Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Commissioning Club is thrilled to be commissioning two composers in 2024!
Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Commissioning Club will commission a work by composer, Michi Wiancko. Michi will write a piece for Violin and Viola Duo that will be premiered at the 2024 Summer Festival on July 18.
MICHI WIANCKO is a versatile and highly imaginative composer, violinist, and collaborator, whose multi-faceted creative projects and organizational work prioritize artistic discovery, as well as community resilience and social change.
She has been commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, American Lyric Theater, On Site Opera, Experiments in Opera, American Ballet Theater, Boston Chamber Music Society, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, The Knights, Ecstatic Music Festival, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Camerata Bern, Liquid Music, Accordo, Schubert Club, The Aizuri, Enso, Friction, Jupiter, and Parker Quartets, Ensemble Connect, Sybarite5, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, and Metropolis Ensemble. She also composes music for short and feature-length films, commercials, and for her own band, Kono Michi.
Michi co-composed, performed, engineered, and mixed the original score of the film The Mend, profiled by Time Magazine as one of the Top 10 films at SXSW. She has worked closely with the indie rock band Wye Oak, re-imagining their songs for electro-acoustic ensemble. She has also arranged for the band EL VY (comprised of Brent Knopf and The National’s Matt Berninger), whom she joined for an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Michi’s arrangements have been performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, The Knights, A Far Cry, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of Brooklyn, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Arkansas Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Harvard Chamber Orchestra, Burlington Chamber Orchestra, Boston Conservatory Orchestra, and The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Learn more about Michi here
The second commission is in partnership with Chamber Music Northwest and Great Lakers Chamber Music Society and will be written by Kyle Rivera. Kyle will write a piece for Piano Quartet and percussion that will be performed at the 2024 Summer Festival on July 23.
The ever-evolving artistic perspective of KYLE RIVERA (b. 1996) makes his music a space for intrigue and exploration. Kyle is fascinated by visual imagery in sound and the way it can create windows into his mind. Sound and time are malleable objects with which he sculpts vivid sonic landscapes. He often draws upon the diverse sonic and cultural environments he grew up in to craft the soundscapes of his music. Interests in linguistics, spirituality, and media all influence the way he creates music. One of Kyle’s goals as an artist is to offer a perspective on the world through his personal experiences. Some of his music has focused on topics relating to social justice, equality, and racialized matters. Alongside that, his music explores the conceptual limits of psychology, spirituality, and consciousness in sound.
As a composer, his music has been performed across the United States and internationally in Russia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and China. Past collaborations include the Houston Symphony, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, Yale Philharmonia, Albany Symphony Dogs of Desire, Musiqa Houston, KINETIC Ensemble, Houston Grand Opera Co., Atlanta Chamber Players, Toolbox Percussion, Green Room Ensemble, and the Chelsea Music Festival. Kyle was the 2023 Anne Spencer Fellow with the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He received a 2024 MacDowell Fellowship and an Aaron Copland House Residency. Future projects include collaborations with Tacet(i) Ensemble, EnSRQ, Juventas Ensemble, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and Bent Frequency.
Learn more about Kyle here
