Starkland: Unique Commissioning Program Enters Third Season

Created by the adventurous conductor Michael Christie, the unique commissioning Click! program at the Colorado Music Festival has entered its third season. Anyone can vote, by donating $10, for any/all of three composers. The composer with the most votes is awarded the commission for an orchestral work, which will be premiered during CMF's 2013 concert season. Thus the process allows the audience to both fund the commission and select the composer. It's the only commissioning program I know of that functions this way.

The three eligible composers are Chiayu Hsu, Kristin Kuster, and Piotr Szewczyk.

Chiayu's music has been premiered by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, pianist Natalie Zhu, oboist Katherine Needleman, the ensemble eighth blackbird, and the Prism Quartet. Born in Banciao, Taiwan, Chiayu received her Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music, Master's degree and Artist Diploma from Yale University, and Ph.D. from Duke University. She has studied at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Aspen Music Festival, Fontainebleau Schools, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Her teachers have included Jennifer Higdon, David Loeb, Roberto Sierra, Ezra Laderman, Martin Bresnick, Anthony Kelley, Scott Lindroth, and Stephen Jaffe. A fuller biography is here. Her music can be heard in these excerpts:

A Boulder native, Kristin Peterson Kuster received her Master's Degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and her Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, where she now serves as Assistant Professor of Composition. Her music has received support from such organizations as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Sons of Norway, American Composers Orchestra, the League of American Orchestras, Meet The Composer, the Jerome Foundation, the American Composers Forum, American Opera Projects, the National Flute Association, and the Argosy Foundation. A fuller biography is here. Her music can be heard in these excerpts:

Piotr Szewczyk, violinist and composer, is a violinist in the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra in Florida since 2007, and is also the Winner of the 2008 Jacksonville Symphony Fresh Ink - Florida Composers' Competition. As a composer, he has received numerous awards including those from Rapido! Composition Contest, Third Millennium Ensemble, American Composers Forum, Society of Composers, Jacksonville Symphony, British Trombone Society, VoxNovus 60x60 Project, Fauxharmonic Adagio Contest, UPBEAT Hvar - Croatia and ACCENT Competition at Music X Festival. Szewczyk holds a double Masters degree in violin and composition from University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he studied violin with Kurt Sassmanshaus, Piotr Milewski, and Dorothy Delay, and composition with Joel Hoffman, Michael Fiday, Henry Gwiazda, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, and Darrell Handel. A fuller biography is here. His music can be heard in these excerpts:

I hope many will take advantage of this unusual opportunity to help both fund and select a commissioned composer.

For more information about the Colorado Music Festival and its Click! program, visit here.