• Hilary Tann

    Composer

    Welsh-born composer Hilary Tann lives in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York where she is the John Howard Payne Professor of Music Emerita at Union College, Schenectady. Her compositions have been widely performed and recorded by ensembles such as the European Women’s Orchestra, Tenebrae, Lontano, Marsyas Trio, Thai Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and BBC National Orchestra of Wales.  Recent composer-residencies include the 2011 Eastman School of Music Women in Music Festival, 2013 Women Composers Festival of Hartford, and 2015 Welsh Music Center.  Praised for its lyricism (“beautiful, lyrical work” – Classical Music Web) and formal balance (“In the formal balance of this music, there is great beauty …” – Welsh Music), her music is influenced by a strong identification with the natural world.

  • Composer

    Born in Long Beach CA, Mark Edwards Wilson is a composer of remarkable artistic range and diversity. His earliest influence was undoubtedly his mother, Rosalie Brashears Wilson, a talented pianist, who, as a teenager, was among the last generation to work as an organist for silent film theaters in the Los Angeles area. In a recent interview, Wilson commented on his earliest memories of her playing. “I can remember her thundering away at the family piano. Given a melody, she could improvise on the spot, filling the house with cascades of show arpeggios and runs.” Wilson began his musical training in earnest with violin studies starting at the age of six and he played in various chamber music groups and orchestras throughout his youth and early twenties.

  • Composer

    Stefan Poetzsch (b. 1963 in Magdeburg, Germany) began studying violin in his early youth in what was formerly East Germany. At the age of 16, he happened to catch a radio show broadcasting a piece focused on the music of Polish violinist Zbigniew Seifert and his subsequent death. Upon hearing Seifert's approach to the instrument, Poetzsch's interest in music from this moment on was forever changed. It instantly made the teenager look at the violin differently and how he approached the sound of its strings.

  • Composer

    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.

  • Composer

    Lukas Foss (1922-2009) German-born American composer of primarily stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, and piano works that have been performed throughout the world; he was also active as a conductor. He started piano and theory studies with Julius Goldstein-Herford at an early age and began composing at age seven. After studies in composition in Paris from 1933-37, he studied composition with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute of Music from 1937-39.

  • Composer

    Barbara Jazwinski studied composition and theory at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, Poland. She received her M.A. degree in composition and piano from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in composition from the City University of New York. Her teachers included Mario Davidovsky, Andrzej Dobrowolski, Gyorgy Ligeti and John Chowning.

  • Eric Honour

    Composer, Saxophonist

    Eric Honour has developed an international reputation as a composer, saxophonist, and audio engineer. A member of the Athens Saxophone Quartet, he performs regularly throughout Europe and the United States, and has presented lectures and master classes at many leading institutions.

  • Daniel Adams

    Composer

    Daniel Adams (b. 1956, Miami FL) is a Professor of Music at Texas Southern University in Houston.  Adams holds a Doctor of Musical Arts (1985) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master of Music from the University of Miami (1981) and a Bachelor of Music from Louisiana State University (1978). He served as the College Music Society Board Member for Composition from 2015 through 2017. Adams is the composer of numerous published musical compositions and the author of many articles and reviews on topics related to 20th-century percussion music, music pedagogy, and the music of Texas.  His book entitled “The Solo Snare Drum” was published in 2000. He also contributed two entries published in 2009 in the Oxford Encyclopedia of African-American History: 1896 to the Present and has authored a revision of the Miami FL entry for the Grove Dictionary of American Music.

  • Pierre Schroeder

    Composer

    Pierre, a French native, came to music as a child, studying classical piano and transcribing themes from movie composers on the family’s piano. Emotions are in the center of his work, and reviewers have often noted cinematic elements in his music, while describing “an imaginative musical craftsman at work, capable of evoking real wonder, mystery, reverence, and celebration.”

  • Composer

    William Vollinger is predominantly a composer of vocal music, spoken and/or sung, performed by groups such as the Gregg Smith Singers and New York Vocal Arts Ensemble, whose performance of Three Songs About the Resurrection won first prize at the Geneva International Competition. The instrumental work The Violinist in the Mall won the 2005 Friends and Enemies of New Music competition. Sound Portraits is a collection of his vocal works featuring soprano Linda Ferraira recorded by Capstone-Ravello. Raspberry Man was selected for both the 2009 National SCI Conference in Santa Fe NM and the University of Nebraska 2009 New Music Festival.

  • Composer

    Throughout his career, composer ROBERT BAKSA has steadfastly re­sisted jumping on the bandwagon of musical fads or academic trends, choos­ing instead to pursue a personal vision of his own by speaking through a musi­cal voice that combines the linear clarity and architectural shape of the classical era with a distinctly American and con­temporary sensibility. 

  • Composer

    Bruce Hamilton composes and performs music in a variety of genres. He is a Professor of Music at Western Washington University, where he teaches composition, theory, and directs the electroacoustic music program. He received his DM from Indiana University, and has performed as a percussionist, improviser, and electronic musician for over 20 years. His music is published by Non Sequitur Music and can be heard on the Albany, Memex, P'hill, SEAMUS, and Mark labels. Hamilton has received honors, awards and commissions from ALEA Ill, AMC, ASCAP, PAS, Barlow Endowment, Carbondale Community Arts, Indiana University, Jerome Foundation, National Society of Arts and Letters, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Whatcom Symphony, Russolo-Pratella Foundation, and SEAMUS.

  • Composer

    Jason Haney's music has been performed in the US, Canada, the UK and China; at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Scotia Festival in Halifax, New Music Miami, Music2000 in Cincinnati, the Staunton Music Festival, Richmond's ChamberFest, the Composers Inc. concert series in San Francisco, and by groups such as the Chester Quartet, the Sunrise Quartet and the New Millennium Ensemble. He has won awards and honors from the National Association of Composers USA, ASCAP, the Music Teachers' National Association, and first prize in the Washington International Competition, among others. He teaches composition and music theory at James Madison University.

  • Composer

    Composer Paul Osterfield's works have been performed throughout the United States and internationally by soloists and ensembles, including the Blakemore Trio, neoPhonia, the Stones River Chamber Players, and the Cleveland Orchestra at their "Family Key Concert" series. His music is available on the Equilibrium and Capstone labels. A recent artist at the MacDowell Colony, he has also received awards from BMI, ASCAP, the National Federation of Music Clubs, and the Library of Congress. Paul Osterfield has served on the faculties at Middle Tennessee State University, where he is Associate Professor of Music Composition and Theory, and Ithaca College. He holds degrees from Cornell University, Indiana University, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, having studied composition with Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, Eugene O'Brien, Frederick Fox, and Donald Erb.

  • Composer

    J. Ryan Garber is an Associate Professor at Carson-Newman College where he teaches music composition, theory, organ, and bassoon. A native of Virginia, he earned degrees from James Madison University and The Florida State University. Garber has received awards, grants; and recognition from five national organizations. In 2002, the Tennessee Music Teachers Association presented Garber with its "Composer of the Year" award. His Concerti no for orchestra is featured on ERM Media's "Masterworks of a New Era" series. and his music has been performed in many parts of the US and in Germany and Austria.

  • Composer

    A native of New York City, Allen Brings received a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Queens College  and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University, where he was a Mosenthal Fellow and a student of Otto Luening, and  a doctorate in theory and composition from Boston University, where he was a teaching fellow and a student of Gardner Read.

  • Composer

    David K. Gompper (b. 1954) has lived and worked professionally as a pianist, conductor, and composer in New York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan, and Texas. He is currently Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at The University of Iowa. From 2002 to 2003 Gompper was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching, performing and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory. 

  • Composer

    Elizabeth R. Austin’s music is meticulous and complex, filled with movement, growth, and turning points. Not a bad description for her own life.” This quote, from an article in SCOPE (Winter, 2011) written by Michael K. Slayton, continues to be relevant to this octogenarian, whose focus on writing music has become even more intense!

  • Composer

    David Bennett Thomas was born in 1969, in Westminster, Maryland. His official music studies began in high school, when he began taking lessons with jazz pianist Michael Connell. Thomas says "I knew at the first lesson that the course of my future was set." He would later be mentored by Lukas Foss, Ron Thomas, Jacques Voois, and Fred Hersch; and receive degrees from West Chester University, and The Peabody Conservatory of Music. 

  • Composer, Performer

    Having been taught and mentored by Henry Cowell and having developed his electronic music techniques in the studios under the direction of Ianis Xenakis, Barton McLean has had a 20-year teaching career in which, as director of the electronic music/music technology programs at Indiana University-South bend and the University of Texas-Austin he pioneered the first large-scale commercially-available digital sequencer (Synthi 100) and sampler (Fairlight CMI), and with his wife Priscilla produced 14 LP recordings and ten CDs, some of which have become staples in electronic music courses. In 1983 he and Priscilla McLean left academia to develop their electroacoustic duo The McLean Mix, which has proven itself in hundreds of concerts and installations throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, as a full-time career.