Title: where we are now
Commission: 2017
Completed: 2019
Instrumentation: solo piano, percussion quartet, and male vocal sextet
Premiere Location: Oberlin Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall
Premiere Ensemble: Xak Bjerken, piano; Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, Timothy Weiss, conductor
Notes:

Composer Elizabeth Ogonek strives to create music that is energetic, dramatic, vivid, and colorful. Often inspired by text, her work explores the transference of words and poetic imagery to music. The nature of her interests has led to several collaborations with emerging writers including Sophia Veltfort, Ghazal Mosadeq, and Jonathan Dubow.

Born in 1989 in Anoka, Minnesota, and raised in New York City, Ogonek began studying music in the Preparatory Division at Manhattan School of Music. Her primary teachers have included Matthew Van Brink, Don Freund, Claude Baker, Michael Gandolfi, Donald Crockett, Stephen Hartke, and Julian Anderson. She has received further mentorship from Samuel Adler, Derek Bermel, John Harbison, Oliver Knussen, and Colin Matthews. She holds degrees from Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music, and the University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music. In 2015, she completed doctoral studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Ogonek is a Mead Composer in Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Professor of Composition at Oberlin Conservatory.