Freida Abtan • 2024-2026
Freida Abtan is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist, composer, and performer. She works between fixed media and computational technologies for concert diffusion, installation, and large-scale multimedia production. Her interests revolve around intersensory composition, phenomenology, and the cultivation of wonder. She holds degrees in Mathematics, Fine Art, and Music Composition, and completed her PhD in Computer Music and Multimedia from Brown University in 2013. She is currently an Associate Professor of Electronic Music Composition at Carnegie Mellon University where she also teaches audiovisual composition. Previously, taught at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Abtan’s music has been compared to bands such as Coil, and Zoviet France, because of her use of spectral manipulation and collage. Her unique sound is heavily influenced by acousmatic composition and other experimental audio: “Abtan’s sounds are magical and transportive; their vivid fidelity and unequivocal crispness weave particular narratives with no small degree of confidence”. She has produced two solo albums and collaborated on many others: Subtle Movements (2008 United/Jnana), and the self-released CD/DVD The Hands of the Dancer / The Temple of the Dreamer (2010). Her audiovisual work has been described as “utterly mesmerizing, utilizing a visual language that perfectly captured the dream-like instability of the work’s underlying theme, exploring the logic of dream narrative”.
As well as having created visual shows for and performed with the cult group Nurse with Wound, Abtan has presented her own music and audiovisual work at venues across North America and Europe. Festivals in which her work or performances have been featured include the: Mutek Festival of Electronic Music and Digital Arts, Cap Sembrat Festival, HTMlles Festival, FlatPack Film Festival, and Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts. Abtan has completed residencies and commissions from The Seattle Symphony, New Adventures in Sound Art, and SHARE Sweden. Her most recent commission My Heart is a River positions acclaimed cellist Seth Parker Woods in an immersive media composition in which audiovisual motion shares focus with his live performance.
Amy X Neuburg • 2023-2025
What Place is This? (2024) written for the PWC
To be premiered at the Break Open to Beauty concert on May 2, 2025 in Palo Alto, CA.
Amy X Neuburg has been developing her own brand of irreverently genre-crossing works for voice, live electronics and chamber ensembles for 40+ years, known for her innovative use of live looping technology with electronic percussion, her 4-octave vocal range and her colorful — often humorous — lyrics. One of the earliest performers to work with live digital looping, Amy has presented her “avant-cabaret” songs at such diverse venues as the Other Minds and Bang on a Can new music festivals, the Berlin International Poetry Festival, the Wellington and Christchurch Jazz Festivals (New Zealand), the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, electronic music festivals, colleges, rock clubs and concert halls throughout the U.S. and abroad.
As composer, commissions for voices and ensembles — often with electronics — include Paul Dresher ensemble, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Robin Cox Ensemble, Present Music, Solstice vocal ensemble, Pacific Mozart chorus, and Del Sol String Quartet. Her acclaimed song cycle The Secret Language of Subways for voice, cello trio and electronics has played at Yerba Buena Center, the San Francisco Symphony After Hours, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Left Coast Festival. She has also composed extensively for theater, visual media and modern dance. Her recent works focus on voice-based audio experiences for multi-channel surround systems and include Entitled for the 140-speaker Cube theater at Virginia Tech.
A classically trained vocalist, Amy has been featured in contemporary operas and recordings including works by Robert Ashley, Culture Clash and Guillermo Galindo. Amy received degrees in linguistics and voice from Oberlin College and Conservatory and an MFA in electronic music from Mills College. Recognitions include the Alpert/Ucross prize, Phi Bets Kappa and Pi Kappa Lambda honors, and grants from Arts International, the Gerbode Foundation, Meet the Composer, The U.S. Embassy New Zealand, Intermusic SF, and others.
Theresa Wong • 2022-2024
Night into Dawn (2024) written for the PWC; dedicated to the community of Lahaina and the singers of the PWC – that we may help each other to heal.
Premiered at PWC Collaborates • Puccini and Wong concert on May 4, 2024 in Santa Clara, CA.
Stay side by side
This night is long
Hold a light
‘Till morning dawns
Theresa Wong is a composer, cellist, and vocalist actively exploring the intersection of music, creative experimentation, and the synergy of multiple disciplines. A second generation Chinese American raised in upstate New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, Wong studied classical piano and cello from an early age. Her interests expanded into design, leading her to Stanford University’s product design program, as well as the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and Fabrica, an experimental research center in Northern Italy. While living in Venice, Wong realized her vision to unite music with the inquisitive process of design, with the primary intention of finding transformation through performance. Upon returning to the United States, she completed an MFA at Mills College where her teachers included Fred Frith, Joan Jeanrenaud, Joëlle Léandre, Annie Gosfield, Alvin Curran and June Watanabe.
Embracing multiplicity, Wong’s artistic practice follows inquiries into song forms, improvisation, just intonation, and intermedia performance. Her works include In Stillness I Sing, commissioned by San Francisco Girls Chorus, As We Breathe, an installed song commissioned by Long Beach Opera for the 2020 Songbook, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill for The Future Is Female project, and Harbors, co-composed with Long String Instrument inventor Ellen Fullman and chosen as one of Wire’s top 50 releases of 2020. In 2022, Wong was the inaugural Sound/scapes artist at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, creating three site-specific performances inspired by artworks in the museum’s collection. Her multimedia piece The Unlearning (Tzadik), 21 songs inspired by Goya’s Disasters of War etchings, premiered in 2013 at Roulette in Brooklyn with visual projections by Daria Martin and Mao Mollona and was also featured in the 2016 New Frequencies Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. O Sleep, an improvised opera for an 8 piece ensemble exploring the conundrum of sleep and dream life, was presented at Southern Exposure in San Francisco in 2010. Recent commissions include works for NakedEye Ensemble, Jeff Anderle’s San Francisco Conservatory Clarinet Studio, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, Splinter Reeds, Vajra Voices, and Del Sol Quartet.
In 2018, Wong founded fo’c’sle, a record label dedicated to adventurous music from the Bay Area and beyond, featuring inaugural releases by Ellen Fullman with David Gamper and Stuart Dempster, Chris Brown, powerdove, and Lijiang Quintet. She has shared her work internationally at venues including Cafe Oto and the Barbican Centre in London, Festival de Arte y Ópera Contemporánea in Morelia, Mexico, Fondation Cartier in Paris, Fabbrica Europa Festival in Florence, Sydney Festival, MONA FOMA Festival in lutrovita (Tasmania), and The Stone in New York City. Wong is a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow and currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Julie Herndon • 2021-2023
Mouth (2022) written for the PWC
Premiered at the 10th New Music for Treble Voices Festival on March 11, 2023 in Palo Alto, CA.
A sound as it leaves the mouth… This piece explores the idea that our words have lives of their own with which we may only intersect for a time. These intersections may alter the course and meaning of their life, in addition to changing our own. The metaphor of motherhood calls into question notions of ownership or authorship of these ephemeral, creative things. — Julie Herndon
When I came out
Of my mother’s mouth,
To anyone she knew,
I was only you.
She would look me in the eye
and use my name in her hair,
My name everywhere,
My name anywhere.
When I came out of
my mother’s gut,
to everyone we knew
We were only used.
I was only you/using time
She would look them in the eye
and use my name in her hair,
My name everywhere,
My name anywhere.
I forgot where I was going,
but I know more than I am showing.
Julie Herndon is a composer, performer, and sound artist based in California. Her work explores the body’s relationship to sound using tools like musical instruments and personal technologies.
Her work has been described as “truly brilliant and utterly affected” (Kulturpunkt), “blended to inhabit a surprisingly expressive space” (SFCV), and “like a signal from another world” (Tages-Anzeiger). Her compositions and installations have been presented at MATA Festival and National Sawdust in New York, Artistry Space in Singapore, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca (MACO) in Mexico, Music Biennale Zagreb (MBZ), Sogar Theater in Zurich, and by Forest Collective in Australia. Recent collaborations include the Decoder Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Kukuruz Quartet.
Julie is the recipient of the Elisabeth Crothers Award for Music Composition, American Composers Forum Bay Area Residency, and Georges Lurcy Fellowship. As an artist in residence, she has collaborated with institutions such as the Cité Internationale des Arts, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Center for Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at Berkeley, and Djerassi Artist Residency Program. She is currently composer in residence with the Peninsula Women’s Chorus and a curator at the San Francisco Center for New Music.
Beginning in the fall of 2022, Julie will be Assistant Professor of Music Technology and Composition at California Polytechnic State University. Previously, she has taught composition and electronic music production at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford. She holds a DMA from Stanford University, MA in Music Composition from Mills College, and BA from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her writing, Embodied Composition: Composing the Body with Sound, can be found in Leonardo with MIT Press.