Artists

Osias Wilenski was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. From an early age he studied piano with Professor Vicente Scaramuzza and harmony, counterpoint and composition with Dr. Erwin Leuchter, who had been a pupil of Alban Berg. From Leuchter comes his early interest in 12-tone music, a system that Wilenski has abandoned since. During the 1950s and through the suggestion of pianist Arturo Rubinstein, Wilenski won a scholarship to study at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, where he resided for several years. There he studied composition with William Bergsma, William Schuman and Vincent Persichetti. He also had private piano lessons from virtuoso Simon Barere, of which he was the only pupil. He started a solo pianist career and played concerts in New York in Hunter College and Town Hall.

Virgil Thomson was born in Kansas City MO in 1896 in what was then still an agricultural society. Early years in the Midwest exposed him to the folk music, hymn tunes and popular songs that would figure so prominently in his compositions.

Marie Incontrera (b. 1985) is a wayward ballerina and heavy metal pianist who writes music in Brooklyn, New York. She has been a recipient of the Miriam Gideon Composition Award for women composers, a winner of the Remarkable Theater Brigade Art Song Competition, a 2010 and 2011 recipient of the ASCAPlus award, a winner of the 2011 Vocalessence/American Composers Forum "Essentially Choral" readings, and was a finalist in the Iron Composer 2010 competition.

Ulf Grahn (b. 1942) studied composition with Hans Eklund, Violin and Viola with Rudolf Forsberg and Piano with Herbert Westrell. He holds degrees from Stockholm's Musikpedagogiska Institut and the Catholic University of America. He has also studied Business Administration, Economics and Development Studies at The Universities of Lund andUppsala, Sweden. In 1973 he founded the Contemporary Music Forum, in Washington, D.C. and served as its Program Director until 1984.

Tapestry is a chamber group weaving together four unique performers working with six versatile composers. Each of these accomplished musicians brings a distinct thread of musical and cultural experiences to this project, resulting in an exciting recording of new repertoire. While there have been a handful of recordings in the past devoted to the earliest repertoire for the oboe, clarinet and piano trio by composers such as Edouard Destenay and Jean Gabriel Marie, this recording is remarkable in that it comprises all newly composed works for trio and quartet, driven by the combination and contrasts of the performers rather than a specific instrumentation.

The works of Liviu Marinescu (b. 1970, Bucharest, Romania) have received recognition in numerous festivals of new music throughout the world, and have been performed by prominent orchestras and ensembles, including the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Czech Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic, Orchestra 2001 in Philadelphia and the National Chamber Radio and Music Academy orchestras in Bucharest.

Coro Allegro, Boston's acclaimed chorus for members and friends of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, seek to affirm, strengthen, and enrich the lives of its members and the broader community through the presentation of outstanding performances of choral music. Coro Allegro performances have been broadcast on WGBH's "Classical Performances" and brought to national and international audiences through performances at four GALA Choruses Festivals and the Eastern Division Convention of the American Choral Directors Association.

Born in Texas in 1947, Michael Mauldin moved to New Mexico in 1971 for "the light, the space and the timelessness." He completed a graduate degree in composition, opened a music school, raised a family and wrote music. He was recognized in 1980 as the national Composer of the Year by the Music Teachers National Association. In 1985, his Fajada Butte was performed in Kennedy Center by the National Repertory Orchestra for the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches in Albuquerque and at his composing and teaching retreat near Cuba, New Mexico.

Composer and keyboard player Juan Sebastián Lach Lau's recent instrumental and electroacoustic music, as well as sound installations, are based on algorithmic processes and harmonic microtonal inquiries, a field in which he obtained a doctorate in artistic research at the University of Leiden, Holland, in 2012.

Vienna, Austria-native Rudy Kronfuss started playing the guitar at age 13 and formed his own band when he was 17. He has loved composing music since his teenage days, and in 1974 he decided to stay in the Netherlands after a tour with his group. In 1984 he successfully completed his six years study of jazz guitar at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Since then he has taught at "GLOBE," the Central Music School of Hilversum. In 1994 he received his degree in composition and arrangement from the Conservatory of Rotterdam under the guidance of Bob Brookmeyer. Kronfuss is an internationally performing artist. His passion is to teach, play, compose, arrange and produce music. He has published 8 CDs and 4 DVDs.

Gregory Hutter holds degrees from Western Michigan University, the University of Michigan, and Northwestern University. He has been a faculty member at DePaul University since 2002. His compositions have been performed by the Moravian Philharmonic, the Kiev Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, Musica Moderna (Poland), the Cassatt Quartet, the Maia Quartet, the Julstrom Quartet, Trio Callisto, the Carpe Diem Quartet, the Anaphora Ensemble, Arts at Large Chicago, Duo Diorama, the Society for New Music (Syracuse), the Philovox Ensemble (Boston), pianists Winston Choi and Matthew McCright, Pinotage, Musica Nova (Israel), and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), among others.

Harlem NY-born Reynard Burns' (b. 1946) prolific career includes work as a composer, arranger, and educator, as well as a bassist and guest conductor for several orchestra festivals. His compositions for full and string orchestra, wind ensemble, concert band, jazz ensemble, improvising strings, and other combinations have been performed throughout the United States and abroad, with his orchestral works receiving national recognition, most notably Flying, which was performed by the Long Island Philharmonic in a program honoring American composers.

Playful! If you had to pick a single word to describe Louis Babin's approach to composing music, 'playful' would be the one. Because for this composer creation is a form of play. Indeed, Babin's early works are associated with the world of story and theatre: Les filles de l'amour divin, as performed at Montréal's Salle Fred-Barry, the intimate character of L'amiral blanc at Les fleurs du mal cafe theatre, and in larger productions, such as his contributions to Le bossu de Notre-Dame, presented at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, and La légende du roi Arthus at Usine C in Montréal.

Composer Sparky Davis' music is featured on THE MUSIC OF SPARKY DAVIS, an album highlighting his "modern, not modernistic" approach to composition.

Missouri native Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927) was born into a musical family and had begun her early compositions at the age of 5. Throughout her elementary and high school years her performance studies continued and her interest in composition intensified, and she attended the Eastman School of Music and the Yale School of Music, receiving her bachelorís and masterís degrees in composition from the latter and her Ph.D. from the former.

Andrew March was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, United Kingdom in 1973. In 1992, he was accepted at the Royal College of Music to study composition with Jeremy Dale Roberts. He graduated in 1996, gaining a Bachelor of Music degree with honors.

The music of award-winning composer Greg Bartholomew is frequently performed across the United States and in Canada, Australia and Europe by such highly regarded instrumental ensembles as Third Angle New Music Ensemble, the Electrum Brass Trio, and the Spring Wind Quintet, as well as such acclaimed choral ensembles as Seattle Pro Musica, Austin Vocal Arts Ensemble, and Connecticut Choral Artists (CONCORA). NPR classical music reviewer Tom Manoff called Bartholomew "a fine composer not afraid of accessibility."

Composer by character and performer by temperament, James Scott Balentine is as complex as his music; that is, moderately enigmatic yet engaging. His compositions are fun and interesting to play, intriguing to the listener, and crafted in a personal language influenced by ethnic dance, jazz and folk idioms, tonal as well as atonal and serial techniques.

Anthony Piccolo earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied piano, orchestral conducting, and composition. He studied further at the Britten-Pears School and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he was a repetiteur in the opera studio. Returning to the states he joined the staff of the New York City Opera and in 2009 took up his current position as Children's Chorus Director at the Metropolitan Opera.

Jenny Kallick has created two original music dramas prior to ARCHITECT: WinterReise (based on Schubert's song cycle) in 2001 for soprano, baritone, string trio, and piano with director Jeffrey Lentz; and The Death of Victor Hartmann (Incorporating songs and piano music of Musorgsky) in 2003 for bass, violin, clarinet, and cello with director and designer John Conklin.