Artists

Ronald Perera’s (b. Boston 1941) compositions include operas, song cycles, chamber, choral, and orchestral works, and several works for instruments or voices with electronic sounds. He is perhaps best known for his settings of texts by authors as diverse as Dickinson, Joyce, Grass, Sappho, Cummings, Shakespeare, Francis of Assisi, Melville, Ferlinghetti, Updike and Henry Beston. Seven major pieces are represented on compact discs released in the late 1990s. Reviewing CRI CD 796 for Fanfare magazine, critic John Story writes, “Three Poems of Günter Grass is, quite simply, one of the most haunting works of the last 25 years.” Reviewing The Outermost House on Albany Troy 314 he writes, “When he is on form, Ronald Perera is among the finest living combiners of words and music…The music is simply lovely.”

Georgia native Gabriela Diaz began her musical training at the age of 5, studying piano with her mother and the next year, violin with her father. As a childhood cancer survivor, Diaz is committed to supporting cancer research and treatment in her capacity as a musician. In 2004, Diaz was a recipient of a grant from the Albert Schweitzer Foundation, an award that enabled Gabriela to create and direct the Boston Hope Ensemble. This program is now part of Winsor Music. A firm believer in the healing properties of music, Diaz and her colleagues have performed in cancer units in Boston hospitals and presented benefit concerts for cancer research organizations in numerous venues throughout the United States.

Tyler Hay was born in 1994 in Kent and began learning the piano at the age of 6. He studied with the Head of Keyboard, Andrew Haigh at Kent Music Academy for three years before gaining a place to study at the Purcell School for Young Musicians in 2007 where he continued under Tessa Nicholson. He completed his studies as an ABRSM scholar at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2016 where he studied with the Head of Keyboard Graham Scott and Professor Frank Wibaut.

Simon Proctor is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music where he gained the GRSM degree and LRAM diploma in piano performance and teaching. He won several prizes for composition, orchestration, and piano including the Eric Coates prize, the Academy’s top award for orchestral composition. As a pianist, he has given recitals in Germany, The Bahamas, and the United States and has appeared many times as a concerto soloist in the United Kingdom and America.

Jacob Tews is Assistant Professor of Strings and Orchestra at Christopher Newport University in Newport News VA. He has served previously as an educator at Wartburg College, Southern Illinois University – Carbondale, and the University of Minnesota. He earned a D.M.A. in viola performance, with a secondary emphasis in music theory, from the University of Minnesota.

Erik Rohde maintains a diverse career as a conductor, violinist, and educator, and has performed in recitals and festivals across the United States and in Europe and Asia. He is the Director of Orchestral Activities at the University of Northern Iowa and the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Winona Symphony Orchestra (MN).

Born in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1931, Donald Martino began music lessons at nine ñ learning to play the clarinet, saxophone, and oboe ñ and composing at age 15. He went on to obtain degrees from Syracuse and Princeton Universities.

Dr. Kim S. Ellis is a native of Rockford, Illinois. She has been principal clarinetist with the Symphony of Southeast Texas since 1990 and is a Buffet Crampon USA performing artists. She is an active performer and clinician at conventions and clinics throughout the United States including the Texas Music Educators Assosication, Festival of Texas Composers, Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium, College Music Society-South Chapter, Sarasota Music Festival, and the University of New Hampshire Chamber Music Festival.

Donald Betts made his New York debut as a pianist and composer at the age of 21, playing his own music along with works by Prokofieff, Liszt, and Schumann. The New York Times called him "a pianist of imagination and poetic feeling". Musical America cited "his tremendous technique and bravura style".

Symphonic, solo, choral, chamber, theater and electronic music composer Carlos Alberto Vázquez is among the most versatile and outstanding Latin American contemporary composers coming from the Caribbean basin. Born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, Vázquez studied music at the University of Puerto Rico, University of Pittsburgh, New York University and La Sorbonne in Paris, where he earned a Doctoral degree.

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1965, Alfonso Tenreiro entered the world of music studying organ. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in composition.

Ricardo Lorenz's compositions have received praise for their fiery orchestrations, harmonic sophistication, and rhythmic vitality. These impressions have accompanied performances of the Venezuelan-born composer's works at prestigious international festivals such as Carnegie Hall's Sonidos de las Amèricas, Ravinia Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, France's Berlioz Festival, Spain's Festival Internacional de Musica Contemporanea de Alicante, the Festival Cervantino in Mexico, and many more. Lorenz's orchestral compositions have been performed domestically by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, New World Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, and the Dayton Philharmonic, and internationally by premier orchestras in Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Brendon McConville (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.

Norman Mathews’s 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.

Shyly courting the limelight, composer and librettist Edward Ficklin focuses his creative energy on the various forms of music theater. He has realized his works in a number of unusual venues, like a store window near Grand Central Station and a vacant bank lobby near the World Trade Center (with the support of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the September 11th Fund). His work has also been presented by American Opera Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Opera Company of Astoria (Astoria, NY), Little Opera Theatre of New York, the Spring Fever Festival (New York, NY), David Parker/The Bang Group (a collaboration with choreographer Lise Brenner) and Opera Vista (Houston, TX).

Paul A. Epstein's compositions include two chamber operas as well as works for string orchestra and for a variety of small ensembles. His Prime Times 2 for flute, bassoon, and piano was a winner of the Pascal Gallois 2008 call for scores.

Hall (b. 1959) was born in San Francisco, CA. He holds a B.A. degree in Music from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1982), completing studies with Emma Lou Diemer and Peter Racine Fricker, and a Diploma degree in Composition from the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia PA (1986), where he studied with Ned Rorem. From 1993 to 2005 he was Vice-President of the Maine Composer's Forum (MCF), and served from 2005-present as President of the MCF. In 2000 he was elected to the membership of the American Composers Alliance (ACA). His works are published by the ACA. He is a Fellow of the Ucross Foundation, a member of the American Composers Forum, and the American Music Center.

David Froom was born in California in 1951. His music has been performed extensively throughout the United States by major orchestras, ensembles, and soloists, including the Louisville, Seattle, Utah, and Chesapeake Symphony Orchestras, The United States Marine and Navy Bands, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the 21st Century Consort, and the New York New Music Ensemble.

Gregers Brinch was born in Denmark to a Danish father and American mother, but spent a substantial part of his childhood and, since returning from Germany in 1994, adulthood in the small village of Row in East Sussex, Great Brittain.

Robert Stewart (b. 1918) has composed for a variety of soloists, orchestras, and ensembles. He has written music for the New York Brass Quintent, the National Symphony String Trio, the Stradivari String Quartet, and many others. His compositions have been performed across North America and Europe.