Composers 2022-23
Join us in welcoming these five wonderful composers to this season’s Amplify Series!
Eugenia Cheng
Eugenia Cheng is a pianist and mathematician. She is the founder of the Liederstube, an intimate oasis for art song based in Chicago. She is Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and author of popular math books including "How to Bake Pi" and "X+Y: A mathematician's manifesto for re-thinking gender". She gives public talks on math and performs concerts around the world, writes the "Everyday Math" column for the Wall Street Journal, and has completed several art
commissions. She recently completed her first art song commission, for GRAMMY nominated Laura Strickling's 40@40 project; other recent compositions include a song cycle about infertility and pregnancy loss, a song cycle about being a woman in the 21st century, and new English lyrics for Schumann's "Frauenliebe und -leben", telling the story of a strong contemporary woman. She holds a PhD in pure mathematics from the University of Cambridge. www.eugeniacheng.com
Shane Scott Cook
Shane Scott Cook is a composer, conductor and multi-instrumentalist whose work often focuses on building community and connection. He draws from his eclectic musical upbringing, and has been performed by New West Symphony, Del Sol String Quartet, New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, Salastina Music Society, Saili Oak, and Shawn Mativetsky. He is an alumni composer fellow of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, where he is a current cohort member of Composing Earth, a program focused on equipping emerging artists to combat the ongoing climate crisis through their work. Shane recently graduated with his Master of Music in Composition at Butler School of Music at University of Texas at Austin, where he taught aural skills and assistant conducted with the New Music Ensemble. He resides in Chicago, Illinois, where he continues to write, perform and teach music, and is presently teaching himself to play the guitar.
Corinne Klein
Corinne Klein is a composer and musician currently based in Chicago, IL. Corinne is originally from Green Bay, WI, and has been studying mezzo-soprano voice for 9 years. They are currently attending DePaul University in Chicago, IL studying Music Composition and Music Education with goals of creating an inclusive environment for creative expression in the classroom.
Corinne composes as a way to process internal conflict, using the process of composing as a healing mechanism and a form of communication. Corinne’s compositions strive to foster complex emotional experiences through intensely expressive writing. The timbres and sonorities of their music seek to capture specific yet complicated feelings.
Corinne is the winner of the 2022 Yale Glee Club Emerging Composers Competition, and has had works performed by the Yale Glee Club at Yale University, the Pyrenean String Quartet with the Fulcrum Point New Music Project, Kyle Bruckmann and Matt Ingalls of SfSound, and various student performers.
Paul Novak
Rejecting grandiose narratives, the music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak is driven by a love of small things: miniature forms, delicate soundscapes, and condensed ideas. His compositions, which draw influence from literature, art, and poetry, have been performed throughout the United States and abroad. Novak was selected for a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has recently received honors from the ASCAP Foundation and National Association of Composers of the USA. He has received commissions from the American Composers Orchestra, ASCAP and Society of Composers, Inc., Music from Copland House, the Boston New Music Initiative, Blackbox Ensemble, and Kinetic Ensemble.
Each of Novak’s pieces immerses listeners in a shimmering and subtly crafted musical world, guided by a sense of empathy for the performers playing his music. Originally from Reno, NV, he is currently a PhD student at the University of Chicago.
Matthew Recio
Recio (G. Schirmer published artist) recently finished his post as the Vanguard emerging composer with Chicago Opera Theater, developing operas with Royce Vavrek and Stephanie Fleischmann. He looks forward to a new commission from Chicago Fringe Opera for the Decameron Opera Coalition. This past year he was a returning resident artist at West Edge Opera, a feature on Laura Stricking’s “40x40” project, and a commission for Queer In(n) dedicated to Chicago elder trans icon, Mama Gloria. He has worked with the Chicago Fringe Opera, Oberlin Conservatory, the Metropolitan Youth Chorus, Fourth Coast Ensemble’s SongSlam and wrote an immersive choral cantata “The Hollow” for Stare at the Sun. He was a winner of the IU Georgina Joshi Vocal Composition prize, the American Prize in choral writing and the first selected commissioned artist for the Cincinnati Song Initiative. Recio has worked with organizations such as BMP, New Voices Opera Company, Cincinnati Camerata, NOTUS and The Crossing.