Artists

Amelia Kaplan (b. 1963) is a composer of concert music that primarily explores gesture, equally drawing upon pitch and timbre. As a reflection of a multifaceted life, most works are based on multiple unrelated musical strands (rather than a single idea) which jump back and forth, find commonality, and occasionally part ways.

Quinn Dizon was born in Santa Rosa CA in August of 1989. When he was nine, Dizon began taking private lessons on the clarinet. Soon, he began playing in his school music program and various youth orchestras in the area. At fifteen, he became interested in composing, and sought out private instruction.

Composer Jason V. Barabba's (b. 1970) work has been called "deeply meditative" by Fanfare magazine, and his music has been performed by such diverse musicians as the Arneis Quartet, Janaki String Trio, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, the California E.A.R. Unit, and Chicago's Quintet Attacca. Reviews of the 2011 premiere of Barabba's work Diddling: Considered as One of the Exact Sciences said it was "uproariously hilarious, Barabba's "Diddling" was plain evidence of this composer's tremendous talent and ability to evoke laughter from the listener " not an easy task."

Atlanta-born Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy (b. 1925) has been commissioned by many contemporary dance companies and chamber groups, and worked with noted choreographers Takehiro Ueyama in New York, Bill Bayles at Bennington College, and Peggy Lawler at Cornell University. Her has a strong rhythmic drive at its core.

Jenny Kallick has created two original music dramas prior to ARCHITECT: WinterReise (based on Schubert's song cycle) in 2001 for soprano, baritone, string trio, and piano with director Jeffrey Lentz; and The Death of Victor Hartmann (Incorporating songs and piano music of Musorgsky) in 2003 for bass, violin, clarinet, and cello with director and designer John Conklin.

John Downey studied musical composition with Lewis Spratlan and electroacoustics with Eric Sawyer at Amherst College. During medical school at Stanford, John continued his involvement in music as a collaborator with Jenny Kallick and Lewis Spratlan on ARCHITECT. John's most recent work for orchestra, The Tides at Golden Gate, had its world premiere at Stanford University and its east coast premiere in 2010 at Amherst College. Dr. Downey is currently a resident radiologist at Stanford University hospital.

Anthony Piccolo earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied piano, orchestral conducting, and composition. He studied further at the Britten-Pears School and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he was a repetiteur in the opera studio. Returning to the states he joined the staff of the New York City Opera and in 2009 took up his current position as Children's Chorus Director at the Metropolitan Opera.

Composer by character and performer by temperament, James Scott Balentine is as complex as his music; that is, moderately enigmatic yet engaging. His compositions are fun and interesting to play, intriguing to the listener, and crafted in a personal language influenced by ethnic dance, jazz and folk idioms, tonal as well as atonal and serial techniques.

Andrew March was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, United Kingdom in 1973. In 1992, he was accepted at the Royal College of Music to study composition with Jeremy Dale Roberts. He graduated in 1996, gaining a Bachelor of Music degree with honors.

The music of award-winning composer Greg Bartholomew is frequently performed across the United States and in Canada, Australia and Europe by such highly regarded instrumental ensembles as Third Angle New Music Ensemble, the Electrum Brass Trio, and the Spring Wind Quintet, as well as such acclaimed choral ensembles as Seattle Pro Musica, Austin Vocal Arts Ensemble, and Connecticut Choral Artists (CONCORA). NPR classical music reviewer Tom Manoff called Bartholomew "a fine composer not afraid of accessibility."

Missouri native Emma Lou Diemer (1927-2024) was born into a musical family and had begun her early compositions at the age of 5. Throughout her elementary and high school years her performance studies continued and her interest in composition intensified, and she attended the Eastman School of Music and the Yale School of Music, receiving her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Composition from the latter and her Ph.D. from the former. Diemer's education exposed her to some of classical's great minds, placing her under the tutelage of Hindemith, Gant, Sessions, and many more.

Composer Sparky Davis' music is featured on THE MUSIC OF SPARKY DAVIS, an album highlighting his "modern, not modernistic" approach to composition.

Vienna, Austria-native Rudy Kronfuss started playing the guitar at age 13 and formed his own band when he was 17. He has loved composing music since his teenage days, and in 1974 he decided to stay in the Netherlands after a tour with his group. In 1984 he successfully completed his six years study of jazz guitar at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Since then he has taught at "GLOBE," the Central Music School of Hilversum. In 1994 he received his degree in composition and arrangement from the Conservatory of Rotterdam under the guidance of Bob Brookmeyer. Kronfuss is an internationally performing artist. His passion is to teach, play, compose, arrange and produce music. He has published 8 CDs and 4 DVDs.

Gregory Hutter holds degrees from Western Michigan University, the University of Michigan, and Northwestern University. He has been a faculty member at DePaul University since 2002. His compositions have been performed by the Moravian Philharmonic, the Kiev Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, Musica Moderna (Poland), the Cassatt Quartet, the Maia Quartet, the Julstrom Quartet, Trio Callisto, the Carpe Diem Quartet, the Anaphora Ensemble, Arts at Large Chicago, Duo Diorama, the Society for New Music (Syracuse), the Philovox Ensemble (Boston), pianists Winston Choi and Matthew McCright, Pinotage, Musica Nova (Israel), and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), among others.

Harlem NY-born Reynard Burns' (b. 1946) prolific career includes work as a composer, arranger, and educator, as well as a bassist and guest conductor for several orchestra festivals. His compositions for full and string orchestra, wind ensemble, concert band, jazz ensemble, improvising strings, and other combinations have been performed throughout the United States and abroad, with his orchestral works receiving national recognition, most notably Flying, which was performed by the Long Island Philharmonic in a program honoring American composers.

Playful! If you had to pick a single word to describe Louis Babin's approach to composing music, 'playful' would be the one. Because for this composer creation is a form of play. Indeed, Babin's early works are associated with the world of story and theatre: Les filles de l'amour divin, as performed at Montréal's Salle Fred-Barry, the intimate character of L'amiral blanc at Les fleurs du mal cafe theatre, and in larger productions, such as his contributions to Le bossu de Notre-Dame, presented at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, and La légende du roi Arthus at Usine C in Montréal.

Composer and keyboard player Juan Sebastián Lach Lau's recent instrumental and electroacoustic music, as well as sound installations, are based on algorithmic processes and harmonic microtonal inquiries, a field in which he obtained a doctorate in artistic research at the University of Leiden, Holland, in 2012.

Born in Texas in 1947, Michael Mauldin moved to New Mexico in 1971 for "the light, the space and the timelessness." He completed a graduate degree in composition, opened a music school, raised a family and wrote music. He was recognized in 1980 as the national Composer of the Year by the Music Teachers National Association. In 1985, his Fajada Butte was performed in Kennedy Center by the National Repertory Orchestra for the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches in Albuquerque and at his composing and teaching retreat near Cuba, New Mexico.

Coro Allegro, Boston's acclaimed chorus for members and friends of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, seek to affirm, strengthen, and enrich the lives of its members and the broader community through the presentation of outstanding performances of choral music. Coro Allegro performances have been broadcast on WGBH's "Classical Performances" and brought to national and international audiences through performances at four GALA Choruses Festivals and the Eastern Division Convention of the American Choral Directors Association.

Tapestry is a chamber group weaving together four unique performers working with six versatile composers. Each of these accomplished musicians brings a distinct thread of musical and cultural experiences to this project, resulting in an exciting recording of new repertoire. While there have been a handful of recordings in the past devoted to the earliest repertoire for the oboe, clarinet and piano trio by composers such as Edouard Destenay and Jean Gabriel Marie, this recording is remarkable in that it comprises all newly composed works for trio and quartet, driven by the combination and contrasts of the performers rather than a specific instrumentation.