Commissions

Learn about the commissioning element of The Sound Bridges .

original commissions

This collection of original works commissioned by The Sound Bridges represents stories that have been documented through the language of music. These stories represent individuals and communities, each story acting as a thread in the larger tapestry of the human experience. With each new commission, the history book recording stories of today grows in pages and each story told through the eyes of the artist.

SUNSET/SUNRISE

MATTHEW MANTINI, COMPOSER

IN COLLABORATION WITH THE SOUND BRIDGES “GENSIS: Young COMposers PROJECT”

PREMIERED SPRING 2023, INDIANA, PA

Sunset/Sunrise is a work written for solo viola and an ensemble of violins and violas, commissioned for the Violin and Viola studio at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. At the time of writing, the studios were comprised entirely of either newcomers to the institution or students in their fourth year of instruction, suggesting the passing on of a torch from one cohort of students to the next. This overarching idea of change is realized in the music through repetition of thematic material with slight differences as the piece progresses until the beginning reappears, fully fleshed out.

-Matthew Mantini

A Tale of One Viola

Lilya Ugay, composer

HOSTED BY THE 2022 AMERICAN VIOLA SOCIETY FESTIVAL AND

THE 47TH INTERNATIONAL VIOLA CONGRESS

PREMIERED SPRING 2022, COLUMBUS, GA

“A Tale of One Viola” is a programmatic set of variations for solo viola, on a descending scale, which unfolds into its full thematic material near the final section of the piece. The program is a life story of a woman who went through the full life cycle - from innocence to peaceful death through moments of hardship, love, betrayal, and more mature, parental love. This piece can be viewed as an opera, or as modern Frauenliebe und Leben for just viola solo.

-Liliya Ugay

FUGUE FOR FOUR VIOLINS

SOOMIN KIM, COMPOSER

IN COLLABORATION WITH THE SOUND BRIDGES “GENSIS: Young COMposers PROJECT”

PREMIERED SPRING 2022, YALE UNIVERSITY

Co-composition between Yale School of Music’s instrumentalist Florrie Marshall and composer Soomin Kim, and four selected participants from Yale Music in Schools Initiative in the New Haven Public School system. This project engaged four Hispanic students, mirroring the district's demographic composition where 48.1% are Hispanic/Latinx and many are second-generation immigrants. Under the guidance of composer Soomin Kim from Yale School of Music, these students learned composition skills to express their collective Latinx and immigrant experience in New Haven through music.

String Quartet no. 3, “Hopper Quartet”

Lilya Ugay, composer

premiered October 3rd, 2018 at Yale University’s Grace Hopper College

A Concert on Memory featured the world premiere of the “Grace Hopper String Quartet,” composed by the Yale School of Music’s own composer Liliya Ugay, alongside Mendelssohn’s Quartet in F minor, Opus 80. Through music and poetic narration, this concert explored relationships among technological memory, made possible by the foundational work of Grace Hopper; aural memory, with which composers engage for maximum impact through their music; and social memory, from the perspective of artists who believe in the importance of preserving the memory of social happenings.