Shawn Okpebholo, Guest Composer Fall 2024
GRAMMY®-nominated for his latest solo album "Lord, How Come Me Here?"—a collection of reimagined Negro spirituals—and named one of the 2023 Musical America Top 30 Professionals of the Year, Nigerian-American composer Shawn E. Okpebholo's music resonates globally, earning widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike. The press has described his music as "devastatingly beautiful" and "fresh and new and fearless" (Washington Post), "affecting" (New York Times), "lyrical, complex, singular" (The Guardian), "searing" (Chicago Tribune), "dreamy, sensual" (Boston Globe), and "powerful" (BBC Music Magazine). Okpebholo has garnered numerous accolades, including awards from The Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Prize in Composition, the Music Publishers Association, ASCAP, and was awarded the Inaugural honoree of the Leslie Adams-Robert Owens Composition Award.
Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, Barlow Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Tangeman Sacred Music Center, The Mellon Foundation, Wheaton College, and many others have supported the work of Okpebholo. Some notable commissions include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, United States Air Force Strings, Copland House Ensemble, Tanglewood, Aspen, and Newport Classical Music Festivals, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Imani Winds, Sparks and Wiry Cries, Urban Arias, and the Kennedy Center. His art songs have been presented in concert by the Chicago Lyric Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Portland Opera, and Des Moines Metro Opera. His chamber music has been performed by eighth blackbird, Copland House Ensemble, Picosa, Fifth House Ensemble, Lincoln Trio, and others. Orchestras including the Chicago, Cincinnati, and Houston Symphonies and the Lexington Philharmonic have featured his music. Okpebholo has also collaborated with renowned solo artists including vocalists J'Nai Bridges, Lawrence Brownlee, Rhiannon Giddens, Will Liverman, Michael Michael Mayes, Ryan McKinney, and Tamera Wilson; pianists Aldo-López Gavilán, Mark Markham, Paul Sánchez, and Howard Watkins; and instrumentalists including Rachel Barton Pine, Steven Mead, and Adam Walker. His extensive artistic reach has led to regular performances at prestigious venues like Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, Lincoln, Kennedy, and Kimmel Centers, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
PBS NewsHour and radio broadcasts across the country, including NPR's All Things Considered, NPR's Morning Edition, SiriusXM's "Living American" series on Symphony Hall Channel, and Chicago's WFMT have highlighted Okpebholo's music. NPR selected his art song "The Rain" as one of the 100 Best Songs of 2021, with only a handful of classical works making the ranking. His compositions are featured on twelve commercially released albums, three of which are GRAMMY®-nominated.
As a pedagogue, Okpebholo has conducted masterclasses at various academic institutions worldwide, including two universities in Nigeria. His research interests have led to ethnomusicological fieldwork in both East and West Africa, resulting in compositions, transcriptions, and academic lectures. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees in composition from the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) at the University of Cincinnati. During his upbringing, a significant part of his music education came from The Salvation Army church, where he received free music lessons regularly. Inspired by that altruism, Okpebholo is deeply passionate about music outreach to underserved communities.
Recently, he completed a residency with the Chicago Opera Theater, culminating in the premiere of his opera, "The Cook-Off," with librettist Mark Campbell (librettist of the Pulitzer-prize-winning opera Silent Night). Currently, he serves as the Jonathan Blanchard Distinguished Professor of Composition at Wheaton College-Conservatory of Music and the Saykaly Garbulinska Composer-in-Residence with the Lexington Philharmonic.
Shawn E. Okpebholo is based in Wheaton, IL, a suburb of Chicago, with his wife, violist Dorthy, and their daughters, Eva and Corinne.
- from www.shawnokpebholo.com
Guest Chamber Ensemble
Picosa is a mixed chamber ensemble specializing in classical contemporary music and more. As collaborative soloists without conductor, its nimble structure and eclectic repertoire defy the traditional limits of the classical music concert to bring a compelling new experience to the stage. Highlights of past seasons include performances at the Chicago Cultural Center, in the open air Thirsty Ear Festival, Ear Taxi Festival, the Frequency Series at Constellation Chicago, and the Rush Hour concert series as well as live broadcasts of Live from WFMT. The ensemble's residencies at Elmhurst University and North Central College host composition workshops and performances.
Picosa’s signature programming presents a body of repertoire that captures the essence of the human experience in all its diversity, depth and magnitude. Concerts seamlessly blend masterworks of the baroque, classical, and romantic eras side by side with gems of contemporary music. Additionally, the ensemble takes pride in championing the works of Chicago composers and remains committed to bringing music from diverse contexts to the stage. Past seasons have included works by Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart together with contemporary composers such as Fred Onovwerosuoke, Asha Srinivasan, Roque Cordero, and Florent Ghys. The ensemble has also presented numerous premieres and newly commissioned works including Hospital Suite by Felipe Perez Santiago, CryptOlogie by Shawn Okpebholo, and This Vale of Tears by Howard Whitaker.
Picosa’s Composer-in-Residence, Jonathon Kirk writes and transcribes works for the ensemble each season. Of particular note is Kirk’s innovative original compositions, including Mechanical Birds, which incorporates the song of the extinct Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird within a contemporary musical context. His transcriptions are exquisite distillations of larger orchestral works including Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun.
For more information, please visit Picosa
The Contemporary Music Festival committee is sad to announce that the 58th Annual Festival will not feature a guest orchestra. We hope that future festivals can return to our 56-year heritage of hosting a professional orchestra. Our deepest thanks to the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra who has been our faithful orchestra-in-residence since 2007.