Emmanuel Sikora was born in Ithaca, New York on July 3, 1991. He began taking piano lessons with Janet Radmore at the age of six, and violin lessons with Lois Pfister at the age of seven. While in the fourth grade he also learned to play the trumpet with Brian Shelley at McGraw Elementary. Though he is no longer taking lessons on any of these instruments, he continues to participate in many local music ensembles. A member of the SUNY Cortland Choral Union since 2001, he has sung the Bach Magnificat as a boy soprano, and more recently as a bass in Mozart's Requiem. In the Spring of 2005, he joined the violin section of the SUNY Cortland Community Orchestra; but since the spring semester of 2006 has been playing viola. Emmanuel is a Junior at Cortland Junior-Senior High School.
At eight, he began composing, and various music teachers have encouraged his interest in writing music: When Emmanuel was 10, Lois Pfister used his piano accompaniments to solo violin pieces in her student group concerts. Prof. Ralph Dudgeon performed one of Emmanuel's compositions, a "Brook" Symphony in F major, with the Community Orchestra in 2002. Stephen Wilson, who teaches at SUNY Cortland, has been a mentor, both in composition and conducting.
On June 18th 2005, Cindy Josbena featured Emmanuel's "Fantasy on 19th Century Themes" as part of the Grace Moore Young Talent Association Concert in Mexico, NY. In this concert Emmanuel conducted a small orchestra of 23 players consisting of students from Mexico, Phoenix and Oswego high schools, while Cindy Josbena was the piano soloist.
In 2006, he began experimenting with newer harmonies, under the insistence of Dr. Wilson and others that he begin looking for his own musical style. The Suite for Piano and the Fantasia for Piano are the strongest works from this period of experiments. He put down this "search" for a while after that, but in the spring of 2007 was asked by his voice teacher Marion Giambattista to write an atonal song for her. The result was "The Shadow Rose", another work in an atonal manner, which Sikora's voice teacher was very pleased with. This work has ben a NYSSMA and MENC Young Composers Finalist.
Sikora is currently taking lessons in composition and theory with Tykla Babyak, a graduate student at Cornell. He has been taking these lessons since the June of 2007, and plans to continue until he is done with High School.
Sikora writes mostly piano pieces and songs, the most recent and best of which (see the program of the September concert) show Sikora to be an exceptional craftsman and already fostering a mature, original style. Tykla Babyak, Emmanuel's teacher, describes his own style as consonant atonality. It is a pensive music, very lyrical and sometimes of an almost childlike gentleness, very inward, with a hightly consistent refinement and emotional reserve.
In his songs, Sikora has a particular attraction to the poetry of Emily Dickinson, which he has set in his mature work almost exclusively, the one exception being "The Shadow Rose". Most of the poems Sikora has put to focus on nature
Playing the piano to a degree himself, Sikora has a special kind of attraction to writing piano music. Virtually all of his piano works are character pieces, evocative paintings of an autumn forests, harvest moons, and pastoral landscapes. His two works for piano four hands, though not descriptive works, are interesting and effective pieces.
His one mature chamber work thus far, a Scherzando for String Quartet, is a dance with a dry humor, and an almost macabre jolity. It has been selected as a NYSSMA finalist for the 2008 Young Composers Concert.