Composers

William White is a conductor, composer, teacher, writer, and performer based in Seattle, WA. Equally known for his original music as for his bold interpretations, White is an innovative programmer and conscientious leader in the musical community. White currently serves as music director of Orchestra Seattle and the Seattle Chamber Singers, a unique performing ensemble comprised of a chorus and orchestra that concertize as one.

Allyson B. Wells began composing and arranging as a teenager, when her name was Allyson Brown, and was 18 when her first arrangement, for choir, was commercially published. Two years later, one of her compositions was commercially published. She has earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and Ph.D., all in music composition, and has taught music theory and composition at the university level since the 1980’s.

Nicholas Weininger (b. 1978) is a composer, singer, software engineering manager, and leadership coach. Weininger's works for a cappella chorus have been performed by ensembles across the United States, ranging from the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco and the NYC-based ensemble Choral Chameleon to the West Genesee High School Chorale, the Germantown Friends School Concert Choir, and the festival ensemble Coro Mundi. In March 2023, the Empire City Men's Chorus premiered his cantata Hakol Hevel (All is Mere Breath) for TTBB chorus, orchestra, and soloists. Weininger's works are published through Personage Press and ArrangeMe. 

With a musical palette ranging from traditional Jewish prayer modes to minimalist textures with rich melodic contours, and from jazz-influenced rhythms to imaginative orchestrations of the natural world, composer Dr. Meira Warshauer’s music has been performed live to critical acclaim and heard on broadcast and online media worldwide. In much demand for commissions, she writes for orchestras, chamber and vocal ensembles, and soloists, as well as opera.

Zhiyi Wang is a multi award-winning composer who has composed a number of works in different genres, including contemporary classical, film and TV score, modern ballet, musical, world music, and pop music. His music has been performed by prestige artists and leading ensembles including Yuri Bashmet, Lang Lang, Lorin Maazel, China National Symphony Orchestra, Brno Philharmonic, Senzoku Gakuen New Philharmonic, Moscow Soloists, Lviv Chamber Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, Lemberg Sinfonietta, Villiers String Quartet, as well as many others throughout Asia, North America, and Europe.

Prolific in all musical media, Wanamaker’s best-known works are those that exploit unique timbral characteristics and technical extensions of wind instruments. His earliest musical training began at age 6 in professional summer stock theater companies, and continued through both schooled and self-guided explorations through the American folk music of the 1960s, bebop and free jazz, and Western classical music of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He continues his study of sounds to those from around the world, to draw from a variety of musics to inform his continually evolving voice.

LARRY WALLACH is a composer, pianist, and musicologist whose compositions, mostly of chamber music, have been performed throughout the United States. He was educated at Columbia University, from which he holds a PhD in Musicology. He currently holds the Livingston Hall Chair in Music at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where he has taught since 1972. From 2001 to 2014 taught composition in the Bard MFA Program for Conductors. He received an NEH Fellowship to study historical piano performance practices for the year 1977-78 and is a recipient of two “Meet the Composer” grants from New York State. His composition “Echoes from Barham Down” for flute, string trio, and piano, based on an English country dance tune, won the New School of Music, Cambridge, composition prize in 1985.

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.

Born in New York City to German parents, Carl Vollrath attended Newton High School. He received a B.A. from Stetson University, an M.A. from Columbia University, and an Ed.D. from Florida State University. Vollrath studied composition with Ernst von Dohnanyi Carlisle Floyd, and John Boda. He served with the West Point Military Band at West Point NY from 1953 to 1956 and was a music consultant in Miami FL from 1956 to 1958. He joined the Troy University (AL) faculty in 1965.Major works include six symphonies for band, an opera – The Quest – and a large collection of chamber music, all published by Tap Music (tapmusic.com). MMC Recordings has released three albums of Vollrath’s works, including a two-disc album of clarinet works recorded by Richard Stoltzman entitled Jack’s Fat Cat (2008).

William Vollinger is predominantly a composer of vocal music, spoken and/or sung, performed by groups such as the Gregg Smith Singers and New York Vocal Arts Ensemble, whose performance of Three Songs About the Resurrection won first prize at the Geneva International Competition. The instrumental work The Violinist in the Mall won the 2005 Friends and Enemies of New Music competition. Sound Portraits is a collection of his vocal works featuring soprano Linda Ferraira recorded by Capstone-Ravello. Raspberry Man was selected for both the 2009 National SCI Conference in Santa Fe NM and the University of Nebraska 2009 New Music Festival.

Composer Mark Volker is Associate Professor of Music at the Belmont University School of Music, where he is Coordinator of Composition Studies and directs the New Music Ensemble. He received degrees from the University of Chicago (Ph.D), the University of Cincinnati (M.M.), and Ithaca College (B.M.).

Described as “exquisite” (Gramophone), “riveting” (The New York Times), “arresting” (The Boston Globe), “compellingly original” (Boston Phoenix), “full, extravagant and wild” (Sydney Morning Herald), and “edgy, bright and entertaining as hell” (NewMusicBox), the works of Nicholas Vines (b.1976, Sydney) have been performed by the likes of Alarm Will Sound, BMOP, Ensemble Offspring, the Schola Cantorum Gedanesis Chamber Choir, the BT Scottish Ensemble and the Australian Piano Quartet. He has been commissioned by organisations around the world, such as Acacia Quartet, Callithumpian Consort, Firebird Ensemble, mmm…, Guerilla Opera, ChamberMade Opera, Ensemble Apex, the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and various Sydney schools.

Elizabeth Vercoe has been hailed by the Washington Post as "one of the most inventive composers working in America today." Active as a composer in the United States and abroad, she has been a fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Italy, the St. Petersburg Spring Music Festival in Russia, The Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, and the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Her music has been performed by the Memphis Chamber Symphony, the Women's Philharmonic, the Boston Musica Viva, Alea III, the Great Noise Ensemble, and counter) induction.

Richard Vella's diverse output includes compositions for orchestra, large ensemble, choir, film, chamber music, burlesque cabaret, music theatre, contemporary opera, site-specific performances, and popular music genres. Much of his music has been performed and recorded nationally and internationally. His film credits include Light Years, Parklands, and Renzo Piano: piece by piece for which he won the 1999 Australian Screen Composer's Award for best music for a documentary. His feature film music score Travelling Light (2003) received the nomination for “Best Music for a Feature Film” by the Australian Film Institute.

Diego Vega is a Colombian-American composer. His music has been performed in some of the most important concert halls in the United States, Europe and Latin America by ensembles such as Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble X, the Colombian National Symphony, the Bogotá Philharmonic, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris, the Quintet of the Americas, Soli Chamber Ensemble, and internationally acclaimed soloists and chamber groups. Diego has written commissioned works for the Colombian National Symphony, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, Banco de la República de Colombia, and the Salvi Foundation and the Cartagena International Music Festival, among others.

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.

Audun G. Vassdal is a Norwegian composer currently located in Los Angeles. Vassdal started playing instruments at an early age, and his obsession with understanding how music and instruments works led him to pursue music further. He is primarily a pianist, and attended a high school with a music education. This is where he discovered his passion for composition, and decided that being a composer would be his life goal. Being fascinated by many forms of music, he has pursued an education in both classical music and film music, as well as other genres.

Composer and tenor saxophonist Frank Vasi graduated from the Mannes College of Music in New York City. His compositions straddle the classical and jazz worlds of music incorporating their various techniques in his pieces. A member of ASCAP, he has written compositions for saxophone quartet, choral cantatas, chamber and orchestra works and is the founder and arranger for The Thimble Islands Saxophone Quartet.

Jorge Variego (b. 1975, Rosario, Argentina) has a Doctorate degree in Music Composition from the University of Florida; a master's of music degree in composition and clarinet Performance from Carnegie Mellon University; and a J.D. equivalent from the National University of Rosario. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music Composition, Theory and Woodwinds at Valley City State University.

He attended Los Angeles City College in 1958 where he studied composItion with Leonard Stein. He graduated with a B.A. in music from Long Beach State College in 1963. While there, he studied with Leon Dallin and Robert Tyndall. He is also a charter member of the Kappa Omicron chapter of PHI MU ALPHA fraternity.