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Composer Chats

Composer Chats

Von: Jason K. Nitsch
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 Composer Chat is a podcast where we talk a little bit about music, a little bit about life, and a whole lot about whatever we feel like at the moment! Each episode I am joined by a special guest composer and we will chat about their pathway towards success in their musical career!Copyright 2026 Jason K. Nitsch Kunst Musik Unterhaltung & Darstellende Künste
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  • 3.12 Evan VanDoren

    3.12 Evan VanDoren
    Apr 28 2026

    Evan VanDoren is an in-demand music composer regularly commissioned to create engaging & award-winning music for marching bands and concert ensembles at all skill levels. Evan’s music is regularly performed around the country, including premiere performances at the Texas Music Educators Association Convention and the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic. In 2025, Evan was recognized as a National Finalist for The American Prize in Composition for his works, Luminosities & Prophetic Dances.

    Evan serves as the brass composer & arranger for the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps, based in Santa Clara, California. Additionally, Evan is an active clinician and has presented for Drum Corps International, the Music Educators National Convention, the Texas Bandmasters Association, the Texas Music Educators Association, and Music for All. He regularly consults with music programs nationwide.

    Before devoting his life to creating music, Evan was a band director at Cedar Park High School in Cedar Park, Texas. During that time, the band was awarded multiple marching state championships and national recognition. He received a Bachelor's in Music Education with Honors from Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. Currently, he lives in Cedar Park, Texas, with his wife, Katie, daughters Anna & Sara, and their dog, Cooper.

    https://www.evanvandoren.com
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    56 Min.
  • 3.11 - Mark Simpson

    3.11 - Mark Simpson
    Apr 21 2026
    Mark Simpson (b. 1988) is a UK-based composer of an acclaimed body of work and an internationally-renowned clarinettist, whose programmes champion music new and old. His music for the stage, orchestra, voices, and chamber forces has been celebrated by leading conductors, instrumentalists, and ensembles ; across a myriad of forms, poetic intensity is matched by technical assurance and expressive generosity.Much of Simpson’s music takes place after dark. When Simpson finished his chamber opera Pleasure the clock read five am. Pleasure is set in the toilets of a gay nightclub. In that nocturnal space confessions are made and lives come into focus; it sees Simpson unleash music of mystery and abandon by turns. Night Music was the title of a taut and elusive disc of chamber works released in 2016 on NMC.The somnolent world of dream and hallucination has shaped numerous pieces: Israfel for orchestra comes from the candle-burning poetry of Edgar Allan Poe; two works under the title Darkness Moves - for clarinet (2016) and horn (2024) respectively - take their names from the hallucinogenic imagination of Henri Michaux. The Immortal , an oratorio, finds a creative wellspring in the induced trances of Victorian mediums and occultists, who drew the curtains, lit the candles, and tried to channel the spirit world. Simpson has long come alive at night - as a youngster in Liverpool attending concerts at the Philharmonic Hall he sneaked into the Royal Box with his friends after the house lights went down. Listening to his music is not far from taking his hand in a séance.As the first ever winner of both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and BBC Proms/Guardian Young Composer of the Year prizes in 2006, Simpson’s career has always reflected the indivisibility of his composing and performing selves. This national acclaim led to a precocious Wigmore Hall debut, as well as his first major works as a composer, now published worldwide by Boosey & Hawkes. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, the University of Oxford, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Julian Anderson.A stint as a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship Award-winner followed, succeeded in turn by a position as BBC Philharmonic Composer-in-Association. He composed sparks for the 2012 Last Night of the Proms. A debut chamber opera Pleasure (2016), to a libretto by Melanie Challenger, was commissioned by Opera North, Britten-Pears Arts, and the Royal Opera House.Israfel premiered with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Litton in 2014. The 12-minute piece evokes a Koranic angel imagined by Edgar Allan Poe, whose heart strings are a lute and who sings with the utmost sweetness. It captures Simpson’s fascination with the otherworldly, and, as its subject is a lyre, recalls Orpheus, the source of all music. “I wanted to write a piece that sang, floated, morphed, moved, moved us, lifted us, had power, had fragility, had hope, uncertainty, beauty”, Simpson writes. Its opening sets out the liquid transformations and elevated sensuality that preoccupy his work.Whilst his music searches out transcendental territories, Simpson’s demotic opera Pleasure turns back to the guts of the world. The touring debut production, directed by Tim Albery, saw Lesley Garrett play a toilet cleaner in a gay nightclub who sees, channels, and sings the largest of feelings, meeting a pair of lost souls and a ketchup-covered drag queen. “It turns out to be the perfect operatic subject”, Alfred Hickling wrote in The Guardian, “squalid and earthbound yet imbued with a radiant, almost mythic quality.” It received its German premiere in 2023 at Theater Erfurt.Simpson’s tone poem A mirror-fragment (2008), written for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, was his first exploration of Melanie Challenger’s writing, inspired by the opening poem of her collection Galatea. At 11 minutes, A mirror-fragment opens concerts rather than collections of poetry, and captures a style that is both nervily present and plugged into the depthless, mythic past. It was unfinished artistic business. Simpsons suggested the scenario for Pleasure the first night they met - another nocturnal mission.The Immortal arose in turn. Commissioned by the Manchester International Festival and premiered by the BBC Philharmonic, Manchester Chamber Choir, EXAUDI, and baritone Mark Stone, it is is an anguished forty minute span, drawing on texts from the Society of Psychical Research, showing the contortions of the spirit as it confronts the abyss of mortality; The Guardian called it an “anti-Gerontius”. Its ‘Lachrymosa’ sees strings and voices wrung out as exhausted tears flow, before a wounded baritone solo. It won the Southbank Sky Arts Award for classical music in 2016. The same searching quality belongs to his motet Ave Maria (2016), written for ORA Singers, and featured on their album Stella - fitful music of a sleepless ...
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    58 Min.
  • 3.10 - Kira Zeeman Rugen

    3.10 - Kira Zeeman Rugen
    Apr 14 2026
    Dr. Kira Zeeman Rugen is a composer, conductor, academic professor, and professional soprano from Scottsdale, Arizona. Kira currently serves as the Director of Choral and Vocal Activities as a residential faculty member at Scottsdale Community College. Now in her twenty-eighth year as a music educator, she conducts Concert Choir and ArtieVox (Jazz Vocal Ensemble) at Scottsdale Community College and is the music director for Musical Theater. Previously, she worked as the Director of Choral Activities and Musical Director for Musical Theater at Arizona Christian University. Before that, she worked at Grand Canyon University, teaching Music History, Conducting, and Fundamentals of Music and Culture for Diverse Learners. As a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University, Kira conducted Choral Union, a 100+-member community choir, and Schola Cantorum, a SATB choir, predominantly for music majors. ​As a composer, Kira’s choral compositions (found at the Fred Bock Group/Gentry Publications and MusicSpoke.com, Sheet Music Plus, Direct Music Plus, and JW Pepper) have been performed worldwide. She is a 2022 winner in the HerVoice Music Composition Competition in Chicago and was mentored by Chen Yi as a part of that prize. She was recently named the 3rd Place Winner in The American Prize, professional choral composition division, an Honorary Mention for The American Prize pops division, and a multi-finalist for The American Prize and the Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for Performance of American Music competition. Kira’s choral compositions have been featured and commissioned by ensembles such as Vancouver Youth Chorus under Carrie Tennant, AdVocem in Poland under Michael Malec, Resonance of Singapore conducted by Toh Ban Sheng, Phoenix Children’s Chorus under Troy Meeker, Phoenix Boys Chorus under Herbert Washington, Reveille Men’s Chorus under Keith Koster, Chandler Children’s Chorus under Aimee Stewart, Northwest Oklahoma State University Singers under Dr. Karsten Longhurst, CU Boulder Chamber Singers under Dr. Greg Gentry, THE CHORAL PROJECT under Daniel Hughes, Cor Cantiamo under Dr. Eric Johnson, Phoenix Chamber Choir under Dr. Nicholle Andrews, Kansas City Chorale under Charles Bruffy, Orpheus Men’s Choir under Dr. Brook Larson, Pinnacle Presbyterian’s Chancel Choir under Dr. Ilona Kubiaczyk-Adler, Carolyn Eynon Singers, Phoenix Chorale under Christopher Gabbitas and the Master Chorale of Flagstaff under Dr. Tom Peterson. In November 2017, Kira traveled to France to conduct the premiere of her composition, Saint-Brieuc Magnificat, with the Saint-Brieuc Cathedral Children and Youth Choir. Under the direction of their conductor, Goulven Airault, the choir went on to perform the work for the Pueri Cantors in Congrès de Barcelone and on tour in the cathedrals Saint-Malo de Dinan, Sainte-Croix de Sant Malo, Saint-Martin de Janze, Saint Sauveur La Rochelle, Sanctuaire de Rocamadour, and Castell de Callonge. Kira truly enjoys her work as a film composer, and her film scores have won awards at over fifty worldwide film festivals. Kira is the Artistic Director and founder of Solis - Choir of the Sun, a professional choir. Initially composed of ASU students, Kira transformed the group from an amateur collegiate choir into a fully paid professional vocal ensemble in the Phoenix area. Now in their fifteenth season, Solis collaborations include high-profile performances with Andrea Bocelli in Live Concert, The Eagles Hotel California Tour, Zelda, Symphony of the Goddesses, Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy, plus performing with composer Ramin Djawadi for the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience. Additionally, they have performed with Irish band The Chieftains and were invited to perform at the American Choral Directors Association Conference in Pasadena, California. Solis continues to perform throughout the valley in local arts concert series, focusing primarily on early music and contemporary choral premieres. In addition to her work as a conductor and composer, Kira has amassed extensive experience as a soprano soloist. She is noted as having an “angelic and supple” and “haunting” sound. She has performed with Norvis Early Music in Durham, England; at Carnegie Hall’s Young Artist Concert Series under Ton Koopman; at Korea’s Incheon International Choral Festival; and she toured with Anúna (Ireland’s National Choir) under Michael McGlynn throughout Ireland, Japan and China. Kira is a soloist on the album, From Graceful Fields, released by Canyon Records, featuring the eleven-time Grammy Award nominee, R. Carlos Nakai, on Native American flute. She sang for several seasons with Arizona Opera and Utah Opera. Kira is in her 21st season as a soprano with the Phoenix Chorale, with whom she has won two Grammy Awards. Kira is a soloist on their Spotless Rose album, which won a Grammy for Best Small Ensemble in February 2009. Kira sang on the Phoenix Chorale’s albums Northern Lights ...
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    1 Std. und 1 Min.
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