David Tanner

 

David Tanner was born in England in 1950 and came to Canada in 1953. He studied in Boston at the Berklee College of Music and at the University of Toronto, where he earned Bachelor and Master's degrees in composition, and was awarded the William St. Clair Low Fellowship in 1974. He became well known in Toronto as a freelance saxophonist and woodwind doubler, in theatres and recording studios and on stage with performers as diverse as Kenny Rogers and Ella Fitzgerald. Although adept in every genre of music, he was best known as an orchestral saxophonist, playing frequently with the Toronto Symphony, Canadian Opera Company, National Ballet, Hamilton Philharmonic, and orchestras in surrounding communities, including guest soloist appearances. He was also extensively involved in commercial arranging and record production.

 

 Career highlights include a year with “Lighthouse” rock band, two years as librarian with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and many years of teaching saxophone at the Royal Conservatory and the University of Toronto. His publications range from “Excalibur” overture for band (Belwin Mills 1981), numerous professional journal articles of interest to saxophonists, three choral works (Editions Olomuc 2011), some piano arrangements, a 2012 CD “Of Birds and Lemons” (Navona Records) featuring several of his orchestral works, and a 1988 record album, “The Eloquent Saxophone” (Apparition Records).

 

 David has always believed that music is for enjoyment. His works are intended to be enjoyed by audience and performers alike. He is semi-retired now, living in Cobourg, Ontario.

 

 

Delvyn Case

 

Delvyn Case is a composer, conductor, scholar, performer and educator based in Boston.

 

His holiday overture Rocket Sleigh has been performed by over 50 orchestras, including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Toronto, Atlanta, Winnipeg, Hartford, San Antonio, Jacksonville, Louisville, Pacific, and National Symphony Orchestras.  It is now a part of the touring holiday repertoire of Cirque de la Symphonie.   The version for wind ensemble has been performed by the Dallas Wind Symphony, the US Coast Guard Band, and many major collegiate concert bands across the United States. It was recently featured on NPR’s “Performance Today.”

 

Performers of his concert music have included the Grammy-winning quintet Chestnut Brass Company, mezzo-soprano D'Anna Fortunato, Grammy-nominated pianist Charles Abramovic, The Hermitage Trio, The New York Virtuoso Singers, Rome's Freon Ensemble, and Ibis Camerata. He is the composer of The Prioress's Tale, a 75-minute chamber opera that toured throughout New England for four seasons as part of a unique initiative fostering inter-religious dialogue and peace-making.  Recently he completed extensive two educational outreach pieces for narrator and chamber ensemble, commissioned by the Portland Symphony Orchestra, which have been performed for thousands of children from Maine to California.   He is currently at work on a new piece for the Ariel Quartet.

 

Delvyn Case earned degrees from Yale (B.A. summa cum laude in music) and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. in composition.) He is currently Associate Professor of Music at Wheaton College in  Norton, Massachusetts.

 

 

L Peter Deutsch

 

L Peter Deutsch is a native of Massachusetts, U.S.A., now living in Sonoma County, California. His early music education included performance and composition for voice, piano, and recorder. After a long detour through a Ph.D. and a distinguished career in Computer Science, he returned to composition part-time in 1986 and full-time in 2003, including a M.A. degree under Frank La Rocca at CSU Hayward.

 

Deutsch's strengths as a composer include sparkling counterpoint and polyphony, lyrical melodies, fluent text setting, and the use of a large harmonic palette centered around modal scales. His works span styles from devotional to romantic to jazzy. He writes primarily for small instrumental or a capella vocal ensembles. His works are distributed commercially by J.W. Pepper at http://www.jwpepper.com/myscore/lpd ; some are also available, for non-commercial performance and study, at http://www.major2nd.com/ae/music . His work to date includes three choral commissions ("Brethren and Lovers," San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, 2008, "The Dimensions of Love," Bay Choral Guild, 2011, and "Where Everything is Music," Arizona Women in Tune, 2012) and a full-length string quartet ("Departure," 2010). An experienced singer, Deutsch has performed with the California Bach Society, the Bay Choral Guild, Menharmonics, the Sonoma Bach Choir, and Circa 1600.

 

 

James Shrader

 

Dr. James Shrader is Professor of Music and former Head of the Department of Music at Valdosta State University. He has combined careers as composer, author, professor, administrator, conductor, stage director, and operatic tenor. He holds the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Fine Arts (Conducting) from Texas Tech University. Dr. Shrader received the Bachelor of Music Education degree from Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, and the Master of Music degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music (Opera Direction) and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. Further studies have included the Cambridge Choral Seminar at Clare College, Cambridge, England.

 

For thirteen years, Dr. Shrader was Director of Music and Fine Arts at the First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland (ABCUSA). For eleven years, he was Head of Music and Choral and Opera Studies at Northwestern Oklahoma State University. He is the former chorus master for Tulsa Opera where he prepared nine productions for live performances and rebroadcasts on National Public Radio stations. He was tour director for the Oklahoma Ambassadors of Music and is currently choral coordinator for the Georgia Ambassadors of Music.

 

He has conducted choral performances, which have included his compositions, in Great Britain at Canterbury and Ely Cathedrals; Dunfirmline Abbey, Scotland; Holy Innocents Church, Manchester; and in London at St. Martin’s in the Field, Wesley Chapel, All Souls Church, and Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church; as well as concerts in France (Paris), Switzerland (Champery, Crans-Montana), Austria (Seefeld), Germany (Rothenburg), and St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, Italy.

 

Dr. Shrader is the author of The Choruses in Mozart’s Opere Serie published by The Edwin Mellen Press. He has also published several choral compositions with Colla Voce, Inc. His works in progress include a mystery novel as well as a series of brief chamber operas. Dr. Shrader is a member of the College Music Society; American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers; Society of Composers, Inc.; National Association for Music Education; Georgia Music Educators Association; Pi Kappa Lambda; and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.

 

 

Henry Wolking

 

A trombonist and prolific, highly diverse composer who recently retired from The University of Utah's School of Music after nearly 40 years as Director Of Jazz Studies, Henry Wolking has found creative inspiration in writing for almost every imaginable type of large and small ensemble in classical and jazz music. His prodigious orchestral output includes symphonies, fantasies, and an overture as well as eight concertos featuring various soloists such as jazz quartet, trombone, flute, heckelphone, bassoon, contrabassoon, two pianos and horn. Major music outlets have published more than a hundred of his jazz and brass chamber ensemble works. His catalogue of orchestral, band and jazz ensemble works also is offered through JW Pepper (click here), and his own company, Wolking Music Publication, (wolkingmusicpublications.com). Over 50 of his jazz big band and small ensemble works are currently available from Ejazzlines (ejazzlines.com). This is his third PARMA recording. His first, “Cross Connection” was released on the Navona label in March of 2013. It has received glowing reviews and features “Gone Playin’ for clarinet and string orchestra, and his string quartet, “The Old Gypsy.”  This was followed by a jazz big band album, In Sea that was released in March 2016 on the Big Round Records label.

 

A native of Orlando, Florida, Wolking enjoys bringing complex, sometimes seemingly disparate mixes of compositional elements to music that becomes easily approachable for listeners who appreciate its sincere, fresh cosmopolitan character. The gifts of polyrhythms, melodic chorales, and unmistakable grooving inflections of jazz are treated with the same deep sense of artistic integrity and respect as are fanfare motifs, classic musical forms such as waltzes and tangos, the folk sounds of Central and Eastern Europe, and Afro-Cuban rhythms that infuse his various works. He also composed the theme music for the International Sports Broadcasting in connection with the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City, Utah.

 

 

Christopher J. Hoh

 

Christopher J. Hoh hails from Pennsylvania and the Washington, DC area.  He has participated in workshops with Jean Berger, Daniel Moe, Robert Page, and Mack Wilberg. He studied as a composition fellow with Alice Parker in 2014.

 

Chris’s recent commissions include American folksong settings for Alexandria, VA middle school choruses & piano and a cappella motets for a church on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.  The Stuttgart German-American chorus called on him to write an extended setting of the O Antiphons for choir & organ, which premiered in 2014. PROJECT:ENCORE endorsed his setting of the early American “Come Away to the Skies” in 2015, leading to several additional performances around the U.S. and commissions for more arrangements of American folk hymns.  His song cycle “I Breathed A Song” for mezzo-soprano, baritone saxophone and piano premiered at Vienna’s Musikverein in 2011.

 

California's Meistersingers also requested new work from him:  Shakespeare's "My Mistress' Eyes" for SATB a cappella (2014) and an SSATBB treatment of the 16th-Century carol “Ein Kind Geborn In Bethlehem” (2013).  The William & Mary College choir reprised and took on tour his six-part “Angele Dei” in 2014-15, while Shepherd University asked him to re-arrange “Dona Nobis Pacem” for six-part male chorus. The Montana-based ensemble Musikanten, for whom he was composer-in-residence in 2008, has performed his work on several European tours. The last few years have seen premieres of Chris Hoh compositions in Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, and West Virginia, as well as Austria, Canada and Spain. His work has been published by Augsburg Fortress Press and Art of Sound Music.

 

Chris’s current projects include more part-songs on Shakespeare and old German texts, a symphony of Latin psalms for choir and orchestra, and flute/horn/piano arrangements of less-known Christmas carols, along with choral pieces for church and concert.  He is also editing neglected works from the European renaissance (e.g. Caurroy, Monte, Prætorius, Sweelinck) and the New World (Billings, Beach, Holyoke, Parker, Salazar) for performance today.

 

In addition to recordings with Navona/PARMA, his compositions are found on ERM Media’s “Made in the Americas, Vol. 1” CD and Phoenix Classical’s “Undiscovered Choral Gems.”  Chris Hoh graduated from Georgetown University in international affairs.  He served in the U.S. Foreign Service for over 30 years and is now a Senior Adviser at the Department of State.  Scores, audio and information about Chris’s compositions may be found on his website, www.HohMadeMusic.com and J.W. Pepper’s MyScore.

 

 

Phillip Rhodes

 

Phillip Rhodes was born in Forest City, North Carolina in 1940 and received degrees from Duke University and the Yale University School of Music. His principal teachers have been William Klenz, Iain Hamilton, Donald Martino, and Mel Powell.

 

Rhodes has been the recipient of numerous commissions and composition awards, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Fund for Music, a citation and award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Tanglewood Orchestra Prizes, two McKnight Foundation Fellowships, two Fromm Foundation Commissions (Harvard), and a Bush Foundation Fellowship for Artists.  Rhodes’ compositions are published by C. F. Peters, E.M.I., Theodore Presser, Earthsongs, and Schott.

 

His music is recorded on labels including CRI, Centaur Records, First Edition (Louisville), Innova, and New World Records. Major performances of his works include those by the Atlanta Symphony at Carnegie Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival, the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

 

He is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at Carleton College and served as the Composer-in-Residence there from 1974 to 2007.  Prior to coming to Carleton, he taught at Amherst College and served as Composer-in-Residence for the City of Louisville and for the State of Kentucky under the auspices of the Ford Foundation, the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times Foundation and the Kentucky State Arts Commission.

 

 

TIMOTHY LEE MILLER

 

Timothy Lee Miller (b. 1961) is an American composer, arranger and publisher writing unique contemporary concert music for chamber ensembles, orchestra, wind ensemble, chorus and solo voice, as well as jazz music. He has also written for several small film and television projects, however, his primary focus is concert music. He has earned degrees from the University of Tennessee (BS Music Ed, 1984), the University of Miami (MM Media Writing and Production, 1990) and Vermont College of Fine Arts (MFA Composition, 2013). His principle composition teachers have been John Anthony Lennon, James Progris, Tamar Diesendruck, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Andy Jaffe, John Fitz Rogers and Roger Zahab. He has received numerous commissions and awards, including several ASCAP awards. His works have been performed throughout the US and Europe. His music is recorded on ERMMedia, Navona and Ansonica Records, and Phoenix Classics.

 

Recent commissions include Three Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for soprano Lauren Alfano-Ishida in New York City, Traveler: Music for Chamber Orchestra for Bede Williams and the St Andrews New Music Ensemble in St Andrews, Scotland, and The Callithumpian Duck for Keith McClelland, retired professor of bassoon at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His Kid's Play: A Fun Suite for Orchestra was awarded a Distinguished and Special Mention at the 2009 IBLA Grand Prize Competition in Ragusa, Italy. His six-part a cappella setting of The Garden of Dreams, a poem of Madison J. Cawein, was a winner in the International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition 2011, and his choral setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem The Day Is Done was a finalist in the same competition. His Divinitus for chamber sextet was a finalist in the 2014 American Prize for Excellence in Composition, and his choral works Jubilate Deo and The Garden of Dreams were both semi-finalists in the 2015 American Prize.