The Space We Hold Episode II: Jeffrey Mumford

The Space We Hold is a five-part documentary series featuring composers Saad Haddad, Jeffrey Mumford, inti-figgis vizueta, Pamela Z, Billy Childs, and others

 

Co-created by VC Artists Nathan Meltzer and Devin Moore, Opus Illuminate's newest project, The Space We Hold, is presented in partnership with the Alphadyn Foundation. 

The series includes both recorded performances and interviews to provide insight into the personal lives and compositional styles of each composer. The aim of the project is to humanize the music and facilitate a personal relationship between the audience and the composer. Topics range from early education and musical upbringing to the unique experiences of being a composer that is part of a traditionally underrepresented or mistreated community.

Episode 2 features composer Jeffrey Mumford, an American composer who has won the "Academy Award in Music" from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and an ASCAP Aaron Copland Scholarship.

 

The musicians featured in the performances include violinist Alexi Kenney, cellists Sterling Elliott and Christine Lamprea, violist Jordan Bak, bassist Nina Bernat, and harpist Deanna Cirielli.

 

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1955,  Jeffrey Mumford is the winner of the inaugural National Black Arts Festival/Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Composition Competition.

Other grants have been awarded by the Ohio Arts Council, Meet the Composer, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music Inc., the ASCAP Foundation, and the University of California.

Mumford's most notable commissions include those from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the Library of Congress (co-commission), the BBC Philharmonic, the San Antonio, Chicago & National Symphonies, Washington Performing Arts, the Cincinnati Symphony, The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, and the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress, among others.

He has taught at the Washington Conservatory of Music, served as Artist-in-Residence at Bowling Green State University, and served as assistant professor of composition and Composer-in-Residence at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at Lorain County Community College in Northern Ohio.

 

Opus Illuminate is a performance organization dedicated to expanding the classical music industry by performing works by composers of historically underrepresented communities and heritages.

"By experiencing a whole new collection of works by composers of diverse demographics, we will be beautifying and enriching not only our culture as classical musicians, but our culture at large," Nathan Meltzer said. "We can change our society by choosing to allow the art form that we all love to finally represent all the people of a vast spectrum of cultures, heritages, and communities, who have dedicated their lives to the craft.”