Artists-in-Residence • CLAIMING SPACE • Sid Richardson, Samantha Wolf, and Bahar Royaee, with Mark DeChiazza

Mark DeChiazza, Guest Mentor says:
“I have built my craft as a filmmaker, designer, choreographer and director, and I often take on more than one of these roles in any given project. I create work that features cohesive and deep expression, integrating influences from design, film, dance, theater, and music. While manipulating the intersections of these forms I seek to discover new expressive and kinetic possibilities in performance, presentation, and design. For me, there is no division between the acts of directing performers, arranging inanimate objects, or articulating light for a camera.”

Sid Richardson
Composer Sid Richardson writes concert music that imbues modern idioms with emotional grit and wit. His work explores the intersections of music and literature, drawing inspiration from a wide swath of authors, poets, and playwrights. Richardson leverages pre-existing texts to create a metaphorical resonance with the source material in pieces that weave literary elements into formal, rhythmic, and harmonic structures. He is constantly on the lookout to explore new sound worlds, collaborations, and technologies with his music.

Bahar Royaee
Born and raised in Iran, Bahar Royaee is a composer of concert and incidental music. Her compositions are a mixture of timbral and sound-based atmospheric structures, interspersed with lyrical influences derived from her Iranian background. Her works have been performed worldwide, including Italy, Greece, Germany, Canada, Iran, and the USA. Bahar was recently recognized as a runner-up in National Sawdust’s 2018-19 Hildegard Competition. Other awards include the Roger Sessions Memorial Composition Award, Walter W. Harp Music & Society Award, John Bavicchi Memorial Prize, and the Korourian Electroacoustic Award.

Samantha Wolf
Described as “haunting”, “enigmatic”, and “inspired”, the music of Australian-born, US-based composer Samantha Wolf blends the classical, contemporary, acoustic, and electroacoustic worlds, while being grounded in the notated tradition. Although she specializes in instrumental and electroacoustic music, her diverse catalogue includes orchestral, vocal, dramatic, electronic, radio, and multimedia works, and theatrical sound design. Current and future projects include scores for two upcoming feature films, major new works for the Brisbane Music Festival and Ensemble Offspring, and her first full-length opera.

Amy Beth Kirsten
“…one of America’s most innovative and visionary composers,” (BBC Music Magazine) is known primarily for her for multi-year, multimedia theatrical collaborations. She has cast herself in roles as varied as composer, poet, filmmaker, vocalist, and director. Kirsten has been recognized with awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2020), John S. Guggenheim Foundation (2010) and the Rockefeller Foundation (2009) and has created works for her own ensemble HOWL, musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New World Symphony, Peak Performances, the multi-Grammy-winning eighth blackbird, among many others.