Don Freund
 
Don Freund is professor of music in composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he has been on faculty since 1992. He is an internationally recognized composer with works ranging from solo, chamber, and orchestral music to pieces involving live performances with electronic instruments, music for dance, and large theater works. The recipient of numerous awards and commissions, including two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Freund has served as guest composer at a vast array of universities and music festivals, and presented master classes throughout Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, and South America. He is also active as a pianist, conductor, and lecturer.
 
 
Timothy Peterson
 
Timothy Peterson’s music has been performed in the US, Europe, and Australia at venues ranging from galleries and distilleries to Times Square (Anita’s Way), National Sawdust, and Lincoln Center. His chamber and vocal works have been featured at events such as the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, BMP: Next Gen (Beth Morrison Projects), the Hear Now Music Festival (Los Angeles), and La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest. Recent projects include commissions from the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music (Composing Earth initiative), the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Cincinnati Song Initiative, and pianist Nic Gerpe (“Makrokosmos 50 Project”). Timothy holds a M.M. in Composition from the USC Thornton School of Music and undergraduate degrees in composition and comparative literature from the University of Michigan. Timothy is pursuing a D.M.A. at Thornton, where he studies under Nina C. Young.
 
 
V.C.R.
 
V.C.R., born Veronica Camille Ratliff, is a world-class multidisciplinary singer/songwriter, composer, violinist, and published author. The Memphis-bred recording artist blends cathartic lyrics and her powerhouse vocals that entrances the listener and leaves them breathless. As a storyteller, this transcendental soul-singer uses amalgamations of her rich southern gospel roots and classical orchestral training to produce songs rooted in vulnerability and speculative anthropology. Her name caught fire in 2019 with the release of her self-produced song “Minnie Lives” featuring Pink Siifu and since has performed on The Late Late Show with James Cordon, at Afropunk, and at the LVI Super Bowl Honors to name a few. As a highly sought-after collaborator, she has worked with the likes of Andre 3000, Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Yoko Ono, Fiona Apple, and the Alice Coltrane Family. As a Composition master’s student at the USC Thornton School of Music, she is sharpening her innate skills to be the best composer, orchestrator, and multi-disciplinary artist she can be.
 
 
Anuj Bhutani
 
Anuj Bhutani is a quickly emerging composer/performer whose music often features visceral grooves; ethereal, meditative spaces; a combination of acoustic instruments and electronics, and a strong sense of narrative in a genre-fluid space. Described as “alternately celestial and dark” (John Schaefer, WNYC New Sounds), his music has won Chamber Music America’s Classical Commissioning Grant, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Verdigris Ensemble’s ION Composer Competition, and was a Finalist in the VOCES8 Composition Competition. He’s been selected for American Composer’s Orchestra’s Earshot, NewAm Composer’s Lab, Banff Centre’s Evolution: Classical, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival’s New Music Workshop at Yale School of Music, and residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Atlantic Center for the Arts (#188 with Judd Greenstein, #191 with Missy Mazzoli), among others. His work has been commissioned or performed by Ashley Bathgate, Metropolis Ensemble, Verdant Vibes, Allen Philharmonic, Andrew Tholl of Wild Up, and Lauren Cauley Kalal of Switch~ ensemble.

Hard Cells
Don Freund
 
Because of their intrinsic nature and the way they are deployed in the composition, the materials out of which Hard Cells is composed are to be perceived as metallic, hard-edged, unyielding building blocks of sound. Rather than allowed to grow, develop and blend into an organic flow, they are contexted by repetition, superimpositioning and juxtapositioning – what might be described as a cut-and-paste approach to fabricating a work. This hard-shell cellular approach to the character and structuring of material is what (I believe) distinguishes Stravinsky from Bartok, Scarlatti from Bach, and rock from jazz. In Hard Cells, the steely nature of the ideas is underlined by a insistent unchanging 16th-note pulse.
 
 
Winter Sister
Timothy Peterson
text by Catherine Pond
 
Poet Catherine Pond, whom I met in USC’s “Writer and Composer” class in the spring of 2018, dedicated Winter Sister to her friend Julia Anna Morrison, whose brother died when Catherine and Julia were teenagers. In this collection of short poems Catherine pays tribute to her friendship with Julia and the other forces to which she turned for guidance through her grief (e.g. her mother, her writing). This song was commissioned by the National Association of Teachers of Singing and Cincinnati Song Initiative, with major support from Lori Laitman.
 
 
Minnie Lives
V.C.R. (Veronica Camille Ratliff)
 
Released in March 2021 and in honor of Women’s History Month, Minnie Lives was written and composed as an ode to women everywhere. Birthed from the growing pains of a physically and emotionally abusive relationship, this sonic offering is a gift and a journey through her healing psyche. Set in a mystical garden and named after her hero Minnie Ripperton, Minnie Lives tells the story of a long lost tumultuous love whom she had been chasing for lifetimes. This karmic cycle is simulated in the cyclical voice leading of the song. She begins with her rendition of “Summertime” which is a jazz standard that also inspired the words of this song. Intuitive and spiritual, this composition is also an ode to gospel music her first love.
 
 
How Long
Anuj Bhutani
 
“How long did you think this would last?
 
I remember.”