Artists

Alan Beeler completed his graduate study in theory and composition at Washington University, where he received an M.A. and Ph. D. He studied composition with Robert Wykes, Robert Baker, and Harold Blumenfeld, theory with Leigh Gerdine, and musicology with Lincoln Bunce Spiess and Paul Amadeus Pisk.

Beeler has taught music theory, composition, and oboe at Washington University and Eastern Kentucky University, where he was Professor of Music Theory and Composition. His many compositions include works for solo piano, chorus, chamber ensemble, string orchestra, full orchestra, and voice.

Utah composer Marie Nelson Bennett earned her music degree from Yale while studying with Paul Hindesmith. She earned her PhD in composition from the University of Utah.

Her orchestral works include eight symphonies, five concertos and the oratorio “Once in Israel.” She has also composed a trio for flute, clarinet and piano, a string quartet, various sonatas, songs, and choral works, and the scores of seven plays. Her opera Orpheus Lex was premiered in February 2010 in New York by the New York Virtuoso Singers under Harold Rosenbaum.

Her works have been premiered or recorded by London Symphony, Slovak Radio Symphony, Manhattan Sinfonia, Czech Radio Symphony, New York Chamber Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Corcordia, Prague Symphony, Utah Symphony, Salt Lake Symphony, Paradigm Chamber Orchestra and Boston Modern Orchestra.

Her works have been conducted by Gerard Schwarz, Robert Stankovsky, Glen Cortese, Vladimir Valek, Marin Alsop, Joseph Silverstein, Roger Briggs, Gil Rose, Joel Rosenberg, James Caswell and David Cho.

Marie is a recipient of the Merit of Honor Award at the University of Utah, where her works are held in a special collection. She has also been nominated for a Friedheim Award at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Pianist Kate Boyd is as a unique and versatile artist. She has performed as a soloist on many concert and concerto series and as a guest artist with established chamber music ensembles throughout the United States and beyond. Among many other performances, she has appeared on the Trinity Chapel Series in New York, the SOLO series in Sligo, Ireland, and performed Schubert in Schubert’s birth house in Vienna, Austria.

Boyd’s performances have been featured on CBC and NPR radio. A passionate advocate for new music, she has performed numerous world premieres, including James Woodward’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Ensemble. In Dublin, Ireland she was a featured soloist on the Bank of Ireland’s Mostly Modern Series, presenting a program of works by living women composers.

Recent performances have included recitals on the Musical Arts Series at Firelands in Port Clinton, Ohio and in New York's Steinway Hall, and chamber music appearances at the Painted Sky Music Festival in Flagstaff, Arizona and on the HVG Concert Series in New York City.

Kate Boyd’s collaborations have led her to work with musicians across the United States and in Europe, where she was active as a concert artist and teacher for seven years. She is a founding member of the New York-based Oracle Trio, a piano trio that performs works from the eighteenth century to the present.

For more information about Kate Boyd, please visit her website.

Illinois native Scott Brickman (b. 1963) was educated in the Chicago Public Schools and holds a B.M. from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in Music Composition & Theory from Brandeis University. Brickman learned under both Chester Biscardi and Yehudi Wyner, who he regards as his most important and influential composition teachers. Since 1997, he has taught at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, where he is Professor of Music and Education, and has served two three-year terms as Chair of the Arts and Humanities Division. Brickman is an active member of AFUM, the faculty union of the University of Maine System, and the MEA (Maine Education Association), of which AFUM is a local. He is the co-chair of Region I of the Society of Composers and has served as treasurer of the College Music Society-Northeast.

composes both acoustic and digital/electronic music. His compositions have been performed in over half of the continental United States and in eleven countries across Europe, the Middle East and North and South America, and are recorded on the New Ariel, Capstone, Seamus and ERM labels. Brickman’s works have been performed by ensembles such as the Windy City Winds, Wisconsin Arts Quintet, Oakwood Chamber Players, Lydian String Quartet, the Auros Group for New Music, the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Basso Moderno, and the Kieve Philharmonic among others, and artists such as pianists Jeffrey Jacob, Jenny Cruz, Deborah Nemko, and soprano Nancy Ogle.

Chicago-based Amy Briggs has established herself as both a leading interpreter of the music of living composers and a provider of fresh perspectives to music of the past. She is the pianist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW ensemble, where she has worked with composers such as Pierre Boulez, Augusta Read Thomas, Marc-Anthony Turnage, Oliver Knussen, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Osvaldo Golijov.

The Chicago Tribune has lauded Briggs’ “mastery of what lay on the dense, printed page and beyond,” and the Chicago Sun-Times called her a “ferociously talented pianist.” The New York Times described her recent Lincoln Center performance of Luciano Berio’s Sequenza IV as having “a live-wire intensity.”

Briggs’ previous recordings include three critically acclaimed discs of David Rakowski’s Piano Etudes on Bridge Records, solo piano and chamber music of Augusta Read Thomas for the ART label, and chamber music of Conlon Nancarrow, Morton Feldman, Edgar Varese, and Erik Oña for Wergo Records.

Briggs has performed as a soloist and chamber musician across the United States, Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and Asia. Amy Briggs earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance at Northwestern University as a student of Ursula Oppens. In 2009 she joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as Director of Chamber Music and Lecturer in Music.

Richard Brooks (b. 1942) is a native of upstate New York and holds a B.S. degree in Music Education from the Crane School of Music, Potsdam College, an M.A. in Composition from Binghamton University and a Ph. D. in Composition from New York University. From 1975-2004 he was on the music faculty of Nassau Community College where he was Professor and Department Chair for 22 years. From 1977 to 1982 he was Chairman of the Executive Committee of the American Society of University Composers (now the Society of Composers, Inc.) on which he continues to serve as the Producer of the SCI Compact Disk Series. In 1981 he was elected to the Board of Governors of the American Composers Alliance. After serving two terms as Secretary and three terms as Vice-President he was elected President in the Fall of 1993 and served until 2002; he is currently Chair of the Board of Governors.

The New Music Connoisseur selected him as their New Music Champion for 2006-2007. He was recently appointed composer-in-residence with the Lark Ascending performance ensemble. He has received a major grant from the SUNY Research Foundation (for composition), a Composer Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, an American Music Center grant and several Meet the Composer awards. He has received commisions from the Music Teachers National Association, the Kent Philharmonia Orchestra (Grand Rapids), Harpsichord Unlimited (Elaine Comparone), the Lark Ascending and several individual performers. Recordings of his music are available on the Capstone label, and (soon) the Innova label.