UConn welcomes Marie Incontrera – conductor and band-leader of the Green Monster Big Band (Fred Ho’s premiere big band) and the Eco-Music Band – to campus tomorrow April 14 at 12:45pm for a public performance.  The Eco-Music Big Band is a 15-piece, multi-generational big band that is committed to continuing the prodigious compositional and creative legacy of Fred Ho. The ensemble also performs the works of the overlooked composers of 20th century (such as Cal Massey), and provides a platform for the next generation of big band composers.

Ms. Incontrera has been awarded the 2015 Fred Ho Fellowship, named for Asian American Musician, composer, writer and activist Fred Ho. Established by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, the Fred Ho Fellowship supports research in the Fred Ho Papers, which are held in Archives and Special Collections at UConn.

Fred Ho’s conducting protégé before his death in April of 2014, Marie Incontrera conducted the Green Monster Big Band for Fred Ho’s final album.

Ms. Incontrera’s work spans queer opera, political big band, and music-for-the-oppressed. As a composer, Marie has been a recipient of the Miriam Gideon Composition Award, a winner of the Remarkable Theater Brigade Art Song Competition, the 2011 Vocalessence / American Composers Forum “Essentially Choral” readings, and a finalist in the Iron Composer 2010 competition. She has been awarded grants from Meet the Composer Metlife Creative Connections, Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, Puffin, and New York Women Composers Seed Money Grant. Commissions have come from the Young New Yorkers Chorus, Remarkable Theater Brigade, ANALOGarts, Brooklyn Art Song Society, ANIKAI Dance Theater, MOIRAE Ensemble, Beth Morrison Productions, and Atlanta Opera. Her work has been performed in Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Meridian Arts Festival in Bucharest, Roulette, Galapagos Art Space, WOW Cafe Theatre, highSCORE Festival, and other respected venues across the United States and internationally.

The Fred Ho Fellowship provides support to a faculty member, doctoral candidate or independent scholar who has a demonstrated research interest in the Fred Ho Collection. The Fred Ho Fellow is required to give a public lecture at the University of Connecticut and to reference the collection in his or her published works.