Artists

American composer, conductor, orchestrator, and producer Dan Redfeld has had his music and arrangements performed internationally from the concert hall to the musical theatre stage to the recording studio. Redfeld received his training at Boston's New England Conservatory before transferring to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he graduated with a degree in composition with an emphasis in conducting. Instructors include composers William Thomas McKinley, Irwin Kostal, and David Raksin, and conductors Jon Robertson, Sir Simon Rattle, Zubin Mehta, and Roger Norrington.

Paula Jespersen Diehl came to New Jersey from China as an infant with her Danish parents and older brother. From her time of awareness, she heard music in the home. She and each of her three brothers studied a musical instrument; her mother listened to opera and played Danish songs on the piano for the children to sing, and her father and an uncle sang Danish songs.

DANIEL ZEHRINGER is Associate Professor at Wright State University, where he serves as head of the Trumpet Studio and Brass Division, coordinator of the Faculty Brass Quintet, and conducts the Wright State University Trumpet Ensemble.

Fred Broer (b.1942) is a native Oregonian. He received his Master of Music degree from Indiana University and his Doctorate from Boston University. Some of the composition teachers he studied with include Jack Goode, Bernard Heiden, and Joyce McKeel. He taught music in colleges for over 25 years, served in several churches as Music Director/Organist, performed as director of several community choruses, and was Director of the North Shore Conservatory of Music, a community music school at Endicott College in Beverly MA.

Eli Tamar’s compositions have been recognized for their high emotional intensity and personal expression. His multi-cultural background (Russian-born Israeli-American) contributed greatly to his ability to explore and synthesize different elements of styles while transcending spiritual barriers between various musical, literary, and religious traditions.

Composer Yves Ramette (b. 1921) was born in Bavay, France, where his father was the director of a school. From a very young age Ramette was instinctively attracted towards music. When he was seven years old he started learning musical notation as well as to play the violin and the piano. At age fourteen, while pursuing his secondary studies at the Beauvais Lycée, he also began taking advanced lessons in harmony.

Composer Sally Reid was born in East Liverpool, Ohio, in 1948. She holds the Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and is Professor of Music and Director of the School of Music at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. Reid was editor of the ILWC Journal (International League of Women Composers) from 1991-1995 and served as President of the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) in 1999-2000. She is also a member of the Society of Composers, Inc., the Southern Composers League and the Nashville Composers Association.

The music of Bill Pfaff is characterized by a strong sense of line, clear harmonic motion, and gestures that have been described as “profound and extravagant.” Known for his collaborative impulse, Bill has produced music for theater, dance and art installations. In this context, his language embraces electronic sources, traditional acoustic instruments, electric guitar and found sounds. As a performer on the soundplane, Bill explores composition that combines physical modeling synthesis, granular synthesis and acoustic instruments.

As an active composer in the Minneapolis area for the past several years, Heath Mathews has been called a "gifted young composer" who "writes with a clarity of musical voice." The compositional interests of Dr. Mathews include a wide range of musical genres and styles. Playing in rock and jazz groups in his youth, the composer draws influence equally from the vernacular music of contemporary culture, western art music, and world music.

Maestra Barbara Day Turner is the founder and Music Director of the San José Chamber Orchestra. An ardent advocate for new music, she has premiered more than 130 works just with SJCO. Named the 2012 Silicon Valley Arts Council "On Stage" Artist Laureate, Maestra Day Turner is also Music Administrator and Conductor of the Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theater, where she has led critically acclaimed productions of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa, Puccini’s La bohème, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Verdi’s Otello, Rossini’s Barber of Seville, Showboat and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Hailed as “a first-class ensemble” (Orange County Register) “exuberant and technically dazzling” (Long Beach Gazette) and “one of the best young chamber groups around today” (Philip Setzer, Emerson String Quartet), Trio Céleste has quickly established itself as one of the most dynamic chamber music ensembles in the country.

Paul John Stanbery is currently Music Director of the Hamilton Fairfield Symphony, Ohio Mozart Festival, Great Miami Youth Symphony and has been Associate Conductor of the Lima Symphony in Ohio. Guest appearances have included the Western Piedmont Symphony, Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, The University of Cincinnati, and the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra. He is a regular guest with the Miami University Symphony Orchestra.

Cellist Samuel Magill has had a rich and varied career as soloist, chamber musician, and enjoyed a highly successful orchestral career. His first Naxos CD of the Cello Concerto by Vernon Duke was hailed as "flat-out magnificent" by the American Record Guide, while The Strad wrote of his world premier recording of Franco Alfano's Cello Sonata "Magill's husky, dark timbre matches the Cello Sonata's yearning intensity to perfection".

A recipient of The Catholic University of America’s Furfey graduate fellowship and a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda music honors society, Jason R. Lovelace (b. 1980) currently serves as an adjunct instructor at Towson University in Towson, MD and Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, VA.

Richard Campanelli was born in Hartford CT. When he was seven years old the family moved to Springfield, MO. There were not a lot of opportunities for an artistic education of any sort there, but he was able to finally talk his parents into getting a piano and started taking lessons from local piano teachers.

Portland OR native Kevin M. Walczyk received the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the University of North Texas where he received the Hexter Prize for outstanding graduate student and served as arranger for the renowned University of North Texas One O'clock Lab Band. Walczyk's works have been commissioned and/or recorded by organizations that include the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, Kiev Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Ukraine National Symphony, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Portland Youth Philharmonic, and consortium-commissioning projects comprising over 60 university and conservatory wind ensembles.

American-born composer, Nicolas Kaviani, has been actively composing chamber, orchestral and choral music since the age of 13. Mr. Kaviani received his Bachelor of Arts in Music Composition from the University of California at Santa Cruz in the year 2000, studying under the noted composer David Cope. He then went on to earn his grade de master in composition from the prestigious Conservatoire de Musique Olivier Messiaen in Avignon, France. There Mr. Kaviani was invited multiple times to attend master classes with some of the most prominent composers in France, including on one occasion Pierre Boulez, during the summer of 2005. In 2006 Mr. Kaviani's String quartet #4 was performed in the Festival de Musique Contemporaine in Avignon.

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.

John D. Rojak joined the American Brass Quintet in 1991. He is bass trombonist with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, IRIS, New York Pops, Little Orchestra Society, Stamford Symphony, and played for the 16-year run of Broadway’s Les Misérables. He has performed and recorded with the New York Philharmonic, Orpheus, New York Chamber Symphony, and as solo trombone of Solisti NY. He has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, for Pope John Paul II in New York's Central Park and St. Patrick's Cathedral, and for Pope Francis in Madison Square Garden.

Arend moves easily across genres such as classical, jazz, and electro-acoustic music. He has written or performed music in contexts ranging from theater, dance, and concert stage to art galleries, night clubs, and outdoor festivals. Arend's music has been performed in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.