Composers

Hayes Biggs was born in Huntsville, Alabama and raised in Helena, Arkansas. He holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from Columbia University. His teachers include Don Freund, Mario Davidovsky, Jack Beeson, Fred Lerdahl and Donald Erb. Biggs has been a fellow in composition at the Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center at Wellesley, at the Tanglewood Music Center, at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony. Among his honors are a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and an Aaron Copland Award, which afforded him the opportunity to live and compose at Copland House in upstate New York for several weeks. Since 1992 he has been on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, teaching courses in the theory and composition departments.

Lewis Spratlan was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2000. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Massachusetts Artists Foundations, the NEA, the Tanglewood Festival, and the MacDowell Colony. Recent commissions include Earthrise, for the San Francisco Opera; Streaming for the Centennial Celebration of the Ravinia Festival; Wonderer for pianist Jonathan Biss; Shadow for cellist Matt Haimovitz; a concerto for a consortium of 30 saxophonists; A Summer's Day for BMOP (Boston Modern Orchestra Project), and Process/Bulge for Wet Ink. His opera Life is a Dream received its world premiere at Sante Fe Opera in July 2010. Apollo and Daphne Variations, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, and A Summer's Day are currently in preparation for a BMOP CD, as is his Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano for Albany Records.

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.

Born in Wheeling, West Virginia, John Alan Rose has been performing as pianist and composer since the age of 14. Acclaimed European pianist Andreas Haefliger once played from John’s sketchbook and was so taken with his music that he predicted his future as a composer/performer. In November of 2015, John performed his piano concerto with the Moravian Philharmonic in Olomouc, The Czech Republic, followed by a collaboration with the same orchestra and the talents of cellist JungWon Choi, violinist Simeon Simeonov, soprano Sing Rose, narrator Tyler Bunch, and conductor Miran Vaupotic on a major recording project of his four concerti (cello, piano, violin and voice) for release on the Navona Label.

Ryan Jesperson is a composer whose music is steeped in the modern practice of blurring genres and skewing expectations. Ryan holds degrees from Washington State University and The Hartt School and earned his doctorate from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he was a Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellow and recipient of the 2011 Outstanding Dissertation Award.

American art song composer Juliana Hall (b. 1958) is a prolific and highly-regarded composer of vocal music whose songs have been described as "brilliant" (Washington Post), "beguiling" (Times of London), and "the most genuinely moving music of the afternoon" (Boston Globe). Among her more than 50 song cycles and works of vocal chamber music are pieces for renowned countertenor Brian Asawa and star soprano Dawn Upshaw.

Shirley Mier is a Twin Cities-based composer, music director and music educator. She writes music of all kinds, in the theatre, educational and concert world. Orchestra works include the suite Of Lakes and Legends: Scenes from White Bear Lake (written for the Century Chamber Orchestra), and Visages, a song cycle for soprano and orchestra.

Greg D'Alessio is a professor of composition at Cleveland State University, where he is also the coordinator of the electronic and computer music program. Among his honors and awards as a composer are a commission from the Koussevitsky Foundation in the Library of Congress, The Aaron Copland Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, The Cleveland Arts Prize, 2 Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Awards, the Board of Director’s Prize from the Society for electro-acoustic music (SEAMUS), The Commuinity Partnership for Arts and Culture fellowship, and the Otto Ettinger fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Festival.

Composer Kamyar Mohajer combines the influences of Eastern modality with a unique approach to harmony, counterpoint and poly-tonality. He has studied composition and orchestration with the celebrated composer and Juilliard faculty member, Behzad Ranjbaran, as well as with award-winning Stanford composer Giancarlo Aquilanti. Mohajer earned a BFA in music from York University in Toronto where he studied piano with Christina Petrowska-Quilico and Antonin Kubalek.

Dennis Kam (1942-2018), Professor Emeritus – University of Miami, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1942. Retired from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida since 2013, Kam was Chair of the Music Theory and Composition Department from 1976 until 2012 and also directed/conducted the Other Music Ensemble (group for the performance of new music) at the University of Miami. He was the Music/Worship Director at Granada Presbyterian Church in Coral Gables, Florida and also Composer-in- Residence/ Associate Conductor for the South Florida Youth Symphony.

Stephen Yip was born in Hong Kong and is now living in the United States. He received his doctor of musical arts (D.M.A.) at Rice University and bachelor of fine arts (B.F.A.) at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, studied with Law Wing-­fai, Clarence Mak, and Arthur Gottschalk.

Born in Aachen, Germany, Walter studied in Hamburg with Ernst-Gernot Klußmann, Wilhelm Maler, and Philipp Jarnach (Busoni’s pupil, and the teacher of Kurt Weill and Bernd Alois Zimmermann). He is prolific in all genres, from solo and chamber works to grand opera. Five of his operas were brought to stage in Germany: “Eli” inspired by Nelly Sachs and “Die Judenbuche / The Jew’s Beech” after the novella by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff were performed in Dortmund.

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.

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.

Australian composer Andrew Schultz studied at the Universities of Queensland and Pennsylvania and at King's College London and has received various awards, prizes and fellowships. His music, which covers a broad range of chamber, orchestral and vocal works, has been performed, recorded and broadcast widely by many leading groups and musicians internationally. He has held numerous commissions, including from the major Australian orchestras.

Acclaimed by Fanfare Magazine as “Masterful...a modernized Rachmaninoff” Christopher J. Keyes (b. 1963) began his career as a pianist, winning many competitions and later making his "double-debut" in Carnegie Hall as both soloist and guest composer with the New York Youth Symphony. He began formal composition lessons at the University of California at Santa Barbara earning a BM degree in Piano Performance and a BA in Creative Studies with an emphasis in composition.

Carlos Simon is a versatile composer and arranger who combines the influences of jazz, gospel, and neo- romanticism.

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.

Allan Crossman has had the great pleasure to write for soloists and ensembles worldwide, including many commissions and awards. Millennium Overture appeared on the eponymous GRAMMY-nominated album from North/South Consonance; Music for Human Choir shared Top Honors at the Waging Peace Through Singing Festival in Oregon; Flyer, for cello solo and string orchestra, was written in 2003 for the centenary of the first Wright Brothers flight and premiered/recorded by the North/South Chamber Orchestra (NYC) under Max Lifchitz, with cellist Nina Flyer.

Sarah Feigin, 1928 – 2011, was born in Dvinsk, Latvia. A precocious child, her musical talent became apparent in the early age of two, as she began to replicate melodies on the piano without instruction.