernist style." A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Soper has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Koussevitzky Foundation, and has been commissioned by ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, and Yarn/Wire. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Camargo Foundation, the Macdowell Colony, Tanglewood, and Royaumont, among others.
Praised by the New York Times for her "lithe voice and riveting presence," Soper performs frequently as a new music soprano. She has been featured as a composer/vocalist on the New York City-based MATA festival and Miller Theatre Composer Portraits series, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW series, and the LA Philharmonic's Green Umbrella Series. As a non-fiction and creative writer, she has been published by McSweeney's Quarterly, PAJ, the Massachusetts Review, Theory and Practice, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies.
Soper is a co-director and performer for Wet Ink, a New York-based new music ensemble dedicated to seeking out adventurous music across aesthetic boundaries. She is the Iva Dee Hiatt Professor of Music at Smith College.