Kati Agócs
Canadian-American composer (born 1975)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kati Ilona Agócs (born January 20, 1975) is a Canadian-American composer and a member of the composition faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
Kati Ilona Agócs | |
|---|---|
Agócs in December 2015 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | January 20, 1975 |
| Origin | Windsor, Ontario, Canada |
| Genres | Contemporary classical |
| Occupation | Composer |
| Website | www |
Education
Agócs attended the Juilliard School in New York where she earned a Master's and Doctoral degrees under the guidance of Milton Babbitt.[1] She was a composition fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School and the Tanglewood Music Center, where she held the ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Composer Fellowship in 2007.[2] She was a voice student of Adele Addison.[3]
Career
From 2005 to 2006, she lived in Budapest and wrote on the new-music scene in Hungary for the journal The Musical Times.[4] She had previously organized an exchange program between the Juilliard School and the Liszt Academy.[5] The Hungarian-language weekly, Bécsi Napló (Vienna Journal) acknowledged her contribution to the visibility of Hungarian composers abroad.[6] She served as Composer in Residence for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada in 2010.[7]
Agócs was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013.[8] In 2014 the American Academy of Arts and Letters named her as recipient of the Arts and Letters Award in Music.[9] She maintains a work studio in Flatrock, Newfoundland, Canada.[10]
Personal life
Agócs has one daughter, Olivia.[11]
Music
Boston Modern Orchestra Project recorded and released the 2016 album The Debrecen Passion,[12] named one of the top 10 Classical albums of 2016 by the Boston Globe.[13] The title track of this album was nominated in 2017 by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for a Juno Award, Classical Composition of the Year.[14][15]
In 2022, her Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra was also nominated for Classical Composition of the Year.[16]
Agócs has written on American music for the journal Tempo[17] and also created a critical edition of the Symphony in A Major by Leopold Damrosch.[18]
Select principal works
Solo and chamber works up to seven instruments
- Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra (Solo violin and six percussionists) 2018.[19] Recorded performance by violinist Nicholas Kitchen and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble led by director Frank Epstein.[20]
- Crystallography (Soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion) 2012 (Text: Christian Bök)[21]
- Every Lover is a Warrior (Solo harp) 2005[22][23]
- Hyacinth Curl (Two high voices and handbells) 2016[24]
- Hymn (Saxophone quartet) 2005[25]
- Immutable Dreams (Flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano) 2006.[26]
- Imprimatur (String Quartet No. 2) 2018[27]
- In Spiritu (French horn, violin, piano) 2026[28]
- Queen of Hearts (Piano Trio No. 1) 2017[29]
- Rapprochement (String Quartet No. 3) 2025[30]
- Voices of the Immaculate (Lyric mezzo-soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano/celeste) 2021 (Text: assembled by the composer: fragments from Revelations and testimony from survivors of abuse by clergy)[31]
Orchestra / large ensemble works
- By the Streams of Babylon (Two amplified soprano voices and chamber orchestra) 2009 (Text: Psalm 137 in Latin)[32]
- The Debrecen Passion (Twelve female voices and chamber orchestra) 2015 (Text: poems by Szilárd Borbély in Hungarian; Lamentations of Mary in modern Hungarian translation by Ferenc Molnár [fragments]; Ana B’Choach [in Hebrew]; Stabat Mater Specioso [fragments, in Latin]; Thou Art a Vineyard [hymn text in Georgian])[33][34]
- Devotion (French horn, harp, and string orchestra) 2014, arranged from string quintet version[35]
- Elysium (Chamber Orchestra and Recorded Sound)[36]
- Horn Concerto (Solo Horn and Chamber Orchestra) 2021[37][38]
- Hosanna of the Clouds (Solo Soprano, SATB Chorus, and Chamber Orchestra) 2025 (Text: Excerpts from Psalms 27 & 39 and Books of Luke, Isaiah, and Revelations in Latin; Prayer in Aramaic; Free verse in Latin and English)[39]
- ..like treasure hidden in a field (Chamber Orchestra) 2010[40]
- Perpetual Summer (Large Orchestra with Amplified and Processed Solo String Sextet) 2010; rev. 2012[41]
- Requiem Fragments (Chamber Orchestra) 2008[42]
- Shenanigan (Orchestra) 2011[43]
- Transluminescence — Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (Solo Piano and Orchestra) 2022[44]