BRING THESE WORKS TO YOUR OWN COMMUNITY!

Deus Ex Musica collaborates with secular and religious institutions, as well as individual performers, to present events that use these works as a springboard for conversation about scripture and faith. Collaborations can take many forms, so contact us if you are interested in finding our more. For an example of a recent live event, click here. PERFORMERS: Contact us to obtain perusal scores for any of these pieces or to discuss collaborating with us on an event.

PERFORMERS

Left to Right: Megumi Stohs Lewis, Chase Spruill, Sarita Kwok, Yonah Zur

Megumi Stohs Lewis is a co-founder of the Grammy-nominated A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra; has been a guest with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, the Radius Ensemble, the South Coast Chamber Players and the North Country Chamber Players, and plays regularly with the Aurea Ensemble. She also loves to fiddle and play rock and has regularly toured with Britain’s Jethro Tull. Megumi’s primary influences include her teachers Lucy Chapman at the New England Conservatory and Camilla Wicks and Ian Swensen at the San Francisco Conservatory. Especially in chamber music and period performance, Roger Tapping, Phoebe Carrai, Manfredo Kraemer, and Mark Sokol have been significant mentors.

Chase Spruill has gained an international reputation as a performer of contemporary music, interpreting minimalist masters such as Philip Glass, Michael Nyman and Henryk Gorecki. In 2020, BBC Music Magazine hailed his debut solo album of the music of Michael Nyman, citing that “Spruill plays with great spirit . . . and a great sense of presence” and calling him, “an engaging and convincing advocate.” He has collaborated with other notable artists such as Kronos Quartet, Steven Mackey, and composer Brian Reitzell, releasing music from the critically acclaimed television series Hannibal. His recordings appear on the Philip Glass record label Orange Mountain Music and on Supertrain Records.

Sarita Kwok has distinguished herself one of the most captivating and sophisticated performers to emerge from the ranks of Australia’s classical musicians. She has performed as a solo artist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout Europe, Asia, and North America, and as a featured soloist with the major orchestras of her native Australia. She has also been a prize-winner at the Kloster Schöntal (Germany), Gisborne (New Zealand), Lipinski/Wieniawski (Poland) international competitions, and grand prize winner of the Plowman National Chamber Music Competition. She is currently the inaugural holder of the Adams Endowed Chair in Music and Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Music at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts.

Yonah Zur regularly performs throughout the US, Israel, and Europe as a soloist and chamber musician in both traditional as well as contemporary repertoire. He has appeared as a soloist with the Jerusalem Symphony, the Israel Contemporary Players, and the Israel Camerata
Jerusalem. He has performed at the Marlboro, Yellow Barn, Tanglewood, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern summer festivals, where he shared the stage with members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, and Emerson Quartets, and with pianists Richard Goode and Gilbert Kalish. Zur has given numerous world premieres, including the premiere performance of the Violin Concerto by his father, Menachem Zur. His recordings of works by Louis Karchin, Chester Biscardi, Paul Moravec and Robert Cuckson have appeared on the Naxos, Albany Records, and ArkivMusic labels.

COMPOSERS and WORKS

Evloghise (Psalm 134:3)

(Psalm 133, Septuagint numbering)

Composed by Ivan Moody. Performed by Sarita Kwok.

Composer and conductor Ivan Moody was born in London in 1964. He studied music and theology at the Universities of London, Joensuu and York (where he obtained his Ph.D), his composition teachers being Brian Dennis, Sir John Tavener and William Brooks. Following the enormous success of Canticum Canticorum I, written for the Hilliard Ensemble and performed by them all over the world, in 1990 he won the Arts for the Earth Festival Prize for Prayer for the Forests. Formerly a member of the choir of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in London, Ivan Moody served as cantor in both Greek and Bulgarian parishes in Lisbon until his ordination to the diaconate and then the priesthood in 2007. He was elevated to the rank of Economos in 2008 and Protopresbyter in 2012, and is vicar for the parishes of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Lisbon area. Beside the Still Waters (Psalm 23)

Beside the Still Waters (Psalm 23)

Composed by Joelle Wallach. Performed by Sarita Kwok.

Joelle Wallach writes music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo voices and choruses. Her String Quartet 1995 was the American Composers Alliance nominee for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The New York Philharmonic Ensembles premiered her octet, From the Forest of Chimneys, written to celebrate their 10th anniversary; and the New York Choral Society commissioned her secular oratorio, Toward a Time of Renewal, for 200 voices and orchestra to commemorate their 35th Anniversary Season in Carnegie Hall. Wallach grew up in Morocco, but makes her home in New York City, where she was born. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University respectively. In 1984 the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with John Corigliano, granted her its first doctorate in composition. Dr. Wallach served as Visiting Professor of Composition at the College of Music of the University of North Texas, while continuing to present pre-concert lectures for the New York Philharmonic.

Sondea (Psalm 139)

Composed by Josh Rodriguez. Performed by Chase Spruill

Known for his energetic rhythms, rich harmonic language, and striking colors, Josh Rodriguez continues to gain recognition as an emerging composer and collaborator on a national and international scale. Born in Argentina and raised in Guatemala, Mexico and the United States, Rodriguez's musical imagination has been formed by this bilingual, multi-cultural heritage. A recent winner of The American Prize and the inaugural Springfield Chamber Chorus competition, he currently serves as composer-in-residence of the Corona Symphony Orchestra. He has also written original scores for Courtyard Shakespeare Festival's 2019 production of Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, as well several animated shorts which have appeared in international film festivals and for  special awards. He holds a Ph.D. from UCLA and a master’s from the Cleveland Institute, and is now Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the Collinsworth School of Music at California Baptist University.

Psalm 33

Composed by Joseph Jones. Performed by Yonah Zur.

My Heart Within Me Is Desolate (Psalm 143:4)

Composed by Judith Lang Zaimont. Performed by Yonah Zur.

A Mere Breath (Psalm 39)

for violin and fixed media electronics

Composed by Bobby Ge. Performed by Megumi Stohs Lewis.

Bobby Ge, co-winner of the 2020 Deus Ex Musica Composition Competition, is a Chinese-American composer and avid collaborator who seeks to create vivid emotional journeys that navigate boundaries between genre and medium. He has created multimedia projects with the Space Telescope Science Institute, painters collective Art10Baltimore, the Scattered Players Theater Company, and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Ge has received commissions and performances by groups including the Minnesota Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the Albany Symphony’s ‘Dogs of Desire,’ the Harbin Symphony Orchestra, Music from Copland House, the Pacific Chamber Orchestra, the Bergamot Quartet, the Boss Street Brass Band, and Mind on Fire. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D at Princeton University as a Naumberg Fellow, and holds degrees from UCBerkeley and the Peabody Conservatory.

Psalm 133

Composed by Delvyn Case. Performed by Chase Spruill.

Delvyn Case, Deus Ex Musica founder, is an American musician, scholar, writer, speaker, and educator. He has spent 25 years developing projects for secular and religious audiences that explore music’s unique power to explore questions of spirituality in the contemporary world. His writings on music, faith, and theology have appeared in The Christian Century, Sojourners, Books and Culture, numerous online magazines. He has collaborated on projects with the Yale Institute for Sacred Music, Harvard Divinity School, Hebrew College, Boston College, and the parish of St Martin in the Fields (London), among many across the United States and Canada. As a composer, his music has been performed by over 80 orchestras across the world, as well as by the Borromeo Quartet, the Mivos Quartet, the New York Virtuoso Singers, and Grammy-winning artists Richard Stoltzman and the Chestnut Brass Company.  A graduate of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Case is Professor of Music at historic Wheaton College, a secular liberal arts college in Norton, Massachusetts.

Ura (Psalm 57)

Composed by Michel Klein. Performed by Chase Spruill.

Deus Misereatur

Composed by Jee Seo. Performed by Sarita Kwok.

Jee Seo, co-winner of the 2020 Deus Ex Musica Composition Competition, was born in Incheon South Korea in 1985. After receiving prizes in competitions in Korea, Jee began his international career and was awarded the 2nd prize at the Val Tidone International Music Competition Egidio Carella Composition Competition in Italy and the special prize at the International Antonin Dvorak Composition Competition in the Czech Republic. His choral works have been performed frequently in concerts at the Anyang, Suwon, and Daejon Civic Chorales. His instrumental works have been performed at festivals including the Bruno Maderna International Composers' Forum in Ukraine, the International Symposium of New Music in Brazil, and the Hawaii Public Radio Art Song Contest.

Proba Me Deus (Psalm 139)

Composed by Sungji Hong. Performed by Megumi Stohs Lewis