CARA HAXO - USA
BORN 01 SEPTEMBER
BORN 01 SEPTEMBER
As a child, Cara Haxo (b. 1991) loved listening to her father read stories out loud to her. Today, she loves finding ways to incorporate these stories, poetry, and artwork into her music. Haxo was awarded the 2013 National Federation of Music Clubs Young Composers Award, the 2013 International Alliance for Women in Music Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prize, and second prize in the 2012 Ohio Federation of Music Clubs Student/Collegiate Composers Contest. Her works have been performed by the PRISM Quartet, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Splinter Reeds, clarinetist James Shields, the Wooster Symphony Orchestra, and the Pacific Rim Gamelan, amongst other ensembles.
A native of Massachusetts, Haxo earned her Bachelors of Music in Composition at The College of Wooster, where she studied with Jack Gallagher and Peter Mowrey, and her Masters of Music in Composition at Butler University, where she studied with Michael Schelle and Frank Felice. Before Wooster, Haxo spent six summers studying at The Walden School Young Musicians Program in Dublin, New Hampshire. She has returned to Walden as faculty in recent years, teaching classes in composition, theory, and graphic notation. Haxo also taught private piano, theory, and composition lessons through the Butler Community Arts School from 2013 to 2015. An avid Francophile, Haxo studied film, literature, and archeology at The Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence, France, during the summer of 2011.
Haxo is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in composition at the University of Oregon, where she studies with Robert Kyr and David Crumb and works as a Graduate Teaching Fellow in Music Theory. After graduation, she hopes to teach at the college level. When she is not composing, Haxo enjoys baking muffins, going on long road trips, and reading Harry Potter in French.
Source: Chaxo Music
♫ LISTEN
Two Exercises by Cara Haxo
KALA PIERSON - USA
BORN 01 SEPTEMBER
BORN 01 SEPTEMBER
Born in 1977, Kala Pierson studied at Eastman School of Music (with Joseph Schwantner, Augusta Read Thomas, David Liptak, and Robert Morris) and at Bard College at Simon's Rock. At festivals, she's also worked with Steven Stucky, Chaya Czernowin, Henri Dutilleux, Bobby McFerrin, Louis Andriessen, and Ted Hearne. She's a self-taught santur (Persian hammered dulcimer) player and a laptop/audio performer. She lives in Philadelphia with her spouses and son.
Kala Pierson's music is vivid, full-throated, and rooted in the joy and urgency of communication. Whether writing boundary-pushing music for The Crossing and American Opera Projects, installing audio in an abandoned fortress, or performing endurance art at the Guggenheim Museum, she works from her own meditative and sensory/sensual experience, producing deeply embodied music that challenges while luxuriating in the performers' best qualities.
Kala's music has been performed in 35 countries on six continents, widely awarded and commissioned, and published by Universal Edition. Her music's "seductive textures and angular harmonies" (Washington Post) build into "massive chords throwing out a wall of sound, like a modern-day Gabrieli" (San Francisco Classical Voice), and her focus on documentary and culturally resonant subject matter leads to works of "marvellous political power" (Louis Andriessen).
Source: Kala Pierson Official Website and Windrep
♫ LISTEN
Carry The Spark by Kala Pierson
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