Artists

Curt Cacioppo (b. 1951) is a composer whose expressive power and emotional appeal continue to captivate listeners and performers worldwide. A person of great human feeling, he derives inspiration from sources as diverse as the medieval poetry of Dante, Native American lore, or the vernacular American music he grew up with. His creative work is founded upon a virtuoso background of solo and collaborative piano playing, and he pursues an active role as pianist on stage and in recording. An engaging speaker and writer on a wide variety of musical topics, Cacioppo is able to communicate his enthusiasm for the art to a broad constituency.

His distinctive voice attracted national attention in a 1997 lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters - an honor conferred in the past upon such recipients as Leonard Bernstein, William Schuman, and Gian Carlo Menotti. With commissions both domestic and international, he has written for the Chicago and Milwaukee symphonies, the Emerson, American, and Moscow string quartets, the Quartetto di Venezia, the International Venice Festival, the Duo Alterno of Turin, the Settimana Organistica Internazionale of Piacenza, and other fine ensembles and soloists.

Cacioppo's music has been presented in prominent venues around the globe, from Carnegie Hall to the Segerstrom Concert Hall in Orange County, California, Munetsugu Hall in Nagoya to the Gasteig in Munich, Teatro La Fenice in Venice to the Jane Mallett Theatre in Toronto, from the Academy of Music in Philadelphia to Sala Felipe Villanueva and Teatro San Benito Abad in Mexico, and often at cherished sites such as the Getty Museum in Los Angeles (there in conjunction with exhibitions of Venetian drawings and Tiepolo paintings) and the Fogg Museum at Harvard (in tandem with a show by American Indian artist Dan Namingha).

Born in Ravenna, Ohio, Cacioppo's paternal lineage is Sicilian and maternal lineage is Anglo-Saxon. He began his first piano lessons at age 9 under the guidance of his mother. His first recital was at age 11 at Kent State University's School of Music, where he received his baccalaureate degree a decade later, studying composition and majoring in piano. Cacioppo participated in master classes led by Arthur Loesser, John Browning, Ruth Laredo, Robert de Gaetano, and others. At the Blossom Festival School, he coached chamber music under principal members of The Cleveland Orchestra, including oboist John Mack and violinist Josef Gingold, and pianist Tung Kwong Kwong. From Ohio he went to New York University and earned a Master of Arts degree (1976) in musicology. Advised by Gustave Reese, his thesis dealt with music of the liégeois composer Johannes Ciconia, who flourished in Padua in the late trecento/early quattrocento. He finished his studies at Harvard University with Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim and Ivan Tcherepnin. Ethnomusicologist David McAllester gave formal direction to his explorations of Native American music. He received the MA (1979) and Ph.D. (1980) in composition and was appointed to the Harvard faculty for a four-year period. In 1983, Cacioppo moved from Cambridge to Philadelphia to join the faculty of Haverford College, where he is Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music.

Curt Cacioppo nato nel 1951 a Ravenna, Ohio (USA) è attivo come compositore, pianista e pedagoga. Ha studiato composizione con Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim e Ivan Tcherpnin, e annovera George Rochberg tra i suoi mentori principali. Ha scritto musiche per i complessi quali le orchestre sinfoniche del Chicago e Milwaukee, i Virtuosi dell' Ensemble di Venezia ed i quartetti d'archi American, Emerson, Moscow e di Venezia. É stato compositore 'in sede' al festival Gran Teton negli Stati Uniti, rappresentante degli USA alla Settimana organistica internazionle in Italia e borsista della Fondazione Howard, e ha ricevuto dall'American Academy of Arts and Letters il premio alla carriera. Di origini siculo-calabresi da parte del padre, egli trae spesso ispirazione dall'Italia. Cacioppo ha studiato pianoforte con Ruth Laredo; ha partecipato ai corsi di perfezionamento di Arthur Loesser, e per l'interpretazione della musica da camera ha studiato con Josef Gingold. Ha suonato con molti musicisti di talento, tra i quali il violinista Arnold Steinhardt del Quartetto Guarneri. Ha studiato musicologia con Gustave Reese; l'argomento della sua tesi di laurea è stata la musica del compositore del trecento Johannes Ciconia. Come professore Cacioppo ha vinto il premio internazionale Luise Vosgerchian, e un' altro a Innovation in Teaching. Dal 1983 fa parte della facoltà del Haverford College vicino a Filadelfia, Pennsylvania, dove occupa la cattedra Ruth Marshall Magill Professor of Music. Tra i CD della sua musica, si trova a Capstone Records la collaborazione Italiano-Americano Incroci di Millennio: musiche per pianoforte, 1975-2000. Il più recente a MSR Classics entitolato Ancestral Passage si riflette a sua interesse profonda nella cultura dei Native Americans, della quale hanno scritto il musicologo fiorentino Marcello de Angelis e l'autore Harvey Sachs nel mensile Amadeus. In Italia ha collaborato coi compositori Marino Baratello, Riccardo Piacentini, Ada Gentile ed altri, ed ha partecipato nei festival Rive-Gauche a Torino, Ex Novo, Groggia Modern, e Viva Vivaldi a Venezia, ed altri a Treviso, Trieste, Alba ed Aversa. Ha presentato i suoi saggi all' Università Ca' Foscari e alla Sala del Soffitto della Fondazione Cini all' Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, anche al Palazzo Albrizzi a San Polo. È l'autore del concerto-oratorio per pianoforte, coro e orchestra Trilogia dantesca (2006), un lavoro della durata di un intero programma.

www.navonarecords.com/italia

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John Carollo was born in Turin, Italy on November 4, 1954. An Italian family adopted him in 1959 and raised him in Oil City, Pennsylvania. During grade school he studied and played piano and was a member of a Catholic Church choir who sang for the congregation during weekend services. He moved from Oil City to San Diego, California in 1976 where he attended college taking courses in music and psychology. He graduated in 1986 from San Diego State University with a Masters Degree in Psychology and began composing for piano. After moving to Honolulu, Hawaii in 1987, he started a career as a mental health counselor with the State of Hawaii Department of Health.

In 1997, he began private composition lessons with Dr. Robert Wehrman. Carollo's first work under Robert's tutelage was The Crumb Suite for Solo Piano. Following this effort, he composed an atonal work in 1998 entitled Frenetic Unfoldings for Solo Violin. After its completion, Carollo focused his energies on mostly solo and chamber works. He retired in March of 2006 to compose full-time and establish a music business named Musica Baudino. Musica Baudino published his first CD, Ampersand, in June 2006, which went on to win Best Classical CD at the 10th Annual Hawaii Music Awards ceremony. Carollo is a prolific artist, composing daily and maintaining a working relationship with faculty members of the University of Hawaii's Music Department and artists throughout the world. His works have been performed in various venues and festivals in Hawaii and abroad. He is an ASCAP member and a lifetime member of the Society of Composers in America.

A complete catalog of John Carollo's works can be found at www.myspace.com/johncarollo.

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Sergio Cervetti's works range from instrumental and vocal music to electronic works that often reflect his South American, French and Italian heritage. His vocabulary draws from an early brush with twelve-tone and minimalism, and his current approach is flexible and free. Critics have said that Cervetti's style blends folk elements, European tradition, and minimalist aesthetics; they also often comment that his music displays a range of sonorities that are truly novel.

Cervetti, who was born in Uruguay and became a U.S. citizen in 1979, graduated from the Peabody Institute after studying with Ernst Krenek and Stefan Grove; and was subsequently invited by the DAAD to be composer-in-residence in Berlin after winning a Caracas Festival prize for Five Episodes. After taking residence in New York City in 1970 he taught at Brooklyn College, worked for Virgil Thomson, and studied electronic music with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Alcides Lanza at Columbia University. In 1972 he joined the faculty of New York University Tisch School of the Arts where he taught music history, composition and choreography until 1997.

Noted works—performed in Berlin's Akademie der Kunste, the Prado Museum, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, BAM's Next Wave Festivals, Walker Arts Center, Library of Congress, and MOMA, among others—include Guitar Music: The Bottom of the Iceberg, a minimalist solo guitar piece;…from the earth…, a controlled improvisation for any number of sustaining instruments; The Hay Wain, an electronic work inspired by the Bosch triptych, sections of which are used in Oliver Stone's film Natural Born Killers; Candombe I for harpsichord and Candombe II for orchestra, based on a Uruguayan national dance with African origins; and the opera Elegy For A Prince, premiered in excerpt by New York City Opera at VOX 2007. Recently completed works include YUM!, a chamber opera to an original libretto by Elizabeth Esris about food and friendship, and Visual Diary, a soundtrack to a film by Valerie Sonnenthal made from 27,000 photographs.

Among works relating to South American history, language, and culture are Leyenda for soprano and orchestra based on the Uruguayan Indian legend; Tabare, by Juan Zorrilla de San Martin; El Triunfo de la Muerte, song cycle for soprano and piano with text by Circe Maia; and Madrigal III for two sopranos and chamber ensemble set to a pre-Colombian Aztec poem by Nezahualcoyotl about the brevity of life.

For further information and music samples visit www.sergiocervetti.com

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Gramophone Magazine calls Shawn Crouch a "gifted young composer" and Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times describes Shawn Crouch's work as music of "gnarling atonal energy". Lawrence Johnson of the Miami Herald called his Road From Hiroshima; A Requiem a "staggering achievement, an imaginative, powerful and deeply moving work" making the Miami Herald and Sun Sentinel's 2005 Classical Music Standouts. Shawn has received numerous awards from among others, The American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, Yale University, Meet the Composer and the Percussive Arts Society. He is the inaugural recipient of the Dale Warland Singers Commissioning Award given by Chorus America and the American Composers Forum. Crouch has had his works performed by Chanticleer, Eighth Blackbird, California E.A.R. Unit, Non Sequitur Ensemble, The Del Sol String Quartet, Prism Quartet, Seraphic Fire Choir and Orchestra, Cantori New York, the Yesaroun' Duo, and others. He has studied with Martin Bresnick, Ezra Laderman, Malcolm Peyton, Marguerite Brooks and Leo Wanenchak. He has been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Norfolk Music Festival. Mr. Crouch received his B.M. in composition from the New England Conservatory with honors and distinction in performance, and his M.M. in composition from the Yale School of Music. Shawn Crouch currently serves as the newly appointed John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Director of the Miami Choral Project, a tuition-free program that creates a little league-type network of choral ensembles for children in low-income areas of Miami-Dade County.

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Composer Michael G. Cunningham, born 1937 in Warren, Michigan, holds music degrees from Wayne State University, the University of Michigan and Indiana University. Between 1967 and 1973 he taught theory and composition-related courses at universities in Michigan, Indiana, Kansas, and California. From 1973 to 2006 he was Professor of Theory and Composition at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire.

To date, Cunningham has approximately 250 compositions written for nearly every medium. He has also published more than ten books focused on the subjects of composition and music theory. One such book, 85 Art Songs, contains the four arias on this disk. Additional biographical information and background can be found in Who's Who in America and in various biographical dictionaries.

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