New Music Ensemble

About the Program

Program notes by Mark Bilyeu

Mary Kouyoumdjian
The Vanishing Dark
Born 1983
Composed 2017
8 minutes

“I come from refugee parents forced to immigrate to the US as a consequence of the Lebanese Civil War,” shares the composer and documentarian Mary Kouyoumdjian, “And my parents come from refugee parents. …One’s relationship to ‘home’ has played a large role in my music.” Born in the San Francisco Bay Area and a graduate of the University of California, San Diego, NYU, and Columbia, Kouyoumdjian was a 2026 Grammy Award nominee for Best Opera Recording of her album “Adoration,” and was a 2024 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music for her work “Paper Pianos.” Her music has been described as “powerful, poignant” (Gramophone), and “gorgeous, brutal, and awe-stricken (FLOOD Magazine).  “The Vanishing Dark,” she writes “is inspired by the podcast episode of the same name from the Nocturne podcast series. This work is an exploration of the loss of natural darkness, our diminishing comfort with the dark, and our false sense of security with artificial light.”
 

Sarah Kirkland Snider
If you bring forth what is within you:
Suite from Blue Hour
Born October 8, 1973, Princeton, NJ
Composed 2016-2019
Premiered July 16,  2019, The Decoda Chamber Music Institute
18 minutes

The Blue Hour is an evening-length work collectively written by five composer musicians: Rachel Grimes, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, and Caroline Shaw. Kirkland Snider has taken six of these movements to craft a stand-alone suite of her work. What follows is an excerpt from the larger work’s program note by the annotator Alex Fortes.

The work uses as its text Carolyn Forché’s poem, “On Earth,” which catalogs the scattered thoughts, visions, and imagery of a life passing ever closer to death, organized through the objective but arbitrary tool of alphabetization. This explicitly rationalized poetic form simultaneously evokes cold modernism and its ancient predecessors in biblical and gnostic abecedaries. The music that sets the poem draws similarly from an eclectic set of influences, at times setting the text quite literally (as with explicit references to Bach and settings that evoke plainchant and Renaissance polyphony), and at times using extended string techniques to create kaleidoscopic sound-paintings of Forché’s moments of fantastical, jarring imagery. The work also gleams with power ballads – unapologetic lyricism and no-nonsense songwriting that is often associated with contemporary non-classical genres but which here contributes to the intimacy and universality of the subject matter. The various movements, each entirely written by one of the composers, access the personal vernaculars and interests of each composer as they pass through the ordered but nonlinear narrative of Forché’s poem, contributing to the scope and scale of the work and its underlying subjects.

When the five composers and members of A Far Cry sat down for a meeting in the summer of 2016 about the possibility of bringing this song cycle to life, the group discussed in depth what justification there was for attempting a collaboration on such a scale for such a deeply personal work. As collaborators shared their own takes on the meaningful urgency of the project, the following statement took hold as a sort of “mission statement:”

In a time when we are seeing masses of people dehumanized–by war, displacement, poverty–we are looking here at a single life, the beautiful detail of one human existence. There is something precious in that; that through our sense of empathy with this one individual, we are given a lens through which to see our own world with greater clarity.

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About the Artists

Sarah Kirkland Snider

Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative, hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times), “groundbreaking” (The Boston Globe), and “ravishingly beautiful” (NPR). Recently named one of the “Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music” by The Washington Post, Snider’s works have been commissioned and performed by the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Conspirare, Cappella Amsterdam, eighth blackbird, Roomful of Teeth, Renée Fleming, Colin Currie, and Emily D’Angelo, among many others. Her first opera, Hildegard (for which she wrote the libretto), recently premiered with LA Opera, earning a New York Times Critic’s Pick and the 2026 Best New Opera Award from the Music Critics Association of North America. Winner of the Detroit Symphony Lebenbom Award, her recent works include Forward Into Light for the New York Philharmonic, Drink the Wild Ayre for the Emerson String Quartet, and Mass for the Endangered, programmed by dozens of choirs globally. Snider’s five full-length LPs—co-released on Nonesuch Records and/or New Amsterdam Records—have earned critical acclaim from The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, New Yorker, NPR, Pitchfork, Gramophone, The Guardian, and BBC Music Magazine. In 2026, her orchestral album Forward Into Light was shortlisted for the Opus Klassik Award in New Classical. A founding co-artistic director of the non-profit New Amsterdam Records, Snider holds an M.M. and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. Her music is published by G. Schirmer.
 

Yevgeniy Sharlat

Yevgeniy Sharlat has composed music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo, theater, dance, mechanical sculptures, animations, and film. He has written string quartets for Kronos, Aeolus, Aizuri and Amphion Quartets. Other chamber music has been played by the NOW Ensemble, Hub New Music, Seattle Chamber Players, Trio Séléné, Quodlibet Ensemble, Le Train Bleu, and many others. Orchestral music has been performed by Kremerata Baltica, Seattle Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Mikkeli City Orchestra (Finland), and Chamber Orchestra Kremlin. He was among the composers commissioned by the Kronos Quartet for its “Fifty for the Future” project. His RIPEFG appeared on Aizuri Quartet’s Grammy-nominated album Blueprinting and was hailed as “startlingly compelling” by the San Diego Union-Tribune. A piano quartet, commissioned by Astral Artistic Services, was described as “one of the most compelling works to enter the chamber music literature in some time” by the Philadelphia Inquirer. He collaborated with prominent choreographers Lar Lubovitch, Donald Byrd, and C. Eule, as well as a renowned dancer Lil Buck. His arrangement of Chopin’s both piano concertos were performed by Kremerata Baltica with Daniil Trifonov as soloist at Carnegie Hall in 2018. Mr. Sharlat is a 2020 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow; other honors include the 2006 Charles Ives Fellowship from American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Music Foundation Commission (2010) to write for the Viney-Grinberg Piano Duo, fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo, and ASCAP’s Morton Gould (2003), Boosey & Hawkes (1997), and Leiber & Stoller (1997) awards. Born in Moscow, Russia, Mr. Sharlat came to the United States as a refugee at age 16. He studied composition at the Curtis Institute of Music (BM) and Yale University (MM, DMA). Since 2005, he has been on the composition faculty at The University of Texas at Austin.

Jimmy Santos-Rivera

Jimmy Santos-Rivera (he/him) is currently pursuing a master of music in wind conducting at The University of Texas at Austin, where he serves as a graduate teaching assistant. In this role, he assists in conducting and managing the university’s concert bands, athletic bands, and conducting courses. He earned his bachelor of arts in music education, with a minor in percussion, from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, his career has been deeply rooted on the island. Prior to moving to Austin, Santos-Rivera spent eight years teaching concert band, percussion, and music theory at Escuela Especializada en Bellas Artes Pablo Casals. As a performer, he has played in the percussion section of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the Puerto Rico Wind Symphony, and the Puerto Rico Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2019, he joined the 248th Army Band in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he currently serves as a percussionist in various ensembles and as the principal conductor of the concert band. His mentors include Carlos Ávila, Eddy Marcano, Karlo Flores, and Carmen Acevedo.

Emily Warren

Emily Warren attends The University of Texas at Austin, where she is currently pursuing a doctor of musical arts degree in wind conducting. As a graduate teaching assistant, she works with the university’s athletic and concert bands, assisting with administrative duties and conducting the ensembles. Additionally, she teaches courses in conducting and wind band literature. Prior to her graduate studies, Emily lived in Massachusetts where she spent four years as a public school music educator. She is a specialist in electroacoustic repertoire for wind ensemble and has been invited to present her research internationally, most recently at the IGEB (International Society for the Promotion and Research of Wind Music) conference in Valencia, Spain. Emily holds a bachelor's degree in music education from Indiana University and a master's degree in wind conducting from the University of Kansas, where she studied under the direction of Dr. Paul Popiel. She is an active member of various professional music organizations, including CBDNA, TMEA, IGEB, and is an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi.
 

Marc Sosnowchik

Dr. Marc Sosnowchik is a conductor, educator, arranger, and clinician based in Austin, Texas. His current duties as assistant director of bands at the University of Texas include conducting the New Music Ensemble and Longhorn concert bands, instructing courses in conducting and wind literature, and teaching the Longhorn Bands. Before his appointment at UT Austin, Sosnowchik served as associate director of bands at the University of South Florida, assistant director of bands at Oklahoma State University, and associate conductor of the Florida Wind Band. Sosnowchik maintains an active schedule as a clinician, conductor, and arranger. He conducts ensembles throughout the U.S., and in the summer teaches at the World Youth and Adult Wind Orchestra Projects as part of the Mid-Europe Festival in Schladming, Austria.  Sosnowchik earned his bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of Alabama, and both his master’s and doctor's degrees in conducting from The University of Texas at Austin.

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New Music Ensemble

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Upcoming Events

Butler Holiday Concert
Saturday, December 5, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, December 6, 4:00 p.m.
Bates Recital Hall
 

WIND ENSEMBLE
Adam Schoenberg, visiting composer
Sunday, February 7, 4:00 p.m.
Bates Recital Hall
 

NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE
Free Admission
Wednesday, March 3, 7:30 p.m.
Bates Recital Hall
 

NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE
Free Admission
Wednesday, April 14, 7:30 p.m.
Bates Recital Hall
 

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