Presentation on "Meet the Composer" podcast With Nadia Sirota, Meade Bernard and Alex Overington.

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Meet the Composer is a Peabody Award-winning podcast from Q2 Music that takes listeners into the minds and creative processes of the composers making some of the most innovative, compelling and breathtakingly beautiful music today. The show is hosted by critically-acclaimed violist Nadia Sirota.

At the convergence of interview, music and production, Meet the Composer aims to show the listener who the composer is as a person, as a thinker and as an artist. The listener, in turn, gets richer context for new work than is provided by your average program note, CD liner or digital booklet, and hopefully an engaging entry point into the exciting world of new music.

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Violist Nadia Sirota’s varied career spans solo performances, chamber music, and podcasting. In all branches of her artistic life she aims to open Classical music up to a broader audience. Nadia’s singular sound and expressive execution have served as muse to dozens of composers, including Nico Muhly, Donnacha Dennehy, Bryce Dessner, Richard Reed Parry, and Marcos Balter. Recently, Nadia won a 2015 Peabody Award, broadcasting’s highest honor, for her podcast Meet the Composer, from Q2 Music, which deftly profiles some of the most interesting musical thinkers living today.

This season she releases two new records, one featuring Nico Muhly’s Viola Concerto with the Detroit Symphony under Leonard Slatkin, and one featuring Donnacha Dennehy’s groundbreaking work for viola and microtonal viola da gamba consort, Tessellatum, featuring gambist Liam Byrne.

Nadia is a member of the chamber sextet yMusic and the chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound, and and has lent her sound to recording and concert projects by such artists and songwriters as Anohni, Jónsi and Arcade Fire. In 2013 she won Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Prize, awarded to pioneering artists and scholars with an emerging international profile. She received her undergraduate and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School, studying with Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory, and Hsin-Yun Huang.

“If the ancient and unassuming viola is having a renaissance in contemporary music, it’s thanks largely to Nadia Sirota, who specializes in, well, anything a composer can throw at her.” (New York Magazine)

More info about the artist can be found at:

http://www.nadiasirota.com/

(Photo by Samantha West)