Lisa Cella

A champion of contemporary music, Lisa Cella has performed throughout the United States and abroad. She is Artistic Director of San Diego New Music and a founding member of its resident ensemble NOISE. With NOISE she has performed the works of young composers all around the world. Lisa is co-artistic director of NOISE's annual festival of modern music entitled soundON. Lisa co-founded the flute collective inHALE, a group dedicated to developing challenging and experimental repertoire for two and three flutes. inHALE was an invited ensemble at the National Flute Association Convention in San Diego in August of 2005. She, along with Franklin Cox, is a founding member of C2, a touring flute and cello duo.  As a soloist, she has performed both nationally and internationally and is a faculty member of the Soundscape Festival of Contemporary Music in Maccagno, Italy and Nief Norf based in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her undergraduate work was completed at Syracuse University and she received a Master of Music degree and a Graduate Performance Diploma from Peabody Conservatory.  She received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in contemporary flute performance  at the University of California, San Diego. Her main teachers include John Oberbrunner, Robert Willoughby, and John Fonville. She is a full professor of music at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and chair of the department.  She is a founding member of its faculty contemporary music ensemble, Ruckus.

Concert Dates

15 one-minute selections

    • Reverie
      David Bohn

      David Bohn studied composition at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is president of the Wisconsin Alliance for composers, and music director at St. John's Lutheran Church in West Milwaukee

    • Solo - per flauto basso
      Francesco Celeste

      Francesco Celeste was born in Bollate, near Milano, in 1966. He studied composition at the Conservatory of Milan where He attended the master of Music in composition with honors. His works have been awarded in numerous competitions and performed in various contemporary music events.
      In this work of only 60 seconds there are mainly 2 instrumental signs: the mechanical ""soundless"" gesture of the key noise and a tremolo performed with different timbres. Between these two gestures a musical phrase slowly emerges, note after note, until its completeness in accelerando.
    • lux aeterna
      Philip Czaplowski

      Philip Czaplowski was born in London, UK but now lives in Australia. He studied music at Melbourne and La Trobe Universities, before completing a PhD in music composition at Monash University in 2007. His compositions have been performed in many countries around the world.

      This piece is dedicated to Lisa Cella, who gave the premiere performance of my solo flute piece Lavender Mist in 2006. The title "lux aeterna" refers to one of the sections of the Catholic Requiem Mass, which includes the words “May light eternal shine upon thee”.

    • For more information visit: www.czaplowski.com
    • Catch me if you can!
      Jonathan Domingo

      Composer-conductor Jonathan Domingo graduated from the University of the Philippines College of Music with a degree in composition. He studied under composer-ethnomusicologist Dr. Jonas Baes. Winner of four international accolades including the Asian Composers' League Young Composers Prize in 2016.
      This new work was conceived thru a dream with wrestling clarity and uncertainty. Then a mysteriously cracking of dawn appears- birds chirping, winds gently howling and life unearthing. But it seems like someone’s not yet ready for a sunrise…panic!
    • Micropraxis
      Stephen de Filippo

      Stephen de Filippo is a composer from regional Western Australia. His music can be characterised by an emphasis on contemporary performance techniques – creating works that feature unusual combinations of sounds. Stephen is currently a PhD candidate at University of California, San Diego.

      Micropraxis explores swift transitions between flute sound, percussive sounds, and vocal sounds — creating these dense and hurried gestures as the performer attempts to navigate through these gestures in preset time durations.
    • For more information visit: www.stephendefilippo.com
    • Fedora
      Anna Vienna Ho

      Anna is a pianist, soprano, composer who received an Advanced Postgraduate Diploma and Master of Music from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Anna's compositions were selected and performed in different festivals. Including New Generation 2014, Tête à Tête Opera Festival, Rugby Festival of Culture, London Oriana Choir Five15 project and more.

      A fedora is a hat with a soft brim and an indented crown. The name "Fedora" comes from a character named Fédora, who likes to dress as a man and often wears this kind of hat, in a script written by Victorien Sardou. It is also a symbol of feminism.
    • For more information visit: annaviennaho.wixsite.com/pianosoprano
    • Wind
      Barbara Kaszuba

      Barbara Kaszuba; alumna of Academy of Music in Poznań - composition and of the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz - violin ; study composition in Dresden; artistic scholarship in California, USA; she works at the Academy of Music in Poznań. She recorded 2 CD’s My Music, Not only from Iceland.

      Wind for alto flute to Lisa Cella; blust of wind, downwind, against the wind. Energy hidden in sounds. The techniques used reflect the constant movement, intensity and speed of natural phenomena. The accumulation of various structures, whistle tones, slap tongues, and fast sound structures, makes the piece becomes a gale.
    • An Oasis in the Moment
      Neda Nadim

      Neda Nadim has obtain a bachelor degree in Music Composition.Her piece “A Piece for Solo Oboe’’ achieved emerging composer merit mark during 4th Tehran International Contemporary Music Festival, held on June 2019,also the piece "garden in the sound" for solo flute was among the winners in Petrichor records competition.

      The idea of the piece “An Oasis in the moment” is to use a variety of sound resources throughout the piece, which is intermittent change between full tone to half air-half tone to totally air sound.in addition, the combination of sound resources, dynamic and fast rhythms creates a different atmosphere.
    • B. Fl. Micrography
      Manos Panayiotakis

      Manos Panayiotakis is a composer and musicologist based in Greece. His works are performed in Europe and internationally, in collaboration with orchestras and renowned artists. His papers on contemporary music are published in peer-reviewed journals and he has co-authored the Music Theory series ‘Learning Music’ published in Greece.

      B. Fl. Micrography was composed in August 2020, dedicated to Dr Lisa Cella, for the “Vox Novus” call for scores. This miniature illustrates a functional shrinking of the classic A-B-A1 form into a one minute-structure, employing much of the Bass-Flute timbral potential.
    • For more information visit: https://manospanayiotakis.com
    • Irmos II
      Richard Pressley

      Richard Pressley has had performances in the US, Europe, Brazil, Australia. He attended Butler University, Cambridge, University of Minnesota (Ph D), Karlsruhe Musikhochschule, and Darmstadt in Germany, studying with Wolfgang Rihm, Sandeep Bhagwati, Dominick Argento, Judith Lang Zaimont, Alex Lubet, Daniel Chua, Michael Schelle.

      Fleeting gestures dialogue in a single unfolding melody in an ever-changing sound world of timbral variation, percussive iteration, and tonal nuance -- each tiny gesture appearing and evanescing in the same moment.
    • More can be found at: http://rpressley.com
    • Ariel- the spirit of the wind
      Ugo Raimondi

      Ugo Raimondi is a composer awarded in several competitions such as: 1st prize and honorable mention at "Città di Albenga" 1st composition contest; 1st prize at Franz Schubert Konservatorium composition competition 2020, 1st prize at V “A. Falconio” composition competition. His music is played in Italy, Germany, Norway, Iran.

      Ariel-the spirit of the wind” describes the mythological figure of Ariel, a Nature’s spirit. The work is a simple melody made through air effects of the like the sound with the air, the pizzicato etc… The “voice of Ariel” appears in short musical fragments during the piece.
    • Short whisper
      Soheil Shirangi

      Soheil Shirangi:1987 Iran Graduate Tehran Conservatory Second Person Tehran International Electronic Music Festival Award,Candidate best composers Thirty-third Fajr festival,Earning a diploma of the third person of the Orginsky International Composing Competition (for orchestra) in Belarus, His works performed in countries such as Iran, Greece, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Romania and United States
      In this short work I tried To emphasize On the sense of narration of the bass flute, With simple techniques And the question that becomes less and less.
    • Rainy Day
      Sheng Song

      Sheng song is studying for a doctor's degree at the Central Conservatory of music in Beijing,China.He composed a lot of academic musical works with many different kinds of types.In his works, he concentrates on instrumental extended techniques and orchestration.

      This work is based on a traditional children's song of Guangdong Province, China. The author used the special technique of flute to show the scene of rainy day. The voice made the whole scene more colorful and interesting.
    • Forgotten Dreams
      Blair Whittington

      Blair Whittington is a Los Angeles based composer who has had his music performed across the United States and Europe. His music has been performed by pianist Yumi Suehiro, the UK Guitar Quartet, the Bateira Trio (flute/viola/bass), and Nautilus Brass and the Wild Prairie Winds.

      I had never written for the bass flute before so I saw this as a chance to learn about this beautiful instrument. The piece is most often in the characteristic low range and is fragmentary - like a dream that cannot be remembered.
    • Speedrun
      Luciano Williamson

      Luciano Williamson is a composer of bold, uncompromising and experimental music, creating experiences that are thrilling, highly engaging, often challenging, and unconventional. Luciano studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where he studied composition with Mark David Boden and Joseph Davies, and conducting with Tianyi Lu.
      Speedrun is inspired by the concept of video game speed running; players will learn incredibly complex and challenging manoeuvres to finish a game in a marginally faster time. Even the slightest mistake could spell the end of an otherwise perfect run, which in some games can mean several hours wasted.
    • For more information visit: www.lucianowilliamson.com