The Los Angeles Composers Collective was founded in 2013 and comprises composers and performers passionate about presenting all styles of music to as wide an audience as possible in the greater Los Angeles area. The LACC emphasizes performance of new music by not only its own resident composers, but other composers who call Southern California home.
The Composers
Linda l. rife
Artistic Director
Linda L. Rife is a composer, performer, and educator with an eye for the new and novel, and an interest in integrating movement, dance, visual art, and multi-media with music. Ms. Rife thrives on collaboration with other artists of various forms, resulting in unique, eclectic arrangements. She is dedicated to increasing exposure to avant-garde, opera, microtonal, and world music in local communities.
In her work, Ms. Rife draws on her background as a cellist, vocalist, percussionist, and dancer to inform her exploration of just intonation and microtonality, non-western theories, extended techniques, and the world of ambience through the use of field recordings. She holds a BM Summa Cum Laude in Composition from California State University, Los Angeles and an MFA in Music Composition from California Institute of the Arts where she studied with Anne LeBaron and Wolfgang von Schweinitz.
nicholas white
associate artistic director
Born in Anaheim, California, Nicholas White graduated with a Bachelor of Music from California State University, Fullerton in 2010. Currently residing in Long Beach, he works in the field of risk management and creates music in his spare time.
cassandra venaglia
marketing and pr director
Cassandra Venaglia, Southern California native, currently resides in Los Angeles. She is a classically trained vocalist, teacher, composer, and recent alumna from California State University of Fullerton. She graduated with a degree in composition and music theory. This past summer, Quartetto Indaco premiered Venaglia’s first string quartet, "I Fiori Muoiono in Pavia," Italy. In 2014, she received the Mannason Scholarship for Composition. Ms. Venaglia has also been invited to study and sing several times as a performer and composer at soundSCAPE festival in Italy and Alpenkammermusik in Vienna, Austria. Her affinity for intimate settings makes her keen towards performing and writing for chamber music, often as a soloist and for uncommon mixed ensembles, including cello, percussion, and voice. Venaglia’s style can best be described as rhythmic, emotional, spiritual, and often revolves around diatonicism with a hint of hauntingly beautifully dissonant harmonies, and colorful timbres. As a composer, her mission is to express her life’s journey through a spiritual and emotionally raw manner by contrasting surrealism with the drama of vulnerability and painstaking honesty.
danielle rosaria
grant development and fundraising director
Danielle Rosaria, DMA in Violin Performance, is dedicated to interacting with truth and beauty through the art of music performance, composition, and education. She enjoys living a creative life in Southern California and is influenced and inspired by the visual and literary arts as well as by nature and the beauty of the California outdoors. She loves working with and learning from people of different cultures and backgrounds and has recently founded the La Verne Symphony Orchestra (LVSO) at the University of La Verne, a community and student ensemble which encourages people of various levels of musicianship to collaborate with the intention of fostering a mutual and positive exchange of experiences and knowledge. She shares her love of the historical violin repertoire through the performance of chamber music concerts throughout the LA and Inland Empires for the benefit of quality, life-giving pregnancy help centers as part of the Rose Life Benefit Concert Series. After over eleven years of private teaching, Dr. Rosaria is now shifting her pedagogical focus to giving college lecture classes and has recently begun teaching at Chaffey College as Adjunct Professor in addition to teaching applied strings at the University of La Verne. Her beginning violin method book entitled Discovering Violin is available through Santorella Publications. In addition to performing and teaching, Dr. Rosaria is an active Southern California composer. Several of her original compositions are featured on the album entitled Abstract with the ensemble String Theory Quartet. The album is available on iTunes. Her newest album is entitled Eternal Dream and contains original music for a variety of ensembles, employing a harmonic and rhythmic musical language that is distinctive and new.
Dr. Rosaria has played throughout Southern California with ensembles such as Musica Angelica, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Long Beach Opera, Con Gioia, the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra, and the Riverside County Philharmonic, as well as in Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary with the Classical Music Festival. While pursuing her bachelor’s degree in music from the University of La Verne and later her masters and DMA in Historical Performance Practice – Violin, at Claremont Graduate University, Dr. Rosaria studied violin performance with Todor Pelev, first prize winner of Bulgaria’s National Violin Competition. Her DMA project paper deals with universal aesthetic principles and is available from ProQuest here.
matthew allen
Matthew Allen is a Los Angeles-based composer/performer. Through his music he tries to explore the existential, transcendental, and metaphysical aspects of the human condition. Mr. Allen has followed the “do-it-yourself” ethos of composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich and has formed his own composer-led groups, which include: The Matt Allen Ensemble, Free the Birds Percussion Quartet, and the Kafka Café Orchestra. He has also received commissions from the Fiato String Quartet and Lisa Edelstein of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
In composition, Mr. Allen has studied with Michael Jon Fink, Michael Pisaro, and Dr. Lloyd Rodgers. As a multi-instrumentalist, he has studied percussion with David Johnson, Todd Miller, and Dr. Lynn Vartan. His piano teachers include Norman Henry Mamey, Michael Sushel, and on organ, Tisha Mabee. Mr. Allen has been honored with a number of scholarships including the prestigious 2013 James Irving Foundation Scholarship in Music Composition and the 2009 Alan A. Manasen Scholarship in Music Composition. He earned his MFA in Music Composition from the California Institute of the Arts and holds his BM in Music Composition from the California State University, Fullerton.
jon brenner
Jon Brenner is a composer and musician who specializes in extremely new and extremely old music. As a composer, he writes contrapuntal contemporary art music and anything else that needs to be written. His works include music for soloists, chamber ensembles, large ensembles, orchestra, film, and art installations. Collaborations with other musicians have yielded quartets, quintets, works for guitar, chamber and orchestral music, electro-acoustic pieces, and a violin sonata.
As a performer, Jon specializes in contemporary chamber music (electric basses/synthesizer/guitar) and early music (viola da gamba/violone/hapsichord). When not writing or playing music, Jon is likely to be found building instruments. Most of his homemade instruments may be heard on his recordings.
In addition to music, Jon sacrifices his time with cooking, fencing, cycling, photography, and other activities. His music is published by klomp music (ASCAP). His primary mentors include Lloyd Rodgers, Alvin Curran, Steed Cowart, and Luther Hughes. He earned his B.M. in Music Composition at California State University, Fullerton and his M.A. in Music Composition at Mills College. Jon currently resides on Bainbridge Island in Washington.
jonbrenner.com
jonbrenner.bandcamp.com
brooke derosa
Brooke deRosa is a composer originally from New York. She holds a double major in music and theatre from Washington and Lee University where she was a recipient of the John Graham Award in Fine Arts. Brooke has pursued further studies with composers Thom Sharp and Robert Drasnin at UCLA Extension as well as renowned orchestrator Scott Smalley. She has scored over 15 different films and TV shows in the span of five years, including a full-length western, “Gunfight at Yuma,” an award-winning sci fi feature film, “The Search for Simon,” and the theme for a TV series abroad, “Exit Hollywood,” Her film work draws strongly from composers such as Nino Rota, Dario Marianelli, and Marco Beltrami. Brooke’s current projects include the films “Needlestick” and “River Guard,” a one-act opera based on the Red Riding Hood fairy tale and a Missa Brevis for full choir.
soundcloud.com/brooke_derosa_composer
derek dobbs
Derek Dobbs received an bachelors degree in Composition from California State University, Fullerton in 2011. In May he earned his masters degree in composition from the same institution. Derek came to the big city from Blythe, California to make all of his dreams come true. He studied percussion with Todd Miller and composition with Lloyd Rodgers. In 2011 Derek co-founded the music collective, Kafka Café Orchestra, and has played with and written for several groups throughout Southern California. Derek's work is largely influenced by the anarchic and DIY principles of punk and the 60's avant-garde.
jack curtis dubowsky
Jack Curtis Dubowsky is a prolific composer, author, filmmaker, and educator. Dubowsky composes choral, instrumental, and orchestral concert music. His research publications include articles on film music and popular music. He has worked in film and media as a composer, director, producer, and sound editor.
Dubowsky's choral music has been performed internationally by groups including San Francisco Choral Artists, Desert Voices, Resounding Harmony, Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, Oakland/East Bay Gay Men's Chorus, Mount Eden Chorus, University of San Francisco Chamber Singers, and Lick-Wilmerding High School Chorus. Dubowsky's major work Harvey Milk: A Cantata has been performed by university, high school, and community choruses. The text, entirely by Milk, is culled from well-known speeches as well as unpublished rare documents, researched and sourced with the cooperation of the Estate of Harvey Milk and the Harvey Milk Archives / Scott Smith Collection of the San Francisco Public Library. Other major vocal works by Dubowsky include the socio-political chamber opera Halloween in the Castro, and Quaker Peace Testimony.
Dubowsky's orchestral music has been performed by the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project, Cadillac Symphony Orchestra, and the Castro Valley Chamber Orchestra. Major works include an oratory with orchestra, Eisenhower Farewell Address. Dubowsky's chamber music has been performed by Classical Revolution, Paradigm Brass, Keisuke Nakagoshi, and Stephanie Lynne Smith. Dubowsky has received grants from Meet the Composer, Zellerbach Family Fund, Friends of San Francisco Public Library, Queer Cultural Center, National Queer Arts Festival, Grants for the Arts/Hotel Tax Fund, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Foundation, and the American Composers Forum.
Dubowsky performs with his signature Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble, combining acoustic instruments, electronic hardware, composed material, and structured improvisation. The Ensemble has released three albums, toured extensively in the United States, and has presented programs of live music to experimental film. The Ensemble can be heard on Pandora and Spotify.
Dubowsky has scored feature films including Redwoods, Rock Haven, That Man Peter Berlin, and I Always Said Yes. Dubowsky provided additional music for Bruce LaBruce's LA Zombie and Hustler White. Dubowsky worked in Pixar's in-house music department, and has screen credit on Monsters Inc. and Toy Story 2. Dubowsky produced recordings by Glen Meadmore, the Virgin Whore Complex, and others. His award-winning "Mr Jones" parody is a highlight of the acclaimed Momus album Stars Forever.
Dubowsky's feature documentary film, Submerged Queer Spaces, a study of architecture and urban archaeology, premiered at the 2012 Frameline36 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival. Dubowsky's short films have screened at the British Film Institute and film festivals worldwide.
Dubowsky has published articles and presented conference papers on various intersections of cinema, animation, music, and sexuality. Dubowsky is author of one U.S. patent. Recent publications include "The Evolving 'Temp Score' in Animation" in Music, Sound, and the Moving Image (Liverpool University Press). Dubowsky serves on the editorial board of The Soundtrack, published by Intellect Press. Dubowsky's sheet music is available through JW Pepper, Sheet Music Plus and Theodore Front Musical Literature. Dubowsky is a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
gregory lenczycki
Described as “always poetic” and “twittering with excitable circuitry,” composer Gregory Lenczycki’s work explores the rhythms of space and the architecture of sound. His music is often self-referential, drawing from a personal archive of borrowed code, irregular sequences, and obscure melodies that are weaved together in lyric cycles. Lenczycki received his MFA from Mills College where he studied composition with Alvin Curran and Maryanne Amacher. He has worked with Curran, Amacher, Naut Humon, Joe Potts, Doug Henry, Anna Homler, William Roper, Renee Petropoulos, Jorge Martin, Kathleen Johnson, and Ted Byrnes, among many others.
Most recently Lenczycki has presented at such venues as Fort Mason Center San Francisco, Los Angeles Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum Los Angeles, Automata Los Angeles, Centre for the Living Arts, Mobile Alabama, Mills College Oakland CA, California Institute for the Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Culver Center for the Arts at UC Riverside, The Steve Allen Theatre Hollywood CA, Mount Wilson Observatory, Cal State LA, Highways Performance Space, Human Resources Los Angeles, Beyond Baroque Venice CA , and as part of SASSAS's 10th Anniversary Mapping Sound festival. Within the last year he premiered his requiem, You Are Not Alone with support from Newtown Arts Pasadena in the Lower Arroyo Park, his setting of Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1817 poem Mont Blanc for soprano, clarinet, tuba, and live electronics at Automata, his opera Brainchild II at Human Resources and his symphonic tone poem Things I am not fully aware of at Mills College in Oakland.
Over the years Lenczycki’s collaborations have included Light Show with Fluxus artist Jeff Perkins, Still Life with Bomb with drummer Ted Byrnes and accordionist Ari DeSano, and Small Liberties (2006, Whitney Museum) with artists Andrea Zittel and Giovanni Jance. Lenczycki’s work has received Meet the Composer and the NEA support, and his music is available at gregorylenczycki.bandcamp.com and on the now defunct label Asphodel.
In addition to being a member of the Los Angeles Composer Collective, Lenczycki is co-chairperson of the new music non-profit The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound aka SASSAS.
Broken Orbits and Forgotten Hymns
ryan lester
Ryan Lester is an internationally performed composer of music for film, television, games, and the concert stage. He has been the composer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for the past five years and recently signed on to score NBC Primetime’s new animated sitcom pilot, Mystery Island, created, written and produced by Ed Helms and Rough Draft Studios. Ryan was asked by composer Mateo Messina (Juno), to join the music team for the NBC summer thriller series, Crossbones, starring John Malkovich; he continued working with Messina on the upcoming feature film, Barely Lethal, starring Jessica Alba, Hallie Stienfeld, Jessica Turner, and Samuel L. Jackson. Ryan also recently completed an hour of music for the Yahoo! action-comedy web-series, Tiny Commando, starring Ed Helms, Zachary Levi, and Gillian Jacobs. Other commercial successes have included music placements on Dateline, On The Case with Paula Zahn, 20/20, and commercials for Coca-Cola and Dominos. He is also a staff composer at 4Elements Music and Sticky Audio Labs.
Ryan recently scored the independent psychological thriller Redemption (2013 feature film) with director Tim Martin Crouse and is also currently in production with director Mika Johnson's feature film Amerika: a notebook in three parts, which will be released late 2015. Ryan has worked extensively with Mika Johnson on his documentary web-series, The Amerikans, which has recently received large international viewership in 134 different countries and praise from NPR. Other completed feature length documentaries include Silo Boy (2013), The Love of Food (2012), Akron 24 (2012), and The Adam Joseph Lewis Center (2012), which was premiered at the Smithsonian National Design Awards in 2012.
In addition to his commercial success, Ryan has enjoyed an extensive concert music career with performances across the United States, United Kingdom, and South America. He is currently working on a brass quintet for the Vista Brass Quintet in Los Angeles and a piece for trombone and electronics to be performed next summer (2015) in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Ryan was selected to participate in BMI's Composing for the Screen year-long mentorship program (2012) and ASCAP’s Columbia Film Scoring Workshop (2013). Ryan studied music composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (B.M. 2011), Royal College of Music in London (2010), and conducting at the Juilliard School, Evening Division (2013-14). His Composition teachers have included Josh Levine, David Lang, Liza Lim, Wendell Logan, David Noon, Lewis Nielson, Ken Hesketh and Alison Kay; film scoring studies with Randy Newman, Rick Baitz, John Lissauer, Scott Gordon, and Miguel Mera.
james mcelravy
James McElravy grew up playing saxophone in 5th grade and continued on playing in jazz bands and wind ensembles during middle school and high school. He picked up the guitar in high school and started seriously playing after graduation. Since then, James has been a musical director and led a choir for a short time. He later attended Berklee College of music where he initially studied film music, but focused on composition instead. James graduated with a degree in composition and is eager to continue writing along with meeting other composers.
john pollard
John Pollard is an Orange County-based composer/performer. Born in Corona, California, John earned a Master of Music from California State University, Fullerton in 2015. Mr. Pollard thrives on collaboration with other artists of various forms, resulting in poignant performances. He has worked with Jesus Palominos, Hector Suarrez, Tim Thomas, Taylor Harb, Andrew Nguyen, Ebaa Khamas, Dana Zhou, and Joseph Del Giorgio, among many others. In 2011 John co-founded the music collective, Kafka Café Orchestra, and has played with and written for several groups throughout Southern California. His works include music for duets, chamber ensembles, large ensembles, orchestra, and film.
theo popov
Theo Popov writes music, where the driving mechanism is melody and Schenkerian logic. After abundant exposure to Eastern Orthodox music and Bulgarian folklore in his childhood, he came to the United States and studied composition and electronic music with Paul Lansky and musical geometry with Dmitri Tymoczko. Having explored various folk traditions, Popov now specializes in Classical Antiquity and has through travel and research assembled one of the most extensive galleries of Ancient Roman music depictions. He is curious about the aspects of melody fundamental to all cultures and strives to fuse antique folk material with modern compositional techniques.
Popov is interested in creating musical dramas that transport the audience to different places and time periods, while remaining accessible to the contemporary ear. In March of 2011 his first opera received a full stage production in Richardson Auditorium, Princeton under the direction of David Kellett. NERO ARTIFEX, a three-act drama in Classical Latin with libretto by Mariah Min and Veronica Shi, presents one of history’s most notorious emperors as a well meaning but incapable ruler, a gullible dreamer and unfortunate artist. As a resident composer at the American Lyric Theater, Popov developed further collaborations with librettists in the New York metropolitan area and composed the one-act fairytale opera Once Upon the Wind with librettist Kate Light. He is currently working with librettist Tony Asaro on a full-length, also commissioned by the ALT.
In addition to opera, Popov’s interest in dramatic music has driven him to compose two puppet shows, two modern dance pieces, eight choral suites, two works of alternative music theater, scores for short films and video games. He is the winner of the Secret Opera Inaugural Composition Competition and a recipient of the Martin Dale Award and a Peter B. Lewis Grant. His music is published by Vitosha Publishing (ASCAP).
Popov completed his Bachelor’s degree in composition at Princeton University, where he studied with Steve Mackey, Bill Whelan and Barbara White. He is also a professional theremin player and frequently travels to Oxford, England to workshop with virtuoso Lydia Kavina.
Contact Theo at theo@theopopov.com
Kostas Rekleitis
Kostas Rekleitis began his formal training at the National Conservatory of Greece. He subsequently earned a Bachelor’s of Music at the University of Edinburgh, a Masters of Music at the Royal Holloway University of London, and a PhD at the Edinburgh University. He has studied harmony and counterpoint with Spyros Klapsis and John Kitchen and composition with Nigel Osborne, Peter Nelson, Marina Adamia, Philip Cashian, and film music with Brian Lock.
His music has been performed throughout the world by ensembles and orchestras including BBC3 Radio in the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, Germany, Austria, Mexico, and the United States.
Kostas’s main output includes a cantata based on C. P. Cavafy poetry (a part of it has been performed in a series of concerts in Universities in the US including Yale, Brown, Columbia, and Harvard), song cycles in Italian, Greek, French, Hebrew, and Japanese text, and concerti for piano, cello, and clarinet. His award winning work Aerialistic Piano Trio, was premiered by the Zagreb Trio in Vienna and compositionally represented Greece at the MINSTREL cultural event in 2012. His orchestral song Subito has been selected among others for the International Society for Contemporary Music, ISCM, Beijing 2018.
Equally comfortable with music beyond the concert hall, Kostas Rekleitis has written music for musicals, theatre, shows, made numerous orchestral arrangements and collaborated with visual artists for short videos and art exhibitions.
https://kostasrekleitis.com
Kostas on YouTube
Friends of the Collective
Laura Bedol, violin
Alicia Byer, composer
Daniel Charleston, tenor
Samuel Grodin, piano
Abraham Hernandez, flute
Sinae Kang, soprano
Max Mueller, composer
Erica Solano, viola
Gabriel Stevens, piano
Carlos Carlos, composer
Gabriel Rodenborn, flute
Jillian Lopez, harp
Cosima Luther, violin
Harriet Fraser, soprano
Adriana Manfredi, mezzo-soprano
Cris Law, countertenor
Anna Corcoran, violin
Benjamin Bartelt, violin
Laila Zakzook, viola
David Mason, cello
Sammi Lee, flute
Claire Brazeau, oboe
Erin Armstrong, clarinet
Kat Nockels, bassoon
Annie Bosler, french horn
Carrie Kennedy, violin
Ina Veli, violin
Erik Rynearson, viola
Ryan Sweeney, cello
Free the Birds
Matthew Allen
Brian Cannady
Nikolaus Keelaghan
Sam Webster
Accordant Commons
Stephanie Aston
Argenta Walther