Pacifican’s entry wins prestigious emerging composer prize, will premier at SF Symphony

Next fall, 27-year-old Ibsen will premiere a 15-minute composition for the San Francisco Symphony as winner of the second annual Emerging Black Composers Project prize given by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. As winner, he will receive $15,000, mentorship and composition resources to compose a piece. It will be Ibsen’s symphonic premiere. 

The prize is a 10-year commissioning project to support Black composers’ music. Aimed at supporting early-career composers, this year’s applicants were all under 35. 

Conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser, the chair of the selection committee, called Ibsen with the news of his award in June. 

“I was so floored,” said Ibsen. He’d applied to the prize the year prior and had not been selected. He almost did not apply this year, but when the deadline was extended he decided to throw his hat in the ring. 

“My life has totally changed,” said Ibsen, who has spent recent weeks conversing with local music legends. “I’m sort of being inducted into the scene, which is really humbling and exciting.” 

When not working his day job as a technical trainer at Studylog Systems, his father’s software company, Ibsen has been dreaming up visions for the piece. 

“Make it about whatever San Francisco means to you,” recommended a friend to Ibsen. 

When he thinks of the Bay Area, Ibsen said, he thinks of the land. San Pedro Valley Park, in particular. 

“I’m in love with the land. There’s no other place on this earth like the wilds of Pacifica for me. Having the mountains and the sea in one place is very special and I treasure it very much,” he said.  

Ibsen wants to include texts by Bay Area nature poets in the composition to honor the unique local ecology. 

Ibsen’s relationship to the area is more complicated than a walk in the park, however. He’s dissecting tenser parts of his relationship to the area as he brainstorms for the piece.

“I’m a believer of being critical about the things we love, and there’s a lot about the Bay Area that I’m very critical of,” he said. “At the same time, I have a very deep love for the place and I want to live up to its idea of itself.

“There’s the idea of the place and the reality,” he said. He does not think the Bay Area is as accepting, multicultural and forward-thinking as it may wish. 

With daydreams of San Pedro Valley and this complicated love for the local culture in mind, Ibsen will set to work. He anticipates the writing and setting of the piece to take about three months. 

Born in Accra, Ghana, Ibsen and his twin, Yasmina, moved to Pacifica as babies. Their childhood home was right next to San Pedro Valley Park. 

“It was specifically Pacifica’s music programs that were the environment where I became a young musician. I owe a lot to that place,” he said. In addition to singing with Wells, he played percussion in the band. 

His commitment to singing and music only crescendoed. The Ibsen twins attended San Francisco High School for the Arts, and, after singing with Ragazzi Boys Chorus, he joined the world-renowned Vienna Boys Choir as a principal soloist. At 17 years old he began composing and went on to complete bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music composition. 

At the age of 27, Ibsen is young to be making a debut on such a world-renowned stage by most standards. But until 2020, Ibsen “didn’t have a clear path forward at all” when it came to music, he said. 

Working at his father’s software company, he fit in singing and music composition in his off time. “It was not obvious to me that anything was going to happen. I just had goals for myself as an artist to better myself, and so I just kept making work. All of a sudden I started garnering attention I didn’t have. At that point, I’d been writing music for 10 years,” he said. 

His father calls it “a 10-year overnight success,” said Ibsen. 

In 2020, the Ibsen twins were asked to participate in “The Cartography Project,” a series of musical performances responding to race-based violence. Their composition premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in March. It honored Nia Wilson, a Black woman murdered at an Oakland BART station in 2018. 

Their composition resonated. Ibsen was one of three musicians asked to compose a mini opera for the Kennedy Center, which will premiere in January. Ibsen says he has other projects in the works, too. 

While he still works at Studylog Systems by day, he hopes to eventually transition to pursuing music full time. 

Based on reviews from musical bigwigs, that transition may be just around the corner. 

“Jens’ music made me feel things with immediacy,” said Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser, the chair of the prize selection committee. “He grasped me and had me in tears at moments; at others, I laughed out loud at the ingenuity. And then, when I looked at the score, I saw the craft beneath. The craft and the potential. I really wanted to hear this person's music, and wanted them, in particular, to have no barriers moving forward!”

Ibsen wants to make it clear that his music is not just for music aficionados, however. 

“It doesn’t matter where you come from or what your socioeconomic status is. If you’re a person who wants to have feelings about art, then this is for you. You’re who I’m making work for. This is not music for the elite, this is music for people who want to be moved by art, whoever you are,” he said.  ▪