Carnegie Hall

Flannery Cunningham (b. 1991) began composing soon after she started piano lessons in first grade. Her early hits included I Love My Piano Teacher and Catching Leaves, for which she admits that she spent at least as much time decorating the cover as writing the piece. Cunningham was fortunate to study music at Princeton University, University College Cork in Ireland, Stony Brook University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she completed her PhD in composition and musicology in 2022. Today, she writes extensively for chamber ensembles, and her music has been performed by groups such as International Contemporary Ensemble, TAK, New York New Music Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, Music from Copland House, and PRISM Quartet. She is particularly attracted to the very old and very new, especially 13th- and 14th-century song, and contemporary technologies for interactive electronics. Above all, she aims to write music that surprises and delights.

Rebecca Pellett (b. 1981) is a Canadian arranger, orchestrator, and composer. She began taking music lessons in rural Ontario when she was four years old, and always sang in her school choirs. She played many instruments as a student, but composition and theory were her favorite subjects right from the start. She was an apprentice under Christopher Dedrick, where she learned to score movies and television shows, as well as write for symphony orchestra. Recently, Pellett has written several pieces that will bring popular children’s books to the concert stage, including her composition Bobby Orr and the Hand-Me-Down Skates (for orchestra and narrator), which was recorded and released in 2022. When she’s not writing music, she takes care of goats and chickens, bakes bread, and step-dances to fiddle music.

Tanyaradzwa A. Tawengwa (b. 1991) is a Zimbabwean gwenyambira, composer, scholar, and singer whose work builds a bridge between Madzimbabwe and Western classical music traditions. Her music is grounded in the ancestral Chivanhu canon taught to her by the generations of svikiro (spirit mediums) and n’anga (healers) in her bloodline. Tawengwa began singing and playing the piano and cello at a young age and was called to carry on the sacred tradition of mbira music when she was 16. As a child, she would dream of songs and music being sung to her by her ancestors—dreams that continue today. Tawengwa is the founder of Zimbabwe KIDS Summer Camp, Mushandirapamwe Arts Trust, and the Mushandirapamwe Singers. Her work and music have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Boston Lyric Opera, the Royal Opera of Versailles, Yale Repertory Theatre, Soho Repertory Theatre, National Sawdust, The Playroom Theater, The Public Theater, The Glimmerglass Festival, TED, and TEDWomen.