The Faculty is represented by internationally operating top musicians from all over the world

Professor Summer Song (soprano) is an acclaimed operatic singer. Before joining Houston Christian University as a full-time voice faculty member in 2017, she taught as an adjunct voice professor at Texas Southern University for 5 years. With over 12 years’ career in academic teaching and stage performances, Ms. Song brings extensive experience in performing, directing, and managing concert events.
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Ms. Song is a signed artist managed by New York Adunni Rose Talent Agency, LLC. She has actively participated in prestigious music festivals as both a voice faculty member and an artist. Notably, she severed as the Voice Faculty at 2024 France Summer Music Festival YXIE, where she was teaching aspiring young artists and performed alongside Grammy Award winners and esteemed faculty members. In 2022, Ms. Song was selected as a Vocal Pedagogy Artist at the Aspen Music Festival Opera Theater and Vocal Arts Summit, where she had the honor of being taught by the renowned opera star Renee Fleming. She also participated as a summer opera Studio Artist at L’Arte Del Bel Canto in Milan, Italy from 2013 to 2017, following the completion of her Master in Music degree in vocal performance from Washington State University, USA.
Ms. Song is an active performer in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Recent notable performances including a leading role in the musical production “Greatest Love of All”, collaborative concert series with Houston Symphony musicians, and the charity concert events for organizations like USA National Alliance on Mental Illness. She has been a featured soloist with various organizations in the U.S., UK, Singapore, Italy, and China. She also serves as a prominent judge for AIMA and CS International Voice Competition and conducts voice masterclasses. Ms. Song has been an active member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) and has served as an adjudicator at voice competitions for 12 years.

Ms. Song was the recipient of the teaching award at the American Protégé International Concerto Competition 2021-22 for her exceptional dedication and achievements in the field of teaching, leading her students to perform at Carnegie Hall at New York in the summer of 2022. Many of her students have gone on to become professional opera singers, with some achieving success in national and international singing competitions. Additionally, numerous students taught by Ms. Song have been accepted into prestigious Master’s and Bachelor’s music programs at institutions such as the New England Music Conservatory, Berklee College of Music, Peabody Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Boston Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, Yale University, Stanford University, Harvard University, and others.

Philadelphia born artist, Dr. Tiffany Renée Jackson is a groundbreaking, highly recognized classical and jazz singer, vocal pedagogue, fitness professional, and scholar, who was raised in New Haven, CT. Her educational credits include a Bachelor of Music Degree from the University of Michigan, a Master of Music and Artist Diploma from Yale School of Music, a Professional Studies Degree from the Manhattan School of Music, and a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from the University of Connecticut.
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Dr. Tiffany Renee Jackson has an extensive, lauded singing career, that spans both the classical and jazz genres. After honing her craft in the classical arena with the Houston Grand Opera Studio, she sang with orchestras and symphonies around the world (Norway, Slovenia, Germany, and others) as part of her Metropolitan Opera Study Grant. She has been a featured soloist with numerous Symphony Orchestras including National Philharmonic Orchestra, Gotham City Orchestra, New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Greater Bridgeport Symphony and many others. She has performed in premier festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen. In 2005, she was the soprano soloist in Haydn’s Paukenmesse at Carnegie Hall.
In the jazz world, Dr. Jackson is known for her interpretations of the music of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. She has appeared at the Blue Note (NYC) and Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center. She can be heard on recordings with Emmy Award winning composer, Dr. Rex Cadwallader, A Balm in Gilead and Sweet Perfume in an Alabaster Jar. In addition to her singing credits, Dr. Jackson is a fitness competitor and sports nutrition specialist. She brought all of her talents to the world in 2011 when she appeared on “America’s Got Talent” as the “Necessarydiva”, the opera singing bodybuilder.
Dr. Jackson’s career began to change course after returning from a trip to South Africa with Oprah Winfrey, where she visited Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and Johannesburg. During the World Aids Day Concert in Cape Town, she met the late Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first African president.
In recent years, Dr. Jackson has been endeavored to provide advocacy in social justice reforms for public and private arts education organizations, some of whom have rededicated their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Connecticut’s Arts Administrators Association invited her to their platform to speak about Social Justice in the Arts through SEL frameworks and she delivered the keynote address for the Connecticut Music Educators Association.
In 2020, Dr. Jackson debuted an autobiographical and multidimensional one-woman show, Rising of the Necessary Diva, at the Paul Mellon Arts Center in Wallingford, CT. Despite the challenges caused by the pandemic, the show has continued to reach audiences through socially distant platforms chartered by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas and the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, CT.
Dr. Jackson’s most recent performance included a Jazz concert and faculty showcase at Hampton University Jazz Band, where she is currently an Assistant Professor of Voice.

Violist Chiu-Chen Liu enjoys a diverse career in orchestra, chamber music and pedagogy. Recent performances include engagements with Cremona International Music Academy, Alion Baltic International Music Festival, Festival Suoni D’abruzzo in Italy, BAMcafé Live, American Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, American Chamber Music Ensemble, New York Classical Quartet, Attacca Quartet and Lecture-Performance Series at Columbia University.
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Violist Chiu-Chen Liu enjoys a diverse career in orchestra, chamber music and pedagogy. Recent performances include engagements with Cremona International Music Academy, Alion Baltic International Music Festival, Festival Suoni D’abruzzo in Italy, BAMcafé Live, American Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, American Chamber Music Ensemble, New York Classical Quartet, Attacca Quartet and Lecture-Performance Series at Columbia University. Chiu-Chen has served as principal viola with the Greater Bridgeport Symphony, the Sarasota Opera, Di Capo Opera, Fairfield County Chorale Orchestra. Her chamber music performances have been broadcast on NPR and WQXR radio. The latest album Alto Under the Radar: Soviet Viola Music with pianist Ilya Kazantsev was released under Centaur Records.
Currently residing in New York City, Chiu-Chen relocated from her native Taiwan at age seventeen to study at the Manhattan School of Music. She later earned her Bachelor of Music, Master of Music and Professional Studies Diploma from Mannes College The New School for Music, receiving full scholarship as a student of Hsin-Yun Huang, Mark Steinberg and Laurie Smukler. A dedicated teacher, Chiu-Chen was appointed the String Department Chairperson from 2013 to 2016 at the Third Street Music School where she is currently serving as a full time violin, viola and chamber music faculty.
In addition to Music, Chiu-Chen is also an active visual artist. She is currently serving as the Visual Artist-In-Resident for the Olympic Music Festival in Washington State, VivaViola Festival in Taiwan and the Sejong International Music Festival at the Curtis Institute from 2013-2014.

Pianist Nic Gerpe, a Los Angeles native, has been hailed as “magnetic” (Dan Johnson, L.A. Downtown News) and “prodigious… heroic” (Kevin McMahon, silverlakeblvd.com). L.A. Times music critic Mark Swed described his playing as “wonderfully illuminating… his tone is crystalline. His technique is dazzlingly fluid.” A dedicated proponent of new music, Nic has given numerous world and regional premieres by composers such as John Luther Adams, Frederic Rzewski, Anne LeBaron, and Gernot Wolfgang, among others.
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Nic has performed throughout Southern California and at festivals including the Ojai Music Festival, Banff International Keyboard Festival, the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at the New England Conservatory, and the Tahoe Chamber Music Festival. Nic has been selected as the newest Core Artist for Los-Angeles new music organization Piano Spheres, and has performed in such venues as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Zipper Hall, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater. Nic’s performances have also been nationally broadcast on 91.5 KUSC and classicalkusc.org.
Nic’s recent works include the Makrokosmos 50 Project, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of George Crumb’s seminal work Makrokosmos Volume I. He has commissioned eleven composers to join him in writing musical responses to one movement of Crumb’s epic masterwork and to create a whole new celestial cycle. Nic premiered this program at the San Francisco Center for New Music and Tuesdays at Monk Space, and gave additional performances at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and at Walt Disney Concert Hall on the 2022 Noon to Midnight Festival. His performances of The Makrokosmos 50 Project and his subsequent studio recording of the program have garnered significant critical acclaim.
Nic is the co-curator of the Wicked GOAT concert series at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music, which seeks to introduce younger audiences to contemporary music. These themed concerts feature exciting programs performed by some of Los Angeles’ top musicians, and include immersive and multimedia elements.
Nic has performed as a soloist in modern piano concerti by some of today’s most talented emerging composers. He gave the World Premiere composer Dale Trumbore’s piano concerto “10,000 Hours” with the USC Thornton Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Donald Crockett. He also participated in the 2012 Piatigorsky International CelloFest, performing the American premiere of Thomas Demenga’s “Relations”, a double concerto for two cellos, percussion and prepared piano. He also recently performed Reena Esmail’s “Earth Speaks”, a concerto for piano, horn and SATB chorus, with the Pasadena Master Chorale, conducted by Jeffrey Bernstein.
Nic has performed with Los Angeles-based ensembles such as Brightwork newmusic, WildUP and The Industry L.A., and premiered new works for Magnetic Resonator Piano with People Inside Electronics. He has performed with such world- renowned artists as Martin Chalifour, Hila Plitmann and Judith Farmer. Nic’s playing is also featured on composer Gernot Wolfgang’s GRAMMY-nominated chamber music album “Passing Through”, released in 2016 on the Albany Label.
Additionally, Nic has given guest artist recitals and masterclasses at the University of California, Los Angeles, California State University Los Angeles, Cal State University Sacramento, and Pasadena City College.
Along with violinist Pasha Tseitlin, Nic is the co-founder of Panic Duo, a violin and piano duo dedicated to the performance of contemporary music. The Duo has performed in Los Angeles, San Diego, Escondido, Paso Robles and other venues throughout the United States. Performance highlights include concerts at Boston Court Performing Arts Center and The Phoenix Concerts in New York City, as well as guest artist recitals at Cal Arts and Cal State L.A.
Nic earned his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Piano Performance at the University of Southern California in 2012. He studied extensively with Bernadene Blaha, Kevin Fitz-Gerald and Stewart Gordon. He has also worked with Earl Wild, Arnold Steinhardt, Robert Lipsett, and Stephen Drury.
Nic has been on the Piano Faculty of the Pasadena Conservatory of Music since 2006. He joined the faculty at Scripps College in the Fall of 2024.

Canadian pianist Joan Forsyth, is a multi-faceted musician who has received critical acclaim as a soloist and chamber music artist. She has performed at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and the Library of Congress, and collaborated with the Cassatt Quartet, the Theater Chamber Players of the Kennedy Center and Cygnus.
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She has toured the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Russia with Cygnus with programs of new American music and has performed in Japan with Trio Spark! Recent performances have been at the Austria Summer Music Festival, Inter-Harmony Music Festival, and the Festival of New American Music at CalState Sacramento, and FIC21 in Mexico. Joan Forsyth has recorded for Furious Artisans, Soundspells, Albany and CRI. In addition to her position as Piano Chairperson at the Third Street Music School, Dr. Forsyth is on the music faculty of Bennington College.

Guitarist/composer William Anderson began performing chamber music at Tanglewood at age 19. He now performs in guitar festivals and new music festivals in Europe, the U.S., Latin America and in Japan. In New York Anderson performs regulalry with many ensembles including Sequitur, and the Cygnus Ensemble, which he founded in 1985.
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For ten years he was a member of the Theater Chamber Players in Washington D.C., under the direction of Leon Fleisher and Dina Koston. He has performed with the Metropolitan Opera Chamber Players, under James Levine, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Da Capo Chamber Players, Speculum Musicae and the York Philharmonic.
Anderson appears on many CD recordings, and he has made four CDs that feature him: The Guitar Music of Meyer Kupferman, on Soundspells; Diary of a Seducer, on CRi; and Hausmusik, on Furious Artisans; and Music of J.K. Mertz on Titanic Records.
He appears on numerous other CDs on various lables including Koch, Bridge Records, and Open Space.
Anderson’s compositions have been heard on Danish National Radio, Polish National Radio, and at festivals including the Europe/Asia Festival in Kazan, the Weekend of Chamber Music in the Catskills, the Rotenburg Festival in Northern Germany, and various music festivals in Spain and Italy. He teaches guitar at Sarah Lawrence College, and at Queens College.

A dedicated music professional with over 12 years of experience, I have cultivated a rich career spanning music education, performance, and cultural coordination across Île-de-France conservatories. My journey reflects a passionate commitment to musical arts, encompassing roles as a piano teacher, accompanist, performer, and cultural event coordinator.
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From coordinating significant musical events like “Journées du Piano” and “Opéra à l’Ecole” to serving as a soloist performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” with Val-Maubuée Orchestra, I have demonstrated versatility in classical, jazz, and contemporary musical contexts. My professional experience includes managing keyboard departments, supervising educational orchestras, and conducting musical workshops.
Academically trained with a Diploma in Classical Piano and a Philosophy License from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, I am now focusing on expanding my professional horizons. My current goal is to transition into broader cultural coordination and event organization, driven by a fundamental mission to make culture accessible and engaging for diverse audiences.
With a background that blends artistic expertise, educational experience, and administrative skills, I am poised to contribute meaningfully to cultural initiatives that connect communities through the transformative power of music and arts.

Amy Hersh has an active career that combines her love of chamber music, orchestral performance, and teaching. The New York Times has written that Ms. Hersh “…plays the flute ….with directness and an ear for subtlety.”
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She currently plays with the Hudson Valley Symphony Orchestra (formerly the Hudson Valley Philharmonic), the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, the Virtuosi Wind Quintet, and the Cara Quartet. Ms. Hersh began her career playing piccolo with the Mexico City Philharmonic and the Filharmonica del Bajio, and has played with the New Jersey Symphony, in various Broadway pit orchestras, such as Les Miserables and Annie, and in numerous New York area orchestras. She gave her New York debut at Weill Hall as an Artist’s International winning member of the “Venus Trio”, a group comprising flute, harp, and mezzo-soprano, and was a winner of the New York Flute Club competition. Ms. Hersh received her Bachelors and Masters of Music from the Manhattan School of Music. In Westchester County, she teaches at the Hackley School, at her home studio in Pelham, and at the Songcatchers program in New Rochelle.

Laura Schwendinger, born in Mexico City, was the first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin Prize. Her opera Artemisia won the 2023 American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Opera Award. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009) and fellowships from prestigious institutions including Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
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She is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she serves as Artistic Director of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble and Head of Composition. She earned her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, studying under Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson. Schwendinger has presented her work at leading institutions worldwide and taught at various universities including the University of Illinois at Chicago, UC Santa Cruz, and Smith College. She has also served as faculty at numerous summer programs and festivals.

Puerto Rican tenor Pablo Veguilla holds a Master’s degree in Music from the prestigious Yale University and a Bachelor’s degree from Florida State University. In 2001, he won the 8th Alfonzo Cavaliere Competition scholarship and was twice a regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He has participated in numerous young artist programs, opera studios, and masterclasses in the United States and Italy.
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Veguilla began his operatic career as Alfredo in La Traviata and soon caught the attention of the New York Grand Opera, where he debuted as Fenton in Falstaff. With the same company, he performed leading roles such as the Duke in Rigoletto, Marcello in Leoncavallo’s La Bohème, Roberto in Le Villi, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, and Rodolfo in Puccini’s La Bohème. He later reprised many of these roles with regional opera companies in St. Louis, Yale, Houston, Sarasota, Philadelphia, and Sacramento, including Don José in Carmen, Des Grieux in Manon, and Cavaradossi in Tosca.

Dutch ‘avant pop’ composer JacobTV ( Jacob ter Veldhuis,1951 ) began as a rock musician and studied composition and electronic music with Luctor Ponse and Willem Frederik Bon in Groningen. He received the Composition Prize of the Netherlands in 1980 and became a full time composer, who made a name for himself with melodious compositions, straight from the heart and with great effect. JacobTV’s eclectic work bridges the gap between high art and low culture, and in the USA, where people shortened his unpronounceable name to JacobTV, it is called “avant-pop.”
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In 2015, JacobTV won the first BUMA Classical Award as the best classical export product of the Netherlands. In fact, his continually updated reality opera *The News* was performed in LA, New York, Chicago, Amsterdam, Rome, and Hamburg, and his ballet music was heard from Moscow to Chicago. With around 1,000 performances worldwide each year, JacobTV has been one of Europe’s most frequently performed composers. *The News*, offered a penetrating look at how the world of news, advertising, spin, and propaganda reaches deep into the roots of our existence. His latest multimedia production, *WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?* went into production December 2024.
According g to the Dutch press: ”JacobTV undeniably has a distinctive sound, in which ‘high and low’ do not matter. This is understood everywhere. Perhaps it’s also because, like Louis Andriessen, he has something quintessentially Dutch: independent and anti-academic. Apparently, it’s not beauty that has burned its face. JacobTV makes it painfully clear that it’s us who sometimes struggle to bear beauty.”
The American press dubbed him the Jeff Koons of new music, and his “coming-out” as a composer of dissonance-free music reached a peak with the magnum opus *Paradiso*, a video oratorio loosely based on Dante Alighieri’s *Divina Commedia*. An anthology of his work was released on BASTA Records and presented at a three-day JacobTV Festival at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In some avant-garde circles, JacobTV is still seen as an “outlaw.” At the same time, according to the *Wall Street Journal*, his music makes many a hip- hop artist look sedate.

As a multi-genre recording artist and instrumentalist, Damien LeChateau Sneed is a pianist, vocalist, organist, composer, conductor, arranger, producer, and arts educator whose work spans multiple genres. He has worked with jazz, classical, pop, and R&B legends, including the late Aretha Franklin and Jessye Norman, Wynton Marsalis, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Ashford & Simpson, Denyce Graves, Lawrence Brownlee, and many others.
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In addition, Sneed has served as music director for several Grammy Award–winning gospel artists, including The Clark Sisters, Richard Smallwood, Donnie McClurkin, Hezekiah Walker, Marvin Sapp, Karen Clark Sheard, and Kim Burrell, among others, and BET’s hit gospel competition, Sunday Best. Sneed is a 2014 Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient, a 2020 Dove Award winner, and a 2021 NAACP Image Award winner for his work as a featured producer and writer on the Clark Sisters’ project, The Return.
Sneed recently joined the esteemed faculty of Howard University and the Juilliard School. His other professional affiliations have included the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, Berklee School of Music, Michigan State University, the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University, Nyack College, and the City University of New York (CUNY). In 2015, he established the Damien Sneed Foundation Performing Arts Institute. Sneed is the founder and artistic director of Chorale Le Chateau, that has gained a global reputation for vividly interpreting vocal literature, from Renaissance period pieces to art songs to jazz, spirituals, gospel, and avant-garde contemporary music. Sneed is featured in the award-winning PBS documentary Everyone Has a Place starring Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and Sneed’s own Chorale Le Chateau, which captures Sneed’s journey as musical conductor of the historic tour performances of Marsalis’s Abyssinian Mass.
He has released several projects on his boutique label, LeChateau Earl Records, established in 2009 to reflect his varied musical interests. Some of Sneed’s commissions as a composer include Empower (2018) by Lyric Opera of
Chicago; Marian’s Song (2019) by Houston Grand Opera; “The Earth Sings” (2021) by the ASCAP Kingsford Commission; the film score for Testament (2021) by Alvin Ailey Dance Theater; The Tongue and the Lash (2022) by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL); and Treemonisha (2023) also by OTSL, a reimagined adaptation of Scott Joplin’s opera.
As conductor, he has debuted with the Flint Symphony Orchestra, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Stockton Symphony Orchestra, Gateways Music Festival Chamber Players, Harlem Chamber Players Orchestra, and his own ensemble,
Orchestra of Tomorrow. Sneed will be featured as a vocal soloist on a new PBS documentary featuring Marsalis’ All Rise Symphony in the first quarter of 2025. He was recently signed to Apple Music Classical & Platoon Records (London). His newest recording project, Our Song Our Story, featuring Metropolitan Opera singers Jacqueline Echols McCarley and Justin Austin, along with the Griot String Quartet and Sneed on piano, will be released early 2025 while his second project with Apple Music, Kaleidoscope, featuring the solo piano music of African American composers, will be released in Fall 2025.

An enthusiastic proponent of new music, pianist Manuel Laufer has presented world premieres at Merkin Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Bang on a Can, June in Buffalo, and Festival Atempo (Caracas and Paris). He has concertized extensively playing contemporary chamber music, performing canonic works by composers including Babbitt, Cage, Crumb, Lachenmann, Xenakis, and Yun, in addition to newly commissioned repertoire.
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His solo work has championed modernist voices from his native Venezuela, placing particular emphasis on composer Diógenes Rivas.
A versatile musician, he is also passionate about traditional repertoire. He has performed with orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic and appears yearly at the Blueridge International Chamber Music Festival. Manuel Laufer has been a visiting artist at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and University at Buffalo’s Creative Arts Initiative. A committed educator, he serves as Director of Piano Studies at New York University, where he teaches pianists in solo and collaborative specializations.

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In 2015, JacobTV won the first BUMA Classical Award as the best classical export product of the Netherlands. In fact, his continually updated reality opera *The News* was performed in LA, New York, Chicago, Amsterdam, Rome, and Hamburg, and his ballet music was heard from Moscow to Chicago. With around 1,000 performances worldwide each year, JacobTV has been one of Europe’s most frequently performed composers. *The News*, offered a penetrating look at how the world of news, advertising, spin, and propaganda reaches deep into the roots of our existence. His latest multimedia production, *WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?* went into production December 2024.
According g to the Dutch press: ”JacobTV undeniably has a distinctive sound, in which ‘high and low’ do not matter. This is understood everywhere. Perhaps it’s also because, like Louis Andriessen, he has something quintessentially Dutch: independent and anti-academic. Apparently, it’s not beauty that has burned its face. JacobTV makes it painfully clear that it’s us who sometimes struggle to bear beauty.”
The American press dubbed him the Jeff Koons of new music, and his “coming-out” as a composer of dissonance-free music reached a peak with the magnum opus *Paradiso*, a video oratorio loosely based on Dante Alighieri’s *Divina Commedia*. An anthology of his work was released on BASTA Records and presented at a three-day JacobTV Festival at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In some avant-garde circles, JacobTV is still seen as an “outlaw.” At the same time, according to the *Wall Street Journal*, his music makes many a hip- hop artist look sedate.

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In addition, Sneed has served as music director for several Grammy Award–winning gospel artists, including The Clark Sisters, Richard Smallwood, Donnie McClurkin, Hezekiah Walker, Marvin Sapp, Karen Clark Sheard, and Kim Burrell, among others, and BET’s hit gospel competition, Sunday Best. Sneed is a 2014 Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient, a 2020 Dove Award winner, and a 2021 NAACP Image Award winner for his work as a featured producer and writer on the Clark Sisters’ project, The Return.
Sneed recently joined the esteemed faculty of Howard University and the Juilliard School. His other professional affiliations have included the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, Berklee School of Music, Michigan State University, the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University, Nyack College, and the City University of New York (CUNY). In 2015, he established the Damien Sneed Foundation Performing Arts Institute. Sneed is the founder and artistic director of Chorale Le Chateau, that has gained a global reputation for vividly interpreting vocal literature, from Renaissance period pieces to art songs to jazz, spirituals, gospel, and avant-garde contemporary music. Sneed is featured in the award-winning PBS documentary Everyone Has a Place starring Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and Sneed’s own Chorale Le Chateau, which captures Sneed’s journey as musical conductor of the historic tour performances of Marsalis’s Abyssinian Mass.
He has released several projects on his boutique label, LeChateau Earl Records, established in 2009 to reflect his varied musical interests. Some of Sneed’s commissions as a composer include Empower (2018) by Lyric Opera of
Chicago; Marian’s Song (2019) by Houston Grand Opera; “The Earth Sings” (2021) by the ASCAP Kingsford Commission; the film score for Testament (2021) by Alvin Ailey Dance Theater; The Tongue and the Lash (2022) by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL); and Treemonisha (2023) also by OTSL, a reimagined adaptation of Scott Joplin’s opera.
As conductor, he has debuted with the Flint Symphony Orchestra, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Stockton Symphony Orchestra, Gateways Music Festival Chamber Players, Harlem Chamber Players Orchestra, and his own ensemble,
Orchestra of Tomorrow. Sneed will be featured as a vocal soloist on a new PBS documentary featuring Marsalis’ All Rise Symphony in the first quarter of 2025. He was recently signed to Apple Music Classical & Platoon Records (London). His newest recording project, Our Song Our Story, featuring Metropolitan Opera singers Jacqueline Echols McCarley and Justin Austin, along with the Griot String Quartet and Sneed on piano, will be released early 2025 while his second project with Apple Music, Kaleidoscope, featuring the solo piano music of African American composers, will be released in Fall 2025.