2023-2024 Review Panel

An American whose music has been characterized by "propulsive, syncopated rhythms, colorful orchestration, and instrumental virtuosity," (Robert Kirzinger, Boston Symphony) Composer Kevin Day has quickly emerged as one of the leading young voices in the world of music composition today, whose music ranges from powerful introspection to joyous exuberance. Kevin Day is an internationally acclaimed composer, conductor, and pianist, whose music often intersects between the worlds of jazz, minimalism, Latin music, fusion, and contemporary classical idioms.

A winner of the BMI Student Composer Award, a three-time finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and considered for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for his Concerto for Wind Ensemble. Day has composed over 200 works, and has had numerous performances throughout the United States, Russia, Austria, Australia, Taiwan, South Africa, and Japan. His works have been programmed by the symphonies of Boston, San Francisco, Detroit, Indianapolis, Houston, and more, as well as several top professional and collegiate wind ensembles. His works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Rachmaninov Hall (Russia), The Midwest Clinic, other major venues.

Day has collaborated with the likes of David Childs, Nicki Roman, James Markey, Wendy Richman, Jens Lindemann, Demondrae Thurman, Hiram Diaz, Steven Cohen, Jeremy Lewis, and more on works for their respective instruments, as well as chamber ensembles like One Found Sound, Axiom Brass, Ensemble Dal Niente, The Sheffield Chamber Players, The Puerto Rican Trombone Ensemble, The Zenith Saxophone Quartet, The Tesla Quartet, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra Low Brass Section.

Day is currently Assistant Professor of Composition and Director of Jazz at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He is finishing his DMA in Composition from the University of Miami Frost School of Music, where he studies with Charles Norman Mason, Dorothy Hindman, and Lansing McCloskey. He holds a MM in Composition from the University of Georgia, and BM in Performance from Texas Christian University (TCU).

Marti Epstein is a Boston-based composer whose music has been performed by the San Francisco Symphony, The Radio Symphony Orchestra of Frankfurt, Ensemble Modern, Trinity Wall Street, and the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, She has completed commissions for the Fromm Foundation, The Munich Biennale, the Ludovico Ensemble, Guerilla Opera, the Radius Ensemble, Tanglewood Music Center, Winsor Music, Boston Opera Collaborative, Callithumpian Consort, Hinge, loadbang, and Collage New Music.

Marti was a two-time fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center (1986 and 1988) and a three-time fellow at the MacDowell Colony (1998, 1999, 2022). In 2020, Marti was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to compose Seven Sisters, Radiant Sisters for the Hinge Ensemble, Alpenglow for loadbang, and In Praise of Broken Clocks for soundicon. Nebraska Impromptu , an album of Marti’s chamber music for clarinet, was just released this past April on New Focus Recordings and features clarinetist Rane Moore and members of WInsor Music. Marti is Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music/Boston Conservatory of Music.

Amy Williams is a composer of music that is “simultaneously demanding, rewarding and fascinating” (Buffalo News), “fresh, daring and incisive” (Fanfare). Her compositions have been presented at renowned contemporary music venues in the United States, Australia, Asia and Europe by leading contemporary music soloists and ensembles, including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Bent Frequency, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Wet Ink, Talujon, International Contemporary Ensemble, Junction Trio. Orpheus, pianist Ursula Oppens, soprano Tony Arnold and bassist Robert Black. Her pieces appear on the Albany, Parma, VDM (Italy), Blue Griffin, Centaur and New Ariel labels. As a member of the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo, Ms. Williams has performed throughout Europe and the Americas and recorded six critically-acclaimed CDs for Wergo (works of Nancarrow, Stravinsky, Varèse/Feldman and Kurtág), as well as appearing on the Neos and Albany labels. Ms. Williams has been awarded a Howard Foundation Fellowship, Fromm Music Foundation Commission, Guggenheim Fellowship, Koussevitsky Music Foundation Commission, Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Scholars Fellowship to Ireland (2017-2018) and a MacDowell fellow (2022). Ms. Williams holds a Ph.D. in composition from the University at Buffalo, where she also received her Master's degree in piano performance. She has taught at Bennington College and Northwestern University and is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Pittsburgh. She is Artistic Director of the New Music On The Point Festival in Vermont. 
www.amywilliamsmusic.com