TEXAS NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE
A nonprofit organization dedicated to the enrichment of Texas communities through the performance of contemporary art music.
TEXAS NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL
GLOBAL SOUNDS, TEXAS MUSICIANS
Festival Artists
Chad Robinson
Artistic Director
Houston native, Dr. Chad Robinson, is the Artistic Director and founder of Texas New Music Ensemble, a Houston-based, mixed chamber ensemble focused on the work of Texas composers. As a composer, he has worked with many prestigious ensembles and soloists, such as: Ethel, Lontano, The Jack Quartet, The Parker Quartet, Musiqa, George Vosburgh, Mary Dullea, and Emma Steele. His music has been performed throughout the globe and in February of 2020, his works received their Carnegie Hall debut. Dr. Robinson has received multiple awards and grants throughout his career, including: 1st Prize in the CMU Orchestral Composition Competition, 2nd Prize in the Louisa Stude Sarofim Composition Competition, KCL Music Research Grant, and the KCL Arts and Humanities Research Grant. An alumnus of University of Houston (BM), Carnegie Mellon University (MM) and King's College, London (PhD), Dr. Robinson currently serves on the faculty of Texas A&M University - Kingsville and his music is recorded by Navona Records. https://www.chadrobinson.net/
Rob Smith
Guest Composer
The innovative and highly energetic music of Rob Smith is frequently performed throughout the United States and abroad. His music has received numerous awards, including those from the Aaron Copland House (Residency Award), Minneapolis Pops Orchestra New Orchestral Repertoire Project, ASCAP, and the National Band Association. He has received commissions from the Texas Music Festival Orchestra, Soli Chamber Ensemble (San Antonio), the American Composers Forum (Continental
Harmony), the New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program, and several nationally renowned university wind ensembles, among many others.
Currently, Rob teaches at the University of Houston Moores School of Music where he is Professor of Music Composition and director of the AURA Contemporary Ensemble. During his tenure at UH he has been formally recognized for his teaching twice: in 2013 Outstanding Faculty Award (Moores School of Music) and 2014 UH Faculty Recognition Award (College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences). From 2003-2014 he served as one of the artistic directors of Musiqa, a Houston-based contemporary chamber ensemble. In addition to programming and presenting 6-8 concerts a season, Rob also created three children’s programs with his colleagues at Musiqa, two of which continue to be presented annually for hundreds of public-school students. https://robsmithcomposer.com/
Edward Nesbit
Guest Composer
The work of composer Edward Nesbit has been performed by groups such as London Sinfonietta, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Britten Sinfonia in venues including Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Purcell Room and Barbican Hall. His work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and has been featured in the Aldeburgh, Tanglewood and Verbier Festivals. His song cycle A Pretence of Wit was shortlisted for the vocal category of the British Composer Awards.
Nesbit’s first portrait CD, entitled Sacred Choral Music and performed by The Choir of King’s College London and their director Joseph Fort, was released on Delphian Records in 2022. The CD was met with critical acclaim, including being selected as Editor’s Choice in Gramophone magazine and Recording of the Month in Choir and Organ Magazine. His second portrait CD, Nativity, was released in 2024.
Born in 1986, Edward Nesbit studied at Cambridge University, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and King’s College London with composers including Julian Anderson and George Benjamin. He is Senior Lecturer in Composition at King’s College London.
Michael Ippolito
Guest Composer
Praised by the New York Times for his “polished orchestration” that “glitters, from big-shoulders brass to eerily floating strings,” Michael Ippolito’s music has been performed by leading musicians in venues around the world. Drawing on a rich musical background of classical and folk music, and taking inspiration from visual art, literature and other art forms, he has forged a distinctive musical voice in a body of work spanning orchestral, chamber, and vocal music.
His orchestral music has been conducted by Edo de Waart, Marin Alsop, Michael Francis, Ludwig Carrasco, David Alan Miller, and Jeffrey Milarsky in performances by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Symphony, Florida Orchestra, San Antonio Philharmonic, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Albany Symphony Orchestra, and Juilliard Orchestra. His chamber music has been performed by the Attacca Quartet, Miro Quartet, Hub New Music, Altius Quartet, and Dinosaur Annex, among others, and his vocal music has been championed by sopranos Joèlle Harvey and Lindsay Kesselman, mezzo-soprano Daveda Karanas, and baritone Will Liverman.
He has received commissions from numerous organizations, including Carnegie Hall and The ASCAP Foundation, The Florida Orchestra, Chamber Music America, the University of Georgia Wind Ensemble, Staatstheater Darmstadt, and the New York Choreographic Institute.
He has received numerous awards, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Charles Ives Scholarship), The Juilliard School (Palmer Dixon Prize) and ASCAP (multiple ASCAP Plus Awards). His wind ensemble work West of the Sun was given an honorable mention in the 2014 Frederick Fennell Prize and his String Quartet No. 3 “Songlines” was selected 2019 Call for Scores winner by the Tesla Quartet.
He was a composer fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and the Cultivate program at the Copland House in 2012. From 2004-2011, he was a participating composer and performer in MusicX, an innovative festival of new music in Cincinnati and Switzerland, where he worked as General Manager from 2008-2011. He has also participated in the "Upbeat Hvar" International Summer School in Croatia, Yiddish Summer Weimar in Germany and the Oregon Bach Festival's Composers Symposium.
Ippolito is currently Associate Professor of Composition at Texas State University. He studied with John Corigliano at The Juilliard School and with Joel Hoffman and Michael Fiday at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
Felipe Tristán
Principal Conductor
Texas New Music Festival presents Felipe Tristán. Hailed as "the most important Monterrey conductor of his generation" (El Norte/Reforma, 2022), Felipe has performed worldwide, including in Germany, Canada, China, the United States, Panama, Czechia, and Switzerland. He is the principal conductor of the Ballet de Monterrey, conductor at the Manhattan School of Music Precollege, associate conductor of Teatro Grattacielo, and interim artistic director of the Brooklyn Symphony. In 2023 and 2024, he was the guest conductor at the MET GALA, with a Condé Nast and Vogue production, later showcased in the NY Times. Felipe is an artistic consultant for the GRAMMY-winning organization, Afro Latin Jazz Alliance in NY, producing and presenting performances for Carnegie Hall Citywide, NY Phil Bandwagon, Bryant Park, and Lincoln Center. In 2019, Felipe was featured in FORBES magazine in “Working Journal” by photographer Michael Fiedler. He has premiered several works by living composers and is the principal conductor of the Texas New Music Festival. Felipe holds music degrees from Mexico, the US, and Switzerland. Upcoming engagements in 24/25 include performances at the Venice Biennale 2024, a “Romeo & Juliet” production by Prokofiev with Ballet de Monterrey, and his debut in Italy with the Orchestra Filarmonica della Calabria. Felipe is the Texas New Music Festival principal conductor and will be premiering works by TNMF composers, as well as coaching TNMF student conductors.
Joachim Reinhuber
Guest Artist, piano
Joachim Reinhuber, DMA, NCTM, serves as Professor of Piano at Texas A&M University, Kingsville, and is in high demand as solo and collaborative performer, clinician, and adjudicator in the US and his native Germany. He studied with his grandfather, Franz Calvelli-Adorno, Gisela Sott (Frankfurt), Robert Levin (University of Music, Freiburg), John Perry (Rice University, Houston TX), and Nancy Garrett (University of Texas at Austin). Recent performances include Brahms first piano concerto with the Laredo Philharmonic, the Schumann concerto and Beethoven’s first with the Aschaffenburg Chamber Orchestra, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Texas A&M Kingsville Wind Symphony, Bach d minor and Stravinsky concerto for piano and winds in one concert with the Kingsville Symphony. In 2012 and 2014 he was the pianist for the Texas Music Educators Association’s All-State Men’s Choir. He has toured extensively throughout Texas, the United States, and Germany, with residencies at the Keyboard Arts Festival in Pueblo, CO, and solo performances at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M International University, Bowling Green State University, Youngstown State University, Akron University, Malone University, Baylor University, and the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, among others. As a collaborator, he has worked with Marianne Gedigian, former principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the baritones Ronald Ulen and David Small, the violinist Julia Kuhn, and the pianists Caroline Oltmanns, Zahari Metchkov, and Johan Botes. In 2016 he was chosen to present the annual faculty lecture at Texas A&M University Kingsville, the first musician in 30 years on whom this honor was bestowed. His lecture recital explored the development of Beethoven’s musical language over the span of 30 years in the three c minor Sonatas op. 10/1, 13, and 111. His doctoral lecture recital on Riemann’s Functional Theory and Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasy was awarded outstanding lecture at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2020 his proposal “Songs with and without words: Extrapolating clues for Brahms' late piano pieces from his songs” was presented virtually at the MTNA convention. In 2023 he was invited to present again for MTNA in Reno, NV on “Beyond the Piano -Transcriptions as Teaching Tools.” In fall 2024 he will present several lectures and recitals on the music of Arnold Schoenberg. He has served as an adjudicator at the Sorentin International Competition in San Angelo, TX, the Laredo International Piano Competition, the Steinway Competition, the California Music Teachers’ Concerto Competition, and the State Concerto Competition of the Texas Music Teachers‘ Association in Huntsville, TX.
Ook-Jin You
Guest Artist, piano
Ookjin You, D.M.A. serves as Instructor of Collaborative Piano at Texas A&M University- Kingsville, and is in high demand as a solo and collaborative performer, and adjudicator. Her first piano teacher was Kyungmi Lee who was raised in Japan, and trained in New England Conservatory. She subsequently studied with Rolf Plagge (University of Mozarteum), Norman Krieger, Alan L. Smith, and Jeffrey Kahane ( University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA).
Born and raised in Seoul, Korea and after graduating Yewon Conservatory and Seoul Arts High School with honors, Ookjin You received a Bachelor degree in Piano Performance from Ewha Women's University in Seoul, a Master of Arts degree in Piano Performance (Klavier Konzertfach) in 2009 in Austria, Europe with the Post Graduate certificate in Piano Performance (Klavier Konzertfach) in 2011. In 2017, she earned Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance at USC Thornton School of Music, with a minor in Music Education, Keyboard Collaborative Arts and Sacred Music under the tutelage of Drs. Beatrice Ilari, Alan L. Smith, Stewart Gordon and Nick Strimple.
As a featured soloist, Ookjin You debuted with the Seoul Symphony Orchestra with the work of Edvard Grieg. Her solo performance has been broadcasted on Classical KUSC, the only classical radio in the greater Los Angeles area. She released the first album sponsored by PARMA recording with the piano solo works and an ensemble work of contemporary composer, Carl Vollrath in the greater Boston area in 2023.
She is invited as a soloist with the Kingsville Symphony Orchestra with the work of George Gershwin in February 2025 and her first piano solo album, which features baroque, classical, and romantic works including contemporary composer Chad Robinson, will soon be released by PARMA Recording.
Vista Trio
Guest Ensemble
The Vista Trio was formed in the fall of 2018 and has since established itself as an ensemble known for its dynamic performances and commitment to chamber music. Comprised of faculty members from Texas A&M University-Kingsville, the trio regularly performs programs of diverse repertoire at venues across South Texas. In August 2023, the Vista Trio was invited to perform at the 51st Annual National Flute Association Convention, where they presented works by Koechlin, Dubois, and Pierné. Their performances continue to be recognized for their musicality and ensemble synergy. They expect their first album to be released in 2025.
Joe LoCascio
Guest Artist
Joe LoCascio has spent a lifetime creating and performing creative music. He is an award winning composer who has written for ensembles of all sizes and is prolific in both traditional and jazz genres. As a performer he has released 18 critically acclaimed jazz recordings.
A student of David Barnett, John Mehegan and Neil Slater at the University of Bridgeport, LoCascio went on to perform and record with major jazz figures such as Chet Baker, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Frank Rehak, Freddie Hubbard, Mel Lewis, Bob Brookmeyer, George Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, Marvin Stamm, Carl Fontana, Hank Crawford, Ernie Watts, Arnett Cobb, Conrad Herwig and Jon Faddis, among others.
Among his works are a Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Orchestra commissioned by the Baytown Symphony Orchestra, Gently Criminal for the Cypress Philharmonic Orchestra, Saltwater Music for the Alkali String Ensemble, Crossings and Still Life (with Clarinets) for Richard Nunemaker, In the Wilderness, The Cities and Urban Mosaics for Trio Oriens, Crossroads for the NOVACANE Clarinet Quartet, Oblique Prayers and Widow’s Tales for the Texas New Music Ensemble and 4 Bagatelles and Northwest Passage for the PLAY Saxophone Quartet.
LoCascio and his wife Lucia currently reside in Houston, Texas where he is a full-time instructor of music at Houston Community College.
Woody Witt
Guest Artist
Woody Witt is an active performer, composer and educator based in Houston, TX. In October 2014, Woody was the grand-prize winner of the Taichung International Jazz Saxophone Competition in Taichung, Taiwan. He has 9 CDs to his credit as a leader and has done over 30 recordings as a sideman. Most of his CDs feature original music and have received airplay around the US and abroad. His 8th recording, “Pots and Kettles,” made the CMJ (#3) and Jazzweek charts.
Woody has been an exclusive performing artist for MacSax Saxophones since 2013. Dr. Witt is a Professor of Music in Jazz Studies, Academic Music and Saxophone at Houston Community College and an Affiliate Artist at the University of Houston Moores School of Music. Woody holds a Masters degree in Jazz Studies from the prestigious University of North Texas, where he taught saxophone and jazz methods. Witt received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston in 2000. As a jazz artist, Woody has had the opportunity to perform and record with some of the best practitioners of the art form including Randy Brecker, Billy Hart, David Kikoski, and Tim Hagans among countless others. Woody has established himself as a notable musician in the area and has performed with the Houston Symphony since 1996, backing artists including Ray Charles, Kenny Rogers and Tony Bennett.
Since 2013, Woody has returned to his classical training. He has premiered several new pieces for solo saxophone, as well as saxophone with electronics. Witt is collaborating with composers including Joe LoCascio, Dr. Kevin Patton and Chapman Welch for this project. Concerts took place at the University of Houston, Oregon State University, University of North Texas and the University of St. Thomas. Witt also leads a professional saxophone quartet (The Play Sax Quartet), which has premiered several new works by Dr. Robert Nelson, Hsin-Jung Tsai, Dr. James Bishop and others.
Meg Griffith
Guest Soloist, flute
Flutist and Trevor James Alto Artist, Meg Griffith tours regularly in the United States and Canada as a soloist and pedagogue on modern and Baroque flute. Meg’s Carnegie Hall debut received critical acclaim from the New York Concert Review: “an excellent flutist…playing at breakneck speed…facility with total control” who “radiated calm serenity and impressionistic colors, giving…a fine opportunity to exhibit her beautiful, singing tone.” (New York Concert Review). Her passion for new music and support of living composers is fed through commissioning projects and as a member of the Texas New Music Ensemble. Meg especially enjoys the chance to collaborate with composers, creating a balance of their voice and her own. On the opposite end of the spectrum, she regularly performs on traverso and gives workshops on Baroque interpretation and ornamentation geared toward connecting modern flutists to the traverse’s colors and beauty. She has presented and performed at the Canadian Flute Festival, the British Flute Society’s Convention, and the National Flute Association’s Annual Convention. In addition to performing, Griffith has been actively involved in service as Assistant Program Chair of the National Flute Association’s 2011 Convention and the President and Industry/Commercial Liaison of the Texas Flute Society. She recently served as Chair of the Archives and Oral History Committee of the NFA.
Texas New Music Ensemble
Ensemble in Residence
The Texas New Music Festival Ensemble is a dynamic group of 12 highly accomplished musicians from Texas and across the country, brought together under the direction of renowned conductor Felipe Tristan. Known for their versatility and expertise, this ensemble is dedicated to showcasing new and innovative compositions. At the upcoming festival, they will premiere the works of our composer fellows, offering a unique opportunity to experience fresh and original music performed by some of the finest talent in the industry.
Festival Staff
Eric Estrada Valadez
Assistant to the director
Eric Estrada’s music balances his artistic voice with his cultural roots, and explores themes like migration, our connection with nature, and the blend of academic and popular music. He is also interested in narrative and story telling, and frequently draws inspiration from poetry and literature.
His music has been performed in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and has received numerous awards, like the Arturo Márquez Composition Award (2019), the National Composition Competition for Percussion Quartet SAFA (2019), the International Composers Competition New Symphony Vienna (2020), MUSIQA’s Emergent Composer’s Competition (2023), and SOLI'S 30x30x30 Project (2024).
His collaborations include ensembles and organizations like Hub New Music, Aura Contemporary Ensemble, Texas New Music Ensemble, Orquesta Mexicana de las Artes, Safa Percussion Quartet, Kazoku Saxophone Quartet, Project Fusion Quartet, SOLI Chamber Ensemble, MUSIQA, Vortice Ensemble, Mexico’s National Endowment for the Arts, Cynthia Woods Mitchel Center for the Arts, the Public Arts University of Houston System, the Blaffer Museum, and the Art Music Society.He has been featured in the Tutti International Music Festival, CampGround 2024, New Music in the Bayou, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Texas New Music Festival, among others.
He holds a bachelor and master degrees in the field of composition by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and is currently pursuing a fully funded Doctoral Degree in composition at the University of Houston Moores School of Music with Rob Smith.
Trey Harris
Sound Engineer
Trey has been infatuated with live music since listening to his father's barbershop quartet rehearse in the living room as a boy. Since 1977 he has toured as a live sound mixer with various artists ranging from Steppenwolf to The B-52's to Asleep at the Wheel to Mickey Gilley and Riot. The picture is from soundcheck for the Mickey Gilley band circa 1985 at a Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn. Incidentally, Ninfa's was the catering service. In the past three decades, he has been a sound designer and board operator for over 80 musical theatre productions. Trey has been practicing live location recording of orchestral and ensemble performances for the last 15 years and has been honored to have been recording great works and performances by Texas New Music Ensemble for the last 10 years!
