Composers

New York composer Debra Kaye has honed her craft collaborating with musicians of Manhattan's dynamic new music community. AND SO IT BEGINS, her debut album, is the result of this cross-pollination, with most of the music played by those who commissioned and premiered it. Music is movement - a concept from Kaye's Dalcroze studies, these pieces have a visceral, visual quality, balancing pathos and humor, poetry and drama, taking the listener on a wide ranging journey that blends her deep classical roots with traces of jazz, world music, folk and pop.

Steven Kemper composes music for acoustic instruments, instruments and computers, musical robots, dance and video. He is a co-founder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), a collective dedicated to designing, building, and composing original music for robotic instruments. He has received awards from Meet the Composer, the Danish Arts Council, and the International Computer Music Association. Steven received a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies from the University of Virginia and is Assistant Professor of Music Technology and Composition in the Music Department at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Colin Kemper is a composer, performer, and educator. His compositional interests are multifaceted; particularly, his art is concerned with matters pertaining to mental wellness, family dynamics, gender norms, addiction, trauma, and recovery. He is interested in collaborative endeavors involving notated music, electronic, electro-acoustic, popular song, theater, video games, film, dance, screendance, and multimedia installation.

Acclaimed by Fanfare Magazine as “Masterful...a modernized Rachmaninoff” Christopher J. Keyes (b. 1963) began his career as a pianist, winning many competitions and later making his “double-debut” in Carnegie Hall as both soloist and guest composer with the New York Youth Symphony. He began formal composition lessons at the University of California at Santa Barbara, earning a B.M. in Piano Performance and a B.A. in Creative Studies with an emphasis in composition. He continued his musical training at the Eastman School of Music, completing his doctorate in 1992. His major composition teachers include Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler, Christopher Rouse, and Robert Morris. Among his numerous awards are the Eastman Szernovsky Award, several ASCAP Grants to Young Composers, and the Rudolf Nissim Award for best orchestral work written by a living ASCAP member. He is also an author of various scholarly articles on subjects including audio engineering, the pedagogy of composition, and music technology.

Hee Yun Kim (b. 1971) is a composer of a wide variety of music including orchestra, chamber ensemble, chorus, and solo instruments. Her compositions have been performed by diverse ensembles across the globe, including Ensemble Calliopée, L’Orchestre de la Francophonie, University of Illinois Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Metropolitan Chorus, Dallas Asian Winds, New York New Music Ensemble, Alea III, Composers’ Ensemble of Northern New York, Juventas Ensemble, Loop 38, Euterpe Quintet, and HET trio. Her music has been reviewed as being “fully convincing” and “masterfully orchestrated” (Paris: La Lettre du Musicien).

Philip Koplow’s first association with professional Cincinnati musicians was the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra’s performance of his tone poem Generations in 1980. Koplow has had fine orchestral success — his music has been performed by the Cleveland Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cincinnati Pops, the National Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Wyoming Symphony, the Columbus Symphony, the West Chester Symphony, the Blue Ash Symphony, the Northern Kentucky Symphony, and has been recorded by the Silesian Philharmonic in Poland.

Joseph Koykkar is a musician who is at home in a variety of music from classical to avant-garde to rock and blues. As a composer, he has had his music performed nationally and internationally for over the past 30 years. Besides Double Takes and Triple Plays, his music can be heard on ten additional CDs, including an all-Koykkar release on Northeastern Records in 1992. In the past ten years three of his compositions (Out Front, Panache, and Streets and Bridges) have been in contention for a Grammy in the “Best Contemporary Classical Composition” category. He has composed for a variety of media including chamber music, orchestra, music for dance, film/video scores, and electronic/computer music. In addition to composing he is a pianist and conductor. He holds degrees from Indiana University (M.Mus.) and the University of Miami (DMA) and has received grants and awards from such sources as the Pew Charitable Trust for Music, the NEA, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, the American Music Center, the Wisconsin Arts Board and the American Composers Forum.

Described by The Washington Post as "tantalizing ... engaging, with a touch of the provocative," Jessica Krash's compositions have been presented in both traditional and experimental settings. Many of Krash's works have been collaborations with choreographers, including a piece for saxophonists on both sides of the C & 0 Canal (in a thunderstorm); a children's ballet in a rundown, former amusement park; a piece for voice, dancer and large mobiles at the Joyce SoHo in New York City; and her performance of Beethoven's Appassionata in a Pierrot costume for a dance concert at Lincoln Center. The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts has presented a full concert of her work. Schools and synagogues have commissioned her to write music for the dedications of their new buildings, including a piece combining klezmer band, jazz percussion, and classical piano.

Michael Laurello is a composer, pianist, and recording engineer based in Northwest Ohio. His compositions reflect his fascination with temporal dissonance and emotional immediacy, and have been presented at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, MATA, PASIC, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Carlsbad Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire, NASA, National Conference of the Society of Composers, Inc., and other venues and festivals. He has collaborated with ensembles and soloists such as icarus Quartet, Nashville Symphony, Sō Percussion, arx duo, HOCKET, Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, Yale Percussion Group, and Ensemble Repercussion featuring the Duisburger Philharmoniker and Deutschen Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz.

Richard Lavenda composes music that is sometimes boldly dramatic and sometimes poignantly lyrical, but always emotionally expressive and formally coherent. No matter what the piece, there are always clearly defined motives, an imaginative and personal use of instrumental color and melodic counterpoint, and strong rhythmic energy that comes as much from jazz and rock and roll as from his classical role models. His catalog of more than sixty works ranges from works for solo flute to an opera, and includes numerous pieces for orchestra and for a wide diversity of chamber ensembles.

Leonard Lehrman (b. 1949) (ASCAP, GEMA), former Critic-at-Large of The New Music Connoisseur, Associate Editor of Opera Monthly, Editor of Opera Today, and Assistant Chorus Master of the Metropolitan Opera, founded the Jewish Music Theater of Berlin and the Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus, and is the composer of 226 works to date, including 11 operas (4 based on works of Russian literature), 7 musicals, 79 individual instrumental pieces, 90 for chorus, and 255 for solo voice, as well as 64 translations (from French, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, and especially Russian – including the operas  Женитьба, Жизнь за царя, and ;Русалка) and 18 adaptations.

David Liptak's music has been described as "luminous and arresting," "richly atmospheric," and having "transparent textures, incisive rhythms, shimmering lightness".

Paul Lombardi holds a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Oregon, and studied composition with David Crumb, Robert Kyr, Stephen Blumberg, and Leo Eylar. His music has been performed in more than 30 states across the United States, as well as in other areas in North America, South America, and Europe. Recordings of his music are available from PARMA Recordings, Capstone Records, Zerx Records, ERMMedia, and Thinking outLOUD Records.

While Lubet was written works in many media, his creative output in this millennium has focused almost exclusively on his own performance, mostly on a variety of plucked string instruments associated with American folk traditions. These include acoustic guitar, mountain dulcimer, National steel guitar, ukulele, and electric and acoustic bass. He performs solo and with groups including the Japanese-inspired ensemble-Ma, Deep State, with pianist Guerino Mazzola, One World, with Kurdish-Canadian kamanche (spike fiddle) player, Shahriyar Jamshidi, and a jazz duo (name tbd) with saxophonist Christopher Rochest. In addition to his own works, many composers have written works for Lubet, in particular composers from China, where he was lectured, taught, and concertized live and on television. Of late, he has become particularly well-known for his unique approach to mountain dulcimer.

Believing that opera should be theater grounded in climactic expression and deliver larger-than-life stories with music that harnesses the full athletic thrill of singing, Evan Mack has devoted much of his compositional life to opera and song. His first major operatic composition, Angel of the Amazon was premiered in 2011 by Encompass New Opera Theatre at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City and was subsequently released on CD worldwide by Albany Records. Two years later, Fresno State Opera Theater premiered another composition by Mack, The Secret of Luca. This was the first of several collaborations with librettist Joshua McGuire.

Bruce P. Mahin is a Professor of Music, and Director of the Radford University Center for Music Technology. Mahin received the 2007 Radford University Distinguished Scholar Award. He is a former president of the Southeastern Composers League, a former co-chair of Society of Composers Region 3, a former research fellow at the University of Glasgow (Scotland) and former resident composer at Le Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, the recipient of awards from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Meet the Composer, Annapolis Fine Arts Foundation, Res Musica, Southeastern Composers League and others. His works are available on Capstone Records (CPS-8747, CPS-8624 and CPS-8611) and as digital reissues on the Ravello Records label.

Matthew Malsky's (b. 1961) compositional style is characterized by its rhythmic vitality, dramatically crafted gestures, melodic angularity, and irony. His music has been described as economical and elegant in both its technical and intellectual rigor, and in the way cutting-edge electronics are fully integrated with live performance. Malsky's compositions speak with intensity, seriousness, and an underlying inquisitiveness about the boundaries between a complex world and a searching interior voice.

Joel Mandelbaum (b.1932) (ASCAP) is Professor Emeritus at Queens College, C.U.N.Y., where he has taught since 1961. He has degrees from Harvard, Brandeis and Indiana Universities, where he studied composition with Walter Piston, Irving Fine, Harold Shapero and Bernhard Heiden, augmented by summer studies with Dallapiccola and Copland. Other influential teachers were Angela Diller, Helen Grant Baker and Tibor Kozma.

Composer Pamela J. Marshall (b.1954) writes chamber, orchestral, choral, and electronic music. Nature and environmental themes run through Marshall's music. There are influences of Bartok, Messiaen, jazz, and American songs from the 1800s. Clever twists, humor, beautiful melody, and wild noise sometimes occur. She loves obscure American folk music, bird songs, and any kitchen object that makes an interesting noise.

Ed Martin (b. 1976) is an award-­winning composer whose music has been performed worldwide at events such as the ISCM World New Music Days, International Computer Music Conferences, World Saxophone Congresses, the Seoul International Computer Music Festival, Confluences – Art and Technology at the Edge of the Millennium in Spain, and the International Electroacoustic Music Festival Santiago de Chile. His works have been heard at numerous venues throughout U.S. by ensembles such as the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, Ear Play, the Empyrean Ensemble, the Synchromy Ensemble, Musical Amoeba, the Bells of the Cascades, and duoARtia. His music is released on Ravello Records, Mark, Centaur, innova, Emeritus, and SEAMUS labels, and has received first prize awards from the Percussive Arts Society, Musical Amoeba, the Electro-­Acoustic Miniatures International Contest, the Craig and Janet Swan Composer Prize for orchestral  music, and the Tampa Bay Composers’ Forum.