Composer Chats

Sheila Bristow is a composer, church musician, and collaborative keyboardist based in Tacoma, WA. She serves as Music Director & Organist at St. Barnabas, Bainbridge, and keyboardist for Harmonia Orchestra & Chorus. She is also in demand as an opera accompanist, vocal coach, and continuo performer.
Sheila’s compositions are heard regularly in worship and concert. Recent awards include the American Prize, Third Place in the major choral works division, for "When Music Sounds" (for solo tenor, chorus, and orchestra). She holds degrees in composition and organ performance from Cornish College of the Arts and the University of Washington.
https://www.sheilagailbristow.com

Emily is an educator, musician, composer in Washington State. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Music Education from the University of North Dakota and is currently pursuing a Masters of Film Scoring through Berklee School of Music. She is celebrating her 12th year in education and stays active as a performer in the Puget Sound region. Beyond her musical pursuits, Emily is also a visual artist and longarm quilter, adding a unique dimension to her creative expression.

Emily’s goal as a composer is to craft pieces that resonate with every student, providing them with a part they love playing. As an educator, Emily strives to cultivate a space where students experience the joy and exhilaration of achieving something challenging together. Her compositions have been selected for Editor’s Choice on JW Pepper, and multiple state lists. She currently lives in Tacoma, Washington with her partner, and two cats.
https://www.emharmonicmusic.com

Violinist/composer Lynn Bechtold, a native of Pittsburgh, has appeared in recital throughout the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, and Switzerland. An advocate of new music, she has worked with composers such as Derek Bermel, Carter Burwell, Gloria Coates, George Crumb, Beatriz Ferreyra, John Harbison, and Morton Subotnick, and has premiered works on the Tribeca New Music Festival and the Princeton Composers' Series. In 2001, she gave the premiere of Violynn, a work for violin and electronics written for her by Alvin Lucier. All About Jazz noted her for her "virtuosity and technical expertise," I CARE IF YOU LISTEN pointed out her "brilliance of sound, technical mastery, and stunning expressivity," San Diego Story called her "unapologetically dominating," and Strings Magazine labeled her "impressive" and "close to the edge."

She performs in groups including Miolina, Missing Link Ensemble, the SEM Ensemble, CompCord Ensemble, and N/S Consonance. Past groups include Zentripetal, Bleecker StQ, Quartet Metadata, Tenth Intervention, and NineLive. Other performances have been with Absolute Ensemble, Alison Cook Beatty Dance, Bleecker StQ, Carnegie Hall's Link Up Orchestra, DJ Spooky, East Village Opera Company, Emily Johnson/Catalyst Dance, EnterArt, disco band Escort, Eternal Tango Orchestra, Glass Farm Ensemble, Lumina String Quartet, NY Symphonic Ensemble, Parsons Dance, Paul Taylor Dance Company, 10 Hairy Legs, Vermont Symphony, VisionIntoArt, VOX Opera Readings, and Pablo Ziegler. She has also performed with entertainers such as Jon Batiste, Andrea Bocelli, Boyz II Men, Sarah Brightman, Michael Bublé, Willie Colon, Sheryl Crow, Dead Can Dance, Darcy James Argue's Secret Society Band, Roberta Flack, Josh Groban, Cyndi Lauper, Left Banke, Smokey Robinson, J-Pop band SMAP, Donna Summer, Suzanne Vega, and Stevie Wonder. In a work by artist Derrick Adams, she was part of Performa '13, the performance art biennial.
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An active performer, she has played at diverse venues such as the Blue Note, Bowery Ballroom, Carnegie Hall, Citi Field, the Frick Museum, the Harvard Club, Joe's Pub, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, Merkin Hall, The Met Museum, MoMA, National Sawdust, nublu, le Poisson Rouge, Radio City Music Hall, The Skyscraper Museum, The Smithsonian, St. John the Divine, and The Whitney Museum. Radio/TV broadcasts include CBC, NHK, WKCR, WNYC, CBS Morning Show, Good Day NY, 30 Rock, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Lynn received her Masters Degree from Mannes–The New School for Music, where she was a student of noted violinist Felix Galimir. Prior to that, she received a double-degree in Violin and English from New England Conservatory of Music and Tufts University. While at NEC, she worked with visiting composers John Cage, Gyorgi Ligeti, and Toru Takemitsu, among others. She has participated in festivals including Kneisel Hall, Meadowmount, Musicorda, Pacific Music Festival, Scotia Festival, and both Spoleto Festivals, as well as masterclasses with Pierre Amoyal, Lydian String Quartet, Orion String Quartet, Quatuor Diotima, and Frances-Marie Uitti.

She composes acoustic and electroacoustic music. Her compositions have been performed on various series and festivals, including Access Contemporary Music, Birmingham New Music Festival, Circuit Bridges, Composers Concordance, COMPOSERSFest XIII, Composers Voice, JUMP, La Cupula Galeria de Arte Livestream Series, Music With a View, NWEAMO, Relevant Tones, Soft Series, Sonic Circuits Festival, Sound of Silent Film Festival, and Sound Traffic, and at venues such as the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC, Bohemian National Hall, Fundación Beethoven in Buenos Aires, Institut Finlandais in Paris, National Opera Center, Nordia House in Portland, and Universidad Nacional in Córdoba. Her works have been performed by performers such as CompCord Ensemble, EnterArt Dance, ETHEL, Miolina, Missing Link Ensemble, The Overlook Quartet, Two Sides Sounding, Zentripetal, cellists Daniel Hass, Nelly Rocha, and Anja Wood, and violinist Funda Cizmecioglu. As a composer, she's worked with chef Kurt Gutenbrunner and with tap dancer Max Pollak. With visual artist Cecilia Mandrile, their video collaborations have been exhibited at Meghívó: DIGITÁLIS AGORA - III, Digitális Müvészeti Triennálé Festival in Budapest, Hungary (2021-22); Impact: Art that Bears Witness, Bethany Arts in Ossining, NY (2022); Experimental Loop Festival on Governors Island, NYC (2023); La Visibilidad es una trampa at Usina Cultural in Villa Maria, Argentina (2023); Courts Carouge Festival in Carouge, Switzerland (2024); Scores Exhibition at Ubicua Gallery in London, UK (2025); 2nd Prize at Envisioning a Just Pittsburgh at Carnegie Museum of Art & August Wilson African American Cultural Center in Pittsburgh (2026); and at Public Shorts Festival in Berlin, Germany (2026). Live performances of their collaborations have taken place at Goddard-Riverside Center, Greenwich House Music School, Loft 393, National Opera Center, and Westbeth Arts (NYC); La Cúpula (Córdoba, Argentina); and Usina Cultural (Villa Maria, Argentina). In 2023, Cecilia and Lynn were artists-in-residence at Alfred University's Institute for Electronic Arts.

Lynn is on the faculties of Greenwich House Music School and the Town School in NYC, and serves as a violin coach for the Norwalk Youth Symphony in CT. Since 2024, she has been a member of the summer faculty at Point Counterpoint Chamber Music Festival in Vermont. She is the recipient of grants from City Artists Corp, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York Foundation for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, NYC Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, Queens Theatre, the Leopold Schepp Foundation, and the Hilda Mesta Willis Fund. With her duo Miolina, she has also been awarded grants from American-Scandinavian Foundation, Japan Foundation NY, LMCC, New Music USA, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Women Composers, and Queens Council on the Arts.

Active behind the scenes as well, Lynn is co-artistic director of violin duo Miolina. In 2018, she became a board member of New York Women Composers. Lynn was a co-director Ladies First, a concert series from 2012-2020, that highlighted female diversity in music and other fields.
https://www.violynn.net

Chelsea Komschlies’ music, called “otherworldly” and “uncanny” and praised for its “vivid storytelling” (Chicago Classical Review), blends the familiar and strange in mysterious ways. She prioritizes perception of her music by the human brain and shared experiences among listeners. Her compositions, each a distinct fantasy world, evoke vivid multisensory imagery and a range of psycho-emotional landscapes, from whimsical nostalgia and camp to eerie disquiet, and from altered states of consciousness to glittering spiritual awe. A 2023 Virginia B. Toulmin Commission recipient through the League of American Orchestras, she premiered Mycelialore for orchestra and electronics with the Tucson Symphony in 2025. She joins the Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps in the 2025-26 season, during which time she will compose several new works for the orchestra. She is expanding her work into immersive VR and has initiated a partnership with Louisville Makes Games, a local nonprofit game developer community, to create musical compositions that are both visually immersive and gamified.
Ms. Komschlies’ work has been commissioned and supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, the Hermitage, Fromm, and ASCAP Foundations, the Alfred Casella Award (Curtis Institute), and Copland House. Presenters include Alarm Will Sound, Bozzini Quartet, Quasar Saxophone Quartet, the Louisville Orchestra, Tucson, Omaha, Vermont, Pittsburgh, Steamboat, and Lima Symphonies, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, TIME SPANS Festival, Grant Park Music Festival, Choral Arts Philadelphia, Fifth House Ensemble, Codes d’accès, Le Vivier, the Boulanger Initiative, Make Music Chicago, and Star Trek: The Cruise.
A Ph.D. candidate at McGill University under Jean Lesage, she has received McGill’s Andrew Svoboda Prize for Orchestral Composition and the Research Alive Student Prize. Her thesis on musically encoding shared multisensory information is supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec, which recognized it as the top-ranked music research project in the province.
https://www.komschlies.com

Mary Bichner (b. 1982) is an American orchestral composer of opera and ballet with sound-to-color synesthesia — a neurological condition that allows her to “see” splashes of specific colors when she hears their corresponding pitches sounded. Her work has appeared in publications such as National Geographic, BBC Music Magazine [UK], La Nouvelle Republique [France], and on NPR; and she has collaborated artistically with numerous organizations in the United States, France, and Greece. Noted commissions and projects include serving as composer-in-residence at The Vasilicos of Santorini, Greece (where she was commissioned to compose a new string quartet work inspired by the colors of the world-famous Santorini sunset); serving a two-year composer residency at the historic Mount Auburn Cemetery of Cambridge, MA, USA (where she was commissioned to compose two orchestral suites inspired by the cemetery's breathtaking landscape and landmarks); serving as composer-in-residence at The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico and Marble House Project of Vermont; and more. She has recently finished her first full-length opera, "The Memoirs of Antonina", inspired by Marie Antoinette.
https://www.marybichner.com