Kareem Roustom • Composer

Syrian-American Kareem Roustom is a composer whose genre-crossing collaborations include music commissioned by conductor Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, arrangements for pop icons Shakira and Tina Turner, as well as a recent collaboration with acclaimed British choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh. Roustom has been composer-in-residence at the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago, the Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming, and with the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen in Germany and the Mannheim Philharmonic. A musically bi-lingual composer, Roustom is rooted in the music of the Arab near-east but his music often expresses beyond the confines of tradition. The themes of a number of his works often touch issues of those affected by war and instability.

Roustom’s music has been performed by ensembles that include the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Boulez Ensemble, Oregon Symphony, Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse, The Crossing choir, Lorelei Ensemble, A Far Cry, and at renowned festivals and halls such as the BBC Proms, the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Verbier Festival, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, and others.

Roustom has received commissions from the Malmö Symphony Orchestra (Sweden), the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Grand Teton Music Festival (2018 and 2023 seasons), the Grant Park Music Festival, the Daniel Barenboim Stiftung (2013, 2015, and 2017), the Pierre Boulez Saal, the Royal Philharmonic Society & Sadler’s Wells Theatre (United Kingdom), A Far Cry and Lorelei Ensemble, and others. Roustom’s music has also been recorded by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester (Berlin), and the Philharmonia Orchestra (London). Current projects include a Trumpet Concerto on commission from the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker (May 2025 premiere), a solo piano work for pianist Garrick Ohlsson, a trio for harp, flute, and viola commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra harpist, Emily Levin, and a new work There Will Come Soft Rains (March 2025 premiere), commissioned for Coro Allegro. Roustom is also finalizing a chamber music album featuring the Balourdet Quartet to be released on Phenotypic Recordings in 2025.

The Chicago Tribune wrote that Roustom is “a gifted and accomplished artist, one of the most prominent active Arab-American composers,” BBC Radio3 described Roustom’s music as “among the most distinctive to have emerged from the Middle East,” and The New York Times described it as “propulsive, colorful and immediately appealing.” The Guardian (London) wrote that Roustom’s music is “arrestingly quirky and postmodern… music with lots of personality.” Roustom holds the position of Professor of the Practice at Tufts University’s Department of Music in Boston.

kr-music.com
Photo credit:  ©Häkan Kogg Röjder

Eric Banks • Composer

A composer, conductor, translator, vocalist, linguist, and ethnomusicologist, Eric Banks has garnered international acclaim as a choral composer and conductor. Hailing from Roscoe, a small town in upstate New York, Banks completed his B.A. in Music at Yale University (1990). Upon graduation, Banks relocated to Seattle to complete his master’s and doctoral degrees in Choral Studies and Music Theory at the University of Washington. In 1997, at the conclusion of his graduate study, Banks was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and Lois Roth Fellowship to study Swedish contemporary choral culture. While in Stockholm, Banks sang as a chorister and soloist with several groups, including the Swedish Radio Choir and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir.

In 1992, while still in graduate school, Banks founded a professional-caliber chamber chorus of volunteers, The Esoterics. Seattle’s most innovative chorus has drawn international praise for performing contemporary music for unaccompanied voices, and for performing settings of poetry, philosophy, and spiritual writings from around the world. The Esoterics has performed over 500 concerts throughout the Pacific Northwest, has commissioned and premiered over 250 new works for a cappella voices in dozens of languages, and has mastered many of the most virtuosic works for chamber chorus of the last century. In recognition for his choral innovation, Banks and The Esoterics have been honored five times with the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for the Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music (in 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008, and 2017).

As an active adjudicator and clinician, Banks has been honored to serve as a judge for the Andrea O. Veneracion International Choral Competition in The Philippines, the Florilège Vocal de Tours and the European Grand Prix of Choral Singing in France, and the World Choir Games in Tshwane, South Africa. Banks is a constant advocate for all new choral music, and has presented several times at Chorus America, ACDA, and IFCM. Banks and The Esoterics inaugurated the annual choral composition competition, POLYPHONOS, in 2006, which awards commissions to three composers each year.

In his composition, Banks is drawn to ideas that are more esoteric in origin, and chooses to express and elucidate concepts that have been undiscovered, underrepresented, or are not easily decipherable by a wider audience. As a composer, Banks has harnessed his passions for poetry, foreign language, classical civilization, comparative religion, social justice, and the history of science — to create choral works that reach far beyond the scope of the established a cappella canon. His recent works have explored the sacred singing traditions of ancient cultures, the crisis of climate change, the patterns of trees, flowers, clouds, and stars, the martyrdom of those who speak truth to power, the suicide of a close friend, and verses of hope by pre-gay and pre-lesbian poets. Banks is a polyglot, and translates nearly all of his own texts from original languages.

Banks has been awarded many grants as a composer, including those from: the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund for New Music, Seattle City Artists, the San Francisco Arts Commission, New Music USA, as well as three creativity grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, to compose, produce, and record three concert-length works — Twelve Qur’anic visions (2005–2007), The seven creations (2007–2010), and I will remember everything (2013–2014).

As a Fulbright Fellow, Banks was visiting scholar at the Royal Conservatory of Music and Swedish Radio in Stockholm (1997–1998). While in India, Banks was a scholar at the Cama Oriental Institute in Mumbai (2007). Banks has also done individual musicological research in Indonesia and Brazil. In 2008, Banks was selected to present his paper “Contemporary American choral music inspired by Islam” at the ASWATUNA conference of Arab choral music in Petra, Jordan.

In 2010, Banks was granted the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America and the American Composers Forum to compose an a cappella symphony, This delicate universe, for Conspirare in Austin. This piece was premiered in May 2015, and since then, has been performed by choirs in Finland, France, and Canada, as well as by the Swedish Radio Choir. In 2013, Banks completed Our earth, a series of three environmental chamber operas on Pacific Northwest native legends for Seattle Opera’s Education program. These operas have been performed in middle schools throughout Washington State over 100 times since completion, and were premiered by Seattle Symphony in May 2014.

In 2018, Banks composed As palmeiras [The palms], a geographical cantata setting 37 poems and proverbs about the palm tree from around the world for the Vox Laci Festival in Lisbon, Portugal. In the same year, he also completed a triple-choral orchestral work for the Anchorage Concert Choral and Anchorage Symphony, To have been there before, setting works that describe the Alaskan wilderness by John Muir and in Tlingit, a native language of Southeastern Alaska. During the pandemic in 2020, Banks was commissioned by The school of good citizenship to compose a piece against police violence, setting texts by four African-American writers, for a virtual choir of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ singers: To be a stranger.

In 2011, Banks was awarded Conductor of the year from the Washington State chapter of the American Choral Directors Association for his ground-breaking work with The Esoterics. Other notable commissions for Banks include works for the American Choral Directors Association, the Atlanta Young Singers, the Anchorage Concert Chorus, the Boston Children’s Chorus, Cantus Firmus (Brasilia), Chorus America, Clerestory (San Francisco), Kitka (Oakland), IFCM (the International Federation for Choral Music), Mikrokosmos (Paris), the Philippine Madrigal Singers, Seattle Opera, St Jacobs Chamber Choir (Stockholm), the Singapore Youth Ensemble Singers, the Vancouver Men’s Chorus, Voces Nordicæ (Stockholm), Vox Laci (Lisbon), the Washington Men’s Camerata (DC), and the Yale Alumni Chorus and Glee Club. His upcoming commissions include pieces for Evoke (Tel Aviv), the Choirs of Northern Michigan University, the Turkish State Choir (Ankara), Suanplu (Bangkok), and the Vancouver Chamber Choir.

https://theesoterics.org/founding-director
Photographer credit: © M. Tarek Ahmed

Reginald Mobley • Countertenor

GRAMMY®-nominated American countertenor Reginald Mobley is globally renowned for his interpretation of baroque, classical and modern repertoire, and leads a prolific career on both sides of the Atlantic.

An advocate for diversity in music and its programming, Mobley became the first ever Programming Consultant for the Handel & Haydn Society following several years of leading H&H in its community engaging Every Voice concerts. He holds the position of Visiting Artist for Diversity Outreach with Apollo’s Fire and has recently been appointed as Artistic Advisor at the Portland Baroque Orchestra. Mobley is also leading a research project in the United Kingdom funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to uncover music by composers from diverse backgrounds.

Highlights of this and next seasons include a diverse range of recitals, with piano and continuo (Chicago, De Bijloke in Gent, Wigmore Hall, MA Festival in Bruges, Bayreuth Baroque festival) as well as regular appearances with specialized ensembles; in North America: the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Early Music Vancouver, Collegium San Diego, Agave, Seraphic Fire, Washington Bach Consort and, in Europe: Nederlandse Bachvereniging, Wiener Akademie, Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, and Bach Oxford Soloists. Mobley will also tour Australia with Bach Akademie in May 2025, and will perform Bach’s St. John’s Passion with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris as part of the St. Denis festival in June 2025.

Mobley has been invited to sing with U.S. main orchestras including Pittsburgh Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Washington National Symphony, Philadelphia (both chamber and symphony), Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota, Montreal Symphony, Houston Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, and Orchestra of St Luke’s (at Carnegie Hall) for a repertoire comprising Handel’s Messiah, Carmina Burana, and Mozart’s Requiem.

In Europe, he has appeared with Orchester Wiener Akademie, Balthasar Neumann Chor & Ensemble, Freiburger Barockorchester, I Barocchisti, Bach Society in Stuttgart, Holland Baroque Orchestra, Dutch Bach Society, Monteverdi Choir and English baroque soloists, as well as the City of Birmingham Orchestra and the Budapest Festival Orchestra for a series of performances as Ottone in L’incoronazione di Poppea. He has also engaged in projects together with the Academy of Ancient Music in Cambridge, singing the role of Disinganno in Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno and devising a new program, Sons of England, supported by UKAHRC, which reflects his research under their umbrella, which toured England in May 2024. Mobley gave a Purcell, Handel, and Sancho programme for his solo debut recital in Paris, which he repeated as part of the Bayreuth baroque opera festival in September 2023.

His first solo release with ALPHA Classics was released in June 2023 to coincide with a major series of concerts with pianist Baptiste Trotignon at the Aix-en-Provence and BBC Proms festivals. The album has been recently awarded the Opus Klassik Awards in the “Classics without limits” category. His second recording will take place this autumn: it gives tribute to English baroque music (Purcell, Dowland and Sancho) and its resonance in the more recent American repertoire (with theorbo/guitar and violone/doublebass). In addition, Mobley features on several albums with the Monteverdi Choir, Agave Baroque, and Stuttgart Bach Society. In 2024, Coro Allegro presented Reginald Mobley with the 15th Annual Daniel Pinkham Award, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to classical music, the LGBTQ+ community, and arts equity.

Reginald Mobley receives the Daniel Pinkham Award from Coro Allegro ©Sam Brewer

https://www.reginaldmobley.com
Headshot credit: ©Richard Dumas

Ron Williams • Baritone

Singer, lecturer and voice teacher, recognized nationwide for his artistry in the field of opera and oratorio, Ron Williams continues to gather acclaim for his work onstage and in the concert hall. He has performed leading roles with several opera companies nationally, including San Francisco Spring Opera, Detroit Opera (formerly Michigan Opera Theater) and Opera San Jose. In New England, Williams debuted with Boston Lyric Opera in the revival of Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars, receiving critical acclaim from The New York Times. Ron made his European debut with the Düsseldorf Chamber Orchestra in Germany. His stage debut was in Saint Gallen, Switzerland and has performed on the European stage in several other countries. Mr. Williams maintains a busy concert schedule, having performed with Cantata Singers, Chorus North Shore, Symphony Pro Musica. Ron was seen in the one-man opera of Domenico Cimarosa, Il Maestro di Cappella with Boston Civic Symphony. formed the title role in the comic opera Gianni Schicchi with Opera Susquehanna in Pennsylvania. Mr. Williams was a regional finalist in the San Francisco Opera National Auditions. An artist committed to works of 20th century American composers, he performed with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in a new recording of The Life and Times of Malcolm X by Anthony Davis, which was nominated for a Grammy Award for best opera recording in 2022.

Ron Williams, baritone as Ugandan Bishop Christopher Senyonjo 

www.RonSings.com
Headshot © Marie Picard Craig

Sonja DuToit Tengblad • Soprano

Described as “radiant” by Opera Magazine, recent highlights for soprano Sonja DuToit Tengblad include Shostakovich Symphony No. 14 with A Far Cry, Mahler’s 2nd Symphony with the Boston Philharmonic, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra; Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (Drusilla, Fortuna) and Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (La Fortuna, Giunone; GRAMMY®-nominated recording with Linn Records), Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans (Abra and Ozias), and Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (First Lady) with Boston Baroque; Bach’s St. John Passion and Purcell’s Fairy Queen (2nd Fairy, Juno) and Dido and Aeneas (2nd Woman) with the Handel and Haydn Society; Francesca Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero with the Boston Early Music Festival; guest appearances with the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus and Minnesota’s Bach Roots Festival; and her Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center debuts, both with the New York City Chamber Orchestra. She was awarded 2nd place in the 2014 American Prize competition’s art song and oratorio division.

A champion of new music, Tengblad co-curated Modern Dickinson, a touring program featuring all 21st century settings of Emily Dickinson’s poetry that was named the #3 Best Arts Event in Austin TX 2015 and nominated for four Austin Critics Table Awards. She has premiered and recorded two works with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and in 2015 premiered Shirish Korde’s Questions for the Moon with members of the Silk Road Ensemble. A highlight for Tengblad was appearing in a concert celebrating the 80th birthday of composer Dominic Argento (in attendance) for which the Minnesota Star Tribune reported her to have given “the most effective performance of the evening.” In 2017 she co-founded the soprano/percussion duo Beat Song who will be featured in April 2023 with Celebrity Series.

Tengblad performs with the Lorelei Ensemble, Blue Heron, and the GRAMMY®-winning ensemble Conspirare and their national tours of Craig Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepard. Upcoming highlights include a national tour of Julia Wolfe’s Her Story with the Lorelei Ensemble (co-commissioned by Nashville Symphony, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Boston Symphony, and National Symphony orchestras), as well as co-curated climate-focused programs with Calliope’s Call, Boston’s premiere art song organization, and the Metropolitan Chorale.

In 2019, Tengblad founded Beyond Artists, a coalition of artists that pledge a portion of their concert fees to organizations they care about. With every performance she supports the Eden Reforestation Project, Singers Of This Age, and Braver Angels, an institution that cultivates effective bipartisan conversation. She is the founder and coordinator of Mothers Out Front East Boston and the producer of Marc Hoffeditz’ “Mr. Twister and the Tale of Tornado Alley,” a 2022–2023 touring children’s opera project promoting STEM concepts and climate change solutions to communities. She teaches at Wellesley College and Harvard University through the Holden Voice Program. A frequent performer with Coro Allegro, Tengblad was recently featured in Coro Allegro’s world premiere and GALA Choruses Festival performances of HERE I AM: I AM HERE by composer Andrea Clearfield.

https://www.sonjatengblad.com/
Photographer credit: ©Natalie Finazzo Fox

Jonathan Hess • Percussion

Praised for his “power and finesse” (Boston Classical Review) and “exacting milieus” (Boston Globe), percussionist Jonathan Hess performs throughout Greater Boston with the area’s premier ensembles, including the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, A Far Cry, Boston Baroque, Odyssey Opera, Aston Magna, Grand Harmonie, the Connecticut Early Music Festival, and Coro Allegro.

A founding member of both the Boston Percussion Group and the soprano-percussion duo BeatSong, Hess is a keen advocate for new music and an active participant in expanding the percussion repertoire through inventive new commissions and collaborations. In addition to his versatility and command as a performer, Hess is also a dedicated and passionate educator, currently teaching percussion at the College of the Holy Cross. Hess is a graduate of St. Olaf College and the Boston Conservatory.

Photographer credit: ©Agnieszka Rytych-Foster

Robert Schulz • Percussion

Percussionist Robert Schulz is widely regarded as one of the finest freelance percussionists working today, with an expertise extending across a broad range of musical styles, ensembles and instruments. He is principal percussionist for the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Musica Viva, Dinosaur Annex New Music Ensemble and “house drummer” for Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire, a unique ensemble built from that orchestra’s principal players. He has been with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) since its inception in 1996 and can be heard on over 45 commercially released recordings, including Tom McKinley’s R.A.P. from 2010. He serves as timpanist for several groups including Boston Baroque, Cantata Singers, and the newly formed Odyssey Opera. In addition to his work with Coro Allegro, he has performed with the Boston Symphony, Pops, and Ballet Orchestras numerous times. Schulz has been a guest soloist with both the Boston Chamber Music Society and the Boston Celebrity Series, performing on instruments ranging from dinner plates to African drums.

In 2004, Schulz received a GRAMMY® award nomination for Best Small Ensemble Performance on Yehudi Wyner’s The Mirror (Naxos) and gave the premier of Tan Dun’s Water Concerto with BMOP. He tours nationally and internationally with pipa virtuoso Wu Man and was the featured soloist for the 2006 CrossSound Festival in Juneau AK. In 2010 he recorded Kick and Ride, a concerto for drumset and orchestra, written for him by Eric Moe, released by BMOP Sound in 2011, with a performance described as “Stunning” by Fanfare Magazine. Recent releases include prominent roles on George Antheil’s Ballet Mechanique (xylophone), Anthony Davis’ Notes from the Underground (drum set), and composer Shih-Hui Chen’s Returnings (vibes/percussion). Soon-to-be released recordings featuring Schulz include Christopher Rouse’s Seeing, for piano and orchestra (timpani, Albany Symphony) and Gerald McBoing-Boing, by Gail Kubic (percussion soloist, BMOP).

Photographer credit: ©Paul Marotta