Kati Ilona Agócs (born January 20, 1975) is a Canadian-American composer and a member of the composition faculty at the
New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
Education
Agócs attended the Juilliard School in New York where she earned a Master's and Doctoral degrees under the guidance of
Milton Babbitt.[1] She was a composition fellow at the
Aspen Music Festival and School and the
Tanglewood Music Center, where she held the ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Composer Fellowship in 2007.[2]
Career
From 2005 to 2006, she lived in
Budapest and wrote on the new-music scene in
Hungary for the journal The Musical Times.[3] She had previously organized an exchange program between the
Juilliard School and the
Liszt Academy.[4] The Hungarian-language weekly, Bécsi Napló (Vienna Journal) acknowledged her contribution to the visibility of Hungarian composers abroad.[5] She served as Composer in Residence for the
National Youth Orchestra of Canada in 2010.[6]
Agócs has written on American music for the journal Tempo[14] and also created a critical edition of the Symphony in A Major by
Leopold Damrosch.[15]
Select principal works
Solo and chamber works up to seven instruments
Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra (Solo violin and six percussionists) 2018.[16] Recorded performance by violinist Nicholas Kitchen and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble led by director Frank Epstein.[17]
Crystallography (Soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion) 2012 (Text: Christian Bök)[18]
Voices of the Immaculate (Lyric Mezzo-Soprano, Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano/Celeste) 2021 (Text: Assembled by the composer: Fragments from Revelations and testimony from survivors of abuse by clergy)[23]
Orchestra / large ensemble works
By the Streams of Babylon (Two amplified soprano voices and chamber orchestra) 2009 (Text: Psalm 137 in Latin)[24]
The Debrecen Passion (Twelve female voices and chamber orchestra) 2015 (Text: poems by Szilárd Borbély in Hungarian; Lamentations of Mary in modern Hungarian translation by Ferenc Molnár [fragments]; Ana B’Choach [in Hebrew]; Stabat Mater Specioso [fragments, in Latin]; Thou Art a Vineyard [hymn text in Georgian])[25][26]
Elysium (Chamber Orchestra and Recorded Sound)[19][27]
Horn Concerto (Solo Horn and Chamber Orchestra) 2021[28][29]