San Francisco Choral Artists engages 3 SF Conservatory students as 2022-23 Composers-in-Residence

San Francisco, October 28, 2022 – San Francisco Choral Artists (SFCA), Magen Solomon, Artistic Director, has named SF Conservatory composers Clark Evans, Samuel C. Nedel, and José Daniel Vargas as Composers-in-Residence for the 2022-23 concert season. Each composer will write a commissioned piece that will be premiered on one of SFCA’s three concert sets taking place in December, March, and June.

SFCA’s Composer-in-Residence program was launched in 1999, in keeping with the choir’s mission to foster the careers of local composers and to encourage the creation of new choral music in general. Each season since then, the choir has engaged a single Bay Area composer for the role, which entails writing a commissioned piece to premiere on each of the season’s three concert programs. Prominent local composers like David Conte, Kirke Mechem, and Henry Mollicone are on the list of past participants.

This season’s inclusion of three student (and recent graduate) composers – a departure from the usual model – is part of SFCA’s ongoing effort to nurture the next generation of choral composers. In addition to the New Voices Project – an annual competition open to US-based composers under the age of 30, since 2010 the choir has been assisting the SF Conservatory’s bi-annual Choral Composition Competition – affording SFCM student composers the opportunity to hear professional-quality performances of their pieces, and to receive valuable practical feedback from Artistic Director Magen Solomon.

Solomon said, “The singers and I had a wonderful time preparing for the competition last spring, and working with the Conservatory’s talented composers. I thought our Composer-in-Residence program would offer three of them (it was a hard choice!) a further opportunity to write for choir, and to be heard by a broader audience.”

In 2010 SFCA added the Composer-Not-in-Residence program, open to composers outside the Bay Area. This season’s honor goes to Buffalo, NY–based Caroline Mallonee, whose works SFCA audiences have heard in past seasons. Each concert will also include commissioned premieres of her music.