Zosha Di Castri
Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer/pianist/sound artist, who joined Columbia University’s composition faculty in July 2014, as the Francis Goelet Associate Professor of Music. Her work (which has been performed in Canada, the US, South America, Asia, and Europe) extends beyond purely concert music, including projects with electronics, sound arts, and collaborations with video and dance. She recently completed a commission titled Hunger for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra with improvised drummer, designed to accompany Peter Foldes’ 1973 silent film by the same name. She also wrote Long Is the Journey, Short Is the Memory for orchestra and chorus, to open the first night of the BBC Proms, featuring the BBC Symphony, the BBC Singers, and conductor Karina Canellakis in July 2019 at Royal Albert Hall. Other large-scale projects include a 25-min piece for soprano, recorded narrator and orchestra entitled Dear Life (based on a short-story by Alice Munro), and an evening-length new music theatre piece, Phonobellow (co-written with David Adamcyk) for ICE with performances in New York and Montreal. Phonobellow features five musicians, a large kinetic sound sculpture, electronics, and video in a reflection on the influence of photography and phonography on human perception.
Di Castri’s orchestral compositions have been commissioned by John Adams, the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, Esprit Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, and the BBC, and have been featured by the Tokyo Symphony, Amazonas Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra among others. Zosha has made appearances with the Chicago Symphony, the L.A. Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in their chamber music series and has worked with many leading new music groups including Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink, Ekmeles, Yarn/Wire, the NEM, Ensemble Cairn, and JACK Quartet. She was the recipient of the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for her work Cortège in 2012, and participated in Ircam's Manifeste Festival in Paris, writing an interactive electronic work for Thomas Hauert's dance company, ZOO.
Other recent projects include a string quartet for the Banff International String Quartet Competition, a piece for Yarn/Wire for two pianists, two percussionists and electronics premiered at her Miller Theatre portrait concert, a solo piano work for Julia Den Boer commissioned by the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust Fund, a piano/violin duo with Jenny Koh, and a string octet premiered by JACK Quartet and Parker Quartet at the Banff Centre. Upcoming projects include a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress for percussionist Steve Schick and ICE, a commission for the Grossman Ensemble in Chicago, and a new chamber work for The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Zosha was an inaugural fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris in 2018-19. Her debut album Tachitipo, released November 2019 to critical acclaim, can be found on New Focus Recordings.