Eun Sook Baek

2014 WCF Competition Results

The Women Composers Festival of Hartford is pleased to announce Jenni Brandon (Long Beach, CA) as the winner of its 2014 International Composition Competition along with Eun Sook Baek (Hartford, CT) and Sookyung Sul (Pittsburgh, PA) as competition finalists. Charles Huang of Oboe Duo Agosto is performing Ms. Brandon’s winning work, In the City at Night, on Friday, March 7th. Oboe Duo Agosto will program the work, along with Ocean with Covered Cloud (Baek) and Mool, Baram (Sul), on additional concerts over the next three years. Ms. Brandon joins resident composer Andrea Clearfield on Friday’s program as part of the festival’s four day event schedule – Thursday, March 6, to Sunday, March 9, at the historic Charter Oak Cultural Center. Information on concert tickets and festival events is available at www.womencomposersfestivalhartford.com.

Jenni Brandon is an award-winning composer whose music has been commissioned by ensembles and performed in venues across the world. Among the ensembles that have performed her works are the Musical Arts Quintet, Yale Glee Club, The Singers-Minnesota Choral Artists, UT Arlington Wind Symphony, Conundrum, the Young New Yorkers Chorus, Vox Femina, the Sundance Trio, and Voices of Ascension. Ms. Brandon also makes guest composer appearances across the country, frequently giving talks on the business of music and musician collaboration. She is the music director of The Concert Singers, the oldest independent choir in Los Angeles, and often makes guest appearances to conduct her works with other ensembles. Active also as a mezzo-soprano, she has appeared with the Boston Pops, Pacific Chorale, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and at the Hollywood Bowl. Information on her music and a complete bio can be found at www.jennibrandon.com.

The festival was pleasantly overwhelmed by the volume of submissions to both its International Composition Competition and regional score calls. Results for the remaining New England and NYWC score calls shall be announced shortly.

Picture of the Day – July 11, 2012

Here’s a peek at the 2011 Festival’s opening concert:

The Hartt Independent Chamber Orchestra led by Erberk Eryilmaz performed works by 2011 Composer-in-Residence Gilda Lyons, Eunsook Baek, Jessica Rudman, and the winner of our inaugural Composition Competition, Sang Mi Ahn.

The Composition Competition was a new addition to the Festival in 2011, and the high quality of the submissions received in both the first and second years encouraged us to continue offering this award annually. Each year, the prize involves the performance of a selected work by our featured ensemble – stay tuned to find out who it will be for 2013!

Picture of the Day – June 29, 2012

Eunsun Jung performs Eun Sook Baek’s Poverty to Liberty on this year’s Electro-acoustic Concert. The piece is composed for the gayageum, a string instrument from Baek’s homeland Korea. According to the composer, “the title Poverty to Liberty is used to describe the immigrants arriving on a foreign country, America. When the immigrants arrived at New York, their first encounter was the Statue of Liberty. As these people witness the Statue of Liberty, they start to imagine the American dream. In this piece, the Korean instrument ‘Gayageum’ represents the American land. East Asian Composers usually expressed their own culture and timbres through western instruments. However, for this piece, the western culture was expressed with an eastern instrument, and the immigrants (all ethnic group) with western instruments. This piece includes the sorrowful departure from the immigrants’ homeland, to achieve the American dream every other people aspire. It also includes their harsh journey across the sea, and the arrival to a land of hope.”