Longy's Divergent Studio

June 24- July 6, 2024
New Music Workshop
for Performers & Composers

Divergent Studio Faculty

GUEST COMPOSERS
Chen Yi

Marti Epstein

PERFORMANCE FACULTY

Loadbang
Tyler Bouque, baritone
Andy Kozar, trumpet (Longy Instrumental Studies Chair & Faculty)
William Lang, trombone (Longy Faculty)
Adrian Sandi, clarinet, bass clarinet

Divergent Trio
Corrine Byrne, soprano (Longy Faculty)
Ralph Farris, viola (Longy Faculty)
Donald Berman, piano (Longy Piano Chair & Faculty)

Eric Hofbauer, electric guitar (Longy Jazz & Contemporary Music Chair & Faculty)
Rachael Elliott, bassoon (Longy Faculty)
Rane Moore, clarinet (Longy Faculty)
Seychelle Dunn-Corbin, saxophone (Longy faculty)

COMPOSITION FACULTY
Alexandra du Bois (Longy Composition Chair & Faculty)
NILOUFAR NOURBAKHSH (Longy  Faculty)
Pablo Santiago Chin (Longy Faculty)
John Morrison (Longy Faculty)
Matthew Evan Taylor (Longy Faculty)

PROGRAM DIRECTORS
Andy Kozar
Aaron Clarke

Administrative Assistant
Liza Knight

Apply for Divergent Studio Now!

Join us for Divergent Studio, a 13-day immersive new music experience focused on interdisciplinary tools and holistic creative practices for performers and composers of contemporary music. Featuring collaborations with resident new music ensemble loadbang, guest composers Chen Yi and Marti Epstein, and Longy’s cutting-edge contemporary music faculty, participants form a tight-knit community centered around conversations about new directions in musical practice.

Apply for Divergent Studio Now!

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 13 days of studying and performing works by some of the most exciting composers of our time!  With daily coaching by the members of loadbang, Mr. Berman, and our performance faculty, performers at Divergent Studio will be featured in composer portrait concerts for Chen Yi and Marti Epstein, be partnered with Divergent Studio composers to bring brand new works into the world and perform in a final marathon concert, featuring pieces by many of the most influential composers of our time. Join us and make connections, make discoveries, and make new music together!

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’ (The 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 by 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), the Xinghai Conservatory of Music (China), Shanghai Symphony Hall (China), Visiones Sonoras Festival (Morelia, Mexico), and the Musikverein (Vienna, Austria). loadbang has premiered more than 500 works, written by members of the ensemble, emerging artists, and today’s leading composers. Their repertoire includes works by Pulitzer Prize winners Raven Chacon, 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 the ensemble-in-residence at Cornell University through the Steven Stucky Memorial Residency for New Music, and through a partnership with the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston, they are the ensemble-in-residence at Divergent Studio, a contemporary music festival for young performers and composers held each summer.

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.

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 an earful.

Donald  Berman  :  piano

Donald Berman, pianist

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.

With guest composers Chen Yi and Marti Epstein 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 out two ensembles of new music specialists. This includes loadbang, and Divergent Trio (Donald Berman (soloist), Corrine Byrne (Lorelie Ensemble), and Ralph Farris (Ethel).

Loadbang
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 Trio

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

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 Chen Yi, and  Marti Epstein.

Chen Yi :  composition

As a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries, Dr. Chen Yi is a recipient of the Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. She has been Lorena Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of Music and Dance in the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1998. She was elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 2019.

Born in China, Ms. Chen received bachelor and master degrees from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University in the City of New York. Her composition teachers included Profs. Wu Zu-qiang, Chou Wen-chung, and Mario Davidovsky. She has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Women’s Philharmonic, Chanticleer, and Aptos Creative Arts Center (1993–96) supported by Meet The Composer, and taught on the composition faculty at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University (1996–98). She has also been Distinguished Visiting Professor in China since 2006.

Fellowships and commissioning awards were received from Guggenheim Foundation (1996), American Academy of Arts and Letters (1996), Fromm Foundation at Harvard University (1994), Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress (1997), and National Endowment for the Arts (1994). Honors include the first prizes from the Chinese National Composition Competition (1985, 2012), the Lili Boulanger Award (1993), the NYU Sorel Medal Award (1996), the CalArts/Alpert Award (1997), the UT Eddie Medora King Composition Prize (1999), the ASCAP Concert Music Award (2001), the Elise Stoeger Award (2002) from Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Friendship Ambassador Award from Edgar Snow Fund (2002), the UMKC Kauffman Award in Artistry/Scholarship and Faculty Service (2006, 2012, 2019), and Pulitzer Prize Finalist with Si Ji for orchestra (2006). Honorary Doctorates are from Lawrence University (2002), Baldwin-Wallace College (2008), University of Portland (2009), The New School University (2010), and University of Hartford (2016). She has received the Sterling Patron Award of Mu Phi Epsilon International Fraternity in 2011 and the Society for American Music Honorary Member Award in 2018.

Her music is published by Theodore Presser Company, performed world wide, and recorded in over 100 CDs, on Bis, New Albion, Teldec (w/Grammy Award for Colors of Love), New World (w/NPR Top 10 Classical Music Album Award for Sound of the Five), Albany, Naxos, BMOP/sound, XAS Records, Bridge, Centaur, Innova, Delos, Angel, Nimbus, Cala, Avant, Atma, Hugo, Koch International Classics, Eroica, Capstone, Quartz, and China Record Corporation since 1986. Chen Yi, An Accessible Guide to the Composer’s Background and Her Works, by Leta E. Miller and J. Michele Edwards published by University of Illinois Press, 2020.

Recent world premieres of Chen Yi’s works have included Introduction, Andante, and Allegro by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, and Fire for 12 players by Grossman Ensemble at Logan Center Performance Hall in the University of Chicago in 2019; Totem Poles for organ solo at AGO national conference in Kansas City, Pearle River Overture by Guangzhou Symphony in China, and Southern Scenes for flute, pipa and orchestra by the Hawaii Symphony in Honolulu in 2018; and piano concerto Four Spirits by China Philharmonic in Beijing and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016. The 20/21 concert season started with European premiere of Tang Poems Cantata by MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir in Germany (9/27/20) and world premiere of Bamboo Song by pianist Zou Xiang at the China National Center for Performing Arts Concert Hall in China (10/5/20), followed by world premiere performances of two oboe solo works, Elegy by St Paul Chamber Orchestra’s oboe principal Cassie Pilgrim in MN (11/28/20), and Mountain Song by Fergus McCready at Royal Academy of Music in UK (6/8/21) to celebrate its 200th anniversary.

* Chen is family name, Yi is personal name. Chen Yi can be referred to Dr. Chen, Prof. Chen, Ms. Chen, or Chen Yi, but not Dr. Yi, Prof. Yi, or Ms. Yi.

Marti Epstein :  composition

Marti Epstein (November 25, 1959) started studying composition in 1977 with Professor Robert Beadell at the University of Nebraska.  She has degrees from the University of Colorado and Boston University, and her principal teachers were Cecil Effinger, Charles Eakin, Joyce Mekeel, Bunita Marcus, and Bernard Rands.Marti was a fellow in composition at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1986 and 1988 and worked with Oliver Knussen and Hans Werner Henze.  As a result of her association with Henze, she was invited by the City of Munich to compose her puppet opera, Hero und Leander, for the 1992 Munich Biennale for New Music Theater.  She was on the jury for the 1994 Biennale.

Marti has received commissions from the Paul Jacobs Memorial Commissioning Fund, the CORE Ensemble, ALEA III, Sequitur New Music Ensemble, the Fromm Foundation, guitarist David Tanenbaum, the American Dance Festival, the A*DEvant-garde Festival of Munich, tubist Samuel Pilafian, flutist Marianne Gedigian, the New England Brass Quintet, the Iowa Brass Quintet, Boston Conservatory, Boston University Marsh Chapel Choir, pianist Kathleen Supové, the CrossSound New Music Festival of Juneau Alaska, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Radius Ensemble, the Ludovico Ensemble, and the Callithumpian consort. The Longy School of Music commissioned her to compose Quartet for BSO English horn soloist Robert Sheena to be played at the Inauguration of Karen Zorn, their new president. Marti’s music has been performed all over the world by ensembles, which include the San Francisco Symphony, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Frankfurt, the Atlantic Brass Quintet, and Ensemble Modern.

The Atlantic Brass Quintet, Sequitur New Music, The Seattle Trumpet Consort, pianist Kathleen Supové, guitarist Ulf Golnast, Robert Sheena with the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, and the University of Iowa Brass Quintet have recorded Marti’s music.  In 2015, the Ludovico Ensemble recorded and released Hypnagogia, a CD of Marti’s music. Nebraska Impromptu, an album of her chamber music with clarinet, featuring Rane Moore and Winsor Music, was released in 2021 by new Focus Recordings. She was a resident at the MacDowell Colony in 1998, 1999 and 2022.  She was a recipient of a 1998 Fromm Foundation Commission, and she won the 1998 Lee Ettleson Composition Prize.  She is a recipient of a 2005 grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Marti is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow to compose works for Hinge Ensemble, loadbang, and soundicon. She is a recipient of a 2023 Chamber Music of America Commission to compose a new work for the Kozar/Byrne duo.

Marti is an active pianist and a devoted teacher.  She plays prepared piano with guitarist David Tronzo in the Epstein/Tronzo Duo.  She is Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music, where she has taught harmony, counterpoint, and composition since 1991, and is also on the faculty of Boston Conservatory. Marti is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition.

Student Composer Premieres: 

Student Performers:

Tuition 

Full Rate (Housing and Continental Breakfast Included) – $2,600
Online Rate (Composers only) – $1,200
Current Longy Students and Longy Alumni Rate (Housing Not Included) – $700 

* If you opt out of housing, Full Rate Tuition will be lowered by $1,200 to $1,400. Note that the average cost of 13 nights at a Boston area Airbnb is between $1,800-$2,500. 

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. 

Deadlines 

November 1, 2023– Application Opens
February 19, 2024– Application Deadline
March 1, 2024 – Notification Letters
March 15, 2024 – Non-refundable Deposit Due ($400)
May 1, 2024 (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 Divergent Studio or how to apply, please contact us at: DivergentStudio(at)longy.edu.

PROGRAM DIRECTORS
Andy Kozar
Aaron Clarke

Administrative Assistant
Liza Knight

Apply for Divergent Studio Now!