Sarah Gibson
 
Sarah Gibson, principal pianist and teaching assistant for Thornton Edge, as well as MM and DMA Thornton alum, was a close personal friend, colleague and prize former student. She excelled in so many ways – as a wonderful composer of very characterful works, a fine pianist and co-founder of the piano duo HOCKET, a gifted educator – which was obvious from her very first semester as a graduate teaching assistant at USC – a compelling arts leader and an all-around exceptional person, warm and caring always. Her last piece, beyond the beyond, a BBC commission, will be performed several times during the 2024/25 season, joining the many performances of Sarah’s music this season. To continue Sarah’s legacy and to identify the next generation of Sarahs, a significant new organization has been created: the Sarah Gibson Foundation. I encourage you to visit the website which is now up and running. We miss you, Sarah, but we are so grateful for your indelible imprint on the world of music.
 
–Donald Crockett
 
 
Sarah Gibson was a Los Angeles based composer and pianist whose works draw on her breadth of experience as a collaborative performer. Her compositions reflect her deep interest in the creative process across various artistic mediums—especially from the female perspective.
 
She received a Copland House Residency and commissions from the League of American Orchestras and the Toulmin Foundation, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Summer Music Festival & School, Grossman Ensemble, and Seattle Symphony, among others.
 
Gibson’s music has been described as “expansive” (LA Times) and has been performed by the BBC & Los Angeles Philharmonics, Atlanta, Seattle, and New Jersey Symphonies, Jennifer Koh, Departure Duo, HOCKET, and at various venues across the United States and in Europe. As a pianist, Sarah performed with many of these ensembles as well as with Wild Up, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and the Atlanta Symphony where she debuted under the direction of Donald Runnicles in 2005.​
 
Sarah was co-founder of the new music piano duo, HOCKET, which has been lauded as “brilliant” by the LA Times’ Mark Swed, and was a core artist for the inimitable Los Angeles Series, Piano Spheres. HOCKET held residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute and received grants from the Earle Brown Music Foundation and the Presser Foundation. HOCKET performed at such festivals as the MATA Festival, the L.A. Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight, Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, and the Other Minds Festival.
 
Sarah received degrees in Piano and Composition from Indiana University and the University of Southern California. She was Assistant Director for the esteemed Los Angeles Philharmonic Composer Fellowship Program and Assistant Professor in Composition/Theory at the California State University, Long Beach Bob Cole Conservatory of Music where she also directed the New Music Ensemble.
 
 
Steven Stucky
 
Steven Stucky, born in 1949, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer. He had an extensive catalogue of compositions ranging from large-scale orchestral works to a cappella miniatures for chorus. He was also active as a conductor, writer, lecturer and teacher, and for 21 years he enjoyed a close partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 1988 André Previn appointed him composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and later he became the orchestra’s consulting composer for new music, working closely with Esa-Pekka Salonen. Commissioned by the orchestra, his Second Concerto for Orchestra brought him the Pulitzer Prize in music in 2005.
 
Steven Stucky taught at Cornell University since 1980 and served as Given Foundation Professor of Composition. He also taught at the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of California (Berkeley). A world-renowned expert on Lutoslawski’s music, he is a recipient of the Lutoslawski Society’s medal. He was a frequent guest at colleges and conservatories, and his works appear on the programmes of the world’s major orchestras.
 
 
Jacob Druckman
 
One of the most prominent of contemporary American composers, Jacob Druckman was born in Philadelphia in 1928. After early training in piano and violin, he studied composition at the Juilliard School, with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, and at the École Normale de Musique in Paris. Druckman produced a substantial catalog of orchestral, chamber, and vocal music, and he did considerable work in electronic media. Among the institutions for which he wrote commissioned works are the Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis Symphonies, the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Juilliard Quartet, IRCAM, Radio France, and the Koussevitzky Foundation. He won Fulbright, Thorne Foundation, and Guggenheim fellowships, was Resident-in-Music at the American Academy in Rome, and served as Composer-in-Residence of the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. Druckman taught at Juilliard, Bard College, Tanglewood, and Brooklyn College. In the last years of his life he was Professor of Composition at the Yale School of Music.

You are still here
Sarah Gibson
 
You are still here was inspired by Mona Hatoum’s artwork of the same name. The work, which is a double mirror containing the titular phrase sandblasted on the surface, allows the viewer to see their face doubled in their reflection with this phrase stamped across their view. Hatoum describes this artwork as a way to spark a conversation with oneself about the confirmation of existence and survival. This sentiment, and the need to talk to oneself about these subjects, spoke to me powerfully during the beginning of the pandemic. My work for Jennifer was a way for me to convey that dialogue and what I was seeking in the spring of 2020: a frantic need for personal expression contrasted with a calmer desire for an empathetic space in which to create during a dark time.
 
–Sarah Gibson
 
 
Soak Stain
Sarah Gibson
 
An innovative technique created by American abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, “soak stain” involves diluting acrylic paint until it is fluid enough to pour onto a raw canvas from a coffee can. In Frankenthaler’s paintings, this technique allows one to see colors competing and blending with its contiguous rival. I love this approach and the way it provides both structured blocks of color in Frankenthaler’s works and leaves amoeba-like and uneven edges as various colors meet. In my piece, I try to play with this idea by evoking clear formal structures defined by liquid melodies and melting textures.
 
–Sarah Gibson
 
 
The Stars and the Roses
Steven Stucky
The Stars and the Roses is originally a three-movement composition for tenor solo and orchestra set to the poetry of Czesław Miłosz by the American composer Steven Stucky. The work was commissioned by the Berkeley Symphony, for which Stucky was then composer-in-residence. It was first performed on March 28, 2013 by the tenor Noah Stewart and the Berkeley Symphony under the conductor Joana Carneiro. The work was rewritten by Stucky in a chamber arrangement of the piece that premiered on October 18, 2013 by the Curtis 20/21 Contemporary Music Ensemble and tenor Roy Hage. The piece is dedicated to his wife Kristen.
 
 
I prefer living in color
Sarah Gibson
 
I prefer living in color is inspired by David Hockney’s Snails Space, a gigantic painted landscape of shapes with a shifting light installation created to represent Los Angeles’s Mulholland Drive. This vivacious artwork impacted the melodic structure and energy in my piece. Beginning with a lyrical melody and morphing to a rock band-like groove, I was imagining the many vibrant colors of Hockney’s painting shifting in and out of foreground and background. These musical structures represent both the changing landscapes in Hockney’s painting and also the energizing curves and changing views found along Mulholland Drive.
 
–Sarah Gibson

Laura Gamboa
 
Laura Gamboa is a Colombian American violinist currently pursuing her doctoral degree in violin performance at the University of Southern California under Martin Chalifour, concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Gamboa is currently minoring in music theory, viola performance, and jazz violin. Gamboa received Bachelor’s Degrees in Violin Performance and Music Theory as well as a minor in Eurhythmics from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Afterwards, she completed her Master’s Degree in Violin Performance as a fellowship recipient from the University of Michigan, where she also completed a Specialist Degree in Violin Performance and a Master’s in Chamber Music. She attended the Aspen Music Festival and School from 2014-19, 22’, 24’ with various fellowships including the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble fellowship and premiered Jessie Montgomery’s Concerto Grosso as the featured soloist.
 
 
Daniel Voigt
 
Daniel Voigt, tenor, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin is a senior year at the USC Thornton School of Music, completing his Bachelor’s degree in Vocal Arts and Opera. Daniel began his music studies at the American Boychoir School then at Interlochen Arts Academy. Outside of his work at USC Daniel has recently performed with the College Light Opera Company in Cape Cod, Massachusetts where he had featured roles in 9 Musical Theatre and Opera productions. In April of 2025, he will be featured in the USC Opera production of Our Town, playing the role of George Gibbs. Currently, Daniel performs with Exilio, a vocal octet based in Los Angeles, and the Adrian Dunn Singers, a touring gospel choir based in Chicago.
 
 
Donald Crockett
 
Donald Crockett is professor and chair of the composition department and director of Thornton Edge at the USC Thornton School of Music, and senior composer-in-residence with the Bennington Chamber Music Conference. He has received commissions from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (Composer-in-Residence (1991-97), Kronos Quartet, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hilliard Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and the California EAR Unit, among many others.
 
Recent projects include commissions from the Harvard Musical Association for violist Kate Vincent and Firebird Ensemble, the San Francisco-based chamber choir, Volti, for its 30th anniversary season, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Claremont Trio, and a chamber opera, The Face, based on a novella in verse by poet David St. John.
 
The recipient in 2013 of an Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for outstanding artistic achievement, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, Donald Crockett has also received grants and prizes from the Barlow Endowment, Bogliasco Foundation, Copland Fund, Copland House, Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA and many others.
 
His music is published by Keiser Classical and Doberman/Yppan and recorded on the Albany, CRI, Doberman/Yppan, ECM, innova, Laurel, New World, Orion and Pro Arte/Fanfare labels. Two all-Crockett recordings were released in 2011, on New World Records with Firebird Ensemble and on Albany Records with Xtet. Active as a conductor of new music, Crockett has presented many world, national and regional premieres with the Los Angeles-based new music ensemble Xtet, the USC Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble, and as a guest conductor with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Hilliard Ensemble, California EAR Unit, Firebird Ensemble and Ensemble X.
 
As conductor of the USC Thornton Symphony’s annual New Music for Orchestra concert, Donald Crockett has premiered well over a hundred orchestral works by outstanding Thornton student composers. He has also been very active over the years as a composer and conductor with the venerable and famed Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. His recordings as a conductor can be found on the Albany, CRI, Doberman/Yppan, ECM and New World labels.
 
 
USC Thornton Edge
 
USC Thornton Edge, founded in 1976 by Robert Wojciak, has been under the direction of Donald Crockett since 1984. Comprised of some of the finest student musicians in the Thornton School, the ensemble presents a series of four concerts annually on the USC campus. Edge has also been part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series and Noon to Midnight, the New Music LA festival, and is a recipient of the Outstanding Ensemble Award given by LA Weekly in 2006. On tour, Edge has presented concerts at the Paris and Lyon Conservatories, the Berlin 750 Jahre Festival, as well as the 2014 Carlsbad Music Festival, and has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in Stephen Scott’s Concerto for Bowed Piano and Orchestra. Thornton Edge has two commercial recordings: a set of new guitar concertos by Dusan Bogdanovich, Brian Head, Simone Iannarelli, Steven Gates, and Donald Crockett, performed by Thornton faculty artists and released on the Doberman/Yppan label in 2015; and a collection of ensemble works by Frederick Lesemann, Songs and Concertinos, released on the Centaur label in 2021.

The Stars and the Roses
Steven Stucky
On poems of Czesław Miłosz
 
I. Happiness
trans. Richard Lourie
from King Popiel and other poems (1962)
 
How warm the light! From the glowing bay
The masts like spruce, repose of the ropes
In the morning mist. Where a stream trickles
Into the sea, by a small bridge — a flute,
Farther, under the arch of ancient ruins
You see a few tiny walking figures.
One wears a red kerchief. There are trees,
Ramparts, and mountains at an early hour.
 
II. The Sun
trans. Czesław Miłosz
from The World, in RESCUE (1945)
 
All colors come from the sun. And it does not have
Any particular color, for it contains them all.
And the whole Earth is like a poem
While the sun above represents the artist.
Whoever wants to paint the variegated world
Let him never look straight up at the sun
Or he will lose the memory of things he has seen.
Only burning tears will stay in his eyes.
Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass,
And look at light reflected by the ground.
There he will find everything we have lost:
The stars and the roses, the dusks and the dawns.
 
III. The Bird Kingdom
trans. Czesław Miłosz
from The World, in RESCUE (1945)
 
Flying high the heavy wood grouse
Slash the forest sky with their wings
And a pigeon returns to its airy wilderness
And a raven gleams with airplane steel.
What is the earth for them? A lake of darkness.
It has been swallowed by the night forever.
They, above the dark as above black waves,
Have their homes and islands, saved by the light.
If they groom their long feathers with their beaks
And drop one of them, it floats a long time
Before it reaches the bottom of the lake
And brushes someone’s face, bringing news
From a world that is bright, beautiful, warm and free.