Roots in the Sky, Montana's premier chamber choir, and Tinworks Art join forces to present Lucid Bodies, a concert exploring the legacy of earthen materials and humankind's ties to the landscape we call home, featuring the world premieres of four pieces written as part of our inaugural 2025 Choral Composition Program.

TOMMY DOUGHERTY Composer and violinist Tommy Dougherty was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and currently lives in San Diego, California. He is passionate about using improvisation to generate musical material while drawing on his experience as both a composer and performer to foster deeper, more meaningful collaborations.

As a composer, Tommy was recently commissioned to write a new work for Copland House Ensemble through a Cultivate 2025 Fellowship. The Winterthur Suite, a fixed media collaboration with violist and historian Alexandra Cade, was created through their shared Maker-Creator Fellowship at the Winterthur Museum and was featured in the museum’s 2024 Transformations: Contemporary Artists at Winterthur exhibit. In 2023, Tommy participated in the DeGaetano Composition Institute where he wrote a new work for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

Tommy’s compositions have been performed by the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, Modern Violin Ensemble, and Kinetic Ensemble. His orchestra piece Restrung is the recipient of ASCAP’s 2019 Leo Kaplan award, and he has won two other ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards for his Three Dances for Orchestra and large ensemble piece Quartets.

As a violinist, Tommy regularly performs with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, and this past year has served as guest concertmaster with the Bozeman Symphony Orchestra. Tommy is a passionate educator, teaching privately while also workshopping compositions by young composers in San Diego through Art of Elan’s Young Artists in Harmony program.

BENJAMIN MARTIN Benjamin Martin (he/they) (b.1998) is a composer, singer, and musical collaborator based in Chicago, IL. Benjamin takes great joy in writing bespoke works which serve to illuminate and amplify the unique gifts of a wide array of individual artists. While interested in all manner of expressive media, their love of the human voice and the written word is often at the center of their compositional orbit. Martin’s works have been commissioned and premiered by the VIVO Music Festival, the Northern Ohio Youth Orchestra, the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, and University Theatre at the University of Chicago. They were also the recipient of the 2021 VIVO Innovation Grant. They have composed for New Music on the Point, Brevard Summer Music festival, the EAMA Institute in Paris, and the Cortona Sessions for New Music.

Passionate about bringing new works to life, Benjamin has also served as the assistant conductor for Oberlin Opera Theater’s productions of Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up and Rachel Peters’ Wild Beast of the Bungalow, with libretti by Royce Vavrek. Most recently, Benjamin returned to Oberlin and Opera Columbus as principal conductor for the world premiere of Melissa Dunphy and Jacqueline Goldfinger’s opera Alice Tierney.

Benjamin received a BM from Oberlin Conservatory in Composition with a minor in Vocal Performance. While attending, they were the recipient of the 2022 Walter E. Aschaffenburg prize in Composition. They are currently pursuing their PhD at the University of Chicago, where they study with Augusta Read Thomas.

MICHAL NISSIMOFF Michal Nissimoff is a soprano, composer, and conductor from Tel Aviv who combines her love for storytelling with a deep commitment to making contemporary art accessible to today's audiences. She earned a B.M. in Composition and Conducting from Berklee College of Music and is now pursuing an M.F.A. in Musical Theatre and Vocal Pedagogy at the Boston Conservatory.

The main focus of Michal’s work is expressing the dialectical human experience, where opposing forces coexist and interact. Over the past few years, she has explored this through electroacoustic composition, using the inherent contrasts within the music to reflect the complexity of life. She delves into how these contrasts can become so intertwined that distinctions nearly disappear, capturing the nuanced and layered nature of human experience.

Focusing on experimental contemporary music and musical theatre, Michal works at the crossroads of genres, creating art that connects with modern audiences. Whether performing on stage or collaborating behind the scenes, she finds joy in working across disciplines to tell meaningful stories. Michal is passionate about making contemporary art communicative and accessible to all audiences without compromising the integrity of the work. She approaches her craft with thorough thought, open-mindedness, and collaboration across different art forms, creating multiple points of entry for diverse audiences.

Through her creative approach and dedication, Michal aims to create experiences that resonate with audiences, reflecting aspects of our society and peering insights into both the self and the world around us.

ETHAN SOLEDAD Bold, dramatic, with an exquisite attention to detail, Ethan Soledad (b. 1999) is a Filipino-American composer whose work aims to express emotions in their most raw form. An experienced singer, he incorporates drama in his work, emphasizing the importance of silence and one’s perception of time. Ethan’s music draws from a wide palette of compositional styles and colors ranging from impressionism and neoclassicism to post-minimalism and the avant-garde. His musical style is marked by unapologetic expression, dynamic extremes, and the ability to do more with less but never shying away from doing more with more. His music has been performed and recognized by ensembles such as Musiqa, New York Youth Symphony (First Music Commission Honorable Mention), the Greater Miami Youth Symphony, Choral Arts Initiative, Fifth House Ensemble, Bent Frequency, the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble (ECCE), Fear No Music, Crossing Borders Music, True Concord Voices and Orchestra, The Choral Project, the Beo String Quartet, and the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York.

He was a teacher at the Shepherd School of Music pre-college program, teaching music theory, composition, and aural skills to advanced high school students. Additionally, he was a young artist at DACAMERA Houston, engaging in outreach programs with Harris county elementary and middle schools.

He graduated with his Bachelor of Arts in Music at Florida State University 2021 and his Master of Music in Composition at Rice University 2024 studying under Pierre Jalbert, Shih-Hui Chen, and Karim Al-Zand.

Currently he is pursuing his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition at the University of Michigan studying under Kristy Kuster.

With performances described as “the best choral singing we’ve ever heard in Bozeman (or almost anywhere),” Roots in the Sky has established itself as Montana’s premier chamber choir through a commitment to presenting thoughtfully programmed performances of historical and contemporary choral works that ask questions about the world in which we are living.

Sought-after for collaborations, Roots in the Sky has appeared in performance with the GRAMMY Award-winning chamber choir The Crossing, Jitro Czech Children’s Choir, and many of the Gallatin Valley’s finest instrumentalists. Roots in the Sky has performed across the state of Montana at venues including at the Tippet Rise Arts Center as part of the Montana State University Honors College Musicale, in Red Lodge as part of Music from the Beartooths, in the Bozeman Public Library as part of the Montana Chamber Music Society’s Noon Notes series for elementary students, as the chorus of a contemporary chamber opera at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, at First Presbyterian Church of Bozeman as part of their Mainly Music season, at mass in the Cathedral of St. Helena, and in concert in Missoula, Kalispell, and Big Sky.

Highlights of the 2024-25 season of Roots in the Sky include a major collaboration with Baroque Music Montana presenting the region’s first historically informed performances of Handel’s Messiah, a Choral Composition Program for early career composers, and a performance at Montana’s renowned Tippet Rise Art Center as part of their Wander concert series.