Carnegie Hall

Claire Chase, described by The New York Times as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize from Lincoln Center.

Now in its 10th year, Chase’s 24-year commissioning project Density 2036 reimagines the solo flute literature through commissions, performances, recordings, education, and an accessible archive at density2036.org. Chase’s discography includes the entire Density repertory, including the most recent (2019–2021) cycles that were released on a triple-album this month on New Focus Recordings. Central to the Density 2036 initiative is a commitment to supporting an international, multigenerational community of flutists who will take the Density repertoire in new interpretive and performative directions. The Density Fellows program, launched this year in celebration of the 10th anniversary, will provide 10 exceptional emerging flutists annually with the resources to intensively study the Density repertoire.

As an undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory, Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble, a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to creating collaborations built on equity and cultural responsiveness. She served as the ensemble’s artistic director until 2017, and as an ensemble member on performance and education projects on five continents, developing an artist-driven organizational model that earned the group the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center in 2010 and the Ensemble of the Year Award in 2014 from Musical America Worldwide.

A deeply committed educator, Chase is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on contemporary music, interdisciplinary collaboration, nonprofit arts organizations, and community-building through the arts. She is also a creative associate at The Juilliard School. In addition to her Debs Creative Chair residency at Carnegie Hall, which has encompassed programming for all ages, Chase’s projects this season have included concerto performances with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony.

Chase grew up in Leucadia, California, with the childhood dream of becoming a professional baseball player before she discovered the flute. She now lives in Brooklyn.

Hailed by The New York Times as “a player of formidable expressive gifts,” Dutch-born cellist Katinka Kleijn enjoys a genre-defying, interdisciplinary career. Classically trained, she has cultivated an exploratory, interactive creative practice at the fertile intersection of improvisation, composition, and performance art.

Much of Kleijn’s work illuminates the cello’s anthropomorphic qualities, often by placing the instrument in thought-provoking new contexts. In 2019, Kleijn and cellist Lia Kohl waded with 30 cellos in Chicago’s Eckhart Park Pool for their devised piece Water On the Bridge. Similarly, Kleijn’s The Body as a Variable Resistor (2021) uses a shared-circuit synthesizer to articulate parallels between the human and cello body. Residuum (2022), a film made in collaboration with Aliya Ultan, pairs Kleijn’s cello with trash of epic proportions, like 600 feet of Mylar and a dress made of soda cans.

An active musician in classical and contemporary spheres, Kleijn is a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and International Contemporary Ensemble. She has performed as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Hague Philharmonic, and Chicago Sinfonietta, and presented her solo multimedia presentations at the Library of Congress, Carolina Performing Arts, and Chicago Humanities Festival. Kleijn’s 2016 world-premiere performance of Dai Fujikura’s Cello Concerto at Lincoln Center was released by Sony Japan. As an improviser, she has collaborated with musicians like Macie Stewart, Joe McPhee, Claire Rousay, Caroline Davis, and Damon Locks.

Kleijn is a Drag City recording artist, releasing STIR with Bill MacKay (2019), Momentum 5: Stammer with Ken Vandermark (2021), An Ayler Xmas with Mars Williams (2017), and Sine Nomine with Mark Feldman (2022).

Described by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace” who possesses “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” Grammy-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. His projects delve deep into our cultural fabric, reimagining traditional works and commissioning new ones to propel classical music into the future, inspiring The New York Times to write, “Woods is an artist rooted in classical music, but whose cello is a vehicle that takes him, and his concertgoers, on wide-ranging journeys.” He received the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award.

Woods recently joined the faculty of the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music as assistant professor of practice (cello and chamber music). He previously served on the faculties of the University at Buffalo, University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, and Chicago Academy of the Arts. He was also artist-in-residence at the University of Miami, Northwestern University, and Kaufman Music Center. Woods holds degrees from Brooklyn College and Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel; he earned his PhD from the University of Huddersfield. In 2018–2020, he served as artist-in-residence with Seattle Symphony, where he was also a creative consultant for the interactive concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.

Woods is a Pirastro Artist and endorses Pirastro Perpetual Strings worldwide.

Pianist Cory Smythe has worked closely with pioneering artists in new, improvisatory, and classical music, including saxophonist-composer Ingrid Laubrock, violinist Hilary Hahn, and multidisciplinary composers from Anthony Braxton to Zosha Di Castri. His own music “dissolves the lines between composition and improvisation with rigor” (Chicago Reader), and his first record was praised by Jason Moran as “hands down one of the best solo recordings I’ve ever heard.” Smythe has been featured at the Newport Jazz, Wien Modern, Trondheim Chamber Music, Nordic Music Days, Approximation, Concorso Busoni, and Darmstadt festivals, as well as at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, where he was recently invited to premiere new work created in collaboration with Peter Evans and Craig Taborn. He has received commissions from Milwaukee’s Present Music, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble (of which he is a longtime member), and The Shifting Foundation. Smythe received a Grammy Award for his work with Hilary Hahn and frequently performs in the critically acclaimed Tyshawn Sorey Trio.

Born in Bucharest, Filipino American Levy Lorenzo is an “electronics wizard” (The New York Times) who works at the intersection of music, art, and technology. His international body of work spans electronics design, sound engineering, instrument building, installation art, improvisation, and percussion performance. With a primary focus on inventing new instruments, he prototypes, composes, and performs new electronic music. As an art consultant, Lorenzo designs interactive electronics that range from small sculptures to large-scale public art installations with artists who include Alvin Lucier, Christine Sun Kim, LigoranoReese, Autumn Knight, and Leo Villareal. As a musician, he has worked with Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Ryuichi Sakamoto, George Lewis, Henry Threadgill, and Claire Chase. As a sound engineer, he is in demand as a specialist in the realization of complete electro-acoustic concerts with non-traditional configurations. A core member of the acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble, he fulfills multiple roles as percussionist, electronics performer, and sound engineer. He recently made his solo debut with the New York Philharmonic for the reopening concerts of David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center.

Lorenzo earned a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University, and a doctorate in percussion performance from Stony Brook University. He has presented numerous workshops and lectures on electronic musical instrument design and performance practice. He is professor of creative technologies at The New School College of Performing Arts, where he is also director of the Nstrument Lab.