4 AUGUST 2019

JULIANA HALL - USA 
BORN 4 AUGUST

American art song composer Juliana Hall is a prolific and highly-regarded composer of vocal music, whose songs have been described as “brilliant” (Washington Post), “beguiling” (Times of London), and “the most genuinely moving music of the afternoon” (Boston Globe).

Hall began composition studies as a 26-year-old graduate student majoring in piano performance at the Yale School of Music. Her teachers – Martin Bresnick, Leon Kirchner, and Frederic Rzewski – encouraged her to change careers, and in 1987 she received her Master’s degree in Composition.

Following Yale, Hall completed her studies with Dominick Argento in Minneapolis. While there, in 1987, she received her first commission (from the Schubert Club of Saint Paul) for a song cycle for star soprano Dawn Upshaw; in 1989 she received a second commission, for Metropolitan Opera baritone David Malis, and was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Since then Hall has composed song cycles for numerous singers, including baritones Christopher Dylan Herbert and Richard Lalli; bass baritone Simon Chalifoux; countertenors Brian Asawa and Charles Humphries; mezzo sopranos Stephanie Blythe, Molly Fillmore, Clara Osowski, and Kitty Whately; sopranos Gwen Detwiler, Maggie Finnegan, Steffi Fischer, Martha Guth, Amy Petrongelli, Pamela Jordan Schiffer, and Laura Strickling; tenors Joel Burcham and Andrew Fuchs; and the vocal duo Feminine Musique (soprano Korliss Uecker and mezzo Tammy Hensrud), among many others.

Hall also received SongFest’s 2017 Sorel Commission, and was the Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar’s 2018 Guest Composer as well as CollabFest’s 2018 Resident Composer.

Several art song organizations have presented concerts devoted to Hall’s music in recent years, including Sparks & Wiry Cries’ “Casement Fund Song Series” in New York City in 2016, the Contemporary Undercurrent of Song Project (CUSP) in Princeton in 2017, London’s “ReSung” art song series in 2018, and Calliope’s Call in Boston in 2019.

♫ LISTEN

At that hour when all things have repose by Juliana Hall  

➺ Find scores by Juliana Hall

KRISTINA ARAKELYAN - HUNGARY/ARMENIA 
BORN  4 AUGUST   

Kristina Arakelyan is an award-winning composer and pianist. Kristina studied music composition at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of Oxford, generously supported by the Raffy Manoukian trust, the Luys foundation and St Peter’s College choral scholarship.

Aged 15, Kristina won first prize in the BBC Proms Inspire Young Composers’ competition, resulting in a broadcast on BBC Radio 3 of her choral composition performed by the BBC Singers. In July 2011, she was commissioned by Music for Youth to write a choral piece for Canzonetta Girls’ Choir which was performed at the Schools Prom in the Royal Albert Hall. Kristina's other awards include Overall Cup winner of the EPTA Composition Competition (2009), the David Cox prize (2012), First Prize in the Shakespeare 400 Orchestra of the Swan competition (2014). Kristina was commissioned by Grace Francis to write a piano piece which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 (March 2015) and subsequently in Flagler College Radio in St. Augustine, Florida (August 2015). Kristina received first prize in the older age category of the NCEM Composer's award with her lute song "Penelope".

Kristina has had masterclasses most notably with John Adams, Bernard d'Ascoli, Steven Osborne and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Kristina's compositions have been heard on BBC Radio 3 and the Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall, Steinway Hall, St John's Smith Square, Conville and Caius College (Cambridge), St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Southbank Centre, in concert halls in Mexico, Spain, Belgium, Croatia and Armenia.

♫ LISTEN

Two pieces for Saxophone, Violin & Piano by Kristina Arakelyan

➺ Kristina Arakelyan's website