For Immediate Release: June in Buffalo 2026 is the Year of the Composer/Conductor

 

June in Buffalo 2026 will run from June 1-7, 2026.

 

 

 

With more than 50 years of history, June in Buffalo is a landmark festival and conference dedicated to emerging and established voices in contemporary music. Hosted annually at the University at Buffalo, it’s widely known as a place composers come to grow, connect and have their work brought to life by top-tier performers and ensembles.

June in Buffalo 2026 is the year of the composer/conductor. Each participant composer will conduct her/his own composition in multiple rehearsals and a performance with the Festival’s resident ensemble, the Slee Sinfonietta. Participants will be mentored in this process by an outstanding and dynamic group of senior figures including Christian Baldini, Jason Thorpe Buchanan, David Dzubay and David Fulmer, each a celebrated leader as both composer and conductor. The number of composers who can be accommodated in such an undertaking is smaller than in a typical year at the Festival, and we are expecting that the application process will be highly competitive.

 

 

As always, participant composers will benefit from the full range of June in Buffalo’s programmatic activities, including masterclasses with senior composers, composer talks, and additional workshops. More recent additions to the JiB curriculum include opportunities to perform an original solo work in an uncurated program and to take part in our “late night” improvisation ensemble.

 

Whether you’re an emerging composer or an established voice, June in Buffalo is your chance to grow, create and connect in a supportive environment. Below you’ll find all the information you need to apply and take part in this transformative experience. June in Buffalo 2026 offers a unique opportunity for composer/conductors to prepare for the important artistic and professional leadership roles which await these most essential figures in the landscape of new music. 

 

How to Apply

Application Deadline:

All application materials and the processing fee must be submitted by February 15. 

Full details will be made available on the June in Buffalo website in early January, and all materials and payments will be accepted through the portals to be found on that website.

Application materials will include:

1. Resume or Curriculum Vitae

2. Performance Proposals and Scores

• Submit one or two proposals for works to be performed by the Slee Sinfonietta.
• Proposed works may include electronic elements.
• Proposals should briefly describe the work, including length, full instrumentation and any technical requirements.
• Proposals of works in progress will be considered.

3. Scores

• Submit scores/drafts of your proposed works for JiB and one or two additional scores showcasing your recent compositional activity.
• For works in progress, please send whatever partial scores or sketch materials you feel will be represent the current state of your work by the Feb.15 application deadline. The deadline for completed scores is April 1. All performance materials including any required score revisions, corrected parts and electronic elements must be received by April 22.
• Audio recordings of works submitted are requested, but not required.

Ensemble Instrumentation:

A maximum of 16 players of the Slee Sinfonietta drawn from the following:

·      Flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, French horn, 2 violins, viola, cello, double bass, piano/keyboards, harp and 2 percussion. Proposals for works of this scoring (or smaller) are highly encouraged.

·      Proposals may include saxophone, trumpet, trombone, and/or guitar (electric or acoustic), but the availability of these instruments will be limited.

·      Proposals may also include soprano voice.

·      Standard doublings are available for flute, clarinet, oboe and saxophone.

 

It is possible to apply for Auditor status. Auditors have access to the following:

• Senior composer lectures.
• All rehearsals, workshops and concerts.
• Masterclasses (as observers without presenting their own work).

Fees

·       $25 non-refundable processing fee

·      Participant Tuition: $800

·      Auditor Tuition: $400

Housing Costs

On-campus housing is available for non-UB students. The festival offers up to eight nights of accommodations in University dormitories; the cost for 2026 is currently estimated at $650.00 per participant.

 

 

Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart to come to UB in Spring

 

The Center is proud to announce that Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart will be coming April 1st and 2nd for performances at Lippes Concert Hall which will feature works by Ming Tsao and UB student composers. Neue Vocalsolisten is a renowned vocal ensemble which is dedicated to exploring new frontiers of vocal expression. Their collaborations with composers and artists produce works which map out unheard landscapes of digital media, performance, and theater. This ensemble has worked with some of the most prominent composers of our time including Georges Aperghis, Luciano Berio, Chaya Czernowin, Sara Glojnarić, Sarah Nemtsov, Katharina Rosenberger, Claude Vivier, and Jennifer Walshe.

 

Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart

 

Neue Vocalsolisten will be working with UB’s PhD student composers including Will Brobston, Francisco Corthey, Chi-Yen Huang, Jackson Roush, and  Lihuen Sirvent. They will also be performing Das wassergewordene Kanonbuch by UB's Birge Cary Professor of Music, Ming Tsao and Salvatore Sciarrino’s 12 Madrigali.

Neue Vocalsolisten has been widely recorded by such record labels as col legno, Cypres Records, Edition RZ, Kairos, and WERGO. The ensemble has been the recipient of many prominent awards including the Silver Lion of the Venice Biennale 2021 and the Italian critic’s prize Premio Abbiati 2022. The jury of the Venice Biennale stated Neue Vocalsolisten are an ensemble whose “creative collaboration with some of the greatest living composers has decisively advanced the development of the contemporary a cappella repertoire.”

Below is an example of Neue Vocalsolisten performing Evis Sammoutis's Sculpting Air. 

UB Student Composers at Hallwalls

 

The UB Music Department will be hosted by Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (341 Delaware Ave) this coming Monday, December 8th at 7:30 PM for a concert of student composer works performed by UB faculty and Buffalo-area musicians. Pianist Eric Huebner, violinists Melissa White and Shannon Reilly, and cellist Jonathan Golove will be playing pieces by Jackson Roush, Andres Bonilla Garcia, Trinity Prater, Lihuen Sirvent, and Thomas Little. In addition, composers Roush and Prater will follow their notated works with improvisations. New to the music department this year is Trinity Prater, who has written about their piece Crisálidas:

 

I wrote Crisálidas earlier in the summer of 2025 in Iowa City, where I had returned for some recuperation after 2.5 years study in Leipzig, Germany. During the study in Leipzig, I had become very close with a classmate of mine, Paula Rocosa Gañez, who was a student in the masters program in piano performance. Paula performed, and still performs, an aesthetically eclectic palette of 20th century composers, such as Hindemith, Debussy, Prokofiev, among several lesser-known 20th and 21^st century Spanish composers. I was always impressed with the distinct approaches she took to each composer, which made any recital of hers an exciting experience of multiplicity: you never knew which Paula you were going to get.  

 

I spent several concerts meditating on the mechanism behind this diversity, and every thought came back to articulation. Paula has, and pianists generally have, an acute, embodied awareness not only of the precise differences between all notated articulations, but also an intuition for which articulations a score was expressively implied to require. This realisation merged with conversations Paula and I had throughout our studies together about our experience of the masters studies as one of becoming, giving rise to feelings of being in a transitory state. The metaphor of the chrysalis (from which the piece takes its title) formed. 

 

The articulatory character of each section of this piece is drawn from imagining an insect's interactions with the walls on the inside of its chrysalis. At the beginning of the metamorphosis, these interactions are more of a variety of tappings, and as the body liquidates, a pressing, or a flowing. The harmonic choices are exclusively intervallic, beginning on a G, and, taking distances in semitones from that G from the distances between "Trues" in a Boolean sieve process. Distances between rhythmic events, including durations, note flurries, and lengths of scrapings on the wire-wrapped strings inside the piano, emerge from the same process as the harmony. 

 

This short piece marks the beginning of my interest in a music which is emergent from a space-in-between. There is so much that happens within a transformation beyond the arbitrary poles of its beginnings and endings.

 

 The concert is free, and a donation to Hallwalls is recommended. Thanks very much to Hallwalls for their continued support of our activities!