Composers

Phillip Rhodes was born in Forest City, North Carolina in 1940 and received degrees from Duke University and the Yale University School of Music. His principal teachers have been William Klenz, Iain Hamilton, Donald Martino, and Mel Powell.

Howard L. Richards Jr. received his first piano lesson when he was six years old and began studying popular piano and trumpet at the age of eight. He attended high school at Culver Military Academy in Indiana and was a member of the Infantry Band for four years. Upon graduating high school, Richards spent one year at the University of Michigan to study Physics, but switched at midyear to major in Music Composition.

Emma-Ruth Richards is a composer much in demand in the UK and overseas, acclaimed for her understanding of both instrumental and vocal writing which has earned her a role as a favorite among musicians and singers.

A Midwest native (WI, MN), Marga Richter earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition from The Juilliard School. She has written over 150 works, encompassing virtually every genre. Her orchestral music has been performed by more than 50 orchestras including the Atlanta, Oklahoma, and Milwaukee Symphonies and the Minnesota Orchestra, and recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

Denice Rippentrop believes that composing is a craft that is as much about the creative journey as the final composition itself. Rippentrop is the creator of numerous choral works, each of which she finds challenging in process, but fulfilling in the end. Composing gives her energy and purpose as she continually challenges herself to write with integrity and compassion. Rippentrop writes with a style and flair that reflects her understanding of the voice and ensemble balance.

(Ernest) John Robertson (b. 1943) was born in New Zealand but is a longtime resident of Canada. His secondary school offered music as a full time subject, allowing Robertson to find his footing. Upon leaving school, he went into the insurance business where he spent his working life. Having emigrated to Canada in 1967, he continued to compose on the side.

Houston native Dr. Chad Robinson is the Artistic Director and founder of Texas New Music Ensemble, a Houston-based mixed chamber ensemble focused solely on the work of Texas composers. As a composer, he has worked with many other prestigious ensembles and soloists, such as Ethel, Lontano, The Jack Quartet, The Parker Quartet, Musiqa, George Vosburgh, Mary Dullea, and Emma Steele.

John Rommereim is a musician who has pursued a varied career as a composer, conductor, keyboardist, and professor. He has written works for choir, solo voice, orchestra, string quartet, saxophone quartet, flute ensemble, guitar, organ, piano, and electronic media, as well as a chamber opera, and music for theater and film. The New York Times praised the “richly expressive” character of his work for voice and piano, Into the Still Hollow.

Jan Van der Roost was born in Duffel, Belgium in 1956. He studied at the Lemmensinstituut and at the Royal Conservatories of Ghent and Antwerp, where he qualified as a conductor and a composer. Besides being a prolific composer, he also is very much in demand as an adjudicator, lecturer, clinician, and guest conductor: his musical activities took him to over 50 countries while his compositions have been performed/recorded around the world.

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.

Called “a fresh, bold, and individual creative force” (Los Angeles’ Canyon News), and “a very talented young composer with much to look forward to in the future” (Paula Brusky, 2010 Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition), Kyle Peter Rotolo (b. 1986) is a multi-faceted musician who has worked in a variety of mediums including contemporary classical, film/television/radio, and pop/rock. He grew up on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, just across from the City That Never Sleeps. 2012 was an exciting year for Kyle; it saw the premiere of Marilyn’s Room, a mini-opera on his own story and libretto, by the Peabody opera company, as well as the album release of his piece for solo guitar Le crâne a lá cigarette qui fume on the album Epitaphios by the lauded guitarist Anastasios Comanescu. He is an alumnus of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University (M.M. ’13), the Brevard Music Center, and a member of Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society. His primary teachers have been Kevin Puts, Liviu Marinescu, and N. Lincoln Hanks. He has also studied with Robert Aldridge and David Dzubay.

As a writer, producer, and director, Michael Roush has had a lengthy career in the development  of creative content for independent film and theater production. During his years in Colorado at Cherry Creek High School (a Grammy® Signature School), Roush was active in Performing Arts as a performer in Musical Theatre and Drama, as well as Choral, drawing upon a heavy Fine Arts course load which also included theory, composition, and music appreciation.

Isak Roux (1959*) was born and raised in the colorful city of Durban, South Africa. The cosmopolitan nature of African folk music fascinated him from an early age. His pianistic career began by playing gospel music at his local church community. As a teenager, this prompted him to embark on vocal arrangement and composition of sacred works. His later close collaboration with Joseph Shabalala and Jake Lerole further influenced his personal stylistic development. As a solo recording artist, he has produced three piano albums to date.

Inspired by concepts of place and the human experience, composer Christina Rusnak works at the intersection of nature, culture, history, landscape, and art to integrate context into her music from the world around her. Rusnak composes for diverse instrumentations with lyrical lines, and organic rhythms and textures. Her pieces range from elementary to professional levels and includes chamber ensemble, orchestra, wind band, choral and solo works, as well as flex band pieces, jazz, electro-acoustic works, and film. 

Tadd Russo (b. 1976, Parma, Ohio) received his master's degree in composition from The Ohio State University, where his principal instructor was Thomas Wells. Critic Ralph O'Dette has praised his lyrical gift, hailing his music for the theatre as memorable.

Composer Alejandro Rutty is best-known for his distinctive mix of South American styles, lyrical melodies, meticulous rhythmic detail, and textures suggested by modern recording processing techniques.

Since beginning her musical career as a cellist, Samantha Sack has been exploring the full range of musical expressions. Performing was only the beginning of her journey, as she quickly understood the greatest expression of music was creation. After receiving private composition lessons with Mara Gibson in secondary school, Samantha entered Missouri State University under the John Prescott Composition Scholarship and the Claude T. Smith Composition Scholarship. Graduating with a Bachelor of Music Composition further led her to Dublin, Ireland, to earn a Master of Arts in Scoring for Film and Visual Media from Dublin Institute of Technology.

London-born Nicholas Sackman (b. 1950) studied music at Nottingham University and then at Leeds University with Alexander Goehr. He spent fifteen years teaching music in schools before returning to the Music Department at Nottingham as a Lecturer in Composition.

Just as the English language makes use of foreign words to augment its own expressive power, Los Angeles-based composer Jonathan Sacks (b. 1950) draws from a wide range of styles and techniques to create music in an idiom that's entirely his own.

Lionel Sainsbury began to play the piano at an early age and soon started to compose his own music. Born in Wiltshire, England, in 1958, he studied composition with Patric Standford at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. At the age of 21 he was awarded a Mendelssohn Scholarship, which brought him into contact with composers as diverse as Edmund Rubbra, John McCabe and Henri Dutilleux.