Album Release Party

From ballet to opera to Korean traditional-orchestra, the wide-ranging talent of composer Nicky Sohn is sought after across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Characterized by her jazz-inspired, rhythmically driven themes, Sohn’s work has received praise from international press for being “dynamic and full of vitality” (The Korea Defense Daily), having “colorful orchestration” (NewsBrite), and for its “elegant wonder” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), among many others. As a result, Sohn has enjoyed commissions and performances from the world’s preeminent performing arts institutions, including Stuttgart Ballet, National Orchestra of Korea, St. Louis Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra, Aspen Philharmonic, and New York City Ballet. 

While Sohn has a lengthy repertoire of solo, chamber, and orchestral work, her current speciality lies within theatrical music, such as ballet and opera. As Sohn herself puts it, “I’m obsessed with the collaborative aspects of it—working with choreographers, for example. Hearing my own work melding with someone else’s imagination is incredibly fulfilling.” This includes a commission from the National Theater of Korea, in which Sohn composed a lengthy work for Korean traditional instrumentation and appeared on national television. After receiving numerous accolades, the complete work continues to be televised on Arte TV’s Korean network.

Recent highlights consist of commissions, premieres and performances by St. Louis Symphony, Annapolis Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, National Orchestral Institute and Festival, violinist Lucia Lin (Boston Symphony) and Gloria Chien (The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center), TMTA (Texas Music Teachers Association), the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Moody Center, Carpe Diem String Quartet, and Atlanta Chamber Players. Prior to this year, her music has been featured at renowned music festivals including the Aspen Music Festival, Perlman Music Program, Les Ecoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau, Ars Nova with Unsuk Chin and the Seoul Philharmonic, and Chelsea Music Festival with Ken-David Masur, among others.

In listening to Nicky Sohn’s music, you may hear influences from jazz greats such as Chet Baker, Bill Evans, and Antônio Carlos Jobim, as well as the living composers Michael Torke, David Del Tredici, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. “Much of their music,” Sohn says, “is characterized not just by major and minor triads at their foundation, but also a very organic way of generating rhythmic patterns—you get a natural sense of forward motion that’s also harmonically compelling.”

Sohn is also one of the co-founders of Sounding Board: The New Music Initiative for Guitarists and Composers along with the world-renowned guitarist Bokyung Byun. The project focuses on promoting collaborative relationships between composers and performers to create new works for guitar, and its inaugural festival in Besançon, France in 2019 has been praised as “extraordinary, in the strict sense of the word,” by La Presse de Gray in France. For the 2020 season, Sounding Board has commissioned 15 composers for their project called "Catharsis" inspired by the Guitar Foundation of America's #Tearsfor2020 movement.

Nicky Sohn is currently pursuing a fully-funded doctoral degree at the The Shepherd School of Music of Rice University and holds a Master of Music Diploma from The Juilliard School. Her early years are marked by a voracious eagerness to learn: Already a student of piano at the age of two, she began seriously studying composition at the age of seven. At fourteen, Sohn completed her high school diploma, and would go on to receive both a Bachelor of Music degree and a Diploma of Piano Performance from the Mannes College of Music. She is grateful to her pedagogues, which include Anthony Brandt, Anna Clyne, Chris Theofanidis, and Richard Danielpour.

After a youth filled with drum set, orchestral percussion, and songwriting, composer Daniel Temkin has become known for crafting works filled with rich detail and visceral beauty.

Daniel has been Composer-in-Residence with Music from Angel Fire (New Mexico), Chamber Music Northwest (Portland), Chamber Music by the Bay (San Francisco), and the Intimacy of Creativity Festival (Hong Kong).  He has received grants and fellowships from New Music USA, the American Composers Forum, Amphion Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, Earshot, the Theodore Presser Foundation, and others, as well as numerous awards, including the Indianapolis Symphony's Marilyn K. Glick Prize, two BMI Composer Awards, and Honorable Mention as MTNA's Distinguished Composer of the Year.

Daniel's orchestra music has been widely performed.  In 2016, MacArthur Fellow Bright Sheng conducted Rising Moon with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and Cataclysm was performed by Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the Indianapolis Symphony, after previous performances with the USC Symphony and the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic in Russia.  Daniel's piece Chasm was performed by the Curtis Symphony and subsequently selected by Robert Spano for a performance at the inaugural Aspen Composers Showcase.  Meanwhile, his earlier works Regenerations and Rolling River were read by the Nashville Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Rutgers, NEC, and Brevard Orchestras.

Daniel has also collaborated with leading chamber groups, including PRISM Quartet, Mirror Visions Ensemble, members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center & CMS II, and many musicians from Ensemble Connect, Astral Artists, and Young Concert Artists.  Daniel has also worked with emerging new music groups around the U.S. including Kinetic Ensemble (Houston), Zafa Collective (Chicago), Agarita (San Antonio), and the Exponential Ensemble (NYC).  His music has been featured American Public Media's "Performance Today" with Fred Child, PBS Philadelphia's "WHYY" series, and many other outlets.  Daniel can also be heard as a composer, percussionist, and conductor on recordings of the Naxos, Albany, and Navona labels.

Directing the presenting series DTM Concerts, Daniel has worked for over a decade to curate and champion contemporary music with many groups.  In 2020, Duo ING performs the "Refractions" project at the Yellow Barn Festival and the Tenri Cultural Center in New York, and in 2019, the acclaimed Aizuri Quartet gave a five-city tour of the "Intricate Machines" program, with both projects extensively featuring recent works by living composers.  Previously, Daniel served as Assistant Director and Percussionist with Thornton EDGE sinfonietta (2014-16), Acting Artistic Director of the Melos Music collective (2010-12), and Assistant Director of the Aspen Percussion Ensemble (2007), organizing many premieres, recordings, and tours with these groups.

Daniel earned degrees in Percussion and Composition from Rutgers (BM), NEC (MM), Curtis (AD), and USC (DMA).  He received composition fellowships from the Aspen, Fontainebleau, and Brevard festivals, and also spent two additional summers at Aspen as a percussionist.  He has previously taught as a Lecturer or Graduate Assistant at each of his major educational institutions, and at the Walden Festival in New Hampshire.  In 2019, Daniel joined Bucknell University in Pennsylvania as an Assistant Professor of Music.