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Born in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1931, Donald Martino began music lessons at nine – learning to play the clarinet, saxophone, and oboe – and composing at age 15. He went on to obtain degrees from Syracuse and Princeton Universities.
A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, his many awards include two Fulbright scholarships; three Guggenheim awards; grants from the Massachusetts Arts Council, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Brandeis Creative Arts Citation in Music; the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in music for his chamber work Notturno, First Prize in the 1985 Kennedy Center Friedheim Competition for his String Quartet (1983), and the Boston Symphony's Mark M. Horblit Award. Mr. Martino has taught at The Third Street Music School Settlement in New York, Princeton, Yale, the New England Conservatory of Music, where he was chairman of the composition department from 1969 – 1979, Brandeis, where he was Irving Fine Professor of Music, and Harvard, where he is the Walter Begelow Rosen Professor of Music, Emeritus.
He has been active as a guest lecturer and has been Composer-in-Residence at Tanglewood, The Composer's Conference, The Yale Summer School of Music and Art, the Pontino Festival (lt.), May in Miami, The Atlantic Center of the Arts, The Warebrook Festival, the Ernest Bloch Festival, the Festival Internacional de Musica de Morelia (Mex.), and has been Distinguished Visiting Professor at many institutions of higher learning. Commissions for new works have come from, among others, the Paderewski Fund, the Fromm, Naumburg, Koussevitzky, and Collidge Foundations; the Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco Symphonies; and a number of musical societies and organizations. According to the New Grove, Martino's music has been characterized as expansive, dense, lucid, dramatic, romantic, all of which are applicable. But it is his ability … to conjure up for the listener a world of palpable presences and conceptions ... that seems most remarkable."
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Norman Mathews' art songs were featured, along with the works of John Kander and Charles Strouse, at the Kennedy Center in a program of classical music written by theatre composers.
Mathews began his career as a Broadway and film dancer-singer-actor. After a back injury, he returned to school and earned a B.A. Degree in music from Hunter College and an M.A. Degree in music from New York University. His composition and orchestration teachers have included Richard Danielpour, Richard Hundley, and Charles Turner.
Songs of the Poet, a cycle composed to Walt Whitman poetry, was premiered in Germany by Gregory Wiest, an American tenor with the Munich Opera. Wiest recorded the work for Capstone Records (CPS 8646). His song, The Last Invocation, received the Recognition of Excellence award at the Fifth Diana Barnhart American Art Song Competition. Selections from Songs of the Poet were performed as part of a program entitled Whitman and Music, presented by The American Composers Orchestra. His string quartet was recently performed by ACM in Chicago. Next year, Mathews will be composer-in-residence at Shorter College. Mathews' works are published by Graphite Publishing.
His theatre works have been performed by Broadway luminaries Karen Mason (Outer Critics Circle Award), Michele Pawk (2003 Tony Award), Liz Callaway (Tony nominee), John Dossett (Tony nominee), and Debbie Gravitte (Tony Award). Mathews' one-woman musical play about Dorothy Parker, You Might as Well Live, was performed at the Harris Theatre of Music and Dance as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival with Broadway star Karen Mason. The play, in which Mrs. Parker's verses are set to music, has also been seen at the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, The New York Musical Theatre Festival, and The York Theatre (starring Michele Pawk).
Please visit: www.normanmathews.com
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(b. 1977) is a composer, theorist, and teacher at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He has crafted works for numerous contemporary ensembles. His music has been performed in the United States and throughout Europe, including performances and recordings with the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra, the Symphonic Orchestra of Lviv, and the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra. He has also received commissions from the Amici Della Musica and Musica e Cultura associations in Italy. In July 2009, his work Che La Tua Fede Non Venga Scossa (Let Not Your Faith Tremble) - written for the victims of the April 2009 earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy, - was featured on the Italian television stations Sky Italia, Teleponte, and Telemare. The world premiere of La Pioggia nel Pineto will be held in D'Annunzio's home province of Abruzzo in July 2010.
After completing undergraduate work at Johns Hopkins University and the Peabody Conservatory of Music, he received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Rutgers University where his principal composition teachers included Charles Wuorinen and Gerald Chenoweth.
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