New Jersey Symphony Edward T. Cone Composition Institute

About the 2024 Institute Composters

Leigha Amick

Composer Leigha Amick believes that music has the potential to reflect on both the current and the timeless human experience, to provide grounds for intellectual fascination, and to quench the need for emotional expression. Her compositions have been performed by ensembles including the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the Boulder Philharmonic, the Denver Young Artists Orchestra, the Orlando Philharmonic, the Indiana University New Music Ensemble, the Playground Ensemble, St. Martin’s Voices, St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, NOTUS Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and Ars Nova Singers. She has studied at summer programs including the Aspen Music Festival, the European American Musical Alliance (EAMA) and the IRCAM Contemporary Music Creation and Critique program through CIEE. EAMA awarded her the highest recognition in Counterpoint, Harmony and Solfège. Amick teaches counterpoint, keyboard harmony and solfège for the Young Artists Initiative at the Curtis Institute of Music. In 2022, New Voices Opera premiered Rhiannon’s Condemnation: a one-act chamber opera based on a medieval Welsh legend from The Mabinogion for which Amick wrote both the libretto and the music.

Amick received her Master of Music degree in composition from the Curtis Institute of Music where she held the Jimmy Brent Fellowship and studied with Amy Beth Kirsten, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Nick DiBerardino, Richard Danielpour and Steve Mackey. She received her Bachelor of Music in composition with highest distinction from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, completing minors in mathematics and electronic music. At IU, she studied composition with David Dzubay, Aaron Travers, Claude Baker, Sven-David Sandström and Don Freund. Before college, she studied with Daniel Kellogg and John Drumheller of the University of Colorado Boulder.

Composer’s Program Note: Cascade
Cascade is loosely inspired by a piece by Carl Stone for electronics, bagpipes and organ called Mae Yao. Over the course of Stone’s piece, the sounds gradually and seamlessly transform from disjunct, percussive material to smooth, lyrical material. Cascade is an orchestral response to that transformation. The primary material for the piece is a passacaglia in which a high voice is removed, and a low voice is added with each iteration of the chord progression. As the harmony gradually changes, so does the character with which the orchestra realizes each harmonic cycle.

Santiago Beis

Santiago Beis (1990) is an Uru-Brazilian composer, pianist, audio designer, arranger and artistic researcher. He holds a bachelor’s degree in composition from Escola de Música e Belas Artes do Paraná—UNESPAR where he worked with new music ensembles such as Orquestra de Câmara da Cidade de Curitiba, Ensemble Nova Camerata, Ensemble Móbile, Quarteto Brasiliana, UM2UO Percussion, Orquestra filarmônica da UFPR, Orquestra de Câmara da Cidade de Curitiba, Orquestra à Base de Sopro de Curitiba, Orquestra à Base de Cordas de Curitiba and Quinteto Sopro5. In Brazil he won first prize in XXII Funarte Prémio de Composição Clássica (2017), and in IV Bienal Música Hoje (2017) composition festivals and played his compositions at MadeinNY JazzGala jazz competition at the Tribeca Center of Performing Arts in New York (2017). In Curitiba, as a producer with Composteira casa de Criação, he organized workshops for composers-in-residence including Marcos Balter, Paulo Rios Filho, Alex Buck, Alexandre Torres Porres and Jorge Antunes, among other Brazilian Artists. In the US Beis graduated in 2023 with a Master of Music in Composition from the School of Music of the University of Missouri, Columbia, where he studied with Yoshiaki Onishi and Stefan Freund. During this period, Beis worked with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the [Switch~ Ensemble], the UM University Philharmonic for the Sinquefield Composition Prize (2021) and the Sheldon Arts Foundation, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the JACK Quartet (JACK Studio 2022). Recent works include Color Utterance for the ensemble Alarm Will Sound and intus ergo foris for Talea Ensemble. Beis is pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition at the City University of New York Graduate Center in Dr. Suzanne Farrin's composition studio.

Composer’s Program Note: Spletna
Spletna is a symphonic composition that delves into the profound concept of entanglement between the present moment and the fading memories of immediate events, as encapsulated by the Czech term coined by composer Leoš Janáček. This complex interplay of the immediate and the vanishing past, which Janáček perceived as a chaotic moment, serves as the central theme of the piece, resulting in a multifaceted exploration of memory’s intricate dance with the present.

Performed by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) at Powell Hall, Spletna is a testament to the powerful connection between music and memory. This composition was featured in two reading sessions alongside pieces by three University of Missouri School of Music students in November 2022 and March 2023, as part of a collaboration between the SLSO and the Mizzou New Music Initiative. This project is generously funded by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation, providing a unique opportunity for audiences to engage with the works by Mizzou composition students.

Stephanie Childress, the former Assistant Conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, shared her perspective on Spletna during its performance, stating, “Santiago’s Spletna is very… I wouldn’t say ambient, but he really has a feel for rhythm and a more kind of abstract way of looking at rhythm and composition.”

This composition exemplifies how the intricate nuances of rhythm and memory can come together in a symphonic narrative, challenging conventional boundaries and offering a fresh perspective on the interplay of memory and the present. The purpose of this study is to encourage a reevaluation of the role of memory within the context of formal musical structures. By weaving together moments of memory within the musical composition, Beis seeks to test and expand upon Janáček's theory of entanglement, ultimately contributing to the field by offering a unique perspective on the intricate relationship between memory and immediate experience.

Spletna is a bold and innovative exploration of memory’s role in shaping the present moment. As Beis intricately orchestrates the interplay of memory and immediacy, this composition challenges conventional boundaries and opens doors for cross-disciplinary dialogue. Performances of Spletna invite the listener to engage with the eternal dance between the present and the vanishing past, transcending the boundaries of music and memory.

Paul Cosme

Filipino composer/scholar Paul Gabriel L. Cosme (b. 2000) blends and breaks boundaries in his constant search for home. He combines various media, instruments and sound worlds from Asian and Western traditions with classical, pop & rock, jazz and traditional artists from the United States and throughout Asia and the Pacific including the JACK Quartet, taiko master Kenny Endo, critical theorist and artist-activist Mari Matsuda, shakuhachi player Christopher Blasdel, sheng performer Loo Sze Wang, koto player Maruta Miki, kulintang player Ron “kulintronica” Querian, members of the Minnesota Opera and the Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestras, traditional musicians from Seoul National University, the BIPOC-centered Sugar Hill Salon Collective and many musicians he considers his dear friends.

As a scholar, Cosme’s research and works involve constructions of Philippine/Filipino subjectivities through contemporary and popular music in the 20th and 21st centuries, which are published and presented in various journals and conferences internationally. His most recent publication focuses on musical mimicry in the Philippines by comparing Taylor Swift and Filipina singer-songwriter Moira dela Torre. His current project revisits and problematizes discourses in intercultural composition through the works of Filipino composer and ethnomusicologist José Maceda.

Cosme received his Master of Music in Composition from the University of Hawaiʻi as a graduate degree fellow at the East-West Center. A winner of the Lila Bell Acheson Wallace Endowed Prize in Music, Cosme graduated as Summa cum Laude from Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota where he majored in Music and International Studies. He is also the inaugural winner of the Nā Haku Mele Competition of the Hawaiʻi Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association where he reimagined one of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s works. His teachers include Donald Reid Womack, Takuma Itoh, Thomas Osborne, Randy Bauer and Victoria Malawey.

When Cosme is not composing, he enjoys improvising on the kulintang, a set of bronze knobbed gongs from the Philippines, which he had the fortune to play in the Hawaiʻi premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner and Navajo composer Raven Chacón and Carcross/Tagish curator Candice Hopkins’s Dispatch.

Cosme loves dogs, the morning dew, Beethoven op. 132, punk rock, mangoes and his favorite Filipino dish: sinigang. paulcosme.com

Composer’s Program Note: A Stranger in a Festival of Spirits
Back home in the Philippines and many other Asian countries, we tell stories of unknowingly enter the world of spirits—often waking up suddenly in a familiar yet strange place. And after a period, they return to the land of the living, often forgetting details or even the entire experience. Taking inspiration from these tales, this work is about that stranger who finds themselves suddenly transported to another world in a time when the spirits are preparing for a joyful festival. Initially frightened of the unknown, this stranger is welcomed by the kindred spirits as they share their festivities with them. Being an outsider, the stranger crosses boundaries and navigates this other world through their own eyes.

The idea came to be when I was visiting the Honolulu Museum of Art in the fall of 2022, and I experienced an installation by British artist Rebecca Louise Law called “Awakening,” which comprises of endless hanging strings of flora and fauna of Hawaiʻi—both endemic and otherwise. Her work reminded me of the richness of the sounds in the islands and the various sounds that make up my sonic worlds. Like Law’s visual work, I experience music through various gradations and shocks of colors which I owe to the sounds I heard in places I have called home.

Thus, A Stranger in a Festival of Spirits takes inspiration from various folk music and festival traditions from Pacific Asia: pista, kulintangan, and folk songs in the Philippines, Javanese and Balinese gamelan from Indonesia, matsuri from Japan and various gut from Korea, among others. The reason for amalgamating these traditions is not simply my interest in these traditions and my time practicing this music, but because of friends and dear ones from these places who invited me to their homes and shared their celebrations with me. They taught me fragments of their music that now stay with me and inform parts of my work. In many ways, I am that stranger who entered this festival of spirits, and the most crucial task is to honor and take care of the generosity and hospitality that they offered to me.

Jessie Leov

Jessie Leov is an award-winning composer, songwriter and musician based in Aotearoa, New Zealand. With a diverse practice as a music-maker, Leov’s work traverses both the classical and popular music space. Her music has been commissioned and performed by groups across Aotearoa, New Zealand and beyond including the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO), the NZSO National Youth Orchestra, NZTrio, Auckland Youth Choir, KC Vitas (US) and Celebris Ensemble (US).

In 2022, Leov was the recipient of an APRA AMCOS Professional Development Award, and received first place in the Open Category of Compose Aotearoa!, a national choral composition competition run by Choirs Aotearoa, New Zealand. She was also selected to take part in the NZ Composer Sessions where her orchestral work, marble, bark, silver, was recorded by the NZSO, in collaboration with SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music and Radio New Zealand. In 2024, Leov is Composer-in-Residence for the NZSO National Youth Orchestra, who commission and perform a new orchestral work each year by a New Zealand composer.

Leov is passionate about collaboration and has worked with artists from various disciplines including theatre, film, poetry and sonic arts. She is currently working alongside sonic artist Garling Wu on a collaborative project titled earthworks, supported by Creative New Zealand. Responding to climate change, this project brings together their respective backgrounds in contemporary classical and electroacoustic music as well as exploring wider musical influences.

Leov holds a Master of Music in Composition from the University of Auckland, completed in 2021 under the supervision of Dr. Leonie Holmes and Dr. David Chisholm.

Composer’s Program Note: Speculations on a Rainbow
Celebrating the work of internationally acclaimed Aotearoa, New Zealand artist Judy Millar, Speculations on a Rainbow is a response to Millar’s “The Rainbow Loop.” Millar’s large-scale gestural work, a long looping painting on wood and canvas, forms a twisted coil that seeks to ‘interrupt and invade’ the space it occupies. Drawing on the duality of Millar’s sweeping strokes of vibrant color, offset by stark monochromatic landscapes, Speculations on a Rainbow offers continuity and flow disrupted by dancing, rolling, shifts of perception. The piece weaves its way through a shifting canvas of stability and turbulence, stillness and motion, offering the audience a brief glimpse into the ‘temporary twisted world’ of “The Rainbow Loop.”

Learn More About the Institute

Institute Director Steven Mackey

As a teenager growing up in Northern California obsessed with blues-rock guitar, Steven Mackey was in search of the “right wrong notes,” as he often likes to say, referencing Thelonius Monk. Today, Mackey is a GRAMMY Award-winning composer of works for chamber ensemble, orchestra, dance, winner of several awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award.

Mackey began composition studies at the University of California at Davis and received his Ph.D. at Brandeis University. Upon graduating and becoming a professor at Princeton, Mackey merged his academic training with rock guitar music. Signature pieces incorporating rock vernacular into traditional classical ensembles emerged: Troubadour Songs (1991), Physical Property (1992) and Banana/Dump Truck (1995).

Mackey repertoire includes: Dreamhouse (2003) for solo tenor, vocal quartet, electric guitar quartet and orchestra, nominated for four GRAMMY awards; A Beautiful Passing (2008) for violin and orchestra, an emotional reflection upon the death of his mother that Leila Josefowicz premiered with the BBC Philharmonic; and Slide (2011), an experimental music theater piece that won a GRAMMY Award for a recording featuring Mackey on electric guitar alongside vocalist Rinde Eckert and eighth blackbird. In 2021, the LA Phil, Gustavo Dudamel, and trumpet soloist Thomas Hooten gave the world premiere of Shivaree, a fantasy for trumpet and orchestra. Mackey further expanded his theatrical catalog with his short chamber opera Moon Tea about the 1969 meeting between the Apollo 11 astronauts and the Royal Family, premiered by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2021, as well as with his 2022 music theater work Memoir, based on the pages of his late mother’s memoirs and Concerto for Curved Space, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons. Red Wood, a new environmentally concerned work, was premiered as part of The Soraya’s Treelogy Project and Mackey’s RIOT was premiered by mezzo-soprano Alicia Olatuja, Mackey on electric guitar, New Jersey Symphony, Princeton University Glee Club and conductor Xian Zhang.

Mackey’s music is published by Boosey & Hawkes. Today, he lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife, composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, and their children Jasper and Dylan. Mackey teaches at Princeton University, where he mentors young composers as director of the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute.

2024 Conductor Christopher Rountree

Conductor and composer Christopher Rountree stands at the intersection of classical music, new music, performance art and pop. Following his 2020-21 debut with Long Beach Opera conducting Philip Glass’ Les Enfants Terribles, Rountree was named Music Director from the 2021–22 season. He maintains a long-term relationship with Martha Graham Dance Company resurrecting, recording and performing works by Copland, Kodaly, Rountree (MGDC commission), and others, with his ensemble Wild Up. In 2019, Rountree began recording a four-volume set of the music of Julius Eastman. In conjunction with this recording project, he toured the country with Wild Up, culminating in an Eastman portrait at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Rountree is currently working on two operas about love and technology with librettists Royce Vavrek and Roxie Perkins.

Rountree’s inimitable style has led to collaborations with: Björk, John Adams, Yoko Ono, David Lang, Scott Walker, La Monte Young, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mica Levi, Alison Knowles, Yuval Sharon, Sigourney Weaver, Tyshawn Sorey, Ragnar Kjartansson, Ashley Fure, Julia Holter, Claire Chase, Missy Mazzoli, Ryoji Ikeda, Du Yun, Thaddeus Strassberger, Ellen Reid, Ted Hearne and James Darrah. Rountree also has worked with many orchestras and ensembles including the San Francisco, Chicago, National, Houston and Cincinnati Symphonies; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; International Contemporary Ensemble; Roomful of Teeth; Opéra national de Paris; and the Los Angeles, Washington National and Atlanta Operas. He has presented compositions and concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Palais Garnier, Mile High Stadium, the Coliseum, Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art, ACE Hotel, National Sawdust, MCA Denver, The Hammer, The Getty, a basketball court in Santa Cruz and at Lincoln Center on the New York Philharmonic’s Biennale.

Rountree is the artistic director and conductor of Wild Up, the ensemble he founded in 2010, and artistic director of an interdisciplinary ambient series in an oak grove in LA called SILENCE. Rountree is a seventh-generation Californian descended from the first sheriffs of Santa Cruz County, he lives in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Background

The New Jersey Symphony and Princeton University Department of Music are well positioned to provide emerging composers with a comprehensive Institute experience that will enhance their careers. Over years of reading sessions in which the New Jersey Symphony has played through orchestral works written by Princeton University Ph.D. composition candidates, the Orchestra and its musicians are experienced in mentoring and advising student composers. Through the New Jersey Symphony’s commitment to presenting new music, the Orchestra has performed works not only by the late Princeton University professor and composer Edward T. Cone, but also by composers who felt the impact of Cone’s legacy as a teacher.

Mackey—a lauded composer and William Schubael Conant Professor of Music at Princeton University—says: “The New Jersey Symphony has had a strong relationship with Princeton University composers for years, and we are excited to again partner with the Orchestra for this immersive composition institute. This program fosters emerging composing talent by preparing composers for both the creative and practical elements of composing works for orchestra.”

By the end of the Institute, participants will have gained invaluable musical and practical feedback about writing for orchestra through real-time interactions with Mackey, the guest conductor and New Jersey Symphony musicians, as well as advice from decision makers in the industry about how to get their music published and performed.

About the Organizations

Princeton University Department of Music

Princeton’s Department of Music is at the epicenter of a musical culture that is broad and deep, reaching from edge to edge of the campus, from the classroom to the concert hall, into the community and from faculty-led groups to those run exclusively by students.

New Jersey Symphony

Named “a vital, artistically significant musical organization” by The Wall Street Journal, the New Jersey Symphony embodies that vitality through its statewide presence and critically acclaimed performances, education partnerships and unparalleled access to music and the Orchestra’s superb musicians.

Music Director Xian Zhang—a “dynamic podium presence” The New York Times has praised for her “technical abilities, musicianship and maturity”—continues her acclaimed leadership of the New Jersey Symphony. The Orchestra presents classical, pops and family programs, as well as outdoor summer concerts and special events. Embracing its legacy as a statewide orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony is the resident orchestra of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark and regularly performs at State Theatre New Jersey in New Brunswick, Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, Richardson Auditorium in Princeton and Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown. Partnerships with New Jersey arts organizations, universities and civic organizations remain a key element of the Orchestra’s statewide identity.

In addition to its lauded artistic programming, the New Jersey Symphony presents a suite of education and community engagement programs that promote meaningful, lifelong engagement with live music. Programs include school-time Concerts for Young People, and New Jersey Symphony Youth Orchestras family of student ensembles, led by Diego García. New Jersey Symphony musicians annually perform original chamber music programs at community events in a variety of settings statewide through the New Jersey Symphony Community Partners program.

For more information about the New Jersey Symphony, visit njsymphony.org or email information@njsymphony.org. Tickets are available for purchase by phone at 1.800.ALLEGRO (255.3476) or on the Orchestra’s website.

The New Jersey Symphony’s programs are made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, along with many other foundations, corporations and individual donors.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Cone Composition Institute have any age restrictions?

• Applicants must be at least 18 years old by July 1, 2024.

Does the Cone Composition Institute accept international applicants? 

• Yes, we do accept international applicants. In order to participate, applicants must have the appropriate US visa or residency status to be present at Princeton University during the Cone Composition Institute dates.

How does the Cone Composition Institute define “emerging” composer?

• We define “emerging composer” quite broadly; eligible applicants can include adults of any age beginning their career as an orchestral composer, including late-in-life career switchers, recent graduates, and those several years out from graduation, as well as composers who have not yet had opportunities to have their work performed by a major orchestra.

My score is 14 minutes long. May I submit it to the Cone Institute?

• During the Institute week, the New Jersey Symphony will rehearse and perform four new works. To ensure we are able to devote sufficient time to each composer’s work, we are unfortunately unable to accept works over 13 minutes in length.
• If your piece is 14 minutes in duration or longer, we recommend submitting a different orchestral composition that meets this guideline. Alternatively, if there is a way to slightly alter your work so it meets the 13-minute maximum or to submit only specific movements for consideration, then it would be eligible.

May I submit a work with a soloist to the Cone Institute?

• No, we do not accept works with concerto soloists, vocalists or narrators to the Cone Composition Institute.

What woodwind doublings are allowed?

• The following standard woodwind doublings are allowed: piccolo, English horn, E-flat clarinet and/or bass clarinet, and contrabassoon.

My orchestral work was performed by [XYZ] ensemble. Is it still eligible for submission to the Cone Composition Institute?

• For a composition to be eligible, it must have no prior professional performance or publication history. Any work that has already received a public, professional performance or will receive a public, professional performance by July 1, 2024, nationally or internationally, no longer qualifies for the Cone Composition Institute.
• Compositions that have had university, conservatory or other non-professional ensemble performances, including by volunteer or student orchestras, or compositions that have had readings by professional ensembles, are eligible for submission.

May I submit a reorchestration of my work, which was previously performed by a professional chamber / wind ensemble / string ensemble?

• We do accept orchestral versions of works that have already been performed in other settings, provided the orchestration and instrumentation have changed substantially. For specific questions related to eligibility, please email coneinstitute@njsymphony.org. In your email, we ask that you share details of the piece, including its original instrumentation, new instrumentation and its prior performance history.

May I submit a live recording as the audio representation of my work?

• Yes! Acceptable live recordings may come from a performance by a university, conservatory or other non-professional ensemble, or a reading from a professional ensemble. If the audio file is larger than the application allows, please send the recording to coneinstitute@njsymphony.org to have it included with the rest of your application materials.

Cone Institute 2023

The 2023 Cone Institute composers were Tom Morrison with his work Messages in the Ground; Kory Reeder with his work Walls of Brocade Fields; Sam Wu with his work Hydrosphere and Yangfan Xu with her work Bya. View concert and composer information.

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Cone Institute 2022

The 2022 Cone Institute composers were Dai Wei with her work Samsāric Dance; Baldwin Giang with his work to remember is always forgetting; Jack Frerer with his work Steep and Sophia Jani with her work What do flowers do at night?. View concert and composer information.

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Cone Institute 2021

The 2021 Cone Institute composers were Elise Aranco with her work Wake, Kevin Day with his work Tango Oscuro, Erin Graham with her work Increase and Jared Miller with his work Under Sea, Above Sky. View concert and composer information.

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Cone Institute 2019

The 2019 Institute composers included Dan Caputo with his work Liminal, Patrick O’Malley with his work Rest and Restless, Iván Enrique Rodríguez with his work A Metaphor for Power and Bora Yoon with her work The Encyclopedia of Winds. View concert and composer information.

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Cone Institute 2018

The 2018 Cone Institute composers were Jonathan Cziner with his work Resonant Bells, Natalie Dietterich with her work Aeolian Dust, Aaron Hendrix with his work Night Train and Brian Shank with his work Into the Rose Garden. View concert and composer information.

Listen to the WWFM broadcast.