The GLISS Composition Residency
August 18-22, 2025 | Bard College
2025 Resident Composers
לאה
Represented by a trinym, לאה (she/it) is a multimedia visual-focused artist formally trained in music composition, currently exploring the possibilities of music as a visual medium. While most often working in photography, she has also created works using oil paints, metalpoint, writing, chamber music, synthesizers, and repurposed analog electronics. She is transfeminine of experience, a Jew of ancestry, a mystic of accident, & an antizionist of conscience. Its art focuses on emotive and narrative representations, T4T life, disability and chronic illness, trauma, memory, surrealism, extrarealism, & the analog world in defiance of a digital dystopia.
Alex Matterson
Alex Matterson is a composer, improviser, and performer currently based in Victoria BC, Canada. She has experience in many genres from Jazz to pop, to western art music. Her music seeks to express an image of a monolithic structure, which up close is full of small details, but from further away, blends into one uniform structure. Her music has also been described as being like “a bird on an oil tanker”, and “Staring at a wall”. She also attempts to show the struggles and emotions of being transgender within her music.
Lulu West
Lulu West is a NYC based performance artist, composer, improviser and educator. She is focused in heavy music that is deeply layered with vocal quivers, field recordings, experimental electronics, interviews, and guitars. Through transexualism, embodied memory, guttural outbursts, mental illness, and loss she looks to create experiences of communal healing. Lulu is specifically fascinated by how historical folk melodies and subtly prepared acoustic instruments can merge with the freakiness of harsh noise, hardcore, power electronics and experimental found-sound sampling. A natural product of this work has resulted in making performance art that physically challenges trans bodies.
Listen to a radio interview with Sarah & inti on Performance Today.
GLISS is hosted by inti figgis-vizueta, Sarah Hennies, and Andrew Yee, three trans women composers and performers working in contemporary music and we are excited to announce our inaugural Composition Residency, available to three transfeminine composers aged 18-30 who would like to spend a week in the Hudson Valley workshopping new music together. Attendees will work one-on-one and as a group with our support through a series of lessons, workshops, masterclasses, recordings, barbecues, and hangouts in a trans woman-only space. The focal point of the program is that each participating composer will write a piece for cello and percussion (15 minutes or less) to be performed and recorded by Andrew Yee and Sarah Hennies. Participants should arrive with a score already in progress that you will finish while in residence. Overall, our aim is to build and strengthen our community of trans sister composers and to support and elevate one another beyond the confines of this inaugural intensive, of which we hope there will be more.
All are welcome who feel that the label “trans woman” applies to them. There is no cost to apply or attend but you must provide your own transportation to the Bard College area. If you’re not able to drive then you can take Amtrak to Rhinecliff or from NYC on the Metro-North to Poughkeepsie. We will pick you up from the train station. Lodging and some meals will be provided.
Applications are closed for 2025 but will reopen in spring 2026 for next year’s residency. FAQ at the bottom of this page but please feel free to contact us with any other questions.
Who We Are
inti figgis-vizueta
inti is a composer and educator who works to reconcile historical aesthetics and experimental practices with trans & Indigenous futures. She is the recipient of the Lotos Foundation Prize, ASCAP Foundation Fred Ho Award, and the National Sawdust Hildegard Award. Her work has been commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cincinnati Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, Attacca Quartet, and Roomful of Teeth. She has held faculty positions with Luna Composition Lab, Wildflower Composers, Fresh Inc Festival, and Atlanticx Composition.
Sarah Hennies
Sarah is a composer and percussionist based in upstate NY whose work is concerned with queer & trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is the recipient of a 2024 United States Artists Fellowship, a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a 2016 Fellowship in Music from the New York Foundation for the Arts and has had work performed at MoMA PS1, the Darmstadt Summer Course, TIME:SPANS Festival, Warsaw Autumn, Ruhrtrienniale, the 2024 Whitney Biennial, and is a professor of composition and electronic music at Bard College.
Andrew Yee
Andrew is a GRAMMY Award winning cellist and composer trained at the Juilliard School and is a founding member of the Attacca Quartet who were the quartet-in-residence at the Met Museum in 2014 and have won the Osaka and Coleman international string quartet competitions. Their solo project “Halfie” draws on their experience as a bi-racial and trans person in having access to multiple communities at once, while not feeling at home in any of them. In 2019 they won the first prize at Oklahoma University’s National Arts Incubation Lab for their pitch of a wearable garment that translates sound into vibrations for the hard of hearing.
Do you have questions? Let us answer some of them.
Why are you doing this?
As trans women working in a field in which there are very few of us, we are tired of being the only ones in the room almost everywhere we go. We also feel that being trans women is integral to our artistic practices and this program is an opportunity to share how that manifests with other people like us. We recognize the power in a special opportunity to exist - even if just for a short time - as the majority. We are inspired in part by the Trans Ladies Picnics that took place in New York City for a number of years. To quote their description of themselves, “Trans women don’t always have the easiest time meeting each other or feeling comfortable in large groups. This is an opportunity for trans women to socialize and have fun in a low pressure environment.”
What do you mean by “trans woman,” anyway?
It’s up to you to self-select into this program. If you think you belong here then you probably do.
I’m a trans man, why can’t I come?
Again, quoting the Trans Ladies Picnic: “Because trans men are not trans women. We love trans men, but we need our space on this one.”
What do you mean by “composer”?
A composer is someone who creates their own music. For the three of us this often (but not always!) means that we are people who make and perform notated, written scores that are often given to other performers (or ourselves!) who perform with - for lack of a better term - “orchestral instruments” such as violins, pianos, trumpets, etc. If this does not describe you or your practice we are still interested in hearing from you. We are not looking for any specific type of composer although the three of us are adventurous 21st century-music types and you should take that into consideration when thinking about how this program might benefit you.
Where will I be working and sleeping?
Working time will be spent on Bard College’s campus in Music Program facilities at the Edith C. Blum Insitute. Housing is TBD at this time but we will give you a place to stay.
What about meals?
At this time we don’t have the budget or facilities to provide all meals free of charge (sorry) but there will be many opportunities for group meals where food will be prepared for you but you’re on your own for breakfast and lunch and some dinners. If the cost of food is prohibitive for you attending this program, please contact us.
But I still have more questions!
Email Sarah Hennies at THIS PAGE.