Susan Narucki Soprano

Biographies

Susan Narucki Artistic Director/Soprano

American soprano Susan Narucki has appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Netherlands Opera, San Francisco Symphony, and MET Chamber Ensemble, on the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, with conductors such as Boulez, Levine, Salonen, Tilson Thomas, de Leeuw and Knussen. A dedicated advocate of the music of our time, Narucki has given over one hundred world premieres, and has enjoyed close collaborations with composers including Andriessen, Kurtág, Carter, Dusapin and Crumb. Narucki’s extensive discography includes both a Grammy Award and Grammy Nomination for Best Classical Vocal Performance. Increasingly, Ms. Narucki has turned her attention to creating projects that introduce modern music to audiences outside traditional concert hall settings and which illuminate broader issues in society. Her work has been supported by major grants from the Creative Capital Foundation, the MAP Fund for the Performing Arts/Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the University of California and the National Endowment for the Arts. She serves as Distinguished Professor at the Department of Music at the University of California, San Diego.

Jorge Luis Volpi Librettist

Jorge Luis Volpi was born in Mexico City and studied law and literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He received a Ph.D. in Spanish philology at the University of Salamanca in Spain. Volpi helped found the “Crack Movement”, a Mexican literary group in which the authors write beyond magical realism and mimic the ideals of the 1968 Latin American literary boom. Influenced by authors such as Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz, Volpi’s academic interests are abundant in his work. His most famous book, En busca de Klingsor (In Search of Klingsor, 1999), is a novel that fuses a story of Nazi generals in World War II and the history of physics. For his work on this novel Volpi won the Spanish literary prize Premio Biblioteca Breve, in addition to the French Deux-Océans-Grinzane-Cavour-Prize. In 2013 Volpi was appointed Artistic Director of the Cervantino Festival.

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Composers

Lei Liang

Heralded as “one of the most exciting voices in New Music” (The Wire), Lei Liang (b.1972) is a Chinese-born American composer whose works have been described as “hauntingly beautiful and sonically colorful” by The New York Times, and as “far, far out of the ordinary, brilliantly original and inarguably gorgeous” by The Washington Post. Winner of the 2011 Rome Prize, Lei Liang is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Aaron Copland Award. Lei Liang’s music is recorded on Mode, New World, Innova, Telarc, GM, Einstein, Spektral and Naxos Records. Lei Liang studied composition with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Robert Cogan, Chaya Czernowin, and Mario Davidovsky, and received degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music (BM and MM) and Harvard University (PhD). A Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, he held fellowships from Harvard Society of Fellows and the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships. Lei Liang currently serves as Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego. Lei Liang's music is published exclusively by Schott Music Corporation (New York).

Hilda Paredes

Firmly established as one of the leading Mexican composers of her generation, made her home in London since 1979 and her music is now performed widely around the world. As an active participant in master classes at Dartington Summer School, studied with Peter Maxwell Davies. After graduating at the Guildhall School of Music, she obtained her Master of Arts at City University and completed her PhD at Manchester University.She has been recipient of important awards, such as the J.S. Guggenheim Fellowship in the USA and is currently beneficiary of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores, (FONCA) in Mexico.
She lives in London as a freelance composer and has taught composition and lectured at Centre Acanthes in France and in 2007 was appointed the Darius Milhuad Visiting Professor at Mills College in the US and was recently visiting professor at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya in Barcelona, amongst other places. Her second chamber opera El Palacio Imaginado, commissioned by Musik der Jahrhunderte, English National Opera and the Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, was premiered with much acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.

Arlene Sierra

An American composer based in London, Arlene Sierra is acclaimed for vivid, darkly energetic works that take their impetus from rich sources including military strategy, Darwinian evolution, and game theory. The Guardian writes, “her work has its own character, in which historical and contemporary influences are fused into a highly flexible and distinctive style”, while Time Out New York describes Sierra’s music as “spry, savage, sly and seductive.” Her work has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta, New York City Opera VOX, ICE, Psappha, Lontano, Collage New Music, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the Schubert Ensemble, the Peabody Trio, the Fidelio Trio, and many others. Recent and upcoming premieres include a piano concerto Art of War for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, a Cheltenham Festival commission Insects in Amber for the Carducci Quartet, and a Seattle Symphony commission Moler.  Sierra gained international recognition with her first orchestral work, Aquilo, which was awarded the 2001 Takemitsu Prize at the behest of Oliver Knussen. Subsequent awards have included Classical Recording Foundation Composer of the Year (2011), a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2007), a Tanglewood Paul Jacobs Award commission (2002), and numerous fellowships including Aspen, Aldeburgh Britten-Pears, and the MacDowell Colony. 
Born in Miami to a family of New Yorkers, Arlene Sierra is a graduate of Oberlin (B.A., B.Mus.), Yale (M.Mus.) and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (D.Mus.). Dr Sierra is Senior Lecturer and Programme Director in Composition at Cardiff University School of Music. 

Hebert Vázquez

Hebert Vázquez was a pupil of composer Mario Lavista at the National Conservatory of Mexico City from 1981 to 1989. In 1989 he studied composition with Leonardo Balada and Lukas Foss and electronic music with Reza Vali at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he earned a Master of Music degree. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from the University of British Columbia (1996-1999), Canada. Hebert Vázquez has received several awards and scholarships in Mexico and abroad, including two Young Composers fellowships of the National Fund for Culture and Arts (1990 and 1994) and a Senior Composer Fellowship granted by the State Fund for Culture and Arts in 1994. In 1998 his Sonata for Guitar received second prize at the Jaurès Lamarque-Pons International Guitar Composition Competition in Montevideo, Uruguay. The following year Mr. Vázquez became a member of Mexico´s National System of Art Creators. In 2008 he received the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in Music Composition. His works have been performed in important festivals in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Since 2000 he is a full-time professor at the University of Morelia.

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Performers

Aleck Karis Pianist

For over thirty years, Aleck Karis has been one of the leading pianists in the New York contemporary music scene. He has performed and recorded with many of the city’s new music groups and was called on by the New York Philharmonic for its Horizons Festival as well as the return concert of Pierre Boulez. He has been the pianist for Speculum Musicae since 1982 and has performed with that group all over the US and at the Bath, Warsaw Autumn, Geneva “Made in America” festivals and Venice Biennale. He has simultaneously pursued a parallel career as a soloist with orchestra and in recital, performing concertos by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Franck, Ravel, Carter and Hyla. He recently played Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds with the Columbus Symphony and performed Messiaen’s Trois Petites Liturgies with the New York City Opera Orchestra under George Manahan at the newly refurbished Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. 

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Ayano Kataoka Percussionist

Ayano Kataoka, percussionist, has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Jaime Laredo, Ani Kavafian, David Shifrin, and Jeremy Denk. She has participated in several consortiums to commission works for solo marimba or chamber ensemble from Charles Wuorinen, Martin Bresnick, Paul Lansky, and Alejandro Vinao. Ayano is particularly drawn to compositions that involve the whole person, using standard percussion instruments and unique musical materials along with spoken voice, singing, acting, and props. She has given numerous performances and masterclasses throughout the U.S. and Canada featuring Stuart Saunders Smith’s percussion/theatre music. She also appeared as an onstage musician with a small acting part in the Yale Repertory Theater production of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. A native of Japan, Ayano began her marimba studies at age five, and percussion at fifteen. She was the first percussionist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two. She joined the faculty of the UMass Amherst in 2008.

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Pablo Gómez Guitarist

Original, distinctive, and unconventional, Pablo Gómez is one of today's most accomplished guitarists. His repertoire includes masterpieces of the twentieth century as well as works written for him by renowned Mexican and international composers; he has appeared throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America and Mexico. Mr. Gómez has been soloist with Las Americas Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Mexico City, the Orchestra of the University of Cincinnati, Carlos Chavez Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Fine Arts in Mexico City as well as the Contemporary Ensemble of Montreal and the Kore Ensemble of Canada, the Ibero-American Ensemble of Madrid, the Latin American Quartet, and Onix. He has performed in international new music festivals, including Cervantino Festivals, Festival de México, Festival Internacional de Morelia, the Ferien Kurse für Neue Musik (1994, 1996, 2002) at Darmsatadt, and the Festival A Tempo in Caracas and Paris. Pablo Gómez began his musical studies at the School Introduction to Music and Dance with maestro Gerardo Carrillo. He received his professional education at the National School of Music at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) where he graduated with honors. With the support of Mexico’s National Fund for Culture and the Arts, he attended a two-year specialization program in contemporary music in Stockholm, Sweden, with Magnus Andersson.

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Production and Technical Personnel

Production Design: Karen Guancione

Technical Directors: Katie Chen (2011-13), Jason Ponce (2014-2017) David Espiritu (2018)

Lighting Design: Kristin Hayes Swift

Costume design: Halei Parker

Video Graphics/graphics animation: Cameron Bailey, Sam Dosher