ACO’s EarShot
June 16-17, 2022
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
American Composers Orchestra
George Manahan, Conductor
Mentor Composers: Derek Bermel, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Jessie Montgomery
Participants: Adeliia Faizullina, Patrick Holcomb, Tommy Dougherty, Will Stackpole, Yuting Tan, Elijah Smith, and Yuqin (“Strucky”) Yi
About the Composers
Adeliia Faizullina (b.1988) is a Tatar composer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and quray player. As a composer, she explores cutting-edge vocal colors and paints delicate and vibrant atmospheres inspired by the music and poetry of Tatar folklore. Read More
Adeliia received her BM in Voice in Kazan, Russia, and BM in Music Composition in Gnessins Russian Academy of Music. She holds an MM in Music Composition from the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently pursuing her PhD in Music & Multimedia Composition at Brown University.
Patrick Holcomb (b. 1996) is a composer from Ocean View, Delaware who is currently based in Rochester, New York. Holcomb’s recent compositional honors include a 2021 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a 2021 American Prize in Composition, a 2020 BMI Student Composer Award, the 2019/2021 Jon Vickers Film Scoring Award, and the 2019 Georgina Joshi Composition Commission Award. Read More
graduated top of his class in the School of Music with a BM in Composition in 2018. He also earned an MM in Composition and an MM in Music Scoring for Visual Media from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2021. At the Jacobs School, Holcomb served
as an Associate Instructor of Music Theory and the Composition Department Graduate Assistant, the Assistant Director of the New Music Ensemble & Co-Coordinator of Music Composition. He studied with Claude Baker, Eugene O’Brien, and Aaron Travers at Indiana University; with Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann, Evis Sammoutis, and Dana Wilson at Ithaca College; and with Mark Camphouse prior to beginning his college education. Holcomb is currently pursuing a PhD in Composition at the University of Rochester Eastman School of Music as a student of David Liptak and a recipient of the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull
University Fellowship from the University of Rochester. He has been a member of Mensa since age nineteen.
Composer and violinist Tommy Dougherty (b. 1990) is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is a composer of orchestral, chamber, and solo works. Over the past several years, Tommy’s music has been performed by the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra, Modern Violin Ensemble (MoVE), Alarm Will Sound, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and Kinetic Ensemble. Read More
In 2019, Tommy was the recipient of the ASCAP Leo Kaplan Award for his orchestra piece Restrung, and in 2016 and 2017, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards. In 2018, Modern Violin Ensemble premiered Extraordinary Instruments, a violin quartet that aims to bring awareness to issues of gun culture in the United States. As a violinist, Tommy currently serves as Acting Section Violin with the San Diego Symphony and has performed with the Pacific Symphony, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Kinetic Ensemble. Tommy received his bachelor’s degrees in both composition and violin performance from the Eastman School of Music and his Master of Music degree in composition from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. He completed his DMA in composition at the USC Thornton School of Music where he studied privately with Andrew Norman and Sean Friar. For more information and to hear Tommy’s music, visit: tsdoughertycomposer.com.
Will Stackpole is a composer whose music has been called “lively” and possessing a “savage charm” by the New York Times. He began his musical career as an electric guitarist and recording engineer in Hoboken, New Jersey. Read More
Singaporean composer Yuting Tan writes music which explores the interaction of different sounds to form unique harmonies and textures. Her music has been recognized with awards including First Prize in the Macht Orchestral Composition Competition (2018), First Prize in the Virginia Carty DeLillo Composition Competition (2018), and Third Prize in the Prix d’Été Competition (2017) at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and has been performed in Singapore, USA, UK, Thailand, New Zealand, and Italy. Read More
Praised by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a “rising star”, composer Elijah Daniel Smith is quickly establishing himself as one of today’s leading young composers. His music, which has been described as “an extended flirtation with chaos” (Chicago Tribune), and as “a compilation of sounds that defy their source” (Picture This Post), ranges from orchestral compositions to multimedia and interdisciplinary collaborations. Read More
Elijah is currently pursuing his PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University as a President’s Fellow after earning a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Composition from the Boston Conservatory in 2017, and a Master of Music degree in Music Composition from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University in 2020.