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Friday, October 29th, 2021 at 7:30 PM 
OPERA AMERICA 
MARC A. SCORCA HALL 
Our 1st Annual Emerging Composers Concert:
New Works, New Voices” 

Join Aural Compass Projects for New Works, New Voices: a concert featuring works by the five winners from our Emerging Composers Competition. This competition encouraged emerging composers to engage in and consider art songs in a culturally meaningful way.  Applicants were asked to compose music that would explore their values and social principles while highlighting underrepresented themes in the classical music industry. 

Sopranos Vanessa Becerra, Tracy Chang, Nia Drummond, Tracy Hsin-Mei Chang, and Rachel Mikol, along with pianist Michael Lewis, violinist Adrianne Munden-Dixon and guitarist Juan Calderon, will be performing works by our winners Juan Calderon, Steven Crino, Keaton Garrett, Marcus Norris, and Minato Sakamoto. Join us for an evening of heartfelt music-making! 
Juan Calderon: Six Songs for Soprano and Guitar | Emerging Composer Competition (2020) Winner
17:08

Juan Calderon: Six Songs for Soprano and Guitar | Emerging Composer Competition (2020) Winner

"I discovered Octavio Gamboa when I read his poem “El Paisaje” amidst other Colombian poets in a collection while I was living in Miami in 2006. I found his poetry very musical and suitable for singing. In 2014, guitarist Nilko Andreas asked me for a song for soprano and guitar, so I set the one poem I had to music. The project did not pan out but in December 2017 I had the opportunity to record the music I had written in Bogotá with local performers. As talk usually goes among musicians, the idea for a song cycle was brought up and I thought it was something worth pursuing. The writing process brought me to use various ideas for solo guitar I had shelved out over the past few years and to bring new ones which fit the character and imagery of a particular poem. Finding published books or manuscripts of his poems proved fruitless, even though there is a park named after him in my hometown. In the end, I found a website done by his family which contained some of his most popular poems along with helpful biographical notes. It turned out that he was a huge fan of classical music, especially Beethoven. In the end it seems we had a spiritual connection through art." - Juan Calderon, composer Performed at New Works, New Voices on October 29, 2021 at Opera America in NYC Aural Compass Projects Vanessa Becerra, soprano Juan Calderon, guitar 0:00 I. El Paisaje 2:39 II. Si tu me lo preguntas 5:26 III. Para vencer la soledad 8:42 IV. Futuro 10:45 V. Final 14:03 VI. Con el silencio estoy en harmonia
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