The aim of this project is to fund five commissions of contemporary solo flute pieces. Commissioned composers include Yule Han, Zachary James Ritter, Elizabeth Gartman (co-commission with flutist Samantha White), Grace Ann Lee, and William Bolles-Beaven. These new works will be premiered at Tenri Cultural Institute in New York City by flutist Steph Dressler. The funds of this project will be used to fairly compensate each composer and performer, as well as cover the costs of renting the performance space.

The culmination of this project will be a public concert of premieres at Tenri Cultural Institute on November 8, 2024.

New York City-based flutist Steph Dressler is passionate about the music of our time. Her debut EP, Pieces of Me, features original poetry and blends contemporary flute sounds with ambient electronics to create an intimate reflection of her lived experiences. She has had the pleasure of performing new music across the U.S. in prestigious venues such as Lincoln Center and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and is a recent graduate of Manhattan School of Music where she was a flutist in the critically-praised contemporary ensemble Tactus. Performance highlights include eight summer concerts with the Atlantic Music Festival’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, and her European premiere with the oNSET Collective in Weimar, Germany. 

Steph is the newly appointed flute faculty at the Music Conservatory of Westchester. She is additionally on the flute faculty at Music in Chappaqua in upstate New York. In addition, she maintains a private flute studio in New York City and virtually via zoom. Her teaching philosophy is rooted in kindness, deep awareness, and self-compassion.

 

Steph is proudly from a small town in central Pennsylvania and currently resides in the Bronx, New York. 

Yule Han is a South Korean composer and performer based in New York City. Her artistic values lie in the texture and shape of sound, underlying frameworks, communication with the audience, beyond-music interpretation, and activism. She plans to expand her vision with electronics, sound installations, building instruments, and collaborative works with other fields of study. Her music has been heard in places including Berlin, Boston, Magdeburg, Michigan, North Carolina, New York, Toronto, and Weimar.

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Zachary James Ritter (he/they) is a composer who wants to work with you. Driven by making music with his friends and making friends with his music, Ritter strives to create works that resonate with his collaborators and audience through shared human experience. Zach's work incorporates the voice, electronics, and the quintessentially human aesthetics of failure. He is influenced most by electronica, minimalism, and traditional music of Ireland and America. Spare, raw musical landscapes invite calm, meditative listening experiences punctuated by layered textures with playfully unpredictable rhythms. He likes to make music people want to listen to, music made in sincerity.

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Ritter holds an MM in classical composition from Purchase Conservatory where he studied with Gregory Spears and Laura Kaminsky, and a BA in Music from Binghamton University where he studied composition with Daniel Thomas Davis, and voice with Professor Mary Burgess. He has written for ensembles including Ficino Ensemble, Quartetto Zuena, Choral Chameleon, The Cassatt Quartet, Fifth House Ensemble, Opera Elect, ModernMedieval, Contemporaneous, Momenta Quartet, and Yarn/Wire. He has also arranged works for Contemporaneous, Choral Chameleon, Present Music, Infrasound, and the Binghamton University Symphony Orchestra.

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His upcoming projects include a new work for Unheard-of Ensemble, a string quartet with electronics for Ficino Ensemble, and a large-scale commission for Contemporaneous and Choral Chameleon premiering in December of 2024.

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With compositions described as "refreshingly absurd" (The Washington Post) and "innovative" (Twin Cities Arts Reader), composer Elizabeth Gartman’s work explores vocalism, process in performance, and active listening. Elizabeth’s music has been commissioned by Washington National Opera, Beth Morrison Projects, New Chamber Ballet, Guerilla Opera, InfraSound Ensemble, Ensemble Chemie, the Why Collective, LIGAMENT Duo, and others. Recent accolades include selection as a composer with the American Opera Initiative (2023), Honorable Mention for the Darmstadt Ferienkurse Kranichsteiner Musikpreis (2023), William Schuman Prize for Most Outstanding Score with BMI Student Composer Awards (2021), and runner-up of Beth Morrison Projects’ Next Generation (2022).

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The music of composer Grace Ann Lee (b.1996) is based on everyday sounds, imageries, and experiences like raindrops, refracting light, and traffic jams, recreated into dynamic and emotive soundscapes. A recipient of 2023 ASCAP Morton Gould Award, Lee has recently been selected as a composition fellow for the 2024 at Tanglewood Music Center and has previously been the composition fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and Copland House’s CULTIVATE program. Her recent collaborators include the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Buffalo Chamber Players, Front Porch, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, among others. She holds commissions from New World Symphony, United States Air Force Heritage of America Band, and Michael Karsher’s Young New Yorkers’ Chorus. A graduate of Indiana University and Rice University, she is currently a Doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan.

William Bolles-Beaven is a composer and educator based in New York City. His thinking on music is strongly influenced by embodied cognition and memory. As such, composing processes and (un)varied repetitions interests him. Bolles-Beaven finds that composing and teaching reinforce each other; he attempts to pursue both from a position of curiosity, sincerity, and playfulness. 

Bolles-Beaven received his Bachelor of Music from Oberlin Conservatory and his Master of Music from Manhattan School of Music. In 2018, he was a fellow of the United States Teaching Assistant Program of the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF), which was administered by Fulbright Austria (Austrian-American Education Commission). William Bolles-Beaven currently teaches music theory and ear training at Manhattan School of Music’s Precollege division while pursuing his Ph.D. in composition at the CUNY Graduate Center. More information can be found at: williambollesbeaven.com