exeter-organ
An exciting series of eleven brand-new organ works that will be premiered at Exeter College, Oxford.
THE EXETER COLLEGE ORGAN PROJECT
April-June 2024
Exeter College, University of Oxford
“The Lord preserve your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and for evermore. Amen”
During the spring of 2024, an international collection of award-winning composers will create brand-new organ works to be premiered during chapel services at Exeter College, Oxford. Inspired by the words from Psalm 121 that close each Exeter chapel service, these extraordinary works will celebrate the rich legacy of sacred music at Exeter and the religious life that has been so meaningful to the College community for hundreds of years.
These new pieces will be premiered by Michale Koenig, Graduate Organist at Exeter College, during Trinity Term of 2024. They will be recorded this summer for the upcoming Deus Ex Musica Records release The Exeter College Organ Project.
Founded in 1315, Exeter College - the alma mater of numerous celebrated musicians, including Sir Hubert Parry - stands at the heart of Oxford, adjoining the Radcliffe Camera of the Bodleian Library. Its ornate noe-gothic chapel, one of Oxford’s most beautiful, houses an organ by J. W. Walker & Sons, Ltd. designed in the style of the French builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.
Read about the project on the Exeter College website.
THE CONCERT
Hear the world premiere concert performances of these works in the glorious Exeter College Chapel.
Friday, 14 June, 8:00 pm
Free Admission
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
THE ORGANIST
Michael Koenig serves as the Graduate Organist at Exeter College. In this role, he is the principal chapel organist, co-directs the choir and facilitates the weekly organ recital series; in 2023, following a tradition of historic firsts at Exeter, he presented the first-ever all-female line-up of a college organ recital series across Oxbridge.
Before coming to Oxford, Michael earned MA degrees in organ performance and music education at Vienna University of Music, an MA in African Studies at Copenhagen University and an MA in World History and Cultures at King’s College, London; furthermore, he is a prize-winning Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. Between 2008 and 2017, Michael completed over two dozen extended trips to Kenya and Nigeria as a visiting organ teacher and recitalist. In 2015, he also acted as the official organist for a worship service presided over by Pope Francis in Nairobi.
Mr. Koenig is currently a third-year doctoral candidate in Music and Global History at the University of Oxford, holding a Graduate Scholarship at St Catherine’s College. He recently gave presentations at conferences in the United States and Singapore and has forthcoming publications in the journals of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Trust of Australia.
THE COMPOSERS
Guatemalan-American composer Xavier Beteta was born in Guatemala City where he studied piano at the National Conservatory with Consuelo Medinilla. In 2013 he won the Silver Medal at the fourth International Antonin Dvorak Composition Competition in Prague. He obtained his Ph.D. in composition at the University of California San Diego where he studied with Roger Reynolds, Philippe Manoury, and Chinary Ung. His compositions have been performed by ensembles such as Accroche Note, Ensemble SoundScape, Ensemble Signal conducted by Brad Lubman, UCSD Palimpsest, the Mivos Quartet, Formosa Quartet, The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players under Steven Schick, the Guatemalan National Symphony and the Camellia Symphony. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Wheaton College (Illinois) and is part of the board of directors of New Music Chicago.
The Rev Professor June Boyce-Tillman MBE is an international performer, composer, workshop leader and keynote speaker. She is an Emerita Professor of Applied Music at Winchester University UK, and an Extra-ordinary Professor at North West University, South Africa. She has taught in primary and secondary schools and higher education. Her doctoral research into children’s musical development has been translated into five languages. She has held visiting fellowships in the US. Her large scale works for cathedrals involve professional musicians, community choirs, people with disabilities and school children. She is concerned with wellbeing, eudaimonia, spirituality, education and radical musical inclusion culturally and personally. She is editing the series on Music and Spirituality for Peter Lang which includes her book, Experiencing Music-Restoring the Spiritual; Music as Wellbeing, She founded MSW – Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing – an international network sharing expertise and experience in this area. She is an Anglican priest.
Hailed as a “promising composer” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Alexandra T Bryant has been lauded for her “ability to convey myriad moods through clear thematic materials and coloristic contrasts.” She has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, the Aeolus Quartet through a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Santa Fe Youth Symphony Orchestra Association, the Tacoma Youth Symphony Association, The Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies, and the Metropolitan Ballet Theatre & Academy. Dr. Bryant is a graduate of the University of Maryland, the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, and the Cleveland Institute of Music. She will be starting her first year at Palm Beach Atlantic University in South Florida this upcoming fall as Assistant Professor of Music Theory. She previously served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota for eight years.
Deus Ex Musica founder Delvyn Case is an American composer, conductor, writer, and scholar whose work explores the intersections of music and religion. His music has been performed by over 100 orchestras in the US, UK, and Europe, as well as by legendary clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, the Borromeo quartet, the Mivos Quartet, Hub New Music, the Hermitage Trio, and the Grammy-winning Chestnut Brass Company. He has won national prizes from many organizations, including BMI, the New York Virtuoso Singers, and the Music Teachers National Association, which named him “Distinguished Composer of the Year” in 2022. His interdisciplinary projects have been featured in Time Magazine, the Christian Century, Sojourners, the Boston Globe, the “Unorthodox” Podcast from the Jewish Magazine Tablet, and on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Morning. He currently serves as Professor of Music at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, and is spending 2024 as a Visiting Fellow at Exeter College.
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Composer Carlos R. Carrillo Cotto holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (BM), Yale University (MM), and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.). Dr. Carrillo is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bearns Prize, the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Vanguard Opera Composer with Chicago Opera Theater, BMI, and ASCAP awards. He has taught composition at DePauw University, Reed College, and the Conservatory of Music in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Currently, Dr. Carrillo is an Associate Professor of Composition/Theory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
William David Cooper is a composer, conductor and organist based in Boston, MA. His vocal music has been featured by Fort Worth Opera, the National Opera Association, the New York Virtuoso Singers and St. Peter’s Church, NYC. He has been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, and the American Prize. His chamber music has been featured on several recently released recordings, including Mirrors (2021) and Nong (2020). An alumnus of UC Davis and the Juilliard School, Cooper serves on the music faculty of the Walnut Hill School for the Arts, and as music director at Wellesley Hills Congregational Church (MA).
Maria Thompson Corley began composing and arranging as a child. Since then, her music has been commissioned and recorded by numerous musicians and entities. She is published by Gentry, Walton, Classical Vocal Reprints, NoteNova, and North Star. An Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, she is known primarily for her vocal music, including two short form operas composed for The Decameron Opera Coalition. Her opera about John Lewis, for which she was a co-recipient of an Opera America IDEA Grant, will be premiered by Cincinnati Opera in 2026. Dr. Corley is the music director/organist at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Lancaster, PA.
After studying piano and church music (choir conducting, composition, organ), Johannes Kobald began working as a sound engineer and choir and orchestra conductor in Vienna. He has collaborated with the Vienna Boys' Choir, the Austrian Society for Contemporary Music (ÖGZM), the University of Music, Hortus Musicus (Klagenfurt), Jesuit College Innsbruck, Society of Carinthian Slovenes in Vienna, Collegium Innsbruck, Muun Company, Vienna Organ Concerts and Museum Applied Arts Vienna (MAK). As a singing member of the Vienna Choralschola, which has been dedicated to the scientific restoration and the cultivation of Gregorian chant and early polyphony (concerts, liturgical events, workshops) since 1996.
Composer Eun Young Lee, a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, has been lauded for her “imaginative use of distinctive sonorities,” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer). She has worked with the New York NewMusic Ensemble, Pacifica Quartet, eighth blackbird, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Gemini Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and ensemble mise-en, among other ensembles. She has received a number of awards, including first prize at the Tsang-Houei Hsu International Music Composition Competition in Taiwan. Her music has been featured on several CDs including Nong by gamin, E Plurius Unum by Liza Stepanova, and From East to Westby Sojung Lee Hong. . She earned a PhD at the University of Chicago, and master’s degrees at Manhattan School of Music and Ewha Woman’s University. She has served on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory since 2014 as well as at Tufts University.
David Maw has been professionally associated with the Oxford Faculty of Music since 1995, when he was appointed to a Lectureship at The Queen’s College. He is currently a Research Fellow and principal College Tutor in Music at Oriel College in conjunction with Lectureships at other colleges. His research centres on topics in historical musicology (medieval and modern) and in music theory and analysis with an overarching interest in questions of compositional practice and choice. He was an undergraduate and graduate student at Oxford, completing his doctorate on Machaut’s songs at Wadham College. He held organ scholarships as both an undergraduate and a graduate student and was active also as a composer during this time. He has received first prizes in composition and organ improvisation from international competitions and made numerous appearances in concerts around France and the UK.
Known for his energetic rhythms, rich harmonic language, and striking colors, Colombian-American composer Josh Rodríguez (b. 1982) continues to gain recognition as an emerging composer on a national and international scale. Born in Argentina and raised in Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States, Rodríguez's musical imagination has been formed by this bilingual multicultural heritage. He collaborates regularly with theatre and film directors and has written in a wide range of musical genres including Dos Palabras (Springfield Chamber Chorus Composition Competition winner 2022) and When Stone Becomes Forest (THE AMERICAN PRIZE, winner 2022). Rodríguez (ASCAP) currently serves as Associate Professor of Music Theory & Composition at the Elmhurst University.