Blog | Symphony Number One

BREAKING: SNO Named 2019 Winner of the American Prize! Tap for more information.

| | | |
| | |

Nicholas Bentz

Nicholas Bentz

With his music being hailed by Christopher Rouse as "striking," Nicholas Bentz is forging a path of the composer-performer that hasn't been explored in generations. His music often takes its inspiration from pieces of literature and poetry, film, and visual art. As a composer he has received commissions from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the Robinson Jeffers Association, the College of Charleston Contemporary Music Ensemble, SONAR New Music Ensemble, Troika, Symphony Number One, and the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, and has had his music played by the Peabody Modern Orchestra. Nicholas was a winner of SONAR New Music Ensemble's RADARLab Competition as well as the Baltimore Choral Society's Student Composer Project. He was also a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards in 2014, and is the Composer in Residence for Symphony Number One's 2016-17 season.

   Equally at home on the violin, Nicholas has performed with orchestras from across the world, soloing with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, Pacific Philharmonic, Piccolo Spoleto Festival Orchestra, and Symphony Number One. He has also performed with the Summit Festival Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, Aspen Opera Theatre Company, and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Nicholas attended the Aspen Music Festival and School for six summers, and was chosen as a finalist for the Dorothy DeLay Fellowship Competition in 2012. In 2014 he was selected as a finalist for the Marbury Competition, and was the winner of the Pacific Region International Summer Music Academy Concerto Competition. Nicholas has participated in masterclasses with Alexander Kerr, Victor Danchenko, and Vadim Gluzman. He is the former concertmaster of Symphony Number One, and was previously the co-concertmaster of the Peabody Concert Orchestra and the College of Charleston Chamber Orchestra. As a dedicated chamber musician, Nicholas has worked with Now Hear This, SONAR New Music Ensemble, Peabody Camerata, Charm City Collegium, and the College of Charleston Contemporary Music Ensemble among others. An avid and sought-after interpreter of new music, Nicholas has commissioned and premiered a large number of pieces ranging from chamber and solo pieces to concerti and multimedia works.

  Nicholas currently attends the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University where he is pursuing degrees in both composition and violin under the tutelage of Kevin Puts and Herbert Greenberg as a recipient of the Randolph S. Rothschild, Eugene Scheffres, and Richard E. Hartt Scholarships as well as the David and Karen Stahl Memorial Scholarship through the generosity of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra League. His previous composition teachers include Yiorgos Vassilandonakis and George Tsontakis, and his previous violin teachers include Yuriy Bekker and Diana Cohen.

Composer's Notebook: Nicholas Bentz, Pt. II

Composer's Notebook: Nicholas Bentz, Pt. II

  The question I most often get in regards to Approaching Eternity, is how one deals with composing a piece of its length. It doesn’t take much research to find that a piece combining the medium of a large chamber symphony with the breadth of an hour-long swath of time is a rarity in this period of music composition. It’s no fault of the composer here – many factors outside of the composer’s control (mostly economic) have contributed to the unfortunate and gaping hole in the repertoire that we now have, but now is the time to fill that space. But regardless, the composer of the 21st century isn’t normally expected to fulfill a commission like this, so how do we all go about it?

Composer's Notebook: Nicholas Bentz

Composer's Notebook: Nicholas Bentz

The piece is conceived as one large swath of music, with seven distinct sections that flow into each other without pause. Each of these sections is demarcated by a cryptic ‘totem’ that relates to a piece of visual art, poetry, literature, or even film, that served as a creative impetus for the section. The sections, when woven together, create a life cycle beginning with the first movement: Ode to the Abyss.

Symphony Number One is Baltimore's Newes Chamber Orchestra, devoted to substantial works by emerging composers.