About Us
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Sonic Harvest welcomes Alexis Alrich as a new Contributing Director. Her music, which she describes as “tonal and melodic,” is influenced by minimalism, Asian music, Latin music and American roots music. Having studied at New England Conservatory and California Institute of the Arts, she earned a master’s degree in composition with Lou Harrison at Mills College. The Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic premiered her Avenues, subsequently performed often. She taught composition in the Preparatory Division of the S. F. Conservatory, and was a founding member and pianist for the S. F. Composers Chamber Orchestra, who premiered her Marimba Concerto and other works. Awarded a ‘Continental Harmony’ grant from the American Composers Forum to write a major work for the state of Maine, she incorporated words and stories of local poets in her Maine Suite. She received an Upstate California Creative Corps grant to compose Wolf Creek Anthem to raise awareness of a local watershed. Selected twice to be a resident at the artists’ retreat I-Park in Connecticut, she composed Fragile Forests I: California Oaks and Fragile Forests II: Cambodia. Moving to Hong Kong in 2007, she studied erhu (Chinese violin) with Xu Hui, who introduced her to traditional Chinese music, and she commuted between Hong Kong and Berkeley as the first director of the John Adams Young Composers Program.
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Soprano Tonia D’Amelio maintains an active performing career with opera companies, orchestras, chamber ensembles, and vocal consorts across the U.S. and abroad. A versatile singer whose repertoire spans six centuries, Tonia particularly enjoys premiering opera and concert works. She created the role of Celia in the world premiere of Allen Shearer’s Middlemarch in Spring, sang in the first performance of Ryan Brown’s “medical oratorio” Mortal Lessons, and performed featured roles in the modern stage premieres of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Le temple de la Gloire with Philharmonia Baroque, and Carlo Pallavicino’s Le amazzoni with Ars Minerva. Recent performances include Jacob’s Ladder by Steve Reich, Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate, George Lewis’ Anthem, Ancient Voices of Children by George Crumb, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, and Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. She is a core member of the Philharmonia Chorale and the S.F. Symphony Chorus, and has been a guest artist with Seraphic Fire, the William Byrd Festival in Portland, Oregon, and the Edington Festival of Music Within the Liturgy in the U.K.
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The evocative and embracing resonance of the natural world is a pervasive theme in the music of Ann Callaway, whose works have been premiered by the Seattle (Concerto for Bass Clarinet) and St. Louis (Amethyst for soprano & orchestra) Symphony Orchestras, the New York New Music Ensemble, Collage New Music, and Earplay. She has been composer in residence for Bella Musica and was the inaugural composer for Voci’s New Works Project, which commissioned On Music and Nature: Three Hopkins Settings (2015). The Peninsula Women’s Chorus performed Silvery Blue (2003), a setting of her own poem on a local butterfly. Her 2020 project was Clamavi de tribulatione mea, a setting for double chorus of Jonah’s hymn of deliverance from the whale’s belly. She returns to Pacific Women’s Chorus this fall as Composer-In-Residence, 2026-28. She often writes for her husband, bass Richard Mix, most recently Char, settings of six poems of Kurahara Shinjirô. A Contributing Director of Sonic Harvest, Ann Callaway is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has held residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Leighton Artist Colony in Banff. Her music is published by Subito Music Corp.
The evocative and embracing resonance of the natural world is a pervasive theme in the music of Ann Callaway, whose works have been premiered by the Seattle (Concerto for Bass Clarinet) and St. Louis (Amethyst for soprano & orchestra) Symphony Orchestras, the New York New Music Ensemble, Collage New Music, and Earplay. She has been composer in residence for Bella Musica and was the inaugural composer for Voci’s New Works Project, which commissioned On Music and Nature: Three Hopkins Settings (2015). The Peninsula Women’s Chorus performed Silvery Blue (2003), a setting of her own poem on a local butterfly. Her 2020 project was Clamavi de tribulatione mea, a setting for double chorus of Jonah’s hymn of deliverance from the whale’s belly. She returns to Pacific Women’s Chorus this fall as Composer-In-Residence, 2026-28. She often writes for her husband, bass Richard Mix, most recently Char, settings of six poems of Kurahara Shinjirô. A Contributing Director of Sonic Harvest, Ann Callaway is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has held residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Leighton Artist Colony in Banff. Her music is published by Subito Music Corp.
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Michael Desnoyers has sung over 50 different roles across San Francisco Bay Area stages, including performances with Opera San Jose, West Bay Opera, West Edge Opera, Festival Opera, Lamplighters Music Theatre, Ars Minerva, Pocket Opera, and the Mendocino Music Festival. His repertoire includes the major roles in the Mozart tenor repertoire, Albert in Albert Herring, Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore, Rodolfo in La Bohème, Ramiro in La Cenerentola, Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance, Marco in The Gondoliers, Sextus in Giulio Cesare, Paolino in Il matrimonio segreto, Gennaro in Lucrezia Borgia, and Eisenstein and Alfred in Die Fledermaus. As a concert soloist he has performed in Mozart’s Requiem, Coronation Mass, and Vespere solennes; Bach’s Johannes-Passion and Matthäus-Passion; Handel’s Messiah, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Saint-Saëns’ Christmas Oratorio, C.P.E. Bach’s Magnificat, and Dvorak’s Mass in D. He performs with the San Francisco Opera Guild’s program Opera a la Carte to bring shortened versions of popular operas to elementary and middle schools, and is the Director of Vocal Music at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts.
Scott Kungha Drengsen, bassist, singer songwriter and composer, has been exploring the sonic possibilities of bass guitar with uniquely designed and built instruments for over 50 years. His playing has appeared in movie soundtracks, international solo bass competitions, and looping festivals. As a sideman or band member, he has shared the stage with Stevie Wonder, The Pretenders, The Foo Fighters, S. K.Thoth , Boris Goldmund, Baba Duru, Elvis Costello, Jim Santi Owen, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and others. He has 14 solo albums--visit the YouTube channel Scott Kungha Drengsen. His music draws heavily from Indian, ambient, jazz and post classical music, with improvisation playing a major role. Some of his playing is unrecognizable as a bass, covering everything from ambient soundscapes to jazz standards and folk songs with John Coltrane- and Jimi Hendrix-inspired melodies. His music is also shaped by a lifelong interest in mysticism and his "day job" as a meditation teacher, healer and artist-in-residence here in the East Bay. He is thrilled to be performing the music of Ann Callaway for Sonic Harvest.
Leighton Fong, a longtime member of San Francisco's Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, is Principal Cellist of the California Symphony, and has taught at UC Berkeley for over thirty years. He plays regularly with Eco Ensemble and Empyrean Ensemble, and was a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Players. In addition to specializing in contemporary music, he has performed the complete string quartets of Beethoven with the Los Angeles based Southwest Chamber Music Society and the complete string quartets of Schubert on original instruments with the Berkeley Schubert Quartet. Leighton studied at the San Francisco Conservatory, the New England Conservatory, the Bern Conservatory in Switzerland, and the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen, Denmark. Born in Sacramento, California, he has lived in Berkeley since 1991.
Peter Josheff (composer and clarinetist) has been on the front lines of the northern California new music scene for more than 30 years. Based in the Bay Area, he is a co-founder of Earplay and of Sonic Harvest, a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Empyrean Ensemble (UC Davis), Eco Ensemble (UC Berkeley), and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. He performs frequently with Opera Parallèle and West Edge Opera. Peter’s music has been performed by the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, the Farallon Quintet, Earplay, Sonic Harvest, the Laurel Ensemble, the Bernal Hill Players, Empyrean Ensemble, and many soloists. Recent works include: Same Old Sadness (2020) for solo violin; On the Way to the Day (2020) for solo cello; Dewy not, Dewy got (2020) for solo bassoon; Warped Oracle (2019) and Images from the Past (2018) for spoken voice and piano; and The Dream Mechanic (2016), for woman’s spoken voice, tenor, and chamber orchestra. An Instructor of Clarinet at U.C., Berkeley, he is also an amateur guitarist/singer/songwriter. Peter is a Contributing Director of Sonic Harvest.
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Born in the Philippines, Lino Rivera won his first national competition at age eight. He has performed as a solo recitalist, concerto soloist, and accompanist on three continents. He has been featured on several radio and television broadcasts, notably live performances with the Manila Symphony Orchestra and the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. Rivera makes it his mission to advocate and premiere contemporary works; to explore and meet the artistic, creative, and technical challenges of piano transcriptions (the subject of his doctoral dissertation); and to discover and perform obscure solo piano repertoire throughout the ages. He often appeared on the concert season of the former Composers, Inc., an organization based in San Francisco dedicated to promoting works by contemporary American composers. In 2007, he performed many of the Beethoven sonatas in conjunction with renowned music historian Robert Greenberg on a concert lecture series presented at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, California. He is a frequent soloist at Music Teachers' Association of California conferences, and regularly serves as an adjudicator of piano competitions. Recent solo recitals have taken place in Nuremberg (Germany), Zurich (Switzerland), Kent University, Corpus Christi, Savannah, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Anchorage.
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Guest composer Martin Rokeach's works have been performed by ensembles including the Oakland Symphony, Ensemble Variant (Geneva), SF Concerto Orchestra, Chameleon Arts Ensemble (Boston), the U. S. Army Orchestra, Dunsmuir Piano Quartet (SF), Ensemble Flageolet (AZ), the Chicago Ensemble, Musica Nova (Macedonia), Duo Sforzando (Geneva), Atlanta Contemporary Ensemble, Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble, St. Petersburg (Russia) Chamber Players, Sheridan Players (Chicago), Webster Trio (Houston) and Guitarinet (Poland). His works have earned honors in over 15 national and international composition competitions, and he has been commissioned by the Ellsworth Smith International Trumpet Competition, Cygnus Ensemble (NY), Switzerland’s Dobrzelewski/Marrs Duo, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Eight Strings and a Whistle (NY), Bowers/Fader Duo (NY), hornists Robert Ward and Andrew Pelletier, and Austrian guitarist Yvonne Zehner. Marty earned his Ph.D. at Michigan State University and bachelor’s and master’s degrees at SF State University. Professor Emeritus at St. Mary's College of California, for 33 years he was Artistic Co-director of Composers, Inc. His oratorio Bodies on the Line: The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike, commissioned and premiered by the Oakland Symphony, will be performed next year in Berlin. His current commission is a large work for the New York chorus Cantori.
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A Contributing Director of Sonic Harvest, Allen Shearer has been honored with the Rome Prize Fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship, the Aaron Copland Award, residencies at the MacDowell Colony, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. His opera The Dawn Makers, on a libretto by Claudia Stevens, premiered at Herbst Theatre and was selected as a finalist in the National Opera Association’s Dominick Argento Chamber Opera Competition 2015. His Three Lyrics, a work written at the Copland House, won the Sylvia Goldstein Award. The premiere production of his opera Middlemarch in Spring was named one of the Ten Best Operatic Events of 2015 by the San Francisco Examiner, and one of the year’s notable events in classical music worldwide by the Encyclopedia Brittanica. His opera Howards End, America premiered at ZSpace in San Francisco in 2019, and Prospero’s Island, on a libretto by Claudia Stevens after Shakespeare’s The Tempest, premiered in 2023 at Herbst Theatre.
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Omri Shimron is Piano Area Coordinator and Associate Professor of Music at Cal State East Bay. An avid collaborator, he enjoys teaming up with instrumentalists, singers, and choirs. His debut solo album, featuring Frederic Rzewski’s 36 Variations on “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” was released in 2014 on New Focus Records. He has performed in solo and ensemble settings across the US as well as in Italy, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, and the UK. A seasoned piano pedagogue, he was on faculty at the Rebecca Penneys Piano Festival from 2013-2017 where he taught an international group of students from elite music schools. He has presented lecture-recitals for the College Music Society on repertoire ranging from C.P.E. Bach to Libby Larsen. A former co-president of the SF/East Bay chapter of CAPMT (California Association of Professional Music Teachers), he is also in demand as a clinician and adjudicator for local, state, and regional competitions and festivals. |
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Since 2007 Claudia Stevens has contributed to Sonic Harvest programs as a writer and performer. She is known for her musical/dramatic solo performance of original works, having toured for twenty-five seasons at the national level, as well as in Canada, Europe and Asia. Several of her solo plays and libretti are published. Claudia's earlier career as a pianist, often performing new and commissioned works, included fellowships at Tanglewood and solo recitals at Carnegie Recital Hall (produced by the New York Composrs' Forum) and Boston's Jordan Hall. More recently, she turned to opera development, as a librettist in collaboration with composer Allen Shearer. Together they have created over a dozen chamber operas, including full-length high-profile productions and more intimate one-acts, a number of them performed on Sonic Harvest. Claudia and Allen look forward to the premiere this November of their opera, "Jackie at Vassar," by Opera Theatre at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A contributing director of Sonic Harvest, Claudia has taught at Williams College and the College of William and Mary, where she is a Faculty Affiliate. See bio .
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