With guest composers Lei Liang, Alex Mincek, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh alongside Longy’s own composition faculty, Divergent Studio’s composition program provides the freedom to develop your own individual voice in a collaborative and community-driven setting. Divergent Studio Composers will have the opportunity to write for one of our four ensembles of new music specialists. This includes loadbang, Divergent Quartet, and Divergent Trio.

Loadbang

New York City-based new music chamber group loadbang is building a new kind of music for mixed ensemble of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. Since their founding in 2008, they have been praised as ‘cultivated’ by The New Yorker, ‘an extra-cool new music group’ and ‘exhilarating’ by the Baltimore Sun, ‘inventive’ by the New York Times and called a ‘formidable new-music force’ by TimeOutNY. Creating ‘a sonic world unlike any other’ (Boston Musical Intelligencer), their unique lung-powered instrumentation has provoked diverse responses from composers, resulting in a repertoire comprising an inclusive picture of composition today. In New York City, they have been recently presented by and performed at Miller Theater, Symphony Space, MATA and the Look and Listen Festival; on American tours at Da Camera of Houston, Rothko Chapel, and the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University; and internationally at Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), China-ASEAN Music Week (China) and Shanghai Symphony Hall (China). loadbang has premiered more than 300 works, written by members of the ensemble, emerging artists, and today’s leading composers. Their repertoire includes works by Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Charles Wuorinen; Rome Prize winners Andy Akiho and Paula Matthusen; and Guggenheim Fellows Chaya Czernowin, George Lewis, and Alex Mincek. They are an ensemble-in-residence at the Charlotte New Music Festival, and through a partnership with the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston, they are on the performance faculty of Divergent Studio, a contemporary music festival for young performers and composers held each summer in Cambridge, MA.

Divergent Quartet

Divergent Quartet is comprised of Longy performance faculty and new music specialists: Eric Hofbauer (electric guitar), Rachael Elliott (bassoon), Rane Moore (clarinet), and Seychelle Dunn-Corbin (saxophone).

Divergent Trio

Divergent Trio is comprised of new music specialists and Longy performance faculty Corrine Byrne (soprano) Ralph Farris (viola) and Donald Berman (piano).

Led by members of one of the country’s most active new music ensembles, loadbang, and the virtuosic pianist Donald Berman, you will plunge into an intensive 14 days of studying and performing works by some of the most exciting composers of our time!  Join us and make connections, make discoveries, and make new music together!

Adrian Sandi :  bass  clarinet

Born and raised in San José, Costa Rica, Adrián began his clarinet studies in 1997 at the National Institute of Music of Costa Rica. He obtained his BM magna cum laude from Virginia Commonwealth University, his MM with distinction from DePaul University, and his Doctorate in Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music. His main professors have included Ken Grant, Jon Manasse, Larry Combs, Julie DeRoche, Dr. Charles West, and Jose Manuel Ugalde. Adrián Sandí is currently a freelancer based in San José, Costa Rica. Hailed by the New York Times as “a brilliantly cool yet tender soloist”, he is an active solo recitalist and has given chamber music and solo performances throughout his musical career in different cities in Costa Rica, Panama, USA, Canada, China, Mexico, Germany, Belgium and Guatemala.

As an avid performer of new music, Adrián is currently a member of loadbang, Ensemble Signal, founder of Ensamble ECO and has performed with groups such as New York New Music Ensemble, SEM Ensemble, Mimesis Ensemble, Numinous, and has toured with Bang on a Can All-Stars. Regularly performing works of rising and living composers, he has had the opportunity to collaborate with composer/conductors Oliver Knussen, Tristan Murail, Steve Reich, Charles Wourinen, Hilda Paredes, Anna Clyne, David Lang and John Zorn. He served on the faculty of Wichita State University from 2011-2012 as Assistant Visiting Professor of Clarinet. As an orchestral musician, Adrián has performed as the principal clarinetist of Wichita Symphony Orchestra for their 2011-2012 season, has performed with ensembles such as the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Lake Placid Sinfonietta, Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Costa Rica, Symphony Orchestra Academy of the Pacific and is currently a member of Orquesta Sinfónica de Heredia. Some of his recording projects include albums such as  Ensemble Signal’s Harmonia Mundi release of Reich: Double Sextet / Radio Rewrite, the album “Dying will be easy” with the Richmond VA based improvisatory ensemble Fight the Big Bull, a solo work by Hilda Paredes in her album Señales and the music of mexican composer Juan Pablo Contreras in “Silencio en Juárez by Albany Records.

Andy  Kozar  :  trumpet(s)

A native of Pittsburgh, Andy Kozar is a New York City based trumpeter, improviser, composer and educator that has been called a ‘star soloist‘ by TimeOutNY, noted for his ‘precise trumpeting‘ by New York Classical Review and has been said to be ‘agile as he navigated leaps and slurs with grace…he shifted between lyricism and aggression deftly’ by the International Trumpet Guild Journal.

A strong advocate of contemporary music, he is a founding member of the contemporary music quartet loadbang which has been called ‘inventive’ by the New York Times, ‘cultivated’ by The New Yorker, and ‘a formidable new-music force’ by TimeOutNY. With loadbang, his playing has been said to be ‘polished and dynamic, with very impressive playing’ by the Baltimore Sun, and that he ‘coaxed the ethereal and the gritty from [his] muted instrument…and revealed a facility for shaping notes and color‘ by the San Francisco Classical Voice. He is also a member the Byrne:KozarDuo, and has performed with new music ensembles including Bang on a Can, Ensemble Signal, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Argento Chamber Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Echappe, Tilt Brass, Wet Ink, Boston Music Viva, and Mark Gould’s Pink Baby Monster. He has performed alongside artists and conductors such as Dave Douglas, Pablo Heras Casado, James Thompson, Mark Gould and Brad Lubman, in addition to working closely with numerous composers including Helmut Lachenmann, Christian Wolff, Joe Hisaishi (Spirited Away), George Lewis, Chaya Czernowin, and Pulitzer Prize winning composers David Lang and Charles Wuorinen. Kozar has performed at venues both domestically and abroad including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, MoMA, Rothko Chapel, The Barclays Center, and Shanghai Symphony Hall.

A flexible performer well versed in many styles, he has performed with the St. Petersburg Ballet, Wordless Music Orchestra, the Ostravska Banda (Czech Rep.), and Symphony New Hampshire. As a baroque trumpeter, he has performed as a part of the Boston Early Music Festival and with period performance ensembles including Rebel Baroque Orchestra, American Baroque Orchestra, The Bach Players of Holy Trinity in New York City, Ensemble Musica Humana, and at St. Thomas alongside the St. Thomas Boys Choir. In addition to contemporary and traditional classical music, his versatility has also allowed him the opportunity to perform with Andrea Bocelli, the Grammy nominated Travis Sullivan’s Bjorkestra, Russian pop-stars Tamara Gverdtsiteli and Igor Krutoi, indie pop bands including YUCK, the Generationals, and Emanuel and the Fear, with Bang on a Can’s Asphalt Orchestra, and on Broadway’s Mary Poppins.

As a commercial recording artist, he can be heard on indie pop albums by Yuck on Mercury Records, Emanuel and the Fear and Bennett Lin, the Hollywood film Sushi Girl, and on PBS’s special featuring baritone Paul Byrom from Celtic Thunder. As a classical recording artist he can be heard on labels including Mode Records, New Focus Recordings, Neos, Bridge Records, Wide Hive Records, and ANALOG Arts. In 2020, Andy released ‘A Few Kites’ on New Focus Recordings, an album of music for trumpet and electronics that was called ‘entrancing‘ by Alex Ross (The New Yorker, The Rest is Noise) and that ‘Trumpeters around the world owe Kozar…a debt of gratitude…the variety here is simply astonishing‘ by anearful.

In addition to performing, his work as a composer has been said to have ‘intriguing sonorities’ by the New York Times, to be ‘virtuosic’ by The New Yorker, ‘…extremely effective and quite touching’ by New Music Box, and ‘at the cutting edge of creativity’ by Sequenza21. It has been performed by loadbang, the MIVOS Quartet, Bang on a Can All Star’s pianist Vicky Chow, and many others. Kozar is on faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston where, in addition to teaching trumpet, he is the Chair of the Instrumental Studies Department, director of Orchestra FLEX, co-directs Ensemble Uncaged, Longy’s contemporary music ensemble, and is the director of the Divergent Studio.

Tyler  Bouque  :   baritone voice

Tyler Bouque (b. 2000) is equal parts musicologist, baritone, and educator specializing in experimental opera and vocal music.

Bouque’s musicological interests are intimately tied to his praxis as a performer, focusing on issues of embodiment and vocal phenomenology in post-1980 opera, and the negotiations of time and space between narrative theater and sound-based music. He has given papers for the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie and the University of Reading’s Samuel Beckett Symposium, and completed archival research on the Sciarrino manuscripts at the Paul Sacher Stiftung. He has lectured on voice and performance for New England Conservatory and the Sydney Conservatorium, and writes liner notes for Huddersfield Contemporary Records. In addition, he is completing his first book, an act of subjective cartography revolving around the single question that informs all of his work: how can we understand opera as a genre in the twenty-first century?

As a performer, Bouque is equally comfortable in opera, chamber music, and unaccompanied repertoire. He has given solo recitals in Berlin, Baden, Chicago, and Boston, where he gave a rare complete performance of Chaya Czernowin’s “Adiantum” trilogy. In 2021-2022, he toured in the original cast of Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding’s Iphigenia. He is a founding member of Alinéa, a Boston-based contemporary music ensemble nominated in 2021 by the Royal Philharmonic Society for their virtual interview series “Everything But The Kitchen Sink.” With Alinéa, he’s premiered works by Richard Barrett, Michael Finnissy, Salvatore Sciarrino, Kelley Sheehan, and Victoria Cheah and held residencies at New England Conservatory and Ithaca College. He is pursuing his postgraduate research under Robert Adlington at the University of Huddersfield’s Center for Research in New Music.

William  Lang  :  trombone

Originally from Long Island, Trombonist William Lang is an active performer and improviser in New York and Boston. Hailed for his “superb performance” of James Bergin’s Langmusik by the Boston Globe, William is dedicated to playing premieres and new music. He has performed solo recitals at New York City’s premiere floating concert venue: Bargemusic, the Dimenna Center, the Stone, the Tank, the Gershwin Hotel, and Greenfield Hall, as well as other venues throughout the country. He has also appeared as a soloist with the Janacek Philharmonia in an acclaimed performance of Iannis Xenakis’ trombone concerto: Trookh, as well as with the Fredonia Wind Ensemble on a tour of New York State; and as a guest soloist with Ensemble Pi and the Broadway Bach Ensemble, as well as on the Avant Media Festival, the Defacto Music Series,  and the Electronic Music Festival.

As a chamber musician William has appeared with the Argento Chamber Ensemble, Wet Ink, the SEM Ensemble, Tilt Brass, TACTUS, and Talea. William is also a founding member of two New York City based groups: the Guidonian Hand, a trombone quartet hailed by the New York Times for their “expertly played, with meaty low brass textures” performance;  and loadbang, his groundbreaking ensemble consisting of Baritone, Bass Clarinet, Trumpet, and Trombone, hailed as “inventive” by the New Yorker. He is also a member of the SEM Ensemble, Brooklyn Brass, and the Boston Microtonal Society’s premier ensemble: Notariotous, where he works alongside like minded composers and performers on the definition of pitch.

As a recording and commercial musician William has appeared on albums with such luminaries as David Byrne and St. Vincent (their album Love This Giant,) and Jonsi’s (from Sigur Ros) solo album Go. He can also be heard on many classical releases, most recently with TILT Brass’ debut recording, to TILT vol. 1 and as a recording soloist for John Cage’s Ryoanji with the Avant Media Festival. He has also recorded commercial music for Philip Glass, as well as the soundtrack for a Matthew Barny film, the River Fundment. In addition to recording credits, William has been heard as the house trombonist for Rockefeller Center’s Christmas Music Spectacular, featuring the Rockettes!, as well as on numerous on and off-Broadway shows.

Mr. Lang is also an accomplished orchestral and opera musician as well, appearing with many ensembles throughout New York, such as the American Ballet Theatre, Dicapo Opera, Musicra Sacra, the Little Orchestra Society, the Garden State Philharmonic, and the Manhattan Chamber Symphony. In addition he has played with the Orchestra of the SEM Ensemble, the Janacek Philharmonic, the Western New York Chamber Orchestra, and the Eroica Ensemble. William has also performed in such venues as the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie’s Isaac Stern and Zankel Halls, le Poisson Rouge, Radio City Music Hall, the Winter Garden, St. Paul’s Church in Boston, St John the Divine’s in New York City, Paul Hall, Lincoln Center’s Rose Theatre, the Flea, Issue Project Room, Galapagos, Secret Project Robot, and St. Peter’s in New York City. Alongside trumpeter Andrew Kozar, William founded and ran a weekly concert series, “Power Concerts”, at Manhattan School of Music. Featuring guest performers every week and a dedication to new music, Will and Andy hosted 42 concerts, which built up a steady following and featured the premieres of over 50 new works during their tenure as curators.

Donald  Berman  :  piano

Pianist Donald Berman is recognized as a chief exponent of new works by living composers, overlooked music by 20th century masters, and recitals that link classical and modern repertoires. His 2-volume The Unknown Ives and The Uncovered Ruggles (New World) represents the only recordings of the complete short piano works of Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles extant. Other recordings on Bridge Records include the 4-CD set Americans in Rome: Music by Fellows of the American Academy in Rome, The Piano Music of Martin Boykan, and Scott Wheeler: Tributes and Portraits. Berman has also recorded The Light That Is Felt: Songs of Charles Ives (with Susan Narucki, soprano New World), Wasting the Night: Songs of Scott Wheeler (Naxos) and Christopher Theofanidis’s Piano Concerto (Summitt), as well as music by Su Lian Tan (Arsis), Arthur Levering (New World), Martin Boykan (New World; Bridge), Tamar Diesendruck (Centaur), and Aaron Jay Kernis (Koch). Recent performances by Donald Berman include solo recitals at Bargemusic, National Sawdust, and (le)Poisson Rouge in New York City. He has also been a featured soloist at Zankel Hall, Rockport Muisc Festival as well as abroad in Belgrade, Rome, Beiijing, and Israel. A 2011 Radcliffe Institute Fellow, Berman is currently President of The Charles Ives Society. He teaches at the Longy School of Music of Bard College and Tufts University. His principal teachers were Mildred Victor, George Barth, John Kirkpatrick, and Leonard Shure.

Composition and performance students will have the ability to work with, hear lectures of, and perform music by our esteemed guests! The 2023 Divergent Studio guests include composers Lei Liang, Alex Mincek, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh.

Lei Liang :  composition

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, an Aaron Copland Award, a Koussevitzky Music Foundation Commission, a Creative Capital Award, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His concerto Xiaoxiang (for saxophone and orchestra) was named a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music. His orchestral work, A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, won the prestigious 2021 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.

Lei Liang was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for the inaugural concert of the CONTACT! new music series. Other commissions and performances come from the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, the Heidelberger Philharmonisches Orchester, the Thailand Philharmonic, the Fromm Music Foundation, Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, the National Endowment for the Arts, MAP Fund, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Manhattan Sinfonietta, Arditti Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, New York New Music Ensemble and Boston Musica Viva, pipa virtuoso Wu Man, violinist Cho-Liang Lin, among others.

Lei Liang’s recent works address issues of sex trafficking across the US-Mexican border (Cuatro Corridos), America’s complex relationship with gun and violence (Inheritance), and environmental awareness through the sonification of coral reefs.

Alex Mincek :  composition

Alex Mincek is a composer, performer, and co-director of the New York-based Wet Ink Ensemble. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Alpert Award, and multiple awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His music has also been recognized through commissions and awards from arts institutions such as the French Ministry of Culture, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, ASCAP, the National Endowment for the Arts, MATA, Radio France, the Barlow Endowment, and the Fromm Music Foundation.

Mincek’s music has been programmed at venues and international festivals including Carnegie Hall, Miller Theatre, Wigmore Hall, Strasbourg Musica, Darmstadt (IMD), Ultraschall Berlin, Festival Archipel Geneve, the Contempuls Festival in Prague, and the Ostrava New Music Days. He has collaborated with ensembles including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Janacek Philharmonic, Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Linea, Talea, Dal Niente, Yarn/Wire, Mivos and the JACK Quartet.

Mincek’s compositional thinking is primarily concerned with creating musical contexts in which diverse sound worlds seamlessly coexist – from raw to highly refined timbres, from rhythmic vitality to abrupt stasis, and from mechanical-like repetition to sinuous continuity. By connecting, combining and alternating seemingly disparate states, he attempts to create a sense of interconnectivity that reveals underlying qualities of coherence and unity. His music frequently explores novel approaches to microtonal harmony by integrating methods often regarded as incompatible. Mincek’s musical thinking is also concerned with how the cognition of physical shape, movement and color can be used as a model for organizing musical sound and structure in relation to psychoacoustics and musical perception more generally.

Mincek received his MA from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Nils Vigeland, and his DMA from Columbia University, where he studied with Tristan Murail and Fred Lerdahl.

Niloufar Nourbakhsh  :  composition

Described as “stark” by WNPR, and “darkly lyrical” by the New York Times, winner of 2nd Hildegard competition, recipient of 2019 Female Discovery Grant from Opera America, and a winner of 2022 Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation Competition, Iranian-American composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s music has been commissioned and performed by Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Library of Congress, I-Park Foundation, National Sawdust Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Camerata Pacifica, Shriver Hall Series, Center for Contemporary Opera, Women Composers Festival of Hartford, PUBLIQuartet, Forward Music Project, Calidore String Quartet, Cassatt String Quartet, Akropolis Reed Quintet, and Ensemble Connect at numerous festivals and venues including Carnegie Hall, Washington Kennedy Center, Mostly Mozart Festival, Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music, and many more. A founding member and co-director of Iranian Female Composers Association, Nilou is a strong advocate of music education. In 2014, she worked as the site coordinator of Brooklyn Middle School Jazz Academy sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center. She is currently an adjunct faculty at Peabody Conservatory as co-artistic director of Peabody Laptop Orchestra, and she regularly performs with her ensemble, Decipher.

Nilou is a music graduate and a Global Citizen Scholarship recipient of Goucher College as well as a Mahoney and Caplan Scholar from University of Oxford. Among her teachers are Lisa Weiss, Laura Kaminsky, Daniel Weymouth, Matthew Barnson, Margaret Schedel and Daria Semegen. She received a Ph.D. in music composition from Stony Brook University under the supervision of Sheila Silver.

Student Performers:

Student Composers:

Student Composers:

Tuition

Full Rate (Housing and Breakfast Included) – $2,100
Online Rate (Composers only) – $1,000
Longy Community Rate (Housing Not Included) – $600

* If you opt out of housing, Full Rate Tuition will be lowered by $900 to $1,200. Note that the average cost of 10 nights at a Boston area Airbnb is between $1,500-$2,000.

Scholarship

In an effort to make attending Longy’s Divergent Studio as affordable as possible, we do offer scholarship opportunities. All students can request scholarship as a part of the application process, and performance students are eligible for the loadbang Performers Scholarship based on the quality of the application.

Schedule

February 15, 2023 – Application Deadline
March 1, 2023 – Notification Letters
March 17, 2023 – Non-refundable Deposit Due ($400)
May 1, 2023 (on or before) – Tuition Remainder Due

Accommodations

Longy’s Divergent Studio offers housing in partnership with Emerson College. Located in the heart of Boston, these accommodations come with breakfast each morning and are a close subway ride from Longy. For students who are already located in Boston, it is possible to waive the accommodations and have the tuition fee adjusted.

If you have any questions regarding the institute or how to apply, please contact us at: DivergentStudio(at)longy.edu.

PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Andy Kozar
Assistant Director
Aaron Clarke
Administrative Assistant
Christina George