Dave Ragland

Dave Ragland is a four-time Emmy-nominated composer, conductor, vocalist, and educator based in Nashville, TN. Most recently, Ragland was named the First Place Winner of The Atlanta Opera’s 96-Hour Opera Composition Competition. He also received the 2022 Adams-Owens Composition Award by the African-American Art Song Alliance. Ragland has received the 2021 American Prize in Composition, two Telly Awards, and two Midsouth Regional EMMY nominations for his work as composer and audio engineer of Nashville Opera’s One Vote Won.

Ragland is currently collaborating with Damon Davis, Ted Hearne, Alarm Will Sound, and Inversion Vocal Ensemble on Davis’ concept opera Ligeia Mare.

Ragland collaborated with librettist Mary McCallum to create the children’s opera Charlie and the Wolf for the Cedar Rapids Opera, and the educational opera Beatrice for Oregon’s Portland Opera. Additional composition credits include LA Opera, Washington National Opera, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Ballet, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Intersection Contemporary Ensemble, chatterbird, and the Alias Chamber Ensemble. Ragland was the 2020 Grady-Rayam Negro Spirituals Foundation composer-in-residence and a member of the inaugural cohort of composers for the National Teachers of Singing (NATS) Mentoring Program. Ragland is a proud member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.

Carlos Simon

Carlos Simon is a multi-faceted and highly sought-after GRAMMY-nominated composer and curator. The current Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Simon's work spans genres, taking great inspiration from liturgical texts, prose, poetry, and art.

The 2023/24 season sees premiere performances with San Diego Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, The Washington Chorus, and LA Master Chorale, following recent other commissions from the likes of Minnesota Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera, and New York Philharmonic.

In September 2023, Simon released two albums on Decca. Together is a compilation of solo and chamber compositions and arrangements featuring Simon and guests such as J’Nai Bridges, Randall Goosby, Seth Parker Woods and Will Liverman. brea(d)th is a landmark work commissioned by Minnesota Orchestra and written in collaboration with Marc Bamuthi Joseph, which was written following George Floyd’s murder as a direct response to America’s unfulfilled promises and history of systemic oppression against Black Americans. His 2022 album, Requiem for the Enslaved, was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY Award.

“If Simon has inherited anything from his lineage, it appears to be a desire to build bridges between worlds, and use music to illuminate them.” -Washington Post

Jessie Nzinga Montgomery

Jessie Montgomery, Musical America's 2023 Composer of the Year, is a GRAMMY-nominated, acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator whose works are performed around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post), her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of twenty-first century American sound and experience. In July 2021, she began a three-year appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence.

Highlights of her 2022-2023 season include the world premieres of orchestral works for violinist Joshua Bell; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; a consortium led by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for New Music USA Amplifying Voices; a violin duo for CSO MusicNOW and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; and new settings of various works by choreographer Donald Byrd for Nashville Ballet.

Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation. She is currently visiting faculty at the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music, Bard College, and The New School, and has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization since 1999. Montgomery holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a doctoral candidate in music composition at Princeton University.

For more information visit www.jessiemontgomery.com

Shawn Okpebholo

Storytelling is at the core of composer Shawn E. Okpebholo's music, be it chamber, symphonic, or operatic works. A Grammy nominee, Okpebholo's compositions are regularly performed around the globe to widespread acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. The Washington Post has described his compositions as 'fresh and new and fearless,' as well as 'devastatingly beautiful,' while The Guardian has praised his music as 'lyrical, complex, and singular.' Okpebholo's artistry has earned him numerous accolades, including awards from The Academy of Arts and Letters, American Prize in Composition, Chamber Music America, and the Barlow Endowment for the Arts.

Collaborations with today's leading artists and ensembles, including Rhiannon Giddens, Lawrence Brownlee, J’Nai Bridges, Will Liverman, eighth blackbird, Copland House Ensemble, and the Chicago, Cincinnati, and Houston Symphony Orchestras, have led to performances in prestigious venues such as Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, the Lincoln, Kennedy, and Kimmel Centers, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as prominent music festivals, including Aspen, Ojai, Bowdoin, and the Oxford International Song Festival. Recently, Okpebholo completed a residency with the Chicago Opera Theater. Currently, he is Jonathan Blanchard Distinguished Professor of Composition at Wheaton College-Conservatory of Music and also serves as the Saykaly Garbulinska

Composer-in-Residence with the Lexington Philharmonic. To experience more of Okpebholo’s story, please visit shawnokpebholo.com.

Jasmine Arielle Barnes

Emmy award winning composer, Jasmine Arielle Barnes, is a Baltimore native, Dallas based composer. Her music has been described as “refreshing..,engaging...,exciting” by San Francisco Classical Voice, "Beautifully lyrical" by The Telegraph (UK), and “the best possible blend of Billie Holiday and Claude Debussy” by Boston Globe. Barnes is managed by UIA talent, a resident artist for Opera Theater of Saint Louis (2023/24), American Lyric Theater

(2021-23) , Chautauqua Opera (2021), and All Classical Portland (2021). She has been commissioned by numerous organizations such as NY Philharmonic and Juilliard Pre College, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, The Washington National Opera and The Kennedy Center, Aspen Music Festival and School, Apollo Chamber Players, Baltimore Choral Arts, CityMusic Cleveland, LyricFest Philadelphia, among others.

A steady rising composer, Barnes has written music for Lawrence Brownlee on album titled “Rising” and since, her art song “Peace” has been named a BMI favorite. Among other artists, she’s written for Will Liverman, Russell Thomas, Karen Slack, Leah Hawkins, and a host of other world class artists. A PBS documentary about her choral/orchestral song cycle titled “Portraits: Douglass and Tubman”, career, and relationship with Baltimore Choral Arts titled “Dreamer” earned her an Emmy in the 2023 Capital Emmy Awards. Barnes has had a busy year with premieres at Carnegie Hall, LA opera, and Chicago Symphony among others within 2023, yet she still awaits premieres with Opera Theater St. Louis of her opera “On My Mind”, NY Philharmonic partnered with Juilliard, and American Composers Forum, an orchestral workshop of her opera “She Who Dared”, and many other premieres in 2024.

Joel Thompson

Joel Thompson is an Atlanta-based composer, conductor, pianist, and educator, best known for the choral work, Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, which was premiered in November 2015 by the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club and Dr. Eugene Rogers and won the 2018 American Prize for Choral Composition. In August 2021 he premiered another new work in Boulder at the Colorado Music Festival; the piece sets the writings of James Baldwin to music.

Thompson’s works have been performed by esteemed ensembles such as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Master Chorale, Los Angeles Master Chorale, EXIGENCE, and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. Currently a doctoral student at the Yale School of Music, Thompson was also a 2017 post-graduate fellow in Arizona State University’s Ensemble Lab/Projecting All Voices Initiative and a composition fellow at the 2017 Aspen Music Festival and School, where he studied with composers Stephen Hartke and Christopher Theofanidis and won the 2017 Hermitage Prize.

Thompson taught at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School in Atlanta from 2015 to 2017, and also served as Director of Choral Studies and Assistant Professor of Music at Andrew College from 2013 to 2015. Thompson has a B.A. in Music and an M.M. in Choral Conducting, both from Emory University.

Damien Geter

Damien Geter is an acclaimed composer who infuses classical music with styles from the Black diaspora to create music that furthers the cause for social justice. His growing body of work includes chamber, vocal, orchestral, and full operatic works, with his compositions being praised for their “skillful vocal writing” (Wall Street Journal). He is Richmond Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence, Portland Opera Music Director, and Resonance Ensemble’s Artistic Advisor.

This season, Des Moines Metro Opera presents the full-length world premiere of American Apollo; Virginia Opera holds a workshop of Loving v. Virginia, co-commissioned by Virginia Opera and Richmond Symphony; Chicago Symphony Orchestra programs Annunciation; Richmond Symphony premieres a brand new work; and The Recording Inclusivity Initiative records String Quartet No. 1 “Neo-Soul”.

Last season, COTTON had its Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. premieres; Emmanuel Music performed his motet; Geter conducted his own piece, An African American Requiem (Fort Worth Opera); and led ABSENCE: Terence Blanchard (Portland Opera). In 2022 alone, he had six premieres: An African American Requiem (in partnership with Resonance Ensemble and Oregon Symphony); I Said What I Said for Imani Winds (Anima Mundi Productions, Chamber Music Northwest, and The Oregon Bach Festival co-commision); Holy Ground (Glimmerglass Opera); Elegy (American Guild of Organists); The Bronze Legacy (Chicago Symphony Orchestra); and American Apollo (chamber version for Des Moines Metro Opera). Geter is an alumnus of Austrian American Mozart Festival and Aspen Opera Center, was an Irma Cooper Vocal Competition finalist, and toured with American Spiritual Ensemble. He owns DG Music, Sans Fear Publishing. www.damiengetermusic.com.