Meet the Artists
New Composers, New Composers: 2025
Performances February 22 and 23, 2025
Conductors
Audrey J. Edelstein
Audrey J. Edelstein brings sensitivity, power, and connection to the podium, championing a compassionate experience between herself, ensemble, and audience. Audrey is engaged in programming women and underrepresented voices, blending the richness of the classical tradition with perspectives of the next generation of creators. A self-described “theater kid,” she is equally comfortable leading choruses, orchestras, theater pits, and avant-garde projects. Recent highlights include conducting Jennifer Higdon’s Viola Concerto with William Frampton, Principal Viola of the American Symphony Orchestra, the New York City premiere of Ruth Gipps’ Oboe Concerto with Keve Wilson, and a fully staged production of Stravinsky’s L'Histoire du soldat.
Audrey is the Associate Music Director of The Broadway Bach Ensemble. Previous positions include Assistant Conductor of the Oratorio Society of Queens and Northwinds Symphonic Band. As guest and cover conductor, she has worked with the Palisades Sinfonietta, the Queens College Orchestra, the Queensboro Symphony Orchestra, the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York, the Yonkers Philharmonic, the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra, and the Arcadian Chorale. Audrey is a founding member of the New Conductors Orchestra, a NYC-based civic orchestra committed to showcasing emerging conductors. Audrey earned a MM in Orchestral Conducting at the Aaron Copland School of Music, and a BA at Swarthmore College, where she premiered Tom Whitman's children's opera "The Royal Singer."
Alicia Lieu
Alicia Lieu is a conductor/composer based in New York City who is passionate about creative programming. She is the creator and producer of Dance-it-Yourself Nutcracker which involves a full orchestra on stage, dancers, and curated audience participation. Her chamber ensemble, Musikapiphany, which performs both new music and standard repertoire, has been featured regularly in the Sounds of Arts Festival in Queens. Alicia co-founded the New York Conducting Institute and developed the Women Conductors Workshops in response to the needs in the field. As a composer, Alicia studied in the tradition of Nadia Boulanger in Paris and New York and has been awarded New Work Grants from the Queens Council on the Arts. She founded the Composers Collective and Pitches Brew non-profit organizations as a way to pool resources together for composers and build an audience for new music. She created an event called, “The 48-Hour Musical,” during which a full-length musical was written and performed within 48 hours. Alicia served as a teaching artist with Kollage Community School for the Arts and the San Francisco Conservatory as well as Midori & Friends in New York City. Alicia holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music Composition from UC Santa Barbara, a Master of Music in Composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from the UT El Paso. She currently serves as Conducting Fellow at the Canton Symphony. Her conducting teachers include Donald Schleicher, Larry Rachleff, Diane Wittry, Paul Nadler, and Bohuslav Rattay.
Jonathan Weber
Jonathan Weber’s multi-faceted career includes work as a violinist, violist, conductor, composer, and teaching artist. Known for his dynamic energy and versatility with musical genres, Mr. Weber has had the privilege of working with some of the most renowned artists in the music industry on stage, screen, and in the recording studio.
As an orchestral conductor, Mr. Weber has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, conducted at music festivals throughout the United States, directed orchestras in numerous college and pre-college music programs, and he has coached the Grammy award-winning New York Youth Symphony. As a classical violinist and violist, Mr. Weber has collaborated in chamber music performances with members of the Orion String Quartet, the Chamber Music Society, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He has appeared with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Chamber Music Society, the Bach Aria Group, and he is currently the violist in the two-time Grammy nominated string quartet Cuartetango. Weber has appeared with ensembles including the Harrisburg Symphony, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, Reading Symphony, Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, Orchestra Long Island, and Haifa Symphony.
A native New Yorker and active freelancer, Mr. Weber has performed in the orchestra pits of nearly twenty Broadway shows, with the Radio City Orchestra and in venues spanning from Lincoln Center to Carnegie Hall to Madison Square Garden. Mr. Weber is currently an adjunct professor of violin and chamber music at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College (CUNY) and Orchestra Director at the Browning School in New York City.
Composers
Katie Jenkins
Katie Jenkins is a multi-award-winning Welsh composer and producer currently based in New York City. Known for her collaborative approach, Jenkins’ work spans stage, screen, and beyond. Her projects have been featured at NASA, the New York Choreographic Institute with the New York City Ballet, and New York Fashion Week, toname a few. Her works have been performed and recorded by leading orchestras worldwide at prestigious venues, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (London) at Abbey Road Studios and The Juilliard Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall (NYC).
Jenkins also enjoys collaborating with choreographers and has been commissioned by dance companies such as Chamber Dance Project, Stefanie Nelson Dance Company, Revolve Dance Project, and PointeWorks. Many of her works have been published by Hal Leonard and Murphy Music Press.
Jenkins’ accolades include winning the Grand Prize in the International Women’s Brass Festival WCFT Competition, the EXPO New Works Competition, the Composer’s Cordance Generations XI New Music for Jazz Septet, the LunArt Festival, and the New York Federation of Music Clubs’ prize from The Society of New Music. Most recently, she was awarded the American Prize in Composition for her musical This Land of Ours. A graduate of The Juilliard School, where she earned both her BM and MM in composition under Pulitzer-winning composer Melinda Wagner, Jenkins was awarded the Norman Benzaquen Career Grant for outstanding artistry. She is currently a member of the Juilliard Pre-College Faculty, teaching film scoring and music production.
Jordan Jinosko
Jordan Jinosko's music has been praised by Wisconsin Public Radio for its “subtle and powerful” qualities and “cinematic scope.” Her compositions draw inspiration from mythology, nature, and her experiences around gender. Often Jinosko’s music advocates for social causes. Her compositions have been honored at the awards ceremonies of the American Prize, the Global Music Awards, the Music International Grand Prix, and the Howard Hanson Young Composers Competition. She composed the score for Trajectories (2022), which won SONY’s Xperia U25 Film Competition. She also wrote the score for UNFOUND (2023), which was nominated for Best International Thriller in Toronto’s Alternative Film Festival.
Jinosko’s Three Sketches of Unblemished Earth was recorded on the album, Advent of the Symphonina. Featuring performances by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Budapest Scoring, this release went on to top Billboard’s chart of Best-selling Classical Albums for the week of August 31, 2024.
Jordan’s music has been performed in concert halls including the Kimmel Center in Philly, the Kennedy Center in DC, and Carnegie Hall in NY. Her music has been featured on the radio, on streaming platforms, and at festivals such as ASTA and Interlochen. Additionally, Avid Technology featured Jinosko online as a composer and Avid software user. She studied music composition and music theory at the University of Michigan and the Eastman Community Music School, and has participated in symposia led by faculty at Juilliard, Princeton, Eastman, and Yale.
Joel Toews
Joel Toews is a composer, keyboardist and educator from Toronto, CA. He studied at Berklee College of Music and received a Bachelor of Music in Jazz and Contemporary Popular Music from MacEwan University in April 2018. He is currently obtaining his Master of Arts in Music Composition at York University with a specific focus on composing music dedicated to Canadian National Parks and their ongoing sustainability.
In February 2019, he premiered his first orchestral work Ra’ah with the Borealis Orchestra in Edmonton. Later that year, he went on to compose an original score for the film The Transit Lodge, directed by Kalyan Acharya. In 2021, Toews was accepted into the Explore the Score program with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for his composition Athabasca, which went on to win the inaugural composer competition with the Litha Symphony Orchestra (NYC).
In late 2021, Toews was commissioned by MacEwan University to write an original Big Band piece, Miriam, and collaborated with Canadian cellist Sahara von Hattenberger to write a three-movement Suite for Piano and Cello, inspired by blending elements of Canadian and Japanese musical ideas. In July 2022, he premiered Mirrors in Haida Gwaii with the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in Bulgaria. In 2023, he was commissioned by Orchestra Toronto leading to his orchestral work Sleeping Giant and by the River City Big Band (Edmonton) to compose a new work for Big Band. Most recently, in 2024 Toews was commissioned by Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra (Toronto) for an orchestral fanfare to open their 2024-25 season.
Yanchen Ye
Yanchen Ye is an accomplished young composer whose works, which include orchestral, chamber, and vocal pieces, have been performed across three continents – North America, Europe, and Asia. Wales Arts Review described his music as “moving from hushed harmonics to biting, Bartókian cross-rhythms, and with a gamut of playful expressive devices in between.” Strongly influenced by Asian music, geography, and culture, Ye’s music explores the simplest beauty of lyrical tunes, tone colors, human bonding, and Mother Earth with sincerity and tonal sophistication. As praised by The National Ballet of China, “the variety of symphonic color transformations, the richness of the layers, and the power of the [musical] tension in his [Ye’s] modern work is beyond expectation. The music moves with [the audience’s] hearts and has a sense of continuous blooming…” Ye’s music has been widely commissioned and performed by many of the world’s most prestigious ensembles and orchestras, including MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the National Ballet of China Orchestra, Vale of Glamorgan Festival, Cabrillo Festival, and TonLagen Festival. Most recently, he received two American Prize awards for his work Xizi for Symphonic Orchestra and Two Pieces for Seven Strings. Ye graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition, New England Conservatory with a Master of Music in Composition, and the University of Michigan with a Doctor of Music Arts in Composition. He is currently based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.