Artists

Nicholas Weininger (b. 1978) is a composer, singer, software engineering manager, and leadership coach. Weininger's works for a cappella chorus have been performed by ensembles across the United States, ranging from the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco and the NYC-based ensemble Choral Chameleon to the West Genesee High School Chorale, the Germantown Friends School Concert Choir, and the festival ensemble Coro Mundi. In March 2023, the Empire City Men's Chorus premiered his cantata Hakol Hevel (All is Mere Breath) for TTBB chorus, orchestra, and soloists. Weininger's works are published through Personage Press and ArrangeMe. 

David Watkin has made a wide range of acclaimed recordings including Sonatas by Vivaldi (Hyperion), Beethoven (Chandos), and Francis Pott (Guild), Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante with OAE (Virgin), and Schubert Quintet with the Tokyo Quartet (Harmonia Mundi). He has been a soloist at Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York, and performed the Schumann Concerto with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique at Lincoln Center, New York. As a guest artist he has collaborated with Robert Levin and Fredericka von Stade. As a founder member of the Eroica Quartet he has performed all over Europe and the United States and their recordings of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Debussy, and Ravel have astonished critics.

Shuko Watanabe, Instructor of Music, holds a D.M.A. from the University of Maryland at College Park, MM and BM from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, studying under Lillian Freundlich, Stewart Gordon and Roy Hamlin Johnson.

With a musical palette ranging from traditional Jewish prayer modes to minimalist textures with rich melodic contours, and from jazz-influenced rhythms to imaginative orchestrations of the natural world, composer Dr. Meira Warshauer’s music has been performed live to critical acclaim and heard on broadcast and online media worldwide. In much demand for commissions, she writes for orchestras, chamber and vocal ensembles, and soloists, as well as opera.

Laura Ward is pianist and Co-Artistic Director of Lyric Fest. As a distinguished collaborative pianist she is known for both her technical ability and vast knowledge of repertoire and styles. Concert engagements have taken her to Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Spoleto Festival (Italy) and the Colmar International Music Festival and Saint Denis Festival in France.

Zhiyi Wang is a multi award-winning composer who has composed a number of works in different genres, including contemporary classical, film and TV score, modern ballet, musical, world music, and pop music. His music has been performed by prestige artists and leading ensembles including Yuri Bashmet, Lang Lang, Lorin Maazel, China National Symphony Orchestra, Brno Philharmonic, Senzoku Gakuen New Philharmonic, Moscow Soloists, Lviv Chamber Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, Lemberg Sinfonietta, Villiers String Quartet, as well as many others throughout Asia, North America, and Europe.

Prolific in all musical media, Wanamaker’s best-known works are those that exploit unique timbral characteristics and technical extensions of wind instruments. His earliest musical training began at age 6 in professional summer stock theater companies, and continued through both schooled and self-guided explorations through the American folk music of the 1960s, bebop and free jazz, and Western classical music of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He continues his study of sounds to those from around the world, to draw from a variety of musics to inform his continually evolving voice.

Described by Pierre Boulez as “un musicien formidable” and “unflaggingly robust” by Opera Magazine, tenor Brian Smith Walters began his musical career as a French horn player before turning to singing. In his career, Walters has performed over 75 roles, including such roles as Tristan in Tristan und Isolde, Siegfried, Parsifal, Siegmund in Die Walküre, Paul in Die tote Stadt, Samson in Samson et Dalila, Captain Vere in Billy Budd and Peter Grimes. He has worked with conductors Valery Gergiev, Sir Mark Elder, and Christoph Eschenbach in festivals such as Lucerne, Schleswig-Holstein, Longborough, Buxton, Grange Park, and Aldeburgh with additional work at the Barbican and Royal Opera, Covent Garden.

Winner of the Munich ARD Competition and the Salzburg Mozart Competition, pianist Diane Walsh has performed concertos, solo recitals, and chamber music concerts throughout the United States and internationally. She has appeared at numerous summer festivals including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Bard, and Chesapeake, and was the artistic director of the Skaneateles Festival. She gave 113 performances of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations on stage in the Broadway production of Moisés Kaufman’s play 33 Variations, starring Jane Fonda. A graduate of the Juilliard School and Mannes School of Music, and a Steinway Artist, Walsh has released 19 recordings of diverse repertoire from four centuries, and has taught piano and chamber music at Mannes, Vassar College, and Colby College.

LARRY WALLACH is a composer, pianist, and musicologist whose compositions, mostly of chamber music, have been performed throughout the United States. He was educated at Columbia University, from which he holds a PhD in Musicology. He currently holds the Livingston Hall Chair in Music at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where he has taught since 1972. From 2001 to 2014 taught composition in the Bard MFA Program for Conductors. He received an NEH Fellowship to study historical piano performance practices for the year 1977-78 and is a recipient of two “Meet the Composer” grants from New York State. His composition “Echoes from Barham Down” for flute, string trio, and piano, based on an English country dance tune, won the New School of Music, Cambridge, composition prize in 1985.

Portland OR native Kevin M. Walczyk received the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the University of North Texas where he received the Hexter Prize for outstanding graduate student and served as arranger for the renowned University of North Texas One O'clock Lab Band. Walczyk's works have been commissioned and/or recorded by organizations that include the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, Kiev Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Ukraine National Symphony, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Portland Youth Philharmonic, and consortium-commissioning projects comprising over 60 university and conservatory wind ensembles.

After successes in several important international competitions for conductors — including the competition in Besancon France in 1971 and the Karajan Competition in Berlin in 1973 — his career began at the opera company in Pilsen. From 1974 to 1978, he was Chief of Opera of the State Theater in Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic. In 1978, he was appointed Chief Conductor of the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he held until 1991. Vronsky was later appointed Chief Conductor of the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava in 2002.

Born in New York City to German parents, Carl Vollrath attended Newton High School. He received a B.A. from Stetson University, an M.A. from Columbia University, and an Ed.D. from Florida State University. Vollrath studied composition with Ernst von Dohnanyi Carlisle Floyd, and John Boda. He served with the West Point Military Band at West Point NY from 1953 to 1956 and was a music consultant in Miami FL from 1956 to 1958. He joined the Troy University (AL) faculty in 1965.Major works include six symphonies for band, an opera – The Quest – and a large collection of chamber music, all published by Tap Music (tapmusic.com). MMC Recordings has released three albums of Vollrath’s works, including a two-disc album of clarinet works recorded by Richard Stoltzman entitled Jack’s Fat Cat (2008).

William Vollinger is predominantly a composer of vocal music, spoken and/or sung, performed by groups such as the Gregg Smith Singers and New York Vocal Arts Ensemble, whose performance of Three Songs About the Resurrection won first prize at the Geneva International Competition. The instrumental work The Violinist in the Mall won the 2005 Friends and Enemies of New Music competition. Sound Portraits is a collection of his vocal works featuring soprano Linda Ferraira recorded by Capstone-Ravello. Raspberry Man was selected for both the 2009 National SCI Conference in Santa Fe NM and the University of Nebraska 2009 New Music Festival.

Composer Mark Volker is Associate Professor of Music at the Belmont University School of Music, where he is Coordinator of Composition Studies and directs the New Music Ensemble. He received degrees from the University of Chicago (Ph.D), the University of Cincinnati (M.M.), and Ithaca College (B.M.).

Described as “exquisite” (Gramophone), “riveting” (The New York Times), “arresting” (The Boston Globe), “compellingly original” (Boston Phoenix), “full, extravagant and wild” (Sydney Morning Herald), and “edgy, bright and entertaining as hell” (NewMusicBox), the works of Nicholas Vines (b.1976, Sydney) have been performed by the likes of Alarm Will Sound, BMOP, Ensemble Offspring, the Schola Cantorum Gedanesis Chamber Choir, the BT Scottish Ensemble and the Australian Piano Quartet. He has been commissioned by organisations around the world, such as Acacia Quartet, Callithumpian Consort, Firebird Ensemble, mmm…, Guerilla Opera, ChamberMade Opera, Ensemble Apex, the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and various Sydney schools.

Vertex Duo, comprised of Jeremy Chan (piano) and Kristin Gornstein (mezzo-soprano), bring the perspective of multiple cultures, backgrounds, and musical aesthetics to their work, sharing a love for freshness and improvisation in classical music. They have performed together in recitals at Seiji Ozawa Hall, Caramoor Center for the Arts, and the DiMenna Center in New York City. Chan and Gornstein met performing the works of William Bolcom, and this shared focus on performing the works of living composers has brought them to their current project, a recording of contemporary songs exploring the ways in which we find joy through sorrow. Featuring a newly commissioned song set by Pulitzer Prize-nominated composer Alex Weiser as well as works by Kamala Sankaram, Annika Socolofsky, James Primosch, Max Johnson, and Robert Balaguer, the album is entitled JOY TOO, and will be released on Navona Records in 2024.

Elizabeth Vercoe has been hailed by the Washington Post as "one of the most inventive composers working in America today." Active as a composer in the United States and abroad, she has been a fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Italy, the St. Petersburg Spring Music Festival in Russia, The Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, and the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Her music has been performed by the Memphis Chamber Symphony, the Women's Philharmonic, the Boston Musica Viva, Alea III, the Great Noise Ensemble, and counter) induction.

Richard Vella's diverse output includes compositions for orchestra, large ensemble, choir, film, chamber music, burlesque cabaret, music theatre, contemporary opera, site-specific performances, and popular music genres. Much of his music has been performed and recorded nationally and internationally. His film credits include Light Years, Parklands, and Renzo Piano: piece by piece for which he won the 1999 Australian Screen Composer's Award for best music for a documentary. His feature film music score Travelling Light (2003) received the nomination for “Best Music for a Feature Film” by the Australian Film Institute.

Diego Vega is a Colombian-American composer. His music has been performed in some of the most important concert halls in the United States, Europe and Latin America by ensembles such as Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble X, the Colombian National Symphony, the Bogotá Philharmonic, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris, the Quintet of the Americas, Soli Chamber Ensemble, and internationally acclaimed soloists and chamber groups. Diego has written commissioned works for the Colombian National Symphony, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, Banco de la República de Colombia, and the Salvi Foundation and the Cartagena International Music Festival, among others.