Young Professional Composers project

season 9 featured composer

Composer: Jacob Stone

Jacob Stone is originally from the Twin Cities, Minnesota where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Music at Concordia College. Jacob works as a professional composer and is currently pursuing his master’s degree at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His electronic music is licensed to 11 television networks in Los Angeles including Nascar, Fox and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. His honors include singing for the King and Queen of Norway and performing at Carnegie Hall under the direction of KellyAnn Nelson and Christopher Eanes.

Jacob is composing the high-spirit Light Triptych for YPCC, commissioned by founding artistic direction KellyAnn Nelson. Originally, three public world-premiere performances (one for each movement) were scheduled in 2020 and 2021 in Cincinnati. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world-premiere events have been transformed into virtual performances and video projects, featuring hundreds of young professional singers and artists creating music together from their own spaces.

Jacob dedicates the Light Triptych to founding Artistic Director, KellyAnn Nelson, and the singers and angels of YPCC who with the sound of their voices helped him to sing once more and forever changed his life.

Commissioned Work: Light Triptych

Spring 2020: Light and Love
Fall 2020: City of Light
Spring 2021: Moonlight

Inspiration for the Light Triptych comes from Enheduanna, the first ever known human poet and high temple priestess who lived in Mesopotamia in 2300 B.C.E. She authored the Sumerian Temple Hymns of 42 personal devotions to the goddess Inanna.

Light and Love represents the dawn and the first glimpse of Inanna in the sky as the morning star in her goddess state descending to earth. City of Light imagines the night as Inanna sings and dances ascending to her realm in the stars, reborn to the light from which she came. Moonlight draws on the inspiration of a single beam of moonlight cutting through the darkness, symbolic of ray of hope and positivity amidst these unusual times.

As Stone puts it, “It is a ray of light. One ray of hope amidst the storm. It is a sliver of light from within the tempest raging, like a star on the horizon of looming clouds threatening to unleash fury."