Etchings 2025
Application Guidelines
Since 2009, Etchings has been one of the premiere music festival academies for emerging composers, hosting guest composers Kaija Saariaho, Geog Friedrich Haas, Francesco Filidei, Lee Hyla, Philippe Hurel, David Rakowski, Franck Bedrossian, Martin Brody, Stefano Gervasoni, Philippe Leroux, and many others.
Fellows are welcomed into our ensemble’s community and afforded opportunities that cultivate their creativity and imagination in supportive ways.
2025 Guest Artists
Composers:
Melinda Wagner, Yu-Hui Chang, David Sanford and Maxwell Dulaney
Ecce Ensemble:
Lily Xie, flutes | Barret Ham, clarinets | Jordan Hadrill, violin | Robbie Bui, cello | Geoffrey Burleson, piano
Guest Artists:
Philipp Stäudlin, Saxophone | Dan Lippel, guitar / electric guitar
Melinda Wagner
Celebrated as an “...eloquent, poetic voice in contemporary music...” [American Record Guide], Melinda Wagner’s esteemed catalog of works embodies music of exceptional beauty, power, and intelligence. Wagner received widespread attention when her colorful Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. Since then, major works have included Concerto for Trombone, for Joseph Alessi and the New York Philharmonic, a piano concerto, Extremity of Sky, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony for Emanuel Ax, and Little Moonhead, composed for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as part of its popular “New Brandenburgs” project.
Among honors Wagner has received is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP. Wagner was given an honorary doctorate from Hamilton College, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Melinda Wagner was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017.
A passionate and inspiring teacher, Melinda Wagner has given master classes at many fine institutions across the United States, including Harvard, Yale, Eastman, Juilliard, and UC Davis. She has held faculty positions at Brandeis University and Smith College, and has served as a mentor at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Atlantic Music Festival, and Yellow Barn. Ms. Wagner currently serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music.
Yu-Hui Chang
Award-winning composer Yu-Hui Chang has written a wide range of music that compels and resonates with professional musicians and audiences alike. Her music is characterized by energy, precision, ingenious effects, and vibrant colors – all in the pursuit of a deep connection with humanity. She strives to break through cultural and stylistic boundaries, and to take an inclusive view of musical diversity. This attitude is manifested in the multifaceted quality of her compositional output, and the stylistic fluidity in her writing.
Yu-Hui was given the Arts and Letters Award and the Charles Ives Fellowship by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, and Meet The Composer (now New Music USA). Additional honors include the Aaron Copland Award, Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize, and the Council for Cultural Affairs of the Executive Yuan (Taiwanese government agency, now Ministry of Culture.)
Performances of Yu-Hui’s compositions have taken places across continents in the Netherlands, Italy, UK, Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and throughout the U.S. to critical acclaim by musicians and organizations such as the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra, Nieuw Ensemble, NZTrio, ICE, Lydian String Quartet, and Alexander String Quartet. Among the numerous commissions she has received include those from the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, KlangForum Heidelberg, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Earplay, Volti, Boston Musica Viva, Alea III, Winsor Music, Ju Percussion Group, Monadnock Music Festival, Arts Council Korea, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, National Theater & Concert Hall of Taiwan, the 2003 Seoul International Festival of Women in Music Today, and many individual musicians.
David Sanford
Born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1963, David Sanford received degrees in music theory and composition from the University of Northern Colorado, New England Conservatory, and Princeton University where he received the PhD in music composition and completed his dissertation, “’Prelude (Part 1)’ from Agharta: Modernism and Primitivism in the Fusion Works of Miles Davis”. During these years, he studied composition and theory with Richard Bourassa, Robert Ehle, Arthur Berger, Pozzi Escot, Jim Randall, Claudio Spies and Steve Mackey. He is the founder and director of the David Sanford Big Band (formerly the Pittsburgh Collective), a twenty-piece contemporary big band.
Sanford’s honors include the Rome Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute, an Arts and Letters Award, an Ives Scholarship and a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awards from BMI, ASCAP, and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and a Composer Portrait concert at Miller Theater. He was composer-in-residence at Concert Artists Guild and at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music (through BMI), guest composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference, and a chosen participant in the African American Composers Forum with the Detroit Symphony. He has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Chamber Music America for the Meridian Arts Ensemble, the Zéphyros Winds, and the Festival of New Trumpet Music, from the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Meridian Arts Ensemble and for cellist Matt Haimovitz and the Pittsburgh Collective, the Barlow Endowment for pianist Lara Downes, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust for Speculum Musicae, and from Castle of our Skins and Winsor Music, Astral Artists, the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Princeton University Orchestra and Jazz Ensemble, the Empyrean Ensemble at UC Davis, and the Mana Saxophone Quartet. In addition, his works have received performances by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra under Kent Nagano, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra under Marin Alsop, the Detroit Symphony under Leslie Dunner, the Peabody Modern Orchestra under Cliff Colnot, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Chicago Symphony Chamber Players, and the U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, among many others.
Sanford’s works have been recorded by artists including Speculum Musicae, Matt Haimovitz, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, pianist Lara Downes and New York Philharmonic cellist Eric Bartlett. The title track of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s recording of the composer’s works, Black Noise, was named one of “The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2019” by the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/arts/music/best-classical-music.html); the Pittsburgh Collective’s CD Live at the Knitting Factory, featuring his compositions and arrangements was named one of the albums of the year in Jazziz magazine; and Haimovitz’s disc Meeting of the Spirits with his cello ensemble UCCELLO, which featured seven jazz arrangements and one composition by Sanford, received a four-star review from downbeat magazine, and was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Sanford has taught at the University of Chicago and Amherst College, and is currently Elizabeth T. Kennan Professor of Music at Mount Holyoke College teaching theory, composition, music and film, and jazz history. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with his wife, architect Mary Yun, and their two children.
Maxwell Dulaney
Maxwell Dulaney, whose work has been described as “evocative and subtle” is currently Assistant Professor of Composition & Theory at Tulane University. Dr. Dulaney received his Ph.D. in Composition & Theory from Brandeis University, where he studied with David Rakowski, Marty Boykan, Eric Chasalow, and Yu-Hui Chang. He also had private lessons and attended master classes with Chaya Czernowin, Isabel Mundry, and Valerio Sannicandro. As an acoustic and electro-acoustic composer, his compositional philosophy is rooted in the study of the multitudinous elements of sounds and finding new and informed ways of developing compositional structures out of them.
Dr. Dulaney has been commissioned by, and collaborated closely with, soloists and ensembles including Orlando Cela, Chris Finkel, New York New Music Ensemble, the Xanthos Ensemble, Ecce Ensemble, Contemporaneous, and Grammy Award-winning harmonica virtuoso Howard Levy. Recent commissions include two compositions for Ecce Ensemble, In Ricordo di una Anima Antica for cello and clarinet in B-flat performed in Paris, and Already Root, an art song for soprano and ensemble performed in New York and Cambridge; The Old Harp for the Ningbo University Orchestra; and A Turning Inwards, no. 1, commissioned by Orlando Cela with multiple national performances including in Boston, New York, and New Orleans.