Artists

The works of Liviu Marinescu (b. 1970, Bucharest, Romania) have received recognition in numerous festivals of new music throughout the world, and have been performed by prominent orchestras and ensembles, including the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Czech Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic, Orchestra 2001 in Philadelphia and the National Chamber Radio and Music Academy orchestras in Bucharest.

Virgil Thomson was born in Kansas City MO in 1896 in what was then still an agricultural society. Early years in the Midwest exposed him to the folk music, hymn tunes and popular songs that would figure so prominently in his compositions.

Marie Incontrera (b. 1985) is a wayward ballerina and heavy metal pianist who writes music in Brooklyn, New York. She has been a recipient of the Miriam Gideon Composition Award for women composers, a winner of the Remarkable Theater Brigade Art Song Competition, a 2010 and 2011 recipient of the ASCAPlus award, a winner of the 2011 Vocalessence/American Composers Forum "Essentially Choral" readings, and was a finalist in the Iron Composer 2010 competition.

Ulf Grahn (b. 1942) studied composition with Hans Eklund, Violin and Viola with Rudolf Forsberg and Piano with Herbert Westrell. He holds degrees from Stockholm's Musikpedagogiska Institut and the Catholic University of America. He has also studied Business Administration, Economics and Development Studies at The Universities of Lund andUppsala, Sweden. In 1973 he founded the Contemporary Music Forum, in Washington, D.C. and served as its Program Director until 1984.

Osias Wilenski was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. From an early age he studied piano with Professor Vicente Scaramuzza and harmony, counterpoint and composition with Dr. Erwin Leuchter, who had been a pupil of Alban Berg. From Leuchter comes his early interest in 12-tone music, a system that Wilenski has abandoned since. During the 1950s and through the suggestion of pianist Arturo Rubinstein, Wilenski won a scholarship to study at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, where he resided for several years. There he studied composition with William Bergsma, William Schuman and Vincent Persichetti. He also had private piano lessons from virtuoso Simon Barere, of which he was the only pupil. He started a solo pianist career and played concerts in New York in Hunter College and Town Hall.

R. David Salvage (b. 1978, Boston MA) is a composer and pianist whose piano, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works have been performed by many of America's most gifted musicians, including the Arcturus Chamber Ensemble, the Rosetta String Trio, the Monticello String Quartet, the Cygnus Ensemble, Miranda Cuckson (violinist), Christopher Swanson (tenor), Thomas Meglioranza (baritone), David Thomas (clarinetist), and the Newark-Granville Symphony Orchestra (OH).

Malcolm Hawkins, British composer born in Portugal, has lived in New Hampshire since 1995. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, and was subsequently awarded a scholarship to study at the Mozarteum, Salzburg, with Cesar Bresgen, where he won an international song competition Das Neue Lied with 4 Songs for Baritone, Saxophone and Piano. These and a solo piano work were broadcast on Austrian Radio, and his wind quintet was performed in Salzburg and Vienna.

Joseph Koykkar (b. 1951), composer, has had his music performed nationally and internationally for the past 30 years, including performances and commissions by many of the leading new music ensembles in the nation including the Relache Ensemble, Present Music, Zeitgeist, New York New Music Ensemble, North/South Consonance, Synchronia, and the C.A.L. Ear Unit.

Warren Gooch's music has been widely performed throughout North America, as well as Europe, Asia and Latin America. His work has been recognized by the National Federation of Music Clubs, Minnesota Orchestra, American Choral Directors Association, Music Teachers National Association, Percussive Arts Society, International Trumpet Guild, College Music Society, Music Educators National Conference, the Composers Guild, Composers and Songwriters International, Collegiate Band Directors National Association, American Composers Forum and numerous other organizations.

Howard L. Richards Jr. received his first piano lesson when he was six years old and began studying popular piano and trumpet at the age of eight. He attended high school at Culver Military Academy in Indiana and was a member of the Infantry Band for four years. Upon graduating high school, Richards spent one year at the University of Michigan to study Physics, but switched at midyear to major in Music Composition.

Östhammar, Sweden-based Håkan Sundin (b. 1961) leads a varied musical career, working as a composer, freelance flutist and saxophonist, and as a church musician. Sundin received his jazz education from Skurups Folk High School (1980-82), and continued on to the Malmö Academy of Music for flute and composition (1983-88); from there, he continued his education in composition with seminars at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark (1988-90). In addition to his formal education, Sundin has continued his flute studies with private lessons from flutist Manuela Wiesler, among others.

Composer, teacher and conductor William A. Fletcher can trace his fascination with music to a specific event: a free concert given by a then-new duo, Simon and Garfunkel, when he was 12 years old. He took up guitar that very week, and joyfully played it all day, every day for the next 15 years...

Don Freund is an internationally recognized composer with works ranging from solo, chamber, and orchestral music to pieces involving live performances with electronic instruments, music for dance, and large theatre works. He has been described as "a composer thoughtful in approach and imaginative in style" (Washington Post), whose music is "exciting, amusing, disturbing, beautiful, and always fascinating" (Music and Musicians, London).

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.

The music of Peter Van Zandt Lane (b. 1985, Port Jefferson NY) has been described as having "Propulsive rhythms" and "surprising lyricism" and has been praised by musicians and critics alike (Boston Musical Intelligencer) as music that "gives an amazing first impression." A Boston-based composer and bassoonist, Peter writes passionately for ensembles of all types, and often employs the use of electronics in his compositions. With backgrounds in classical performance and rock, contemporary theory and music engineering, he draws on his diverse experiences to create music that is fresh, genuine, and widely appealing.

From the onset of his career, German composer Gerhard Stäbler (b. 1949) has not only been active as a composer, but also involved in the political and organizational arenas. He organized the new music festival Aktive Musik, along with serving as the artistic director of the 1995 World Music Days of the ISCM in the Ruhr Area in Germany. A third vital point of his activities lies in teaching; he has worked with many young international composers in a variety of workshops and seminars. He was a composer-in-residence and visiting professor throughout North and South America as well as in the Middle and Far East.

Lawrence Siegel brings to the writing of KADDISH twenty-five years of experience creating and directing music and music theater projects using texts from oral histories, interviews, and community dialogues. His music has won awards from the McKnight Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and many others. He has been a fellow in composition at the Tanglewood Music Center and the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH.

Jim Scully (b. 1979) is a composer, performer and educator in the fields of contemporary classical music, electroacoustic music and jazz studies. He is currently a member of the music faculty at CSU Bakersfield, where he is tasked with teaching an array of courses in the fields of Music Theory, Jazz Studies, Composition and Music Technology. In addition, he serves as Director of the CSU Bakersfield Guitar Arts Series, Director of Small Jazz Ensembles, Director of the Audio/MIDI Lab and Assistant Director of the Bakersfield Jazz Festival.

Portuguese violist Anibal Dos Santos was born in born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1963. He began his musical studies at an early age in his native city with Gianfranco Farina and Mario Mescoli. At age 18, he traveled to Philadelphia PA to study with renowned violist Joseph de Pasquale, obtaining his degree in 1988 at the Curtis Institute of Music. Since then, he has dedicated his career to perform viola repertoire with many orchestras in the Americas, as well as recitals and chamber music appearances.

Composer James Tribble has been writing and playing music for about 30 years, gradually learning his craft. He taught himself piano at 14, creating a lot of bad habits, and he has performed and taught piano, violin and viola since then while improving his own technique.