"Melting, ice-like, high-register piano notes open Kati Agocs's Supernatural Love, followed by beams of sunlight in the violin. A slowly evolving urgency characterizes the next movement..... the overall effect is serene and unworldly, exploring space with sound in a way that seems to evoke the time before the universe hosted life."
-Fanfare Magazine, July/August 2010 issue
Review of Supernatural Love, duet for Violin and Piano
http://www.fanfaremag.com/content/view/39191/10237
Kati Agócs was born 1975 in Windsor, Canada, of Hungarian and American background, and has been on the composition faculty of the New England Conservatory since 2008. Bridging the gap between lapidary rigor and sensuous lyricism, her music is performed by leading musicians and ensembles and has been hailed as original, daring and from the heart. The Boston Globe recently described it as "moving and taut" and "music of fluidity and austere beauty," while The New York Times has characterized it as "striking" and "filled with attractive ideas" and has described her vocal music as possessing "an almost 19th-century naturalness." A citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the Charles Ives Fellowship in May 2008 reads: "Kati Agócs's music is blessedly unsophisticated in any conventional way … Instead, it has heart; it reaches the hearer through melody, drama, and clear design. Even a brief recent duet I and Thou, with its soulful directness, and its naturalness of dissonance, reveals much about the composer’s address to the listener."
Recent commissions include Perpetual Summer for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada's 50th Anniversary,Elysium for the National Arts Centre's Cultural Olympiad, Requiem Fragments for the CBC Radio Orchestra (Vancouver), I and Thou for the Chamber Ensemble of the Orchestra of St. Luke's (New York),
'...like treasure hidden in a field' for the American Composers Orchestra, By the Streams of Babylon for the Albany Symphony, Immutable Dreams for the Da Capo Chamber Players (New York), Division of Heaven and Earth for pianist Fredrik Ullén (Stockholm, Sweden), Supernatural Love for Duo Concertante (St. John's, Newfoundand), As Biddeth Thy Tongue for saxophonist Timothy McAllister, and new works for Ensemble de Flûtes Alizé (Montréal), the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra (Boston), the Autumn Festival in Budapest, Hungary, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the Juilliard School (for its annual Irene Diamond Concert). Agócs was chosen for Meet the Composer's 'Music Alive: New Partnerships' program for 2010, and was Composer-in-Residence with the Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra in April 2010. She is Composer-in-Residence for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada for 2010, and has been commissioned for their 50th Anniversary.
Last season the Grammy-winning chamber ensemble Eighth Blackbird toured nationally with her quintet Immutable Dreams.The work was also heard in 2009 at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, in Boston with Xanthos Ensemble in Boston, and in Vancouver with Standing Wave. Agócs performed as soprano soloist in her own Awakening Galatea at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival and in By the Streams of Babylon in Jordan Hall (Boston), together with soprano Lisa Bielawa and Boston Modern Orchestra Project (Gil Rose, conductor), on their Boston ConNECtion program. Also in 2008-2009, Supernatural Love for violin and piano was heard at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival
and on nation-wide tours of China and Canada by Duo Concertante, Pearls was given its Canadian premiere by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra with James Sommerville conducting, and the solo aria for alto saxophone As Biddeth Thy Tongue was showcased by saxophonist Timothy McAllister at the Lontano Festival of American Music in London, U.K. Time Out New York featured the premiere recording of Every Lover is a Warrior, on harpist Bridget Kibbey's debut CD, Love is Come Again, as one of its top ten recordings of 2007, describing the work as "a powerful, ruminative suite" and Agócs as an "innovative" and "promising" composer. Almost all of her recent chamber works are scheduled to be released on upcoming CDs in the next year.
Awards include an inaugural 2009 Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation, a 2008 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center, multiple grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, a Fulbright Fellowship to the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, a New York Foundation for the Arts Composition fellowship, a Jerome Foundation commission, Presser Foundation Award, and honors from ASCAP in their Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. Fellowships and residencies include the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Yale Summer School of Music), Aspen Music Festival, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Dartington International Music Festival (U.K.), and Virginia Arts Festival. On two occasions while attending Juilliard, Kati Agócs had her orchestral works premiered by the Juilliard Symphony in Alice Tully Hall as a winner of the annual composer's competition. In 2004, she spearheaded a groundbreaking exchange program between Juilliard and the Liszt Academy in Budapest that still continues today. She has written on recent American and Hungarian music for Tempo and The Musical Times.
Kati Agócs earned the Doctor of Musical Arts and Masters degrees from The Juilliard School, where her principal teacher was Milton Babbitt. She is also an alumna of the Aspen Music School, Tanglewood Music Festival, Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific (one of the United World Colleges), and Sarah Lawrence College, all of which she attended on full scholarship. From 2006 through 2008 she taught at the School of Music, Memorial University of Newfoundland. She is on the composition faculty of The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and maintains a work studio in the fishing village of Flatrock, near St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.
