MICHAEL G. Cunningham was born in Warren MI in 1937 and holds music degrees from Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, and Indiana University. After limited teaching appointments at four different universities, he remained Professor of Theory and Composition at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire from 1973 to 2006.
Since 1958 Cunningham has created a large catalog of various types of music for all manner of performer combinations and situations. Five previous albums of mostly orchestral works performed by European orchestras are currently available from Navona Records: WISDOM LOVE ETERNITY, PARAGONIA, SONIC FLIGHT, COLONNADE, GALLERY, AN ARC OF QUARTETS.
Information on his various music theory and composition textbooks can be found on his website:
Rain Worthington
“There is a deep interiority to this music . . . Worthington has an instantly recognizable sound, an austere sensuality not quite like anyone else . . . a composer of considerable imagination, emotional expressiveness, and poetic sensibility.” – American Record Guide
“Worthington . . . makes clear to us how we experience the transitional, impermanent and ever shifting quality of a later modernist world. [DREAM VAPORS] establishes her as a unique orchestral exponent, an inspired artist saying something definite and compelling today.”
– Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Reviews
Performances of Rain Worthington’s compositions have spanned the globe from Brazil to Iceland, Cyprus to Korea, with premieres in Tokyo, Oxford University, and Delhi India. Her work takes “. . . ideas of American musical style to a new place – like a walk in a familiar, yet very different park” – Chamber Music Magazine
Self-taught in composition, her catalog includes works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, duos, solos, and miniatures. Inspirations for pieces have ranged from “NYC trucks late into the night, to the two-note expression of a sigh, to a dream of a careening bike ride through dark fog.”
With a strong childhood memory of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, an affinity for Satie’s piano music, and the allure of Middle-Eastern modal music leading her to travels in Greece, Egypt, and Turkey, Worthington has always followed her own musical instincts.
She first began composing solo piano pieces, before learning music notation, and performed her works from memory in fellow artists’ lofts in Soho and at The Kitchen. With the downtown NYC club scene serving as her conservatory, Worthington led two bands and performed at CBGB’s, the Pyramid, Roulette, and PS 122.
Inspired by the energy of the contemporary classical scene, she pursued her fascination with orchestral music and taught herself notation and orchestration. Her orchestral writing has been described in the IAWM Journal as “a fusion of styles—ancient, medieval sounds expressed via modality and open sonorities, modernist minimalist ostinato, and classical approaches to basic ideas—to capture components of the human experience.”
Navona Records released Worthington’s album of orchestral works, DREAM VAPORS, in 2016 to critical acclaim. She was a guest composer for two Missouri State University Symphony premieres of her orchestral works, Tracing a Dream and In Passages. In 2018, In Passages received premieres in Italy and Brazil.
Worthington has received the American Prize Ernst Bacon Award, a Global Music award, and grants from Meet The Composer, ASCAP, American Music Center, NYFA, and American Composers Forum. She serves as Artistic Administrator/Composer Advocate for the New York Women Composers.
Photo: Mark Berger
Ssu-Yu Huang
Ssu-Yu Huang, a native of Taiwan, enjoys an active career in contemporary music. Her compositions – covering a wide range of music with bold and delicate genres – are performed by professional musicians and orchestras in Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United States, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela. German maestro Günther Herbig praised her orchestral work, calling it “a modern and complex style, presenting her own characters and creativity.” She has received awards and honors including the first Call For Score of the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan in 2010 (winner), the 2013 IBLA Grand Prize (Most Distinguished Award), the 2015 American Prize (semi-finalist in composition-chamber music), and the 2016 Maurice Ravel International Composition Competition. During 1997-2000, she was commissioned by Kazuhito Yamashita to compose many pieces for guitar solo, including the "Grand Music of Tang," a suite of 24 pieces inspired by poems from the Tang Dynasty of China. In 2018, her orchestra piece “Heritage of Hakka” was premiered at the grand opening ceremony of the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts Weiwuying. Her compositions have been published globally through companies such as Mahin Media (United States), Mark Custom Recording (United States), and Ablaze (Australia). Her wind band and ensemble scores have been published by Golden Hearts Publications (Japan). In recent years, Huang's works have been increasingly performed throughout European, Asian, and American continents.
Bruce Reiprich
Bruce Reiprich's music has been described as having "unapologetic lushness" (NewMusicBox), "post-romantic radiance" (Danbury News-Times), and "a contemplative mood, its sedate pace subtly dilating the flow of time" (Eagle Rock Patch). It has also been characterized as "a deeply personal mediation on the poet's feelings" (San Francisco Classical Voice), "very powerful" (All Music Guide), "lovely and evocative" (Guitar Review-New York), "very impressive" (Cumhuriyet-Turkey), and "of special interest" (Guitar International-England). With compositions that span the gamut from overt tonality and metric regularity to atonality and pronounced rhythmic flexibility, he explores the beauty of lyrical lines, lush harmonies, and colorful textures. Recently, he has been influenced by the long sentences with multiple subordinate clauses that Marcel Proust employed in his In Search of Lost Time, as well as the long, rhapsodic sentences of László Krasznahorkai, Claude Simon, and Mircea Cărtărescu. Ultimately, it is the beauty of the serene and quiescent in both nature and art that serves as his inspiration.
His music has been performed by violinists Miranda Cuckson and Goran Končar, pianists Vicki Ray, Ana Cláudia de Assis, Stephen Gosling, Mark Robson and Gary Barnett, the Indiana University New Music Ensemble, Washington Square Contemporary Music Society/League ISCM Chamber Players, Oficina Música Viva (Brazil), California E.A.R Unit, Ensemble Flageolet, Zeitgeist, Boston Modern Orchestra Project (Club Cafe Series), Composers, Inc., Boston New Music Initiative, Grand Circle New Music, Hartt Contemporary Players Ensemble, Society for New Music, Civic Performers Innovative Music, Gregg Smith Singers, Hradec Kralove Philharmonic Orchestra (Czech Republic), Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra, Knox-Galesburg Symphony, Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus, and Oakland Civic Orchestra.
His music has been heard abroad with performances in Brazil, China, Poland, Germany, Romania, Portugal, England, Turkey, and Mexico, and throughout the United States. International, national, and regional festival performances include the Festival of New Music: Touchpoints (Portugal), Săptămâna Internatională a Muzicii Noi (Romania), Shenyang Conservatory Festival of American Music (China), Piano Spheres, Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, International Double Reed Society Conference, North American Saxophone Alliance National Convention, Society of Composers National and Regional Conferences, San Francisco Chamber Wind Festival, and New Directions Concerts (California), among others.
After receiving B.M. and M.A. degrees in music theory from the Eastman School of Music, Reiprich attended the University of Iowa, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in music composition. A former faculty member of the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and Wilkes University, he joined the Northern Arizona University faculty in 1999, where he is currently a Professor of Music Composition and Theory in the School of Music. In addition to composing and teaching, he is actively engaged in the promotion of contemporary music as Director of Flageolet, a professional new music ensemble.
Photo: Melissa Dunstan, Tangled Lilac Photography
Beth Mehocic
Beth Mehocic (United States), is a composer, poet, visual artist, filmmaker, and author. She received her M.M. and Ph.D. in music composition from Michigan State University, East Lansing, and is currently the Music Director/Composer-in-Residence and full professor for the Department of Dance at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Mehocic has written over 100 works for orchestra, concert band, chamber music, dance ensembles, theatre, and film, and her works have been performed throughout the United States, Japan, China, Korea, and Europe. She has produced works in several Las Vegas Hotels including The Mirage, Caesar's Palace, and the Las Vegas Hilton.
From 2000-18, several of her music compositions written for choreography have been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Edinburgh Scotland, the Adelaide Fringe Festival in Adelaide Australia, and for joint concerts between UNLV and the Korea National Sport University in Seoul Korea. Her video dance poem Perpetual Motion with original music for vibraphone quartet was also performed in Seoul Korea, and the video is in the Jerome Robbins Dance Library of the NYC Library at Lincoln Center.
Shadows, a dance poem with her original music, and her video dance poem, Hands, were presented at the 2005 International Taishan Congress of Cultures and the 19th World Congress of Poets in Tai’an City, Shandong Province, China for which she was awarded a “Gold Medal in Innovation” for digital poetry, dance, and music by the People’s Republic of China.
As a multimedia performing artist, her music, poetry, visual art, and dance were presented in her one-woman exhibit entitled “Poetic Visions” which was on tour in the Clark County Library Galleries in Las Vegas.
She has received several grants from The Nevada State Council on the Arts as well as receiving a grant for her participation in the China Conference. Her other grants include awards from New Music Across America, the Southwest Gas Corp., The Western States Arts Foundation, and Meet-the-Composer, as well as awards in music composition from ASCAP.
Her article "Learning to Dance with Live Music" was published by Dance Teacher Now and her article "Chamber Music in Las Vegas" was featured in the directory edition of Chamber Music America.
She was proclaimed "Distinguished Composer" of the City of Las Vegas by Former Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, and received commissions from New Music Across America, the Sierra Woodwind Quintet, and the University of Utah for a musical score to a documentary film that commemorated 50 years of dance history at that university as well as commissions from Artists Embassy International and the Natica Angilly Poetic Dance Theater.
She was awarded the First Performing Artist's Fellowship in Music Composition from the State of Nevada and became a founding member for the International Guild of Musicians in Dance, the first guild in western history devoted to the advancement of concert dance music and musical education of dancers. She was also the founding editor for the Guild's Journal for three years.
Photo: Louis Kavouras
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