David Finko

David Finko was born in 1936 in Leningrad to a family of a famous mathematician and submarine designer. In the early 1950’s, talented young men were pressed into military service. Finko was selected to follow in his father’s footsteps, and became a submarine engineer. He graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Naval Architecture in 1959. He was appointed as a submarine design engineer in 1960 at the Submarine Design Bureau in Leningrad.

 

Finko also studied piano, violin, and music theory since childhood. While working at the Submarine Design Bureau, he graduated from The Leningrad Conservatory in 1965. After his Sonata for Piano #1 was awarded the first prize in the Conservatory New Composition Contest, he left his engineering career to become a full-time composer.

 

David Finko has been a US citizen since 1986. Since his emigration to the USA in 1979, he has taught at numerous universities including Yale University and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Texas. Finko has written eleven operas, eighteen concertos, two symphonies, three tone poems and a number of chamber compositions. His music has been performed in the USA and in many foreign countries.

 

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Richard C. Brodhead

A native of Philadelphia, Richard C. Brodhead earned his Bachelor’s degree as a Scholar of the House in music composition at Yale University, and his Master’s degree in composition at the University of Pennsylvania, where his principal teacher was Richard Wernick, a central and enduring influence on his work.

 

Brodhead’s compositions—works for symphony orchestra, vocal and choral music, chamber music for a variety of solo instruments and ensembles, and works for dance—have been presented by such organizations as the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Network for New Music, New Sounds Live! at Merkin Hall, the Steinway Salon Series at Symphony Space, Chamber Music Now!, and Hartt School of Music, and have been broadcast on NPR. New World/CRI, BCM&D, and PARMA Recordings have recorded his music. Distinguished artists, including pianists Charles Abramovic, Marcantonio Barone, and Clipper Erickson; cellists Scott Kluksdahl and Jason Calloway; the Lions Gate Trio; the Momenta Quartet; guitarist Allen Krantz; lutenist Richard Stone; and flutist Edward Schultz have premiered his work.

 

From 1986 until his retirement from teaching in 2013, Brodhead served on the faculty of Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, where he also held a number of administrative positions, including Associate Dean and Acting Dean.

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Modest Mussorgsky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Mussorgsky

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Clipper Erickson

Clipper Erickson made his debut at age nineteen in Los Angeles as soloist with the Young Musicians Foundation Orchestra, followed by studies at The Juilliard School, Yale University, and Indiana University, where he trained with the renowned British pianist John Ogdon. Erickson has won top prizes at international competitions and performs as soloist with orchestras throughout the US, as well as recitalist in venues including the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall, and Symphony Space in New York.

 

Erickson’s first Navona release, My Cup Runneth Over – the Complete Piano Works of R. Nathaniel Dett, was honored by Gramophone UK in 2016 as a critic’s choice and best album of the year while writing: “this historically and musically important release not only fills a crucial catalogue gap but sets reference standards. No serious aficionado of the history of American piano music can afford to miss it.” His prior albums have often featured American music from past and present, often of lesser-known composers, as well as world premieres.

 

Committed to encouraging the love of music in future generations of musicians, he performs regularly in schools and gives master classes. Erickson is a faculty member of Westminster Conservatory in Princeton, Temple University, and Rutgers University.