Judith Sainte Croix: Vision V

Judith Sainte Croix was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and received her early musical training from her mother, a piano teacher, her father, a tenor soloist and Marion Hutchinson and Gerald Bales who taught her organ. Her teachers and mentors include the composers John Eaton, Iannis Xenakis, Morton Feldman, Lukas Foss and the poet Mary Ellen Solt. Sainte Croix's transformative music blends social issues and aesthetic expression, primitive sounds and new technologies, ancient structures and modern techniques to create a unique, evocative style. Her awards and commissions include the Gaudeamus Competition; a Creative Associate Fellowship in Buffalo, NY; the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation Award; Chamber Music America; The Orchestra of St. Lukes; The Long Island Composer's Alliance; The Kitchen; Meet the Composer; The American Composer's Forum; New York Foundation for the Arts; The Jerome Foundation; The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust; the National Endowment of the Arts; a Con Edison Composer Residency; and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Sainte Croix's Vision V will integrate three non-orchestral instruments into the orchestra by the  Sonora Trio: the populist electric guitar played by Oren Fader, ancient pre-Columbian flutes played by Andrew Bolotowsky, and the non-ordinary sound palette of the synthesizer played by the composer. Abstract digital imaging suggesting the auras of the musicians photographed during rehearsal, will play along with the music in the concert. Vision V is the fifth in a series of compositions by Sainte Croix, the first for full orchestra, which combines traditional classical instruments with indigenous instruments of the Americas. The digital images used in the piece will be derived from photography by Claudia Miranda with design support from Marcelo Mella.

Dan Visconti's music has been commissioned by ensembles including the Kronos Quartet, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Albany Symphony, and the Berlin Philharmonic Scharoun Ensemble, at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and LA's Disney Hall. His compositions have been honored with the Berlin Prize, the Bearns Prize from Columbia University, and the Cleveland Arts Prize; awards from BMI and ASCAP, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Society of Composers, and the National Association of Composers USA; and grants from the Naumburg Foundation, the American Music Center, the Barlow Endowment, the Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bascom Little Fund, the Annenberg Foundation, and Chamber Music America. He has also been the recipient of artist fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Copland House, the Lucas Artists Program at Villa Montalvo, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Visconti studied composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Yale School of Music, primarily with Margaret Brouwer, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman, and Zhou Long. He is a member of BMI and currently resides in Washington, DC, where he serves as artistic director of DC's VERGE Ensemble.

Visconti's Glitchscape will be created in collaboration with experimental filmmaker Simon Tarr, and will blend instruments of the orchestra with sounds from obsolete analog technology. The piece will explore the interaction of live acoustic instruments with sounds created on modified vintage Speak & Spell and Speak & Read toys, and an old "noisebox" from the 1950s. Visconti says, "This new work will create a unique texture through reimaging familiar, nearly-forgotten sounds: an exploration of the expressive power of obsolescence."