DMA Composers
Matteo Belli
Matteo Belli is a composer and performer. His music has been performed in Europe, South and North America. In Spring 2020, he won two awards for the orchestral work trame di sangue grigio (Macht/DeLillo Competitions). Visual arts, literature, theatre, and contemporary issues play a major role in sparking his creativity.
Trained as a pianist and conductor, he felt compelled to delve completely into writing while working with composers in Italian theaters, where he served as assistant orchestral conductor and principal coach in several productions of contemporary music. He worked as a choral conductor, piano teacher, and accompanist in academia for many years, also gaining experience as a concert series producer.
Mr. Belli holds degrees in Composition (MM, Peabody Institute 2019), Orchestral Conducting (MM, Italy 2014), Choral Conducting (MA, Italy 2011), and Piano Performance (Diploma, Italy 2009). Currently, he is pursuing a DMA in Composition at Peabody, where he has studied with Oscar Bettison, Michael Hersch, and Felipe Lara.
Jun An Chew
Immersed in the cultural diversity of his native country, Singapore, Jun An Chew seeks to seamlessly assimilate his experiences to present a unique voice in his eclectic body of works. He started his musical journey as a Chinese Dulcimer player and began writing music while exploring the synergistic possibilities between distinct musical styles through collaboration. His music exemplifies his influences by drawing inspiration from his wide-ranging artistic interests. Recent premieres include his piano solo piece Hyetal Days at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall as well as his first opera scene A Madman’s Diary in collaboration with the Peabody Opera Department and producer Tony Arnold. In 2015, he won the Youth-Prize in the Singapore International Competition for Chinese Orchestra Composition with his ethnic orchestra piece Bale Bengong. In 2018, his voice and electronics piece Hear the Forest Sing was accorded second prize in the Prix d’Ete Competition and later that year Jun An was conferred the Otto Ortmann Award in Composition.
He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Peabody Conservatory under the tutelage of Oscar Bettison having previously studied with Law Wai Lun, Michael Hersch, Felipe Lara, Amy-Beth Kirsten and Jason Eckardt.
Christopher Ciampoli
Christopher Ciampoli is a composer and performer who takes interest in the intersections of “old” and “new,” with frequent inspiration from visual art, poetry, anthropology, and astronomy. A recipient of Peabody’s Randolph S. Rothschild award and a guest composer for Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute 2019 National Youth Orchestra, Christopher’s compositions have been performed in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
As a violinist, Christopher has premiered, performed, and recorded the works of many composers and contemporary masters, along with routinely displaying and teaching music of the traditional repertoire in venues ranging from nature preserves in North Carolina to St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University in New York City. Christopher has served as Concertmaster and Principal Violin II of the Occasional Symphony, Principal Violin II of Symphony Number One, Concertmaster of the Peabody Camerata, and Concertmaster of the TCNJ College Orchestra, along with performing solo concerts and in collaboration with other ensembles.
Christopher is an adjunct faculty member at Harford Community College, where he teaches courses such as composition lessons, violin lessons, chamber music, electronic music, and popular music. He has presented his compositions and performed violin in masterclasses with Georg Friedrich Haas, Christopher Rouse, Kate Soper, and Jennifer Koh. Christopher’s primary teacher at Peabody has been Michael Hersch.
Steven Crino
Steven Crino is a composer primarily interested in simplicity, compositional craft, and emotional immediacy. His music has been performed by ensembles and soloists, such as Peter Sheppard Skaerved, The Podcast Opera Company, The Philadelphia Experimental Theatre Ensemble, The Temple Composer’s Orchestra, and The Temple University Singers.
Steven is the winner of the 3rd International A.D. Kastalsky Choral Music Competition, The Composers Concordance Competition. and was selected for Peabody’s 2019 Honors Ensemble Project, and the Baltimore Choral Arts Society’s Student Composer Project. He is the recipient of the Ada Arens Morawetz Memorial Award, the Richard M. Duris Scholarship for Excellence in Classical Music, and the Florence Gould Foundation Scholarship.
Steven is a doctoral candidate at the Peabody Conservatory, where he also completed degrees in Composition (M.M.) and Theory Pedagogy (M.M.), studying with Michael Hersch, Kevin Puts. He was also a Graduate Assistant, and Graduate Teaching Fellow of Music Theory at Peabody, working under the tutelage of Omar Thomas, Ildar Khannanov, and Kip Wile. Prior to his time at Peabody, Steven studied harmony, counterpoint, and composition privately with Benjamin C.S. Boyle and attended the E.A.M.A. summer program in Paris. He currently resides in the Philadelphia area.
Cody Criswell
Cody Criswell (b. 1988) is a composer, percussionist, and guitarist. His music is informed by his experiences growing up in rural Southwestern Oklahoma, the ten years he spent roughnecking in the oilfields of Texas and the Midwest, and the collision of his self-taught musical beginnings with his conservatory education. His music deals with the American Southwest, rural poverty, and his complicated attitude toward his Mexican and Texas cowboy heritage.
Richard Drehoff Jr.
Richard Drehoff Jr. is a composer and pianist interested in creating works that explore a level of vulnerability between performers and audiences. His music strives to manipulate our perceptions of time to develop a unique psychological affect for each piece, often juxtaposing the most fragile of sounds with obtrusive and harsh sonorities.
Richard is the Co-Director of earspace, a North Carolina-based ensemble dedicated to the cultivation of contemporary compositions. His works have been commissioned by musicians and presenting organizations, including the Library of Congress and the New Mexico Contemporary Ensemble, and has performed internationally by many soloists and chamber groups, including the Mivos Quartet, the ECCE Ensemble, Andrew Nogal of the Ensemble Dal Niente and the Grossman Ensemble, and Andy Hudson of earspace and Latitude 49.
Richard is currently a doctoral student at Peabody Conservatory, studying with Michael Hersch. He also holds degrees from Peabody in composition (M.M.) and theory pedagogy (M.M.), studying with Michael Hersch and Felipe Lara, and a degree in music and mathematics (B.M.) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Joseph Foster Harkins
Joseph Foster Harkins (b.1995, Harrisburg, PA) is a composer of colorful, evocative, expressive, and narratively rich music of emotional and musical depth deeply inspired by the Appalachian Mountains and rock music across the decades. His work has been performed and disseminated across North America, has enjoyed two awards in Instrumental Chamber Music from the American Prize (Finalist for the Piano Sonatina No. 2 and Honorable Mention for Mountain Streams), and made a record label debut in May 2020 on Centaur Records’ compilation disc Polychrome. Additionally, his work will make its first appearance in publication in 2021 with Flat Rock Vista’s inclusion in the first volume of NewMusicShelf’s “Anthology of New Music: Solo Piano” series. He has appeared as fellow at the Fresh Inc and RED NOTE Festivals and the Cortona Sessions for New Music, has recently collaborated with notable artists including flutist Sarah Brady, Transient Canvas, F-Plus, and Unheard-Of//Ensemble, and is a founding member of the Queen City Composer Collective. Mr. Harkins is currently based in Baltimore where he frequently hikes and bikes throughout the city and surrounding Mid-Atlantic region.
Jonathan Hugendubler
soundcloud.com/jonathan-hugendubler
Jonathan Hugendubler is a contemporary composer who is passionate about concert music. He composes for the mediums of solo, chamber, and orchestral music.
Currently based in Baltimore, Jonathan is a native of central Pennsylvania. A composer who has performed by Alarm Will Sound, Peter Sheppard Skaerved, Peabody Symphony Orchestra, and Omnibus Ensemble. He has been performed in the United States and Asia.
Jonathan Hugendubler is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree (D.M.A) from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. At Peabody, he studies composition with Oscar Bettison. Previously, he attained an M.M. from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and B.M. in Music Composition from Shenandoah Conservatory under the tutelage of David T. Little. He has also participated in several composition masterclasses, most notably with Dutch composer Louis Andriessen and Georg Friedrich Haas.
Hye-Ryung Hyun
Sally Hyun (Hyeryung Hyun) is a composer who creates musical pieces that are mostly talking about social events. Her representative piece, Black River, is subjecting the Zong Massacre, a tragic incident on slavery that happened in Africa. Her recent piece, Paloma, a piece for a Large ensemble is depicting the Chile Mine Collapse that happened in 2010, she depicts the incident by reproducing its soundscape with musical instruments. Her interest in human events is also found in her most recent piece, The Other Malala. Through Pakistan tunes and the various sounds she created for depicting the soundscape of Pakistan, she guided the audience to feel the atmosphere of the era and the place when/where the event happened.
She always represented symbols of the era. In addition, she aligned tunes and symbolic sounds which the composer selected based on the contents of the piece to fit the big and small themes of the music.
Hyun is a composer from South Korea. She got her Bachelor’s degree at Hanyang University in Seoul and took her Master’s degree at Peabody Conservatory. She’s currently studying her doctoral degree at the Peabody Conservatory with Dr. Oscar Bettison.
Ga-Yeong Jeong
Ga-Yeong Jeong earned her sequential Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Music Composition at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, under the guidance of Prof. Sung Yun. She then received her second Master’s degree, studying with Prof. Michael Hersch, at the Peabody Conservatory in 2014. She participated in master classes provided by Martin Bresnick and Christopher Rouse, and was awarded the First Prize of Chengdu-China International Composition Competition with a chamber work titled “Hyang”, which means resonance in Korean, in 2011. Her music is considered to possess unique colors and subtle nuances expressing sophisticated and dramatic musical languages, which often evokes mysteriously mellow and poignant atmosphere. However, she has imbued highly diverse feelings and themes into a variety of her musical art works, including solos, ensembles, symphonies and concertos. She is currently pursuing the Doctor of Musical Art degree under the guidance of Prof. Oscar Bettison at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.
Seo Yoon Kim
Seo Yoon Kim is a composer raised in Korea and Russia. Her favorite things are captivating stories, music in spoken words, and pre-dawn ceremonies in ancient Korean Buddhist temples. Her music was performed at the 30th Seoul Music Festival, International Festival of Children’s Musical Theatre at Novosibirsk, Longy’s Divergent Studio, and by the musicians including Density512 and Pique Collective. Seo Yoon was one of five composers selected in the Peabody Opera Études Project in 2019. The resulting opera Dear Father, both music and libretto written by Seo Yoon, received its premiere by the Peabody Opera Department. She is a composer fellow of Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and the winner of a 2019 Student Commissioning Project of the American Guild of Organists.
Seo Yoon is passionate about bringing music to a broader world. She was a violinist at Peabody String Sinfonia and served as a Junior Bach composition instructor helping young composers realize their musical ideas. Seo Yoon is a founding member of CNSNC (consonance), a composers’ collective based in Baltimore. She received a full scholarship in the form of a graduate assistantship in music theory, to pursue her doctorate studies with Kevin Puts.
Tristan Latchford
British composer Tristan Latchford has an extensive output stretching from works for solo performers to combined Gamelan and Symphony Orchestra. At Durham University, Tristan received his Masters, and Undergraduate degree with first-class honours. Working internationally, he has held posts as composer-in-residence at the Seoul Oratorio and Palatinate Studios. Current commissions include ‘A Celebration of Women in the Bible’ (2020), ‘Prince Siddhartha’ (2020), and a mass for St Etienne Du Mont (Cambridge Voices, 2020). He has composed for a variety of talented ensembles and performers, including the IVES Ensemble, E7B, The Clerks, Heather Roche, Mark Knoop, The Brodsky Quartet, and many others.
Tristan has published papers on Music Analysis and Music Psychology. Current research interests include: The Philosophy of Composition (Composition and logic, Composition and Aesthetics), Hybridized Analytical and Theoretical Models, Advanced Harmonic Models, Balinese and Javanese Gamelan, Style in the 20th and 21st Centuries, and the Psychology of Composition and audience reception.
As a professional Singer, Tristan has worked with a wide range of choirs; most recently the Cambridge Voices and Il Corpo Cantate. From 2019-20, Tristan was Director of St Chads College Choir, Durham (proceeded by Matthew Kelley). Tristan currently lives in a small village near Cambridge, UK.
Adam O’Dell
Described as “kaleidoscopic,” and praised for its “real power,” “triumphalism,” (Fanfare Magazine) and “depth, beauty, and rich dimension” (The Courier), the multistylistic work of Baltimore-based composer and pianist Adam D. O’Dell (b. 1992) invokes theatre, nature, and human behavior and speech to explore the territory between the profound and the absurd.
O’Dell’s music has been performed across the globe by ensembles including the Brno Philharmonic, the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra, the Oklahoma State University Symphony Orchestra, the Peabody Opera Theatre, Altered Sound Duo, and Third Inversion Reed Trio. He has won awards from ABLAZE Records, Make Music Inc., and the Kennedy Center, among others.
O’Dell holds degrees from Bowling Green State University (MM) and Clarke University (BA). He has studied with composers Marilyn Shrude, Mikel Kuehn, Christopher Dietz, and Amy Dunker. He is currently a DMA candidate and Teaching Fellow at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, studying primarily with Kevin Puts and Oscar Bettison.
O’Dell is a PARMA Recordings Artist, his music can be heard on the Navona and ABLAZE record labels, and his debut solo album Things we gone and done with Just Duet is now available on CD Baby and all major streaming sites.
Zhujun Pan
Born in Xi’an, China and currently residing in the United States, Zhujun Pan’s music is strongly inspired by the different cultural environments she has experienced over the time of her composition studies. Zhujun pursued a Bachelor’s Degree in composition at the Shanghai Conservatory of music, studying under the famous composer Mingwu Yin. In order to further her study in composition, Zhujun traveled to the United States, and pursued a Master’s degree in Composition at the Peabody Conservatory. At Peabody, Zhujun’s compositions were well acclaimed and led to the Gustav Klem Award for her excellence in composition. After being awarded a full scholarship for Graduate Assistantship in 2016, Zhujun has been pursuing her Doctoral degree in composition at Peabody Conservatory with Michael Hersch. Zhujun’s music delves into the unsettledness of individual identity in between two conflicting cultures, and explores the possibility of fusing the contrasting differences into a coherent narrative. Both expressive and compelling, Zhujun’s musical language brings out a complex of emotions, and simultaneously provides the listeners with a strong emotional resonance.
Matthew J. Pellegrino
mattpellegrinomusic.weebly.com
Matthew J. Pellegrino is an award-winning composer, classically trained oboist, and devoted music educator with a fascination for new timbral realms of expression, aural extremes, and visceral sonic imagery. He has enjoyed an eclectic musical upbringing; one which combines classical training, electronic sounds, and a brief stint in a metal band. Pellegrino seeks to create music that is, all at once, deeply personal, raw, and darkly humorous.
Born in South Korea as Jihoon Lee, Matthew was raised on Long Island, New York. He is currently studying at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University where he has been awarded a Dean’s Doctoral Fellowship to complete a Doctor of Musical Arts degree with Oscar Bettison. His primary teachers have been Dr. Rob Deemer, Dr. Sean Doyle, and Dr. Karl Boelter. Equally active as a teacher, Matt is a Faculty Associate at Peabody Conservatory for the Music Theory department, as well as an instructor of oboe, flute, and saxophone at the Park School of Baltimore. He now resides in Baltimore, Maryland with his cat, Gnocchi. When not making noise, he can be found hiking, making/eating pasta, or attending local shows.
Alexa Rinn
Alexa Rinn is a composer whose music aims to evoke nuanced emotions and to capture specific ineffable feelings in sound. She is deeply inspired by travel and by the feelings of places, both real and imaginary. Her works have been performed at the Norfolk Festival, the HighScore festival, New Music On the Point, in Montreal, in the National Portrait Gallery in London, and by Baltimore-based ensembles, such as SONAR and Occasional Symphony.
Alexa received her Master of Music degree in composition from the Peabody Institute in 2014 and graduated in 2012 from Boston University’s College of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Music in composition and theory. While at BU, she studied with Rodney Lister, Samuel Headrick, and Ketty Nez, and she spent a semester abroad in 2010 at the Royal College of Music in London, England, where she studied with Alison Kay. Alexa is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in composition at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where she studies with Michael Hersch.
Benjamin Scheer
Benjamin Scheer (b. 1993) is an American composer of chamber and symphonic works. Ben had his first commission in 2013 from the New Haven Symphony Orchestra to write a concert piece, ART Dances, honoring his former teacher, Augusta Read Thomas. His next orchestral work, Narcissus was selected runner-up for the 2017 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. He has written pieces for artists such as Katherine Needleman, Chad Hoopes, David Fung, Matthew Lipman, and Bridget Kibbey.
Ben studied composition at the Eastman School of Music with Robert Morris, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and David Liptak. Ben earned his Masters in Composition at the New England Conservatory of Music with Michael Gandolfi, where he was also a graduate teaching assistant for the theory department. He is currently studying with Michael Hersch in the Doctor of Musical Arts Program at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.
Ben has enjoyed studying at renowned summer festivals that include Bowdoin International Music Festival, the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, and Atlantic Music Festival. Ben is an opera lover, and a recent highlight for him was guest lecturing at NEC for an advanced undergraduate analysis course, for which he designed and taught a full lecture on the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.
Jonathan Shin
Pianist-composer Jonathan Shin made his concerto debut with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at age 16 and later became the youngest-ever winner of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concerto Competition. He began composing in 2016 with his song cycle The Other Merlion and Friends, which The Straits Times praised as “the most compelling and worthwhile new work from any Singaporean composer in recent years.”
In his first year at Longy School of Music, Jonathan won both the Orchestral Composition Competition and Concerto Competition, and was conferred the Patricia Sherman Award and the Roman Totenburg Award. In 2019, he received the St. Botolph Club’s Emerging Artist Award. His 1819 Suite, commissioned for the Singapore Bicentennial, was called “supremely confident and comfortable in its own skin.” (The Straits Times)
Jonathan is currently pursuing his doctoral degree in composition at the Peabody Institute, under the tutelage of Prof. Kevin Puts. He is a founding member of the Singapore-based multi-genre group Lorong Boys.
Rachael Smith
Rachael Smith (b. 1996) is an American composer from Brockport, NY. She has written a number of pieces ranging from works for solo instruments and chamber ensembles to musicals and operas. In addition to being a composer, Rachael is also a playwright and lyricist, having written the book and libretto for four musicals and two operas since 2013. She has worked with groups such as A/tonal, SHUFFLE, the SUNY Fredonia Department of Theatre and Dance, and the Performing Arts Company at SUNY Fredonia, and her libretti have been performed at SUNY Fredonia, Bowling Green State University, and the NOW Festival at the Conservatory of Music at Baldwin Wallace.
Rachael received her BM in Music Composition at the State University of New York at Fredonia where she studied with Andrew Martin Smith and Rob Deemer, and received her MM in Music Composition at the University of Louisville where she studied with Steve Rouse and Krzysztof Wolek. Currently Rachael is pursuing her DMA at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University with Du Yun.
Danni Song
Danni Song is currently pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition at Peabody Institute under the tutelage of Michael Hersch. Danni received his Master of Music degree at Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Reiko Füting. As an undergraduate student, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley. Danni’s current interests include to have his mind blown at least once a day and to observe when people think something is “not music.”
Evan Williams
soundcloud.com/evan-jay-williams
Evan Jay Williams (b.1989) has studied with Michael Hersch and Du Yun at Peabody, and is currently working on his final DMA projects: a commission from the Peabody Wind Ensemble, and research into the musical legacy of Allen Ginsberg. His song cycle for soprano and orchestra, premiered by the Peabody Modern Orchestra, recently won an American Prize. Evan has made his home in Baltimore since 2016.
Hua Xin
Hua Xin writes music that is kaleidoscopic in color and contrapuntally driven, often inspired by real or fictional stories. Hua’s repertoire spans over solo, chamber, orchestral, and electronic music, and she is a two-time finalist of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. Hua is currently a D.M.A student at the Peabody Institute, under the studio of Kevin Puts. She received her M.A. from the University of North Texas, her G.D. from the New England Conservatory, and her B.A. from the University of Virginia.