Dayton Hare

Architecture of Silence

Dayton was one of the very first composers we reached out to after our formation. He gave us Archictecture of Silence, which, years later, is still unlike anything else in our repertoire. The piece is largely ethereal and meditative, but the denser middle section features gorgeous, soaring melodic lines for bassoon and violin. It also features some unique techniques, such as mallets inside the piano, wind noises, and scordatura violin.

Colin McCall

Share

Colin McCall is a percussionist, collaborator, and composer currently based out of Ann Arbor, MI. His goal as a musician is to find ways to present both complex and accessible percussion music in mediums which connect with audiences on a basic, human level. Through use of audience participation, original compositions, and multimedia components, he strives to develop a fresh and engaging performance style. As a collaborator, Colin has partnered with the Virginia Technical University Percussion Ensemble, Harvard Ballet Company, University of Missouri Percussion Ensemble, and Chautauqua Institution Theatre Company. Colin is currently pursuing his DMA in percussion performance at the University of Michigan, where he previously completed a master's degree under the tutelage of Joseph Gramley and Jonathan Ovalle. He holds a bachelor's degree in music performance from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Michael Burritt.

Many of our favorite memories as a band involve performances of Share. This piece gets the audience directly involved with the music, from reading personal memories to playing simple found instruments, while the mostly improvised instrumental parts lead and respond to the surrounding sounds. We've performed Share with groups ranging from music school students to middle schoolers to developmentally disabled adults, and it always creates a truly special shared musical experience and sense of community.

Evan Premo

Earth Rites

Composer and double bassist Evan Premo creates heart-centered music that inspires audiences and musicians alike. He is a member of New York City-based chamber music collective DeCoda, with whom he performs in residencies around the world, including four he led in Abu Dhabi, UAE. As a member of Ensemble ACJW, Evan has performed many concerts at Carnegie Hall and participated in residencies in Spain and Germany. As a chamber musicians he has performed at summer music festivals throughout the country and has been featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today. Evan holds degrees in performance and composition from the University of Michigan where he studied with composers Michael Daugherty, Susan Botti, and Evan Chambers and bassist Diana Gannett. When he’s not composing and performing, Evan enjoys woodworking, hiking, skiing, fishing, and simply being in Nature.

Earth Rites is the result of a happy coincidence: when Maddy attended New Music on the Point in 2018, she got randomly placed in an ensemble with the same instrumentation as Front Porch. For them, Evan wrote Earth's Invocation, which was so beautiful that after performing it ourselves dozens of times, we asked Evan to expand it into a longer work. Now, "Earth's Invocation" is the first movement of four, and the deep harmonies and rich textures of Earth Rites will make it a staple of our repertoire for years to come.

Nina Shekhar

DEAR ABBY

Nina Shekhar's music explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter. Current projects include commissions for the New York Youth Symphony, Helios Chamber Orchestra, saxophonist Timothy McAllister, Ray-Kallay piano duo, The Furies, and LA's HEAR NOW Festival, and performances by Eighth Blackbird on their 2019-2020 season. Nina is pursuing graduate studies at University of Southern California, studying with Andrew Norman and Ted Hearne and serving as a teaching assistant. She earned undergraduate degrees in composition and chemical engineering at University of Michigan.

Founded in 1956, Dear Abby is a newspaper column in which readers ask for advice on a variety of topics, including etiquette, relationships, sex, health, and career guidance. A historical survey of Dear Abby and other advice columns paints a distinct portrait of misogynistic and heteronormative opinions about gender and sexuality: columns frequently advised women to obey their husbands, give up their careers, tolerate domestic violence, and always smile. Reading these old columns is telling of society's limited perception of genderroles and how the definition of gender has evolved. This piece, DEAR ABBY, explores how society often attempts to pigeonhole others into fitting into narrow gender roles that may or may not contradict with their own identity and the internal reactions that one might face as a result.

Ari Sussman

Mesmera

Praised for his "sophisticated writing" (GTM) and work that "weave(s) a trance-like mystical aura" (Zamir Chorale), Ari Sussman is a Philadelphia-born and Ann Arbor-based pianist, clawhammer banjoist, and composer of vocal, chamber, orchestral, choral, and electronic music. Kabbalah, the natural world, cosmology, meditation, metaphysics, ancient and contemporary poetry, the human condition, and human interactions are among Sussman's non-musical influences and interests. As a result, Sussman's music illustrates equivocal worlds of sounds that are ambient, euphonious, and ethereal in nature. Sussman enjoys long walks, playing basketball, drinking tea, Broad City, mancala, cheesecake, and avidly rooting for Philadelphian and University of Michigan sports teams.

"Mesmera" is a fabricated word derived from "mesmerize" or "mesmerism." The hypnotic sound and timbre of the word lends itself well to both the music and the accompanying eponymous poem:

I feed the lifebreath
who worships the insidious
tender demons, but
I may worry as
all is not lost. Bless your ears,
I will look alive.

Nathan Thatcher

A Little Lower than the Angels

Nathan Thatcher is a composer, performer, arranger, and author. He has received commissions from numerous soloists and ensembles including the New York City-based sextet yMusic, Emblems Wind Quintet Calidore String Quartet, Converge String Quartet, and the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition. He has worked as a producer, arranger, copyist, transcriber, and conductor with a wide array of musicians including Nico Muhly, Shara Nova, Sufjan Stevens, Nadia Sirota, Son Lux, Sam Amidon, Daníel Bjarnason, Joshua Winstead, Woodkid, David Byrne, and others. His arrangements have been performed by the Kronos quartet, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the Flanders Symphony Orchestra, and the Grant Park Orchestra and chorus, and appear prominently on the record Away by the band Okkervil River. He is also the author of Paco, a biography and memoir about the discovery of the music of the Spanish composer Francisco Estévez. He completed a bachelor’s degree in music composition at Brigham Young University and a master’s degree in the same at the University of Michigan.

When Front Porch first started out, there was no existing music for our unique instrumentation. Our close friend Nathan Thatcher was the first composer we reached out to about writing for us, and the resultant work, A Little Lower than the Angels, is still one of our absolute favorites. Beginning with small fragments of melodies, this piece develops into a rich tapestry of overlapping textures, with warm, thick ensemble textures balanced by delicate, sparkly sections. It also gives Jacob the opportunity to show off a unique instrument: a bowl of rice, which is spun, shaken, and poured to add density to the group texture. The work's climax is jubilant and expansive, providing a great close to any concert program.

Maddy Wildman

Disenraged

Whether in the concert hall or the rehearsal room, bassoonist and composer Maddy Wildman is passionate about the communities and relationships surrounding music, and strives to present music in fresh contexts to help foster new chemistry between performers and audience members. Her playing has received such praise as "Wow, I’ve never heard the oboe played like that before!" and "That kid sure can honk a mean boon." Maddy is passionate about watching animal videos, doing makeup, visiting thrift stores, and beating Ben in card games. Her favorite animal is the puffin (of both Atlantic and tufted varieties), but if she could be any animal, she would definitely be a bird of paradise.

"Disenraged" is a made-up word — a combination of "disengaged" and "enraged" — but it can mean whatever you want. This work by our own Maddy Wildman is similarly confounding: flitting between bouncingly groovy, seductively lyrical, and outright manic, this work is a guaranteed bop that lasts only slightly longer than the time it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket.