Flannery Cunningham, program coordinator

Flannery Cunningham is a composer and musicologist fascinated by vocal expression, illusion and auditory perception, and the compositional process. She aims to write music that surprises and delights. Among others, she has been commissioned by the Minnesota Center Chorale, the Cornell University Chorus, the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University, and Grace Chorale of Brooklyn. Archival work forms part of her process as both a composer and researcher, and she has written dramatic works including an oratorio about the 6th-century Irish monk St. Brendan the Navigator and a (pre-Hamilton) opera about the Burr-Hamilton duel. An active poet, Flannery often writes her own texts and libretti. She is attracted to both the very old and very new; she has presented on the 14th-century master and fellow poet-composer Guillaume de Machaut at the International Medieval Congress and performed with Cork-based electronic ensemble CAVE at the 2014 International Computer Music Conference. In addition to acoustic ensembles she writes for live players with real-time electronics, always striving to create an environment that foregrounds the skills and musical voice of the performer. Flannery has also scored, performed, and sound designed for theatrical and dance productions in Oxford, UK and New York. She holds a BA from Princeton University, an MA from University College Cork as a Mitchell Scholar, an MA from Stony Brook University, and is currently pursuing a joint PhD in composition and musicology at the University of Pennsylvania.