About the Show
This show is part of Hildegard Month at National Sawdust, held throughout June to celebrate the essential contributions of women to music both past and present.
The composers of the all-woman Luna Lab music collective will have world premieres on June 6th, performed by the outstanding Face the Music ensemble. The concert will also include music by established female composers, Luna Lab mentors and special guests.
Music will include selections from the Luna Lab fellows: Caroline Bragg, Maya Johnson, Helen Lyons, Katie Palka and Aliya Salmanov.
About Luna Composition Lab
Luna Composition Lab is a program that provides mentorship, performances and networking opportunities to female composers ages 13-19. Luna Composition Lab was founded in 2016 by composers Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid in collaboration with Face the Music at the Kaufman Center, and in its inaugural season garnered attention from the New York Times, Musical America, The New Yorker, Huffington Post and NY1 News. Luna Composition Lab aims to help close the gender gap in the classical music field by providing participants with one-on-one mentorship with established female composers, performance opportunities in New York City, high-quality recordings, and instant access to a network of like-minded peers and professionals.
Luna Lab Mentors include Ellen Reid, Reena Esmail, Kristin Kuster, Tamar Muskal, and Gity Razaz.
Luna Lab Partners include New Amsterdam Records, National Sawdust, New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program, and Contemporaneous Ensemble
Luna Lab Supporters include The BMI Foundation, The Cheswatyr Foundation, The Patrina Foundation, New York Community Trust, the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, and the Witherspoon Fund. Maya Johnson is the recipient of the Griselda Villanueva Fellowship. Caroline Bragg is The Patrina Foundation Fellow.
About the Fellows
Caroline Bragg
Caroline Bragg (age 15) studies composition with Alla Cohen, and she is honored to be a 2017-18 Luna Composition Lab Fellow. She is the 2017 first place winner of the High School Division of the Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers and the 2016 first place winner of the Junior Division. She has twice been named an Emerging Composer from Tribeca New Music, and is a two-time finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Competition. She also plays cello with the Boston Youth Symphony. Caroline Bragg is The Patrina Foundation Fellow.
Maya Miro Johnson
Maya Miro Johnson (age 16) is an aspiring conductor-composer from Salt Lake City. Her first artistic infatuation was dance; however, injuries at 14 allowed her time to explore a deeper love: music. She was an Apprentice Conductor in NYO-USA 2017, where her teachers included Marin Alsop and James Ross. She is deeply appreciative of composition mentor Devin Maxwell and opportunities provided by Utah Young Composers Project. She studies with Conner Covington (conducting), Yuki MacQueen (violin), and rotates as concertmaster of Utah Youth Orchestra. She is also an award-winning poet. Interests are the communicative dichotomies of semantics/phonetics, silence/sound, and extended techniques/timbre. Inspirations include Boulanger, Crumb, Furrer, Messiaen, Oliveros, Pintscher, Sciarrino. Maya Johnson is the recipient of the Griselda Villanueva Fellowship.
Helen Lyons
A 14-year-old freshman at Hunter College High School, Helen Lyons had her first composition performed by an ensemble at her elementary school when she was nine years old, and was a Finalist for the ASCAP awards for another composition she wrote that year, Waves. Since then, Helen has composed multiple orchestral and jazz pieces, including Summertime Laughter, performed at Hunter’s 2016 Junior Jazz Ensemble Spring Concert; Midnight Traveler, a piano trio performed at the 2016 Arts Day concert; and Sea Storm, performed at the 2017 Junior Orchestra Spring Concert. Helen studies composition with Kyle Blaha, plays violin in her school orchestra and played piano in the jazz band.
Katie Palka
Katie Palka (age 16) is a composer, violinist, violist, and writer. Katie has participated in Portland, OR-based fEARnoMUSIC’s Young Composers Project for three years. In 2016, she was selected for the Eugene Symphony’s Ode to the Future project, where she worked with four other young composers to write a piece the Eugene Symphony premiered. Last summer, Katie participated in a masterclass with David Lang. She attended Kinhaven Music School’s summer program, where she conducted one of her pieces at the composers concert. This year, Katie was commissioned by the Metropolitan Youth Symphony to write a piece which will be premiered in March.
Aliya Salmanov
Born in 2001 in the United States, Aliya Salmanov (age 16) is a young pianist and composer living in Houston, Texas. She began taking music lessons at the age of 8 but started pursuing music professionally in 2013, after enrolling in an arts high school in Baku, Azerbaijan. As a pianist, Aliya has participated in many music festivals and has won several awards and certificates. Recently, she became interested in composition and decided to have a career as a composer. Aliya especially loves the theater and dreams of writing contemporary theater music in the near future.
