All Score Urbana: Music and Dance is a current grant proposal for the next iteration of All Score Urbana’s free to the public composition workshops. This program offers teaching artists with specializations in music composition, performance, improvisation, electronic music, choreography, and dance and seek to serve composers, songwriters, choreographers, and dancers in the community.
The teaching artist personnel include: briar darling (cello, improvisation), Jacob Mark Henss (choreography, dance), Dr. Ralph Lewis (composition, electronic music), Dr. Kerrith Livengood (composition, flute/electronic music), Peter Tijerina (trombone, improvisation, arranging). See below for more complete bios.
briar darling (they/fae/she) is a freelance composer and cellist, sound designer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Chicago, IL. faer primary aesthetic interest is exploring electroacoustic systems of musicmaking within a mode that conveys unhinged virtuosity and ecstatic emotion in equal and overwhelming measure.
As a cellist, they have performed within genres ranging from early baroque and cutting edge contemporary compositions to grindcore and avant garde improvisation. she has an ongoing collaborative relationship with Ashton Bauer, a Chicago-based dancer, choreographer, and educator. As a passionate advocate of new music, she has premiered works by Ben Johnston, Jack Langdon, Christian Quiñones, Alyssa Aska, Cheng Jin Koh, among many others. fae has performed with ensembles and bands such as New Music Mosaic, Illinois Modern Ensemble, Sweetmelk, and members of the Bergamot Quartet and JACK Quartet. As a keyboardist, she performed as a ringer with the meteoric cybergrind band Thotcrime during the winter and spring of 2023. In addition to her musical endeavors, fae is a passionate cook and a PK-12 substitute teacher for Chicago Public Schools.
Jacob Mark Henss is a St. Louis–based movement artist and choreographer. He is a graduate of Webster University (2013–17) with a BA in dance and music. From there he danced with Modern American Dance Company (MADCO), where he was a MADCO2 member (2017–18) and later an apprentice (2018–19). During his time after graduation, he produced three evening-length works, The Other Sides, Conservation, and Non Cura. Alongside self-producing his choreography, he has set work on MADCO2, Karlovsky and Company, and Webster University and for the CommUnity Arts Festival. Jacob received his MFA in dance from the University of Illinois in 2022.
Dr. Ralph Lewis is a composer and music theorist who currently serves as Adjunct Instructor of Music Composition at Millikin University and Instructional Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Illinois State University. His compositions seek meeting points between sonorous music and arresting noise, alternative tunings and timbre, and the roles of performer and audience. Lewis’s music has been presented at festivals and conferences including the International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR) (Australia), Convergence, the ARC Project, Radiophrenia Glasgow, and Sonic Cartography (the United Kingdom), Pärnu Days of Contemporary Music Festival (Estonia), International Computer Music Conference/ISSTA (Ireland), the Orpheus Institute (Belgium), Audio Rocket Festival (Japan), as well as numerous events in the United States including New Music Gathering, Verdant Vibes, Thirsty Ears Festival, SEAMUS National Conference, Boston Microtonal Society, SCI National Conference, College Music Society National Conference, Electronic Music Midwest, MOXsonic, N_SEME, CHIMEFest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, and the Music for People and Thingamajigs Festival. Throughout the 2020-2021 academic year, Lewis served as Composer-in-Residence for the Oberlin Arts and Sciences Orchestra. He has also been honored with artist residencies at Banff Art Centre, Westben, and WGXC Wave Farm. Lewis has been featured as a guest composer at University of South Florida, Heidelberg University, California State University, Bakersfield, and other institutions. In 2023, he was elected as the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States’ first Member At Large for Outreach. He also serves as Newsletter Editor for Society of Composers, Inc.
Composer Dr. Kerrith Livengood’s music has been described as “an escapade of wild effusions” (Bloomington Herald-Times) and “sketchy-seeming” (New York Times). Her music has been performed at SEAMUS, KISS 2018, ACO’s SONiC Festival, June in Buffalo, Bargemusic, CCM’s MusicX festivals, the North American Saxophone Alliance annual conference, the Atlantic Music Festival, the Contemporary Undercurrent of Song series, the Cortona Sessions, the Charlotte New Music Festival, and Alia Musica Pittsburgh’s Conductors Festival. She has composed works for the JACK Quartet, Third Angle Ensemble, Duo Cortona, Altered Sound Duo, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Beattie and pianist Adam Marks, soprano Amy Petrongelli, Harry Partch’s Adapted Guitar I performed by Charles Corey, Ligament, and the h2 Quartet. Kerrith’s music features unexpected musical forms, complex grooves, lyricism, improvisation, noise, and humor. Kerrith has been composer-in-residence at the Charlotte Festival of New Music, Music in Bloom Festival, Artists at Albatross Reach, the Osage Arts Community, I-Park, and Copland House. Her solo album of ambient electronic Sailor Moon-themed pieces, In The Name of the MOON, recently was released on Neuma Records. She is a co-founder and original flutist for the new music collective Alia Musica Pittsburgh, and has premiered many new works by young composers alongside members of the JACK Quartet, eighth blackbird and the American Modern Ensemble. Kerrith is also an adventurous experimentalist who has played bird songs while sitting in a tree, started a “noise cult”, worn a towel as concert attire, and performed in concert with Anthony Braxton and Renee Baker. She is a native of Springfield, Missouri; graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied with Eric Moe, Mathew Rosenblum, Amy Williams and Marcos Balter; and previously taught at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). Kerrith is Assistant Director of the New Music On The Point Festival, an annual summer festival for young composers and performers.
Peter Tijerina is an acclaimed trombonist, composer, and educator in both jazz and classical music worlds. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Peter moved to the state of Washington while still in junior high school, where he became exposed to the soulful and exuberant music of the Pentecostal church. In his undergraduate studies, Peter studied classical and jazz trombone with Keith Winkle, Richard Lopez, Ben McDonald, Rob Tapper, Ross Holcombe, Todd DelGuidice, and Jenny Kellogg, and soon after received an invitation to pursue his Master’s degree in Jazz Studies at Michigan State University (MSU) to study trombone with Michael Dease. Upon graduating, he joined the renowned jazz program and jazz trombone studio at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where he is currently finishing his Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Jazz Performance, under the direction of trombone legend Jim Pugh.
As a jazz and commercial trombonist, Peter has performed with Milonga and Son Dulce latin bands, the Sun Messengers, The Katie Flynn Cabaret, and the Lansing Symphony Jazz Band. He has also played alongside world-renown jazz musicians, including Rodney Whitaker, Randy Gillespie (aka “Uncle G”), Xavier Davis, Diego Rivera, Randy Napoleon, Etienne Charles, Christian McBride, Robin Eubanks, Peter Bernstein, Brian Lynch, Jimmy Cobbs, Kenny Barron, and Tim Warfield.
As a classical trombonist, Peter has given solo trombone recitals, performed with various chamber ensembles and orchestras, including the Olympia Symphony Orchestra, Coeur d’Alene Symphony, Illinois Modern Ensemble, and Urbana Pops Orchestra.
Peter formerly taught music at Lincoln College and has previously coached students and led courses at the Brevard Jazz Institute and the MSU Big Band Symposium. He has written commissioned arrangements for universities across the United States, for icons of contemporary jazz, including Ulysses Owens Jr.’s New Century Big Band, and for his nonet, which performs regularly in Central Illinois. He is currently finishing his DMA in jazz performance and teaching music at Community Center for the Arts (C4A).
Peter is an Outside in Arts artist and reviews for the Online Trombone Journal (OTJ).
Ralph Lewis: Composer 