|
 STEPHEN PAULUS
Composer Stephen Paulus has been hailed as "...a bright, fluent inventor with a ready lyric gift." (The New Yorker) His prolific output of more than twohundred works is represented in many genres, including music for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, solo voice, keyboard and opera. Commissions have been received from the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, The Houston Symphony and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, with subsequent performances coming from the orchestras of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the BBC Radio Orchestra. He has served as Composer in Residence for the orchestras of Atlanta, Minnesota, Tucson and Annapolis, and his works have been championed by such eminent conductors as Sir Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Christoph von Dohanyi, Leonard Slatkin, Yoel Levi, the late Robert Shaw, and numerous others.
Paulus has been commissioned to write works for some of the world's great solo artists, including Thomas Hampson, Håkan Hagegård, Doc Severinsen, William Preucil, Cynthia Phelps, Evelyn Lear, Leo Kottke and Robert McDuffie. Chamber music commissions have resulted in works for The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Friends of Music at the Supreme Court, the Cleveland Quartet and Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. He has been a featured guest composer at the festivals of Aspen, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, and, in the U.K., the Aldeburgh and Edinburgh Festivals.
As one of today's pre-eminent composers of opera, Paulus has written eight works for the dramatic stage. The Postman Always Rings Twice was the first American production to be presented at the Edinburgh Festival, and has received nine productions to date. Commissions and performances have come from such companies as the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Washington Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Berkshire Opera Company, Minnesota Opera, and Fort Worth Opera, among others, as well as many universities and colleges.
His choral works have been performed and recorded by some of the most distinguished choruses in the United States, including the New York Concert Singers, Dale Warland Singers, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Robert Shaw Festival Singers, New Music Group of Philadelphia, Master Chorale of Washington DC, Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and dozens of other professional, community, church and college choirs. He is one of the most frequently recorded contemporary composers with his music being represented on over fifty recordings.
A recipient of both Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, Paulus is also a strong advocate for the music of his colleagues. He is co-founder and a current Board Vice President of the highly esteemed American Composers Forum, the largest composer service organization in the world. Paulus serves on the ASCAP Board of Directors as the Concert Music Representative, a post he has held since 1990.
Paulus' music has been described by critics and program annotators as
rugged, angular, lyrical, lean, rhythmically aggressive, original, often gorgeous, moving, and uniquely American. He writes in a musical language that has been characterized as "...irresistible in kinetic energy and haunting in lyrical design." (Cleveland Plain Dealer) "Mr. Paulus often finds melodic patterns that are fresh and familiar at the same time.... His scoring is invariably expert and exceptionally imaginative in textures and use of instruments." (The
New York Times)
 JACK BEESON
Born 1921 in "Middletown, USA" (Muncie, Indiana) and, in part, of Native American lineage. Accordingly, perhaps, most of his ten operas are based on American subjects. Best known are Hello Out There and Lizzie Border, performed often in the US and in Europe. When not collaborating with Kenward Elmslie, William Saroyan, and Sheldon Harnick, he has fashioned his own libretto. He has composed a large amount of vocal music — songs and choral music — and some instrumental and orchestral music. He is presently MacDowell Professor of Music Emeritus at Columbia University, where he taught for half a century. He has served on the boards of many organizations that aid American composers, including the ASCAP Board (1991-95).
 DEREK BERMEL
Described by the Toronto Star as "an eclectic with wide open ears", Derek Bermel has been widely hailed for his creativity and theatricality as a composer and his virtuosity and charisma as a performer. Known for drawing freely from a rich variety of musical genres - including classical, jazz, pop, rock, blues, and gospel - he filters the sounds of the world through his own musical palette, crafting a singular artistic vision. From the complex Bulgarian melodies in Tied Shifts, to Irish bagpipes coupled by Led Zepplin-inspired riffs in Voices, Bermel infuses his music with the rhythms and inflections of myriad folk traditions while maintaining a sophisticated and distinctive style of orchestration, harmony, and counterpoint.
As a composer of concert music, Bermel currently serves as the 2006-2009 Music Alive Composer-in-Residence of the American Composers Orchestra, curating its ongoing series Orchestra Underground: Composers Out Front. Projects during the 2006-2007 season included the world premiere of The Migration Series for Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in conjunction with ACO, and Thracian Echoes, performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. His commissions include works for the National, St. Louis,Pacific, and Pittsburgh Symphonies, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, eighth blackbird, WNYC radio, De Ereprijs (Netherlands), Jazz Xchange (U.K.), pianist Christopher Taylor, and cellist Fred Sherry. His premiere CD of chamber music, Soul Garden, was released last season to critical acclaim. "Soul Garden is a superb album of consistently winning chamber works that demonstrate how a brilliant musical vagabond..."(Sequenza 21).
As clarinetist, he has appeared throughout the U.S. and Europe, including recitals in New York, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Detroit, Jerusalem, The Hague, and Paris, and radio broadcasts on both sides of the Atlantic. He has premiered dozens of new works including his clarinet concerto Voices, which created a sensation at the Carnegie Hall premiere, and which he has since performed with the BBC Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, and others. In 2007, he returned to the LA Philharmonic as guest soloist, performing John Adams' Gnarly Buttons with the composer conducting, and he performed Voices with the Tianjin Symphony Orchestra at the Beijing Modern Music Festival. Bermel is also the founding clarinetist of Music from Copland House and co-artistic director of the Dutch-American interdisciplinary ensemble TONK. In addition, he rocks it with his Brooklyn-based band Peace by Piece as bandeader/singer/songwriter.
His upcoming musical Golden Motors - written with librettist/lyricist Wendy S. Walters - will be produced in Spring 2009 by Music Theatre Group. Bermel and Walters have also collaborated on The Good Life, a new work for the Pittsburgh Symphony and Mendelssohn Choir to be premiered by Leonard Slatkin in Oct. 2008. Bermel's many awards include the Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Faber Music, and residencies at Tanglewood, Banff, Yaddo, Civitella Ranieri, Sacatar, Bellagio, and Aspen. As an educator, he is founding director of the New York Youth Symphony’s Making Score program for young composers, hosted by ASCAP and the League of American Orchestras, and he has taught masterclasses internationally. His music is published by Peermusic Classical (US) and Faber Music (Europe/Australia). To learn more about Derek Bermel, visit www.derekbermel.com.
 JOHN CORIGLIANO
John Corigliano, winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Symphony No. 2, is internationally celebrated as one of the leading composers of his generation. In orchestral, chamber, opera and film work, he has won global acclaim for his highly expressive and compelling compositions as well as his kaleidoscopic, ever-expanding technique.
In 2000, Corigliano won another coveted prize: the "Oscar," the Academy Award, for "The Red Violin," his third film score. He was the second classical composer, after Aaron Copland, to be so honored.
In 1996, the recording of his string quartet, like that of the Symphony No. 1, won Grammy Awards both for Best Performance and again for Best New Composition, making Corigliano the first composer to win twice in the history of that award.
Corigliano attracted unparalleled international attention with the premieres, respectively, of his Symphony No. 1, and his opera The Ghosts of Versailles. In 1991, the Metropolitan Opera unveiled its centennial commission, and its first new opera in 25 years -- Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles. The symphony -- Corigliano's impassioned personal response to the AIDS crisis -- was commissioned and first performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Upon its premiere, it was immediately scheduled by virtually all of the leading orchestras in the country, and later captured for Corigliano music's Nobel Prize -- the 1991 Grawemeyer Award for Best New Orchestral Composition. Chicago's recording of the piece on the Erato label also won two Grammy awards.
Mr. Corigliano was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, an organization of 250 of America's most prominent artists, sculptors, architects, writers, and composers.
 JENNIFER HIGDON
Jennifer Higdon is active as a freelance composer. She has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts & Letters (two awards), the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the International League of Women Composers, Composers Inc. (the Lee Ettelson Prize), the University of Delaware New Music Competition, the Louisville Orchestra New Music Search, the Cincinnati Symphony's Young Composer's Competition, NACUSA, and ASCAP. In addition she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet-the-Composer, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She has served as Composer-in-Residence with the Music From Angel Fire Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Walden School, the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco (Continental Harmony Project), and currently with the Prism Saxophone Quartet. Her work, "Shine" (commissioned by the ASCAP Foundation), was named Best Contemporary Piece of 1996 by USA Today in their year-end classical picks.
Upcoming commissions include works for The Philadelphia Orchestra (one of their Centennial Commissions), St. Lukes' Chamber Ensemble, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, eighth blackbird, the Cypress String Quartet, the Verdehr Trio, the Vail Music Festival, the Atlanta Symphony, and the American Guild of Organists. Recent commissions come from groups that are as diverse as the Minnesota Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony, the Curtis Institute of Music Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Women's Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Singers, pianist Gary Graffman and the Lark String Quartet , The Network for New Music, The National Flute Association, the DaVinci String Quartet, ZAWA! and flutist Carol Wincenc.
Ms. Higdon's works have been performed extensively around the country, including performances at the White House, Weill Hall, Merkin Hall, Alice Tully, Carnegie Hall, and by such performers as Carol Wincenc, Jeffrey Khaner, Marc-Andre Hamelin, the Cassatt String Quartet, the Miami String Quartet, the Lark Quartet, The Pacifica String Quartet, The Prism Sax Quartet, Synchronia, Earplay, the Cleveland Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Louisville Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony, the New England Philharmonic, and the Knoxville Symphony.
Her works have been recorded on 14 CDs. In the coming months, the following works will be released on various labels: "running the edgE" (Neuma), "wissahickon poeTrees" (Albany), "blue cathedral" (Albany), "Deep In The Night" (New World) and "Short Stories". As a flutist, she is recorded on the Access and I Virtuosi labels and as a conductor on CRI.
She holds a Ph.D. and a M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in composition, a B.M. in flute performance from Bowling Green State University, and an Artist Diploma from The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her teachers have included George Crumb, James Primosch, Jay Reise, Ned Rorem, and Marilyn Shrude (composition), Judith Bentley and Jan Vinci (flute), and Robert Spano (conducting).
Ms. Higdon is currently on the composition faculty of The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She formerly served as conductor of the University of Pennsylvania orchestra and wind ensemble and has served as Visiting Assistant Professor in music composition at Bard College. She is published by Lawdon Press.
 TANIA LEON
Tania León is one of the most vital personalities on today's music scene. In demand as both a composer and a conductor, she has also been recognized for her significant accomplishments as an educator and as an advisor to arts organizations. León's latest orchestral work, Horizons, was written for the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg and was premiered there in July 1999, with Peter Ruzicka conducting. The Frankfurter Rundschau wrote: "Starting with a few short motifs that resembled bird calls, the piece built, swiftly to an intense shimmering chorus of many voices . . . The brief, highly compact composition makes one long to hear it again several times over." Her other recent commissions include Drummin', a major multimedia work premiered at the Lincoln Theater in Miami and subsequently performed in Hamburg.
In 1999, her opera Scourge of Hyacinths was given 17 performances to great acclaim by the Grand Théâtre de Genève in Switzerland, the Opéra de Nancy et de Lorraine in France and the St. Pölten Festspielhaus in Austria. Presented under the direction of Robert Wilson and conducted by the composer, the work is based on a radio play by Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka. The Munich Biennale commissioned the opera in 1994, where it won the BMW Prize as best new work of opera theatre in the festival. The aria Oh Yemanja (Mother's Prayer) from Scourge was recently released by Nonesuch on Dawn Upshaw's CD "The World So Wide."
A brief discography of León's music includes Indígena, a CD of León's chamber music, released on CRI; the orchestral works Batá and Carabalí on the Louisville Orchestra's First Edition Records; Rituál, a solo piano work, on an Albany Records; an arrangement of the Cuban song El Manisero for Chanticleer on Teldec; and Journey for the Jubal Trio, also on CRI. Her music is also featured on the Newport Classic, Leonarda, Mode and Opus One labels. A 1999 recipient of an Honorary Doctorate degree from Colgate University, León has received awards for her compositions from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund, NYSCA, ASCAP, and Meet the Composer, among others. In 1998 she held the Fromm Residency at the American Academy in Rome; she has also been to Yaddo, supported by a MacArthur Foundation Award, and to the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy.
Born in Havana, Cuba, León came to the U.S. in 1967. At the invitation of Arthur Mitchell, she became a founding member and the first musical director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969, and founded the Dance Theatre's music department, music school, and orchestra. She instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series in 1978. Starting in 1993 she held a four-year position as New Music Advisor to Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic. Currently, she serves as Latin American Music Advisor to the American Composers Orchestra, where she co-founded the award-winning Sonidos de las Americas festival. León has held masterclasses at the Hamburg Musikschule in Germany, and has been Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University and Visiting Professor of Composition at Yale University, and most recently, Composer-in-Residence at The College of William and Mary, in Spring 1999. León is Professor of Music at Brooklyn College, where she has taught since 1985.
 MISSY MAZZOLI
Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980) was recently deemed one of "the most consistently inventive and surprising composers now working in New York." (New York Times) Her music has been heard all over the world in performances by the Kronos Quartet, the Minnesota Orchestra, eighth blackbird, the South Carolina Philharmonic, the Spokane Symphony, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, NOW Ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players and many others. She's recently been commissioned by Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, the Whitney Museum and Carnegie Hall. Her work was recently performed as part of the Bang-on-a-Can New Music Marathon and the 2007 Cabrillo Festival of New Music. In 2006 Missy was a featured composer at Merkin Hall in New York City and at the Gaudeamus New Music Festival in Amsterdam. She is a recipient of a Fulbright Grant to the Netherlands, the 2007, 2008 and 2009 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and grants from the American Music Center and the Jerome Foundation. In 2006 she taught beginning composition at Yale University, and is now Executive Director of the MATA Festival of New Music in New York City, an organization founded by Philip Glass dedicated to commissioning and promoting new works by young composers. Missy is also an active pianist, and often performs with Victoire, an "all-star, all-female quintet" (Time Out New York) she founded in 2008 dedicated exclusively to her own compositions.
Recent projects included the premiere of Harp and Altar, a work for electronics and string quartet commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, the premiere of Still Life With Avalanche, commissioned and performed by eighth blackbird, the premiere of The Sound of the Light, a new work commissioned by Carnegie Hall and two performances of These Worlds In Us by the Minnesota Orchestra. Upcoming performances include the premiere of new works commissioned by the Whitney Museum of Art, the Santa Fe New Music Ensemble and the League of Composers Orchestra. Missy also recently received a Jerome Foundation Grant to support the creation of Song from the Uproar, a large-scale multimedia work featuring NOW Ensemble and filmmaker Stephen Taylor that premiered in New York City in May, 2009.
 ALEX SHAPIRO
Alex Shapiro is a familiar face in the new music community as a composer, essayist and speaker. Shapiro's acoustic and electroacoustic works, published by her company, Activist Music, are performed and broadcast weekly across the U.S. and internationally. Her music has been recorded by artists around the world and is available on over twenty commercially released CDs, including a compilation disc of several of her most performed chamber pieces on the 2007 Innova Recordings release, "Notes from the Kelp."
Shapiro is known for her creative views on how the internet and new media can advance artists' careers, and lectures frequently, sharing this information with those both inside and outside of the arts. Articulate and passionate, Shapiro has appeared at a wide variety of music events, including NARAS' Grammy® in the Schools, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's First Nights series, Chamber Music America's national conferences, IAWM's International Congress of Women in Music, the National Performing Arts Convention, the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, and each of ASCAP's I Create Music Expos in Hollywood. Since 2000, Ms. Shapiro has interviewed over 100 composers as the moderator of the Los Angeles Composer's Salon series, and the Composer to Composer series at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
A vocal advocate for other artists, Ms. Shapiro serves on the Board of Directors of the American Music Center, and is the past President of the Board of Directors of the American Composers Forum of Los Angeles. Shapiro has also served as an officer on the boards of national organizations including NACUSA, The College Music Society, and The Society of Composers & Lyricists. Her activism extends beyond the music world to additional interests: she sits on the board of the University of Washington's marine science research facility, the Friday Harbor Laboratories, and served three consecutive terms on the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Southern California during the 1990's, for which she chaired its State and National Legislative Action Committee and was the 30,000-member affiliate's Vice-president. A seasoned lobbyist, Ms. Shapiro has joined ASCAP colleagues and board members meeting with legislators in Washington, D.C. about audio visual download performance rights, and has testified before the Federal Communications Commission on a panel hearing on issues related to broadband access and digital piracy.
Born in New York City in 1962 and raised in Manhattan, Shapiro began composing at age nine. She was educated at The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music, where she was a composition student of Ursula Mamlok and John Corigliano. Earlier composition studies from age fifteen were with Leo Edwards at Mannes College of Music and with Michael Czajkowski and George Tsontakis at the Aspen Music School. Ms. Shapiro is the recipient of awards from the American Music Center, ASCAP, the American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer and Mu Phi Epsilon, and has been awarded artist fellowships from The California Arts Council and from The MacDowell Colony, for which she currently serves as an advisor.
A longtime resident of Malibu, California, Alex now lives on Washington State's San Juan Island. When she's not composing she can be found communing with the sea life in a kayak or at the tide pools, evidence of which can be found on her music and photo-filled blog, http://www.notesfromthekelp.com and her website, www.alexshapiro.org.
 MELINDA WAGNER
Melinda Wagner was born in Philadelphia and received graduate degrees in Music Composition from the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. Her teachers included Richard Wernick, George Crumb, Shulamit Ran, and Jay Reise.
Wagner's Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion was awarded the 1999 Pulitzer Prize. The Chicago Symphony has commissioned three major works - Falling Angels (1992); a piano concerto, Extremity of Sky (2002) for Emanuel Ax; and a third orchestra work in 2006. Extremity of Sky has also been performed by Emanuel Ax with the National Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, and the Staatskapelle Berlin.
Other commissions have come from the New York Philharmonic (a concerto for principal trombonist Joseph Alessi), from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Barlow, Fromm, and Koussevitzky Foundations, the American Brass Quintet, and from guitarist David Starobin. Ms. Wagner is the recipient of a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honorary degree from Hamilton College, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Pennsylvania. Other performances have come from the Dallas Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra, the Women's Philharmonic, the New York Pops, and the US Marine Band.
Melinda Wagner has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, Syracuse University, and Hunter College. She has lectured at many schools including Yale, Cornell, Juilliard, and Mannes. Ms. Wagner has served as Composer-in-Residence at the University of Texas (Austin) and at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, percussionist James Saporito, and their children.
|
