Phyllis Chen, pianist/toy pianist/composer

Described by The New York Times as “spellbinding” and “delightfully quirky matched with interpretive sensitivity,” Phyllis is a composer and sound artist whose music draws from her tactile exploration of object and sound. Phyllis was recently named a 2019 Cage-Cunningham Fellow from the Baryshnikov Arts Center, a fellowship curated by the legendary ballerina Mikhail Baryshnikov. She has received commissions by ensembles and organizations such as the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), A Far Cry, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Claire Chase Density Project, Opera Cabal Opera SHOP, Singapore International Festival of the Arts,the Roulette-Jerome and others. She has received grants from New Music USA, Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, NYSCA (via Concert Artists Guild and Look & Listen Festival), Fromm Foundation and the Pew Heritage Trust.

Phyllis is one of the composers for the one-woman play, The Other Mozart about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s forgotten sister Nannerl, performed and written by Sylvia Milo. She and co-composer/sound designer Nathan Davis, received the New York Innovative Theatre Award for “Best Original Music in a Play” in 2015.

In 2009, Phyllis was the solo on-stage musician for the Off-Broadway production of Coraline. Based on Neil Gaiman’s children’s book, the work was composed by Indie bandleader Stephin Merritt from the Magnetic Fields, who scored the musical for multiple keyboards of various sizes. As the show’s sole instrumentalist, the Financial Times claims ” Phyllis achieves dazzling effects with pianos both standard-sized and shrunken.”

Phyllis founded the UnCaged Toy Piano, a music festival in New York City that featured local and international artists on unusual instruments. She is a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Her latest album, “On The Nature of Thingness” (Starkland) a collaborative album with Nathan Davis was awarded the 2019 Independent Music Award for Best Contemporary Classical Album. Phyllis is currently an assistant professor of Composition at SUNY New Paltz

 

Christiana Fortune-Reader, viola

Christiana is a multi-faceted musician, passionate about the intersection of teaching, performing, community building, and arts advocacy. She serves as Assistant Professor of violin and viola, as well as College Orchestra Director in the Music Department at the State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz. She performs regularly with the Innigkeit Quartet based in Illinois, and with the Minnesota and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras. Her research interests broadly look at music as a tool for social change and community building, both in the early childhood, among college-aged students, and within larger communities of professional ensembles. 

She holds a doctoral degree from the Eastman School of Music, as well as other degrees from the University of Southern California and the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying with Donald McInnes, Jeffrey Irvine, Lynne Ramsey, Karen Ritscher, and Carol Rodland.