Join Third Angle New Music and Oregon Repertory Singers Youth Choir
Consortium Opportunity for youth choir + Pierrot ensemble
New work by composers Iman Habibi, Kirsten Volness, & Michael-Thomas Foumai
Third Angle New Music and the Oregon Repertory Singers Youth Choir are leading the consortium for a new work composed for the following instrumentation:
SATB choir
flute (1 player)
clarinet (1 player)
violin (1 player)
cello (1 player)
piano (1 player)
percussion (1 player)
The work will be a co-composition from composers Iman Habibi, Kirsten Volness, & Michael-Thomas Foumai with text sourced from poetry by youth choir members on the impact of wildfires. To be contacted with more information, please fill out the form linked below.
About the Composers
Iman Habibi
Iman Habibi, D.M.A. (Michigan), is an Iranian-Canadian composer and pianist, and a founding member of the piano duo ensemble, Piano Pinnacle.
Hailed as “a giant in talent” (the Penticton Herald), "whose technical mastery is matched by his musical and cultural literacy" (Hudson-Housatonic Arts), Dr. Habibi has been commissioned by The Boston Symphony, The Philadelphia, and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, The Orchestra of St. Luke's and The Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and has been programmed by The Carnegie Hall, The Tanglewood Music Festival, and The Canadian Opera Company, among others.
His Shāhīn-nāmeh is nominated for the 2024 JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year. He is a 2022 laureate of the Azrieli Music Prizes, and has received multiple SOCAN Foundation Awards and the Brehm Prize in Choral Music (2016), among numerous others.
Kirsten Volness
Internationally recognized composer Kirsten Volness (she/her) creates sublimely intimate and emotive soundscapes that inspire immersive listening. Through the refined use of electronics and modern composition techniques overlaid with jazz and pop influences, Volness’s music is both groovy and graceful, “irresistible” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “nothing short of gorgeous.” (New York Arts). Each of her compositions reveals “an exquisite sound world” (New Classic LA) with disparate, suggestive musical elements and idioms woven together to create sonic atmospheres that hold listeners in beauty and fascination. Inspired by nature, myth, spirituality, and environmental and sociopolitical issues, Volness’s music is smart, relevant, timeless, and transcendent.
MICHAEL-THOMAS FOUMAI
Dr. Michael-Thomas Foumai (b. 1987, Honolulu, Hawai'i) is the Director of Artistic Engagement and the first Composer in Residence for the Hawai'i Symphony Orchestra (HSO). His music, described as "vibrant and cinematic" (New York Times) and "full of color, drama, and emotion" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), encompasses an extensive catalog of symphonic music, spanning commercial arranging to the avant-garde, and focuses on the culture of his Hawaiʻi home.
Dr. Foumai's orchestral works have been conducted and performed by Yannick Nézet-Séguin with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Lidiya Yankovskaya with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Lina Gonzalez-Granados with the National Symphony Orchestra, Sarah Hicks and the Seattle Symphony, George Manahan with the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Osmo Vänskä with the Minnesota Orchestra, and with Dane Lam, Mei-Ann Chen, JoAnn Falleta, Hans Graf, Earl Lee, Rei Hotoda, Anthony Parnther, Andrew Grams, and Scott Yoo with the Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra.
His honors include a Fromm Foundation Grant from Harvard University, the MTNA Distinguished Composer of the Year Award, the Jacob Druckman Prize from the Aspen Music Festival, and three BMI composer awards. Dr. Foumai is currently on faculty at the University of Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu and holds multiple degrees in music composition from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa (BM) and the University of Michigan (MM, DMA).
