Featured Artists
Shawn E. Okpebholo
GRAMMY®-nominated for his latest solo album "Lord, How Come Me Here?"—a collection of reimagined Negro spirituals—and named one of the 2023 Musical America Top 30 Professionals of the Year, Nigerian-American composer Shawn E. Okpebholo's music resonates globally, earning widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike. The press has described his music as "devastatingly beautiful" and "fresh and new and fearless" (Washington Post), "affecting" (New York Times), "lyrical, complex, singular" (The Guardian), "searing" (Chicago Tribune), "dreamy, sensual" (Boston Globe), and "powerful" (BBC Music Magazine). Okpebholo has garnered numerous accolades, including awards from The Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Prize in Composition, the Music Publishers Association, ASCAP, and was awarded the Inaugural honoree of the Leslie Adams-Robert Owens Composition Award.
Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, Barlow Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Tangeman Sacred Music Center, The Mellon Foundation, Wheaton College, and many others have supported the work of Okpebholo. Some notable commissions include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, United States Air Force Strings, Copland House Ensemble, Tanglewood, Aspen, and Newport Classical Music Festivals, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Imani Winds, Sparks and Wiry Cries, Urban Arias, and the Kennedy Center. His art songs have been presented in concert by the Chicago Lyric Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Portland Opera, and Des Moines Metro Opera. His chamber music has been performed by eighth blackbird, Copland House Ensemble, Picosa, Fifth House Ensemble, Lincoln Trio, and others. Orchestras including the Chicago, Cincinnati, and Houston Symphonies and the Lexington Philharmonic have featured his music. Okpebholo has also collaborated with renowned solo artists including vocalists J'Nai Bridges, Lawrence Brownlee, Rhiannon Giddens, Will Liverman, Michael Michael Mayes, Ryan McKinney, and Tamera Wilson; pianists Aldo-López Gavilán, Mark Markham, Paul Sánchez, and Howard Watkins; and instrumentalists including Rachel Barton Pine, Steven Mead, and Adam Walker. His extensive artistic reach has led to regular performances at prestigious venues like Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, Lincoln, Kennedy, and Kimmel Centers, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
PBS NewsHour and radio broadcasts across the country, including NPR's All Things Considered, NPR's Morning Edition, SiriusXM's "Living American" series on Symphony Hall Channel, and Chicago's WFMT have highlighted Okpebholo's music. NPR selected his art song "The Rain" as one of the 100 Best Songs of 2021, with only a handful of classical works making the ranking. His compositions are featured on twelve commercially released albums, three of which are GRAMMY®-nominated.
As a pedagogue, Okpebholo has conducted masterclasses at various academic institutions worldwide, including two universities in Nigeria. His research interests have led to ethnomusicological fieldwork in both East and West Africa, resulting in compositions, transcriptions, and academic lectures. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees in composition from the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) at the University of Cincinnati. During his upbringing, a significant part of his music education came from The Salvation Army church, where he received free music lessons regularly. Inspired by that altruism, Okpebholo is deeply passionate about music outreach to underserved communities.
Recently, he completed a residency with the Chicago Opera Theater, culminating in the premiere of his opera, "The Cook-Off," with librettist Mark Campbell (librettist of the Pulitzer-prize-winning opera Silent Night). Currently, he serves as the Jonathan Blanchard Distinguished Professor of Composition at Wheaton College-Conservatory of Music and the Saykaly Garbulinska Composer-in-Residence with the Lexington Philharmonic.
Shawn E. Okpebholo is based in Wheaton, IL, a suburb of Chicago, with his wife, violist Dorthy, and their daughters, Eva and Corinne.
Shawn Okpebholo
Caitlin Edwards
Caitlin Edwards is a classically trained violinist, arranger, recording artist, and teacher based in Chicago. She is a 2021 3Arts/Walder Foundation award recipient. Caitlin released her debut album Exhale in August of 2021. She has performed with the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra, Nairobi Philharmonic, Grant Park Festival Orchestra, and Chicago Sinfonietta. She’s played and recorded with artists such as John Legend, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Common, and with PJ Morton’s on his “Gumbo Album”, for which she received a Grammy Certificate. She also recorded for the Disney movie score, The Lion King, with the ReCollective Orchestra at Sony Studios. Caitlin is co-curator of two Fulcrum Point program series: AuxIn: Connected! and Discoveries: Hear & Be Heard
Caitlin Edwards
Tania León
Tania León (b. Havana, Cuba) is highly regarded as a composer, conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations. Her orchestral work Stride, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 2022, she was named a recipient of the 45th Annual Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime artistic achievements. In 2023, she was awarded the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition from Northwestern University. Most recently, León became the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s next Composer-in-Residence—a post she will hold for two seasons, beginning in September 2023. She will also hold Carnegie Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair for its 2023-2024 season.
Recent premieres include works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, NDR Symphony Orchestra, Grossman Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Modern Ensemble, Jennifer Koh’s project Alone Together, and The Curtis Institute. Appearances as guest conductor include Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille, Gewandhausorchester, Orquesta Sinfónica de Guanajuato, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Cuba, among others. Upcoming commissions feature a work for the League of American Orchestras, and a work for Claire Chase, flute, and The Crossing Choir with text by Rita Dove.
A founding member and first Music Director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, León instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series, co-founded the American Composers Orchestra’s Sonidos de las Américas Festivals, was New Music Advisor to the New York Philharmonic, and is the founder/Artistic Director of Composers Now, a presenting, commissioning and advocacy organization for living composers.
Honors include the New York Governor’s Lifetime Achievement, inductions into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and fellowship awards from ASCAP Victor Herbert Award and The Koussevitzky Music and Guggenheim Foundations, among others. She also received a proclamation for Composers Now by New York City Mayor, and the MadWoman Festival Award in Music (Spain).
León has received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from Colgate University, Oberlin, SUNY Purchase College, and The Curtis Institute of Music, and served as U.S. Artistic Ambassador of American Culture in Madrid, Spain. A CUNY Professor Emerita, she was awarded a 2018 United States Artists Fellowship, Chamber Music America’s 2022 National Service Award, and Harvard University’s 2022 Luise Vosgerchian Teaching Award. In 2023, Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library acquired Tania’s León’s archive.
Tania León
Fernanda Aoki Navarro
Fernanda Aoki Navarro is a musician born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, based in California. She earned a BA in Music Composition from Universidade de São Paulo, a Masters degree from UC Santa Cruz and a PhD from UC San Diego. She's currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard. She works with acoustic and electroacoustic music, performance art and sound installation.
Fernanda Aoki Navarro
~Nois
Take your preconceived notions of ‘noise’ and toss them out the window. Equal parts “fiendishly good and fiendishly goofy” (Chicago Tribune), ~Nois is a Chicago-based saxophone quartet dedicated to connecting with diverse audiences through the creation of new work. Since its founding in 2016, “~Nois continues to legitimize the saxophone quartet as a premiere ensemble formation for classical music” (thank you Brutal New Music) through commissioning repertoire that is thought-provoking, engaging, and honestly just really good, by some of today's most inspiring compositional voices.
Hailed as “technically superb and musically brilliant” (Cleveland Classical), and renowned for their “supremely sensitive balance and control” (Chicago Classical Review), ~Nois has presented over 130 performances spanning 24 states over the past seven years. These engagements have included invitations to perform at some of the top festivals and concert series in the nation, including Big Ears, LONG PLAY, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Princeton Sound Kitchen, and the University of Chicago Presents Series. As educators, ~Nois has held residencies at some of the nation’s top academic institutions including the University of Chicago (Don Michael Randel Ensemble in Residence 2020/21), Princeton University (Princeton Sound Kitchen Residency 2023), Michigan State University (MSUFCU Entrepreneurial Ensemble in Residence), CU Boulder (Composition Department Ensemble in Residence 2020 - 2023), and more. The ensemble has also been awarded top prizes at numerous prestigious chamber music competitions including the M-Prize International Arts Competition, the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and was once deemed “Too loud for the Farmers Market” (Local Evanston, Illinois 1st Ward Constituent).
As proud residents of Chicago, the ensemble members seek to serve the diverse neighborhoods of the city through an annual season of self-presented concerts and programs. Each year, ~Nois’ Curiosity Series brings together Chicago residents and artists for an evening of music exclusively featuring the work of composers and performers with strong ties to the city, with a particular focus on advocating for younger creators in Chicago. The ensemble also enjoys bringing works written by their non-Chicago collaborators to the city through other local performances, such as the world premiere of Annika Socolofsky’s song cycle “I Tell You Me” at Chicago’s Ear Taxi Festival in 2021. The piece was described as “among the most captivating compositions I heard the whole festival” by Hannah Edgar of the Chicago Tribune, and was subsequently listed as one of “Chicago’s Top 10 moments in classical music, opera, and jazz that defined 2021” (Chicago Tribune). Additionally, ~Nois serves Chicago youth through their Young Creators Fellowship, which selects two local high school-aged students each year to collaborate with the ensemble on new works for saxophone.
~NOIS saxophone quartet
JacobTV
Dutch ‘avant pop’ composer JacobTV (Jacob ter Veldhuis, 1951) started as a rock musician and studied composition and electronic music with Luctor Ponse and Willem Frederik Bon at the Groningen Conservatoire. He received the Composition Prize of the Netherlands in 1980 and became a full time composer, who soon made a name for himself with melodious compositions, straight from the heart and with great effect.
The press called him the ‘Jeff Koons of new music’ and his ‘coming-out’ as a composer of ultra-tonal music reached a climax with the video Oratorio Paradiso based on Dante’s Divina Commedia. In the US they call him JacobTV. Sounds cool, just like his music, packed with slick sounds and quirky news samples. "I pepper my music with sugar," he says. You can not accuse him of complex music, but some of his pieces are so intense, that people get freaked out by it. Or simply blown away.
Jacob TV
Kahil El'Zabar
Kahil El'Zabar is a jazz multi-instrumentalist (mainly a percussionist) and composer. He regularly records for Delmark Records. He attended Lake Forest College and joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the early 1970s, and became its chairman in 1975. During the 1970s, he formed the musical groups Ritual Trio and the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, both of which remain active. Musicians with whom Kahil EL'Zabar has collaborated include Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Simon, Pharoah Sanders, and Billy Bang.
Kahil El’Zabar
Joelle Lamarre
Joan Tower
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time," her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
Joan Tower
Vijay Iyer
Angelo Hart
Pianist and composer Angelo Hart has always had a unique and expressive approach to his instrument. Angelo has spent personal time studying jazz and classical legends such as Thelonius Monk, Art Tatum, Cecil Taylor, Oscar Peterson, Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea, Debussy, Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven and many more. Time spent with the great educators and musicians in Chicago, along with his natural innovative musicianship has molded him into the great musician that he is today. He approaches the piano with command and finesse, displaying a unique relationship and connection between the two of them. Angelo is co-curator of two Fulcrum Point program series: AuxIn: Connected! and Discoveries: Hear & Be Heard.