About
GOLDEN HORNET & KMFA CLASSICAL PRESENT
2025 OFFICIAL SXSW
ATX COMPOSERS SHOWCASE
WED, MARCH 12 | 7:00 P.M. | COOPER'S OLD TIME PIT BAR-B-QUE
The ATX Composers Showcase is an official SXSW 2025 event brought to you by Golden Hornet and KMFA Classical. It presents an array of local new music artists and contemporary classical talent during the height of the city-wide festival.
The showcase features five ensembles throughout the night, fostering exposure to local groups leading the charge on revitalizing classical music for the modern age.
THE LINEUP:
- Inversion at 7:00 p.m
- Invoke at 8:15 p.m.
- VAMP Vocals at 9:20 p.m.
- Graham Reynolds at 10:30 p.m.
- Daniel Fears at 11:40 p.m.
ADMISSION:
SXSW badge and wristbands will receive priority access. Non-credentialed guests will be allowed entrance based on availability, a cover charge may apply.
THE ARTISTS:
Inversion Ensemble is a professional choir that exists to make the music of living composers accessible to all audiences. Inversion’s focus is to commission and perform new works by local musicians, as well as U.S. composers and beyond. We incorporate modern visual art, dance, and poetry, creating comprehensive performance experiences. Every concert includes a partnership with a nonprofit that reflects our core values – ecology, LGBTQIA+ rights, social justice, and mental health awareness.
Described as “...not classical but not, not classical – Invoke is beautiful, adventurous, American and immediately engaging” (David Srebnik, SiriusXM Classical Producer), Invoke strives to successfully dodge even the most valiant attempts at genre classification. The multi-instrumental band’s other not-nots encompass traditions from across America, including bluegrass, Appalachian fiddle tunes, jazz, and minimalism. Invoke weaves all of these styles together to create truly individual music, written by and for the group. Equally at home in a collaborative setting, Invoke has performed with musicians from widely varying genres, from the Miró and Ensō Quartets, to chamber rock powerhouse San Fermin, to beatboxer/rapper/spoons virtuoso Christylez Bacon. Invoke’s three albums Souls in the Mud, Furious Creek, and Fantastic Planet, all feature original works composed by and for the group, and the quartet has also performed and recorded numerous world premieres. Invoke believes in championing diverse American voices, including their ongoing commissioning project American Postcards, which asks composers to pick a time and place in American history and tell its story through Invoke’s voice.
Conceived pre-pandemic and born in March 2020, VAMP is a vocal quintet of formidable female artists touting a motley songbook and a bold red lip. VAMP is comprised of Adrienne Pedrotti Bingamon, Mary Ashton, Katrina Saporsantos, Page Stephens, and Laura Mercado-Wright. Versatile in style and genre, they are committed to programming and commissioning new work and making classical vocal music relatable for audiences. As an ensemble, they have premiered works by composers such as Reena Esmail, Adrienne Inglis, Benjamin Dia, Peter Stopschinski, and their own members. They recorded their first studio album in the summer of 2024 and plan to release in spring 2025.
Called “the quintessential modern composer” by the London Independent, Austin-based composer-bandleader-improviser Graham Reynolds creates, performs, and records music for film, theater, dance, rock clubs, and concert halls with collaborators across a multitude of disciplines. Reynolds is also the Artistic Director for Golden Hornet.
Heard throughout the world in films, TV, stage, and radio, he recently scored Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette with Cate Blanchett, Kristen Wiig, and Laurence Fishburne for Annapurna Pictures, an upcoming projected directed by and starring Katie Holmes, Happy Jail for Netflix, the Rude Mechs’ Stop Hitting Yourself for Lincoln Center Theater, Ballet Austin’s Grimm Tales, and a multi-year commission from Ballroom Marfa, The Marfa Triptych. He has performed on an array of legendary stages, from the Kennedy Center to the Green Mill Tavern to the Conan O’Brien Show. His Creative Capital Award winning project, Pancho Villa from a Safe Distance, a bilingual cross-border opera created with librettists Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol (Mexico City) and director Shawn Sides (Rude Mechs), has been staged in over a dozen cities in North America.
Daniel Fears was raised in Houston, Texas. The multi-instrumentalist and singer grew up attending Lakewood Church in Houston where his mom was the music director. By age 11 he was playing the trombone in his school band and then after moving to a smaller church, he played the piano and even took up the drums and began playing for church service every week until he was 18.
During this time he was introduced to classical music by his teacher Brian Logan, a trombone player who played with the Houston Symphony and was a contractor for the local churches. That teacher not only introduced Fears to a whole new world of music but he even helped him get into the University of Texas. After graduating, Fears was convinced to write a horns part for a friend’s song and found the experience liberating.
Fears would go on to attend Yale for his master’s with the goal of pursuing a career in classical music. During his time at Yale, he was sidelined by a lip injury and he decided to put his classical music career on hold and to instead relearn his instrument and start gigging for friends in Austin – collaborating with bands like Wild Child and Leyline. He slowly began to create working on his music daily until he began to work with music producer Moses Elias which lead to a 6 song EP that was recorded and released during the pandemic called Canopy. Which included his hit Windows.
Since then Fears has released the singles “Keep On” and “No Gravity,” and in 2022 his work earned him a Sonic Guild Grant (formerly known as black fret). Daniel Fears continues to trailblaze his own lane all while thriving and creating and supporting other musicians in his community.
Event Details
- Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2025
- Time: 7:00 P.M.
- Venue: Cooper's Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que
Ticket Information
- Cost: SXSW credentials get priority | Non-credential guests based on availability ($10.00 cover charge)
Presenter Details
- Name: Golden Hornet
In the 1990s, Golden Hornet co-founders Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski were both composers struggling to find spaces, presenters, and funding to support their original chamber works. During their search, they found that many other young and emerging composers were facing the same challenges. At the time, both Reynolds and Stopschinski were also bandleaders in the burgeoning rock and punk scene of Austin, TX -- of Golden Arm Trio and Brown Whörnet respectively -- and they decided to team up to solve this challenge. By applying the collective creation and self-production methods of the rock genre to the world of classical music, they were able to form a thriving community of living composers. Through Golden Hornet, numerous new works have emerged over the years from full-size symphonies performed in warehouse spaces to collaborations with Tosca String Quartet, Austin Lyric Opera, local high school orchestras, and composers like Glenn Kotche.
Every year, Golden Hornet present four core programs. First, the String Quartet Smackdown results in sixteen new, original string quartet compositions from composers of all backgrounds. Second, the SXSW Official ATX Composers Showcase supports and celebrates six new music ensembles focused on contemporary works by local composers and connects them with a national and international network of music industry representatives. Third, their Young Composer Concert provides opportunities for local composers ages 8 to 18 to develop artistically and professionally through a six-month program. During this program, they compose an original piece of music, and collectively produce a public concert featuring a professional ensemble. Fourth, their always changing, but high-caliber, concert endeavor results in a performance that is of significant quality and relevance and is defined by its touring potential.
Golden Hornet's methods continue to be informed by the extensive experience and network of Artistic Director Graham Reynolds and by their central values of inclusion, accessibility, collaboration, innovation, and excellence. In 2008, Golden Hornet received an official 501(c)3 designation and has since grown in both capacity and consistency, and by the end of 2019, will directly serve an audience of over 1,400 individuals in the Austin area alone, plus more than 1,600 nationally and internationally.
Venue Details
- Address: 17 Congress Ave.
- City: Austin
- State: Texas
- Zip: 78701