Creating with Text and Music

Join in for a unique discussion and workshop as three composers share thoughts and insights from their own practices on creating with text and music. This interactive event will also include live, in-the-moment composing of vocal music, as the composers set crowd-sourced poetry from the audience to music (and possible surprise guest vocalists in a unique pop-up performance).

Amy Gordon is a composer, arranger, singer-songwriter, and vocalist in Los Angeles, CA. She is the composer-in-residence for Nova Vocal Ensemble. Her numerous commissions include The Los Angeles Belles, Graham Middle School Vocal Ensemble, and the South Bay Chamber Singers, among others. Her music has been described as melodic and accessible, yet with surprising harmonic twists. She has been influenced by the music of Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Steve Reich. Amy loves setting text to music and bringing out shades of meaning.

In addition to composing in the classical and choral music tradition, she is also an active media composer and singer-songwriter. Her song “One Door Opens” was named as a finalist in the International SongDoor Songwriting competition.

She is an active educator and teaches Music Theory, Songwriting, and Music Education at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, CA. She received her MM in Composition from CSU Long Beach and her BA in Composition from Loyola Marymount University.

Christian Guebert is an award-winning composer and music educator from Orange, California. As the most recent winner of the prestigious nation-wide composition competition from Pacific Chorale, Christian’s piece, “The Untold Want,” was performed in 2017 by the John Alexander Singers. His music aims for immediacy, idiomatic performing style, and sonic variance and depth. The liveliness and spirited nature of much of his music comes from his roots as a percussionist. His recent major project Voyaging, is a choral song cycle of Walt Whitman’s sea poetry, which incorporates harp and handbells to form the instrumental soundscape of the expansive choral work.

He composes in all sound media, focusing on choir, handbells, wind band, orchestra, and chamber ensembles. He holds an MM in Composition from CSUF, a Parish Music Certification, and a BA from Concordia, Irvine. He is currently a PhD student in composition at UCLA.

Christian serves as Music Director at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Orange and as an Adjunct Professor at Concordia University, where he was Composer-in-Residence from 2013-2014. He also has served as a director and clinician of massed handbell choirs and adjudicator at the Young Ringers Festival, 2016-2018. Recent publications include his handbell piece, Glad Adoration, and an orchestration of Peter Anglea’s Silent Night.

Steven Homestead is an artist, composer, curator, and thinker. His heart for collaboration and visionary leadership have led to involvement with numerous organizations and creative outlets, including his current position as President of the American Composers Forum of Los Angeles (ACF-LA). Across multiple disciplines, Steven is passionate about giving honor, empowering voice, sharing wonder, and developing unity.

Steven’s music is characterized by strong melodies, harmonic stasis, motivic repetition, counterpoint, humor, and nostalgia. His largest work, Recursive Mass (for choir, piano, and percussion) draws inspiration from fractal geometry, M. C. Escher’s use of positive and negative space, the counterpoint of J. S. Bach, and ideas centered on cognitive science found in the writings of Douglas Hofstadter. In addition to choral music, his catalogue includes vocal, piano, and chamber music.

With a strong background in composition and voice, Steven sits on the board of directors for the Choral Arts Initiative, Southern California’s premier new music choir. In the visual arts, Steven’s creative output includes large-scale interactive installations, paintings, sketches, and photographs. He is a writer, essayist, and also serves as Editor-in-Chief for poet José Lozano.

Steven received his BA in Music from UCLA, graduating as the Chancellor’s Marshall of Music. His MM in Composition-Theory comes from CSUF, where he was Assistant to the Director for the New Music Festival.

Visit our sites to listen to our music and stay up-to-date on our projects.

amygordonmusic.com

christianguebert.com

stevenhomestead.com