Sheila Silver

Sheila Silver is an important and vital voice in American music today. Her compositions have been commissioned and performed by numerous orchestras, ensembles, and soloists throughout the world. She has written in a wide range of mediums: from solo instrumental works to large orchestral works; from opera to feature film scores. Her musical language is a unique synthesis of the tonal and atonal worlds, coupled with a rhythmic complexity which is both masterful and compelling. Again and again, audiences and critics praise her music as powerful and emotionally charged, accessible, and masterfully conceived. “Only a few composers in any generation enliven the art form with their musical language and herald new directions in music. Sheila Silver is such a visionary.” (Wetterauer Zeitung)

Her opera, A Thousand Splendid Suns, based on Khaled Hosseini’s international best-selling novel, was premiered in 2023 by the Seattle Opera to rave reviews and was short-listed for “Best World Premiere” by the International Opera Awards 2023. “Sheila Silver’s sweeping score is magnificent — dramatic, richly colored, and full of texture and melody. (Opera Wire) In preparation for and throughout the composing of this opera, Silver studied Hindustani music with the late Pandit Kedar Narayan Bodas in India in order to incorporate an authentic Hindustani musical color into her score. A chamber opera version with the same cast and an orchestra of 12 is in the works, premiere TBA soon.

Her honors include: a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous Opera America awards for the development of A Thousand Splendid Suns, the Sackler Prize in Music Composition for Opera The Wooden Sword for ; Bunting Institute Fellowship; the Rome Prize; the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Composer Award; NEA awards, twice winner of the ISCM National Composers Competition; and awards and commissions from the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio Residency), the Camargo Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, New York State Council of the Arts, the Barlow Foundation, the Paul Fromm Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Cary Trust.

Resilient Earth, Seven Preludes for piano, and Four Caprices for solo violin, was premiered in July 2022 at the Samuel Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, NY, for the closing celebrations of the art exhibit, The Observing Heart, a retrospective exhibit of the work of Mary Frank with Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, piano, and Emmanuel Vukovich, violin. Composed 2020-2022 during COVID, each of the Caprices and Preludes is inspired by the natural world and in some cases, our destructive relationship to it. Three Duos for violin and piano, have been added to the series in 2025. Vukovich’s recording of the Caprices were recently released on the Warner Classics label.

Silver is currently working on a set of “Songs of Resilience,” addressing the current political era in the U.S. and celebrating the every-day heroes of our time. 

Silver was the Elliot Carter Resident Composer at the American Academy in Rome in Spring 2020, where she worked on If Trees Could Talk for 4 female singers, piano, Tibetan bowls, and video projections. It was premiered at Songfest 2022.

One of her most performed works, Beauty Intolerable, A Songbook based on the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, contains 14 songs and two rounds and was recently recorded with singers Dawn Upshaw, Stephanie Blythe, Lucy Fitz Gibbon, Deanne Meek, and Risa Renae Harman on a 2 disc CD set with all of Silver’s song repertoire from 1979-2018. Of the recording, American Record Guide says “Silver…writes music that marries the delicious bitterness of jazzy discord with lush, cool harmonies and merges the two harmonic moods together with ease…The music is just as rich and captivating as the text that inspired it…” 

Recordings on the Naxos label include her Piano Concerto and Six Preludes for Piano on poems of Baudelaire with Alexander Paley, piano, and the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, Gintaras Rinkevius, conductor and Shirat Sara (Song of Sarah) with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony Strings; Twilight’s Last Gleaming, (Gilbert Kalish and Christina Dahl) for two pianos and percussion is on the Bridge Label.

Silver composed the film score for indie feature Who the Hell is Bobby Roos? – awarded the New American Cinema Award at the Seattle International Film Festival, 2002 and more recently the scores for Symbiotic Earth: How Lynn Margulis rocked the boat and started a scientific revolution, (2018) and Regenerating Life; How to cool the planet, feed the world, and live happy ever after (2024).

Born and raised in Seattle Washington, she earned her BA from U.C. Berkeley (1968) and her PhD from Brandeis University (1976). Her mentors and teachers include Edwin Dugger, Erhard Karkoschka, Gyorgy Ligeti, Arthur Berger, and Jacob Druckman. Sheila currently lives in Spencertown, New York, with her husband, filmmaker John Feldman. Their son, Victor Feldman, is a journalist. Silver is Professor Emerita of Music at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Her music is published by Lauren Keiser Music, Mostly Marimba , and Argenta Music, and is recorded on various labels.

Maria Fuller

Hailed as an artist of “subtle control, careful focus and thorough professionalism” by the Chronical Journal, and “fiery and dynamic” by the Walleye Magazine, Canadian conductor MARIA FULLER demonstrates unparalleled energy and an infectious joy in her music-making. Admired for the broad-scope of her musicianship, she performs internationally as a conductor, pianist, trumpeter, and is also an acclaimed vocal coach, award-winning composer, and sought after arranger.

Selected by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Maria is one of several Canadian conductors to take part in a unique mentorship in Montrèal with him and the Orchestra Métropolitain. For the 24/25 season, Maria is a Resident Conductor at the Teatr Wielki w Łodzi, Poland, where she conducts several operatic and ballet productions, including Madama Butterfly, Hansel und Gretel, and Turandot. This season she also works at the Narodní Divadlo, Prague.

In November 2023, Maria was a finalist and multi-award winner of the 11th Grzegorz Fitelberg International Conducting Competition, Poland, garnering her multiple guest appearances as conductor and repetiteur in Europe. She also represented Canada in the inaugural La Maestra International Conducting Competition, Paris, in 2021. Currently a conducting fellow of Tapestry Opera, Toronto, Maria assists and guest conducts over 25 orchestras and opera companies across Canada. Last season her debut performances were with the Victoria, Winnipeg, Kingston, and Hamilton orchestras, as well as with New Music Concerts Toronto, and Music Niagara Festival. She has also assisted at the Toronto Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, Pacific Opera Victoria, and Manitoba Opera. This season, she will have debut engagements with the Kamloops, Guelph, and Calgary symphony orchestras.

As a pianist, trumpeter, chamber musician, and composer, Maria is a laureate of several international competitions. Her participation as the youngest pianist at the Franz Schubert Institute, Baden, and at the Mozarteum, Salzburg, has garnered her recital appearances across Austria, including at the Beethoven Haus. On the piano, Fuller has performed for Lang-Lang, Lee Kum-Sing, André Laplanté, Julius Drake, Helmut Deutsch, and for singers Robert Holl, Barbara Bonney, and Elly Ameling. Her recording of Der Erlkönig is highly acclaimed, achieving a video-view count of well over one million. She is featured in the “Erlkonig Project” from the University of Wisconsin-Madison along with Julius and Drake, and Gerald Moore.

Maria studied conducting at CCM (College-Conservatory of Music), Cincinnati, under the intense mentorship of Mo. Mark Gibson. She also has a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano from McGill University, a Masters of Music in Piano and an Artist Diploma in Operatic Coaching from the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). Following her education in 2019, she was awarded the renown David Effron Conducting Fellowship at the Chautauqua Institute, NY, and began a position as Resident Conductor and Chorus Master with the Thunder Bay Symphony and Chorus.

2025 marks Maria's second year as Co-Founder and Music Director of Ammolite Opera, Calgary, Alberta. Together with Co-Founder Tayte Mitchell they seek to highlight western Canadian talent and showcase operas by living composers. Already a partner with several leading groups including Steinway Piano, AO looks forward to premiering Maria’s own Oratorio “The Return of the Messiah,” which features text from the original. When she can, Maria enjoys writing new Baroque/film score arrangements of holiday music. Her arrangements are played by orchestras across Canada. Jeff Tyzik: "Maria is a wonderful arranger and orchestrator who has a gift of turning traditional and well known songs into a fresh and

interesting new musical experience for the listener and the musicians."