Conference Morsel: Hottest New Composers

(An excerpt from the interest session “Thirty-Something: New Choral Music from Today’s Hottest Young Composers,” presented by Dominick DiOrio during the 2015 ACDA National Conference.)

 

       New choral music is flowing in many directions these days, with composers borrowing influences from popular music, early music, and folk traditions. This is in no way more clear than in Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize-winning score Partita for 8 voices — a monumental work that was created over four years while Caroline was singing with the octet Roomful of Teeth and Brad Wells. The Passacaglia from Partita exemplifies all of these things: the influences of the Baroque suite (and Caroline’s experience as a violinist playing in string quartets); the colors and inflections of indigenous vocal cultures; and the flexibility and unrestrained vocalism of popular music.

       These trends can be seen in the works of other young composers too. Ted Hearne’s rhythmic pulsation and forward motion in his Mass for St. Mary’s remind us of rock music, while Jocelyn Hagen’s soft blink of amber light washes over us in waves of contemporary color. The music of Michael Gilbertson and Zachary Wadsworth borrows influence from Dowland and Byrd respectively, while my work O Virtus Sapientiae actively quotes a chant of Hildegard, set against original music of my own design.

       Vocal music is moving in many directions, and the definition of a “chorus” is no longer quite as fixed as it once was. The new repertoire by these composers–and so many others–is launching us into a new era of choral composition, where the 24-voice professional chamber chorus is the ensemble par excellence by which all others will be measured.

 

(Make plans now to attend your 2016 ACDA Divisional Conference!)