Keymore Festival: Inaugural Concert

Program:

Aeryn Jade Santillan: weathering. (world premiere) *2022 Keymore Commissioned Work*

Shi-An Costello: Piano Parents (2022) for piano and recorded voices

Shi-An Costello: encores for piano (2020)

Performers:

Shi-An Costello, piano

Francis Yun, piano

About the works:

Aeryn Jade Santillan’s new work, weathering. will incorporate themes of nature, pollution and the idea of home. Santillan’s new work marks the Festival’s very first Keymore Commissioned Work. Shi-An Costello’s Piano Parents (2022) features voice memo recordings of parents reflecting on the experience of parenthood, as it relates to the piano and the unique stories and relationships that intersect with the instrument. Costello’s encores for piano (2020) are a set of studies in intimacy, time and focus, written during the summer lockdowns of 2020.

To learn more about the newly forming Keymore Festival for contemporary piano and keyboards, please visit: shiancostello.com/kf

(pictured: composer Aeryn Jade Santillan)

Featured Performer: Francis Yun

Francis Yun began playing the harpsichord while still a serious student of piano. He soon became enamored with the expressive capabilities of the harpsichord and became passionate about the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has performed throughout the United States in both solo and chamber recitals and has served as a continuo player for many orchestras, including The New York Strings Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, and Juilliard415. He has been a concerto soloist with the Garth Newel Emerging Artist Orchestra, the Birmingham Bloomfield Orchestra, and Juilliard415 and has performed in many prestigious concert halls including Avery Fisher Hall and Carnegie Hall.

Dr. Yun is a strong advocate for new music written for the harpsichord. He has commissioned several new works for the instrument and has also appeared as soloist with the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra where he premiered a new harpsichord concerto.

An educator at heart, Dr. Yun has taught high school and college students throughout his career. He has taught at Montclair State University, Brevard Music Center, and is now serving as the Director of Music at Chatham Hall.

Dr. Yun also hosts a podcast, “So Many Wrong Notes,” where he and his co-host, Jeannette Fang, discuss issues that face many emerging music professionals. More can be found at somanywrongnotes.com.

Featured Composer: Aeryn Jade Santillan

Aeryn Jade Santillan (she/her) is a composer, guitarist, and bassist whose work is heavily influenced by the DIY punk scene and actively aims to blur the lines between band/ensemble and song/composition.

Aeryn performs bass and vocals in Massa Nera, an experimental screamo quartet who’s toured in the USA, Canada, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan. Along with composer/guitarist Andrew Noseworthy, she co-founded this place is actually the worst, an experimental mathcore duo, and post-genre DIY label, people | places | records. She’s been commissioned by 45th Parallel Universe, Bang on a Can, Del Sol String Quartet, Gabriela Lena Frank’s Creative Academy of Music, ~Nois, percussionist Adam Groh, and more.

Aeryn holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Columbia College Chicago and a Master of Music in Theory and Composition degree from New York University. Previous mentors include Gabriela Lena Frank, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, Marcos Balter, David Reminick, Drew Baker, and Ilya Levinson. Aeryn has been a fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Toronto Creative Music Lab, and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music.

When she’s not writing music and touring with her bands, she works as an Adjunct Professor at NYU, the Sales and Marketing Assistant at Cantaloupe Music/Bang on a Can, and freelance production gigs around NYC. She enjoys skateboarding, D&D, video games, and vegan junk food. She lives in Jersey City, NJ with her partner and two cats.

Featured Composer/Performer: Shi-An Costello

Shi-An Costello (b. 1987) is a musician with deep roots in contemporary art practices. A versatile pianist, composer and sound artist, Shi-An has been described as a “precise, engaged, welcoming performer, unafraid of deep ambiguities“ (The Reader), “in such spare textures and hushed dynamics, the smallest development seems seismic” (Chicago Classical Review), and on his piano interpretations of Shostakovitch and Schumann, “a tour de force ... steely and granitic [Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87]” and “dreamy and sensitive [Davidsbundlertanze]” (Boston Musical Intelligencer).

As a composer, Shi-An has received commissions from Access Contemporary Music, High Concept Labs, The Response Project, Chromic, The _____ Experiment, masso quartet, Cacie Wilhoft and Friends, Missing Piece, artist G. Funo O’Kain. violinist Marina Kifferstein, vocalist Sarah Albu, harpsichordist Francis Yun, and pianists Jonathan Hannau and Magnus Villanueva. His music has been programmed by Sandra Wright Shen, International Contemporary Ensemble (I.C.E.), Thin Edge New Music Collective, Timepoint Ensemble, ThingNY and the Conservatoire de musique de Lausanne. Shi-An’s compositions have been featured at Contemporary Arts Center, Tribeca New Music New York, Chicago Cultural Center, Garth Newel Music Center, Asian Improv Arts Midwest, Université de Montréal, Pollack Hall and Redpath Hall of McGill University, Dalhousie University, University of Richmond, Constellation Chicago and Array Music Toronto.

Hailed by Philippe Leroux as “Shi-An finds the depth in every note” and the late Frederic Rzewski as “a winner,” Shi-An, as a pianist, has worked personally with over 150 composers from all over the world in solo, ensemble and chamber settings. Shi-An has commissioned new works by Viet Cuong, Danny Clay, Alex Temple, Ana Paola Santillan Alcocer, Aeryn Santillan, morgan krauss, Jimmie Leblanc, David Reminick, Marielle Groven, Kurt Isaacson, and has worked personally with composers Philippe Leroux, Frederic Rzewski, Jerome Kitzke, Serge Provost, Keeril Makan, Marti Epstein, Anthony Cheung, James O’Callaghan, Eliza Brown, Thomas Carr, and many other brilliant composers around the world.

A dedicated advocate and administrator. Costello founded and directed the Morton Feldman Chamber Players (MFCP) from 2013-2017, founded and served as artistic director of Vox Humana collective of speaking musicians from 2011-2013, and co-founded and served as president of Cadre composer collective at Columbia College from 2008-2010. Currently, he serves on the Board of Directors of New Music Chicago and The _____ Experiment, and is the artistic director and lead curator of the Keymore Festival for contemporary piano and keyboard music. He has also curated events at Experimental Sound Studio, Narloch Piano Studio, Marvin Duchow Music Library of McGill University, and Cathédrale Christ Church (Montreal).

Costello previously held position as Visiting Artist and Piano faculty at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and New Music School. He has been a guest artist lecturer at numerous universities and institutions across North America. He holds degrees in Music Composition and Performance from Columbia College and the Schulich School of Music of McGill University.