Artists

Sidney started composing when he was 6. He learned species counterpoint when he was 10, and entered Juilliard when he was 15, studying composition with Hall Overton. He also studied with Roger Sessions and Otto Luening at Juilliard, with Darius Milhaud at Aspen, and with Charles Dodge at Columbia University. Over the past 10 years, his hearing has diminished rather severely. But with some creative programming of his hearing aids, he has continued composing, and today is at the top of his creative powers.

For more information, please visit his website

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Leonard V. Ball, Jr. is Associate Professor Emeritus of Composition and Theory at the University of Georgia, where he taught music theory, acoustic composition, electronic composition, and music technology. While at UGA, he was also Director of the University of Georgia electronic studio from 1987 to 1995; Director of the Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music Electronic Studios from 1995 to 2001; Director of the Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music from 2002 to June 2015; and Chair of the Composition/Theory area from 2010 to June 2015.

Ball's works have been performed across the United States and in Europe, South America, and Japan. His electronic works have focused on interactivity using movement (dance) as a control source for sound generation/manipulation and, more recently, real-time manipulation of instrumentally produced sound. In 2016, his work ..leaves~ ~ ~ (he.. ~ she.. ~ the.. ~), for flute, viola, and harp, was recorded by members of the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra in the Czech Republic, produced by PARMA Recordings, and mastered by PARMA in the United States. Also in 2016, Ball was selected as a semi-finalist in The American Prize in Composition Chamber Music (Professional Division) contest for his song cycle The World Turns Softly. In 2019, he was selected as a finalist in The American Prize in Composition 2018-19 contest, this time in the Instrumental Chamber Music (Professional Division), for the work ice crystals ~ lava flows~ ~, a real-time sound manipulation work for one performer, three saxophones, and Max 7 software using an Apple MacBook Pro as the processing platform.

Born in Richmond VA, and brought up in eastern North Carolina, Ball’s musically formative years were spent as a vocalist/guitarist in legacy dance bands, folk groups and light rock bands, eventually culminating in professional work as an arranger/performer for several folk and bluegrass groups. After an eight-year hiatus with the United States Army, he earned a Bachelor of Music degree, with honors, in Theory and Composition and a Master of Music degree in Composition from Kansas State University. In 1987, immediately before joining the faculty of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia, he completed the Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis). His principal teachers were T. Hanley Jackson, John Baur, and Donald Freund.

www.leonardballjrmusic.net

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Edgar Barroso received his Phd in Music Composition from Harvard University, where he was director of the Harvard Group of New Music, and worked with Hans Tutschku, Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, Michael Gandolfi and Chaya Czernowin. In 2013 he was selected as part of the Inaugural Society of Harvard Horizon Scholars and from 2010 - 2012 was the appointed Director of the Harvard Group for New Music. From 2015 - 2018 he became a member of Mexico�s National System of Art Creators. His music has received awards and performances in Russia, Europe, Asia, North America and Latin America. His compositional interest revolve around transdisciplinary collaboration, allusive sonic streams, technology, energy conflict and the embodiment of sound through objects and gestures. His music has been played by some of the best ensembles and soloist specialized in contemporary music such as MusikFabrik, Mario Caroli, Elision Ensemble, Diotima Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Garth Knox, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Sonodualis, Gabriel Diaz, Matthias M�ller, the Callithumpian Consort, Ensemble Nikel, Corrado Rojac, Argento Ensemble, among others. Barroso has scored music for film, documentary, audiovisuals, animation, short films, installations and recently he is exploring with experimental video among other audio visual collaborations. Edgar combines his career as a composer and entrepreneur creating several startups and laboratories that promote creativity and transdisciplinary collaboration for innovation and social purposes.

He currently lives in Zurich, Switzerland where he continues composing, learning and enjoying the company of his wife Ulla. For more information, please visit his website

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Scott Barton composes, performs, and produces (electro)(acoustic) music. His interests include rhythmic complexity in beat-based contexts, machine rhythms, auditory and temporal perception, musical robotic instrument design, human-robot interaction in composition and performance, and audio production. As a composer, his works explore how we perceptually organize sonic information into rhythms, (dis)continuities and forms. They involve human performers, robotic instruments, studio-produced recordings and interactive software. They illuminate the possibilities of stylistic heterogeneity through synthesis and juxtaposition of unlike elements on a variety of temporal scales. Often the latter are small, which produce micro-collages that challenge listeners� perceptual abilities to make distinctions and find ordered sequences. His music has been performed in the United States, Europe, Mexico, South America and Asia and has been featured at SMC; ICMC; NIME; SEAMUS; The Original Gravity Concert Series, The International Symposium on Sound and Interactivity; Sound, Sight and Play Conference; Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval Symposium; Leeds International Festival for Innovations in Music Production and Composition; and the CERF festival. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Performances and more information can be found on his website.

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John Beall, a native Texan born in 1942, has been Composer in Residence at West Virginia University since 1978. Through his increasing devotion to hymn and folk sources of West Virginia and the surrounding Appalachian country, he has undergone a sort of musical adoption. He himself is a string player (bass, cello) and pianist, he is also the father of another musician, violist Stephen Beall, and husband of pianist Carol Allen Beall. His love of string playing, and the combinations of strings with the piano resound through many of his greatest works of chamber music.

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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.

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Brian Belet lives in Campbell, California (USA), with his partner and wife Marianne Bickett. He performs with the ensemble SoundProof using Kyma, viola, and bass. He has performed in symphony orchestras, rock and jazz bands, avant-garde ensembles, and a wide variety of recording sessions. He earned his DMA degree in composition from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990. His music is recorded on the Centaur, Capstone, Frog Peak Music, IMG Media, Innova, PARMA/Ravello, SWR Music/Hänssler Classic, and the University of Illinois CD labels; with research published in Contemporary Music Review, Organised Sound, Perspectives of New Music, and Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference. To finance this real world Dr. Belet works as Professor of Music at San Jose State University.

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Jon's work has been shown in concerts, festivals, and galleries across North America and Europe, including Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS); Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS); the Smithsonian Museum of American History (D.C.); International Computer Music Conference (ICMC); with special performances at the Casa da Musica (Porto, Portugal) and CCRMA (Palo Alto, CA). His music and media explore environmental sustainability, data-driven interactivity, site-specific sound, and choreographic composition. Jon is a co-director of Harmonic Laboratory, an interdisciplinary arts collective focused on art and technology collaborations.

Jon has received awards through the Mozilla Community Gigabit Fund, the Oregon Community Foundation Creative Heights Grant, the Jefferson Trust, and has served as a University of Virginia Presidential Fellow in Data Science, an Environmental Resilience and Sustainability Fellow, and an Art & Environmental Action Scholar. Jon studied composition with Samuel F. Pellman, Matthew Burtner, Ted Coffey, Jeffrey Stolet, Judith Shatin and others, earning degrees at University of Virginia (Ph.D., M.A.), University of Oregon (M.Mus.), Hamilton College (B.A.) and Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences (Dip.).

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Critically acclaimed as "a passionate pianist and scholar," Svetlana Belsky is a highly-demanded recitalist and chamber pianist, noted for her remarkable rapport with audiences and stylistic versatility. She has appeared in Italy, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Canada, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States. Belsky has received awards both for her performances in international piano competitions and for her advocacy of new American music.

Belsky's fascination with the legacy of Ferruccio Busoni began during her Doctoral studies. Her dissertation was an annotated translation of Busoni as Pianist by the famed Soviet musicologist Grigory Kogan. Subsequently, the book was published in 2010 by the University of Rochester Press on their prestigious Eastman Studies in Music series. The book received widespread praise from Busoni scholars and lay readers, and was featured on BBC radio in December 2016. Belsky champions Busoni�s legacy by performing and recording his music and lecturing about Busoni's historical contributions to Bach scholarship, among others.

Following emigration from the Soviet Union, Belsky studied with Emilio Del Rosario in Chicago. She earned her Bachelor of Music summa cum laude and master's degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, studying with Ann Schein. Later, she earned her doctorate in performance at the Manhattan School of Music, working with Nina Svetlanova. As the Coordinator of Piano Studies at the University of Chicago, Belsky teaches students from four continents, among many other academic responsibilities.

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Utah composer, Marie Nelson Bennett (1926 – 2018), earned her music degree from Yale while studying with Paul Hindemith. 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, 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 and 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 was 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.

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Sauro Berti, bass clarinetist of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, has collaborated with the most important Italian orchestras (Teatro alla Scala, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, RAI National Orchestra), the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyvaskyla. He has played under G.Prêtre, R.Chailly, M.W.Chung, R.Muti, W.Sawallisch, V.Gergiev, L.Maazel, P.Boulez, and Z.Mehta. He has also participated in the DVD recording of Mozart's Serenade No. 10 "Gran Partita" under M. Muti. Berti was a soloist at the Tokyo ClarinetFest 2008, the last five ClarinetFest� 2009-2013 (Porto, Austin, Los Angeles, Lincoln, Assisi), the 2nd Costa Rica Festival, the 1st and 2nd Peruvian Congreso Latinoamericanos, the 5th "Congreso de Madrid," the Festival Guimaraes 2012, and the 3rd Guatemala Festival 2013. In 2009 he obtained his conducting diploma with D.Renzetti. He has published Venti Studi per Clarinetto Basso, Tuning for winds (Suvini Zerboni), his version of V. Bucchi's concerto and the album Suggestions with N. Fujiya (Edipan).

Berti plays on Buffet Crampon instruments and is a Rico Artist.

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Doug Bielmeier creates commercial drone and mediation music tailored for boutique audiences and media. His love of combining technology and music was first cultivated while studying with composer Robert Carl (student of Iannis Xenakis)at the Hartt School of Music in the late 90s After going on to earn his masters in composition Bielmeier shifted his attention to recording and popular music working as a staff engineer in Washington D.C. and subsequently working as a freelance engineer in Nashville. T.N. Currently, Bielmeier is a professor at the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI and designer/manager of the C.L.E.A.R. Laboratory: a state-of-the-art music and production facility designed for the creation, mixing, and mastering of new electronic works.

www.noisybuffalo.com

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Christopher Biggs is a composer and multimedia artist residing in Kalamazoo, MI, where he is Associate Professor of Music Composition and Technology at Western Michigan University. Biggs' recent projects focus on integrating live instrumental performance with interactive audiovisual media. His compositions reflect on extramusical concepts, including climate change, physics, philosophy, and politics. Biggs is a co-founder and the director of SPLICE Institute, a weeklong intensive summer program for performers and composers to experience, explore, create, discuss, and learn techniques related to the creation and presentation of music for instruments and electronics.

Biggs teaches music composition, electronic music production, digital signal processing, visual programming, and music theory. He received degrees from American University, The University of Arizona, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He studied music composition with James Mobberley, Paul Rudy, João Pedro Oliveira, Daniel Asia, Chen Yi, and Zhou Long.

christopher-biggs.squarespace.com

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Gina Biver is a composer, guitarist, vocalist, and producer based in the Washington DC area. She composes electroacoustic music for chamber ensemble, choirs, dance, multimedia, and film. Her work is inspired by the written word and by visual art, both static and moving. Her life and her work involve collaborations with other musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, poets, computer artists, sculptors, painters, and video artists.

Gina�s music contains a sense of rebelliousness - an auditory democracy where it�s anyone�s guess who wins. Her constant need to create and interpret the world around her in musical terms pushes her forward, beyond her everyday life and into a rich internal existence. Her deep musical world contains the struggle and push/pull between pulse and lack of pulse, electronics and acoustics, words and lines, shadow and light, form and freedom.More information can be found on her website.

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Bob Bliss is a musician, software engineer, and instrument designer residing near Santa Cruz, CA. Born in Michigan, he was playing guitar in his first band at age 10, and bass guitar and keyboards soon after. He studied the French horn and composition in middle and high schools, and by age 16 was building electronic music synthesizers in his basement. Interleaving college and music, he played bass in two college jazz bands, and by 18 he was playing pop, rock, and funk keyboards nightly as a professional, while still studying electronics technology, computers, piano, and music theory. After a stint playing progressive symphonic rock, he and his band mate and wife-to-be Paula relocated to California. Bob landed a gig as electronics technician at the first music store he walked into in Santa Cruz, where he would later meet Jim Schliestett, soon to be friend and musical collaborator.

After a few years of gigging the Santa Cruz music scene in the eighties, Bob began his long engineering career at E-MU Systems. As a principal software engineer at E-MU, he wrote the operating system, realtime synthesizer, and signal processing code for the Emulator IV series of digital samplers, an instrument used by such music professionals as Tony Banks (Genesis), Trevor Rabin (Yes), and film composers Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman. Bob played electric guitar and keyboards on hundreds of pop and rock dates in the nineties, occasionally behind such notables as the Drifters, and Peter Noone (Herman's Hermits). Continuing into the new century, he has played with former members of the Doobie Brothers, Snail, and Little River Band, at times in front of the Santa Cruz Symphony Orchestra, and has recently recorded a CD of original eclectic folk-rock with Paula. His current day gig is Software Architect and partner at Rossum Electro-Music, LLC, purveyors of fine synthesizers.

With 2017 marking the 30-year anniversary of the creation of "Sunrise Sonata", Jim and Bob are turning their attentions to their creative futures, and are thrilled to be joining the PARMA musical community as Schliestett & Bliss. close

Jennifer Borkowski enjoys an active and varied career as a flutist, researcher, teacher, and composer. She was founding member of the Ensemble-Zeitfluss Graz and has performed with the Klangforum Wien at the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and at modern music festivals Wien Modern and Steirischer Herbst. She has worked with composers such as Peter Ablinger, Nikolaus Huber, and Salvatore Sciarrino. Together with Andy Icochea, Borkowski co-founded the Ensemble Vienna Nova, performing chamber operas including three world premieres in Vienna's Musikverein and at the Sagra Musicale Umbria in Italy. Prior to this period, she spent a decade as a freelance orchestral musician in the Philadelphia and New York areas.

Borkowski earned a Ph.D. in Instrumental and Vocal Pedagogy from the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz. She publishes academic research on the physical demands of performing experimental music. Her academic writing can be found in the book The Body is the Message and the journal Medical Problems of Performing Artists. Flute related articles are in Flute Talk Magazine and Flute Focus. Borkowski has lectured at the Kael Franzens Universität Graz, The Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, The Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Gratz, The College Music Society National Conference, and at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge MA.

Born in Philadelphia, Borkowski is a long time resident of Vienna, Austria where she lives with her husband and two daughters.

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The Boston University Wind Ensemble is the premiere wind band of the Boston University School of Music. Under the baton of Professor David J. Martins, the Wind Ensemble is designed to prepare wind, brass, and percussion players for the professional world, and provide future teachers with concepts related to the study of band repertoire. The ensemble, made up of undergraduate and graduate level music majors, has participated in collaborations with composers and other universities, resulting in several world premieres.

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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.

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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.

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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 O�a 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.

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New York pianist and composer Allen Brings has performed extensively both in the U.S. and abroad, especially in programs of music for four-hand piano with Genevieve Chinn, with whom he has recorded for Orion, CRI, and Centaur. His published compositions, which include works for orchestra, band, chorus, various chamber ensembles, piano, organ, harpsichord, guitar, and voice, have been recorded by Capstone, Centaur, Grenadilla, Contemporary Record Society, North/South Recordings, Arizona University Recordings, and Vienna Modern Masters. He is also coauthor of A New Approach to Keyboard Harmony, published by W. W. Norton, and has contributed articles to College Music Symposium, Contemporary Music Newsletter, New Music Connoisseur, Society of Composers Newsletter, New Oxford Review, ComposerUSA, sounding board and Adoremus Bulletin.

He has twice served as chairman of the eastern region of the American Society of University Composers and is currently vice-president of Connecticut Composers. Each year since 1975 he has received an ASCAP Award. In 1988 he was awarded an Individual Artist Grant by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.

Brings graduated magna cum laude from Queens College in 1955 and earned his M.A. from Columbia University in 1957, where he was a Mosenthal Fellow and a student of Otto Luening. In 1962 he became a Naumburg Fellow at Princeton University, where he studied with Roger Sessions. In 1964 he received a doctorate in theory and composition from Boston University, where he was a student of Gardner Read.

Brings is Professor Emeritus of Music at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College of the City University of New York. He is a director of the Weston Music Center and School of the Performing Arts in Weston, Connecticut, where he has taught since 1960.

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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.

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Neely Bruce is a prolific composer, pianist, conductor, and scholar of American music. He has composed over 700 pieces of music, including three full-length operas, five one-act operas, oratorios and other choral works, about 300 solo songs, chamber music, seven documentary video scores for PBS, and 14 hours of solo piano music. In 2013, Bruce began This Is It! - a series of twelve recitals comprising his complete piano music - to conclude in 2017.

Bruce is also a composer of operas. His first opera, Americana, or, A New Tale of the Genii, was produced in 1985 in a semi-staged concert version. His second opera, Hansel and Gretel, was commissioned and premiered by Connecticut Opera, with subsequent productions at Trinity College of Music (London) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

His first one-act opera, Pyramus and Thisbe, based on the play-within-the-play in A Midsummer Night's Dream, was recently revived by the Graduate Opera Workshop at Indiana University. His most recent work for the musical stage is an expanded version of the 1728 ballad opera, Flora, commissioned by Spoleto USA. Flora can be heard online by linking to NPR's "World of Opera," May 20, 2011. Bruce calls this work "my new eighteenth century opera."

Bruce's largest work is entitled Convergence. Commissioned by the American Composers Forum as part of its Continental Harmony project, Convergence received its premiere on June 18, 2000, as part of the New Haven International Festival of Arts and Ideas. In 2002, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors presented a revised and expanded performance of this piece, enthusiastically received by an audience of 10,000. As a pianist, Bruce has specialized in the music of American composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and his recordings appear on a variety of labels. In 2005, Bruce set the Bill of Rights to music, in the style of William Billings. Important premieres as a pianist include The Time Curve Preludes of William Duckworth, Twelve Fugues by Gerald Shapiro, and Arthur Farwell's Piano Sonata. He is the only pianist to have performed all of the solo vocal music of Charles Ives.

Important engagements as a conductor include the twentieth century revival of Rip Van Winkle by George Bristow and several major works of Henry Brant. Dr. Bruce is also the founder and director of two ensembles devoted exclusively to the music of the United States-the American Music Group (at the University of Illinois) and the American Music/Theatre Group, headquartered in Hartford CT. Dr. Bruce is John Spencer Camp Professor of Music at Wesleyan University.

Bruce has described his compositions like this: "My music is characterized by concern for structure juxtaposed with process, the use of instrumental and vocal color for its own sake, an irrepressible lyrical impulse, and an eclecticism which is occasionally so extreme as to be virtually incomprehensible. Thirty-six years of practice have made the eclecticism much more comprehensible." For future dates and times, and descriptive comments about his music, go to neelybrucemusic.com and click on "Neely's Blog."

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Julius Bucsis is an award-winning composer, guitarist, and music technologist. Since beginning serious efforts with composition in 2011, his works have been included in over one hundred juried events worldwide. He creates compositions for fixed media, acoustic instruments with electronics, acoustic instruments without electronics, and for electric guitar with computer processing. He has performed his compositions for electric guitar with computer processing nationally and internationally. His compositions have been included on CDs released by Ravello Records, Ablaze, Electro-Music, RMN Classical, and Soundiff.

His artistic interests include using computer technology in music composition and performance, developing musical forms that incorporate improvisation, designing interactive installations, integrating video with audio, and composing music for traditional orchestral instruments. He has an associate's degree in music, a bachelor's degree in music composition, a master's certificate in music production and technology, and a master's degree in computer music composition. He is currently pursuing a doctor of arts in music degree at Ball State University.

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Matthew Burtner is an Alaskan-born composer and sound artist. An IDEA Award winner and first prize winner of the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music composition, Burtner works closely with politicians, scientists, artists and musicians, creating music in support of sustainability and free imagination. In 2014 he was invited to Brazil to work with former Vice President, Al Gore on Climate Reality, and in 2015 he was invited by the US State Department to create the music for President Barack Obama's visit to Alaska. In 2015 he was also a featured presenter on the Smithsonian Magazine's Future is Here festival and the Smithsonian Natural History Museum's Arctic Spring Festival. In 2016 he presented Music for Climate Science at NASA's Goddard Space Center. His electronic and chamber music is played widely in festivals and concerts around the world and is available on several critically acclaimed albums. Jean Ferraca of Public Radio�s Here on Earth says "It is music that draws from both beauty and horror of nature... He calls his music "ecoacoustics". I say it's the world song." Burtner is a Professor of Composition and Computer Technologies (CCT) and Chair of the Department of Music at the University of Virginia, and Founder of the environmental arts non-profit organization, EcoSono.

More information can be found on his website.

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