Composer Bios - Three Bones

Composer Bios Charlton Singleton A native of Awendaw, South Carolina, Charlton Singleton began his musical studies at the age of three on the piano. Throughout his youth, he went on to study the organ, violin, cello, and the trumpet. Since graduating from South Carolina State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance in 1994, Singleton has taught music at the elementary through college levels. He is the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Charleston Jazz Orchestra, an 18-piece jazz ensemble comprised of some of the finest professional musicians in the Southeast. In addition to his roles as speaker, composer, and arranger, Singleton also leads performs as part of Ranky Tanky, a group that specializes in jazz-influenced arrangements of traditional Gullah music, a culture that originated among descendants of enslaved Africans in the Lowcountry region of the US Southeast. Dai Wei Dai Wei is originally from China. Her musical journey navigates in the spaces between east and west, classical and pop, electronic and acoustic, innovation and tradition. She often draws from Eastern philosophy and aesthetics to create works with contemporary resonance and reflects an introspection on how these multidimensional conflicts and tension can create and inhabit worlds of their own. Her artistry is nourished by the Asian and Chinese Ethnic cultures in many different ways. Being an experimental vocalist, she performs herself as a Khoomei throat singer in her recent compositions, through which are filtered by different experiences and backgrounds as a calling that transcends genres, races, and labels. ​ Featured in The Washington Post’s “22 for 22’: Composers and Performers to Watch this year,” Dai served as a Young Artist Composer-in-Residence at Music from Angel Fire and Composer Fellow at Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong. Her newly composed chamber orchestra Invisible Portals, conducted by Marin Alsop, premiered at Carnegie Hall in March 2022. During a centralized quarantine, she wrote a piece for solo violin and electronics called Song for Shades of Crimson dedicated to those who died from COVID-19, which premiered at the Bang on a Can 2020 Marathon. Other Projects include commissions and collaborations with orchestras and ensembles such as the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Michigan Philharmonic, Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Curtis Symphony Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, and the Aizuri Quartet, among many others. From concert halls to local bars, her music has been performed in various venues and festivals, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Royal Festival Hall, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, International Computer Music Conference, World Saxophone Congress, and North American Saxophone Alliance. Wei is currently pursuing her doctorate in Music Composition at Princeton University as a Naumburg Fellow. She holds an Artist Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music. After she finished her B.A. in Music Composition at the Xinghai Conservatory of Music in China, she came to the United States and earned an M.M. in Music Composition at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Laura Ortman