Composers

Matthew Durrant's music has been performed throughout the United States at festivals, conferences, and recitals. His style is very melodic and can be thought of as neo-tonal. While his music is generally triadic in nature, its richness is expanded by borrowing from beyond the diatonic realm and employing tonality in unconventional ways.

Sophie Dupuis (b.1988) is a francophone composer from New Brunswick, Canada, interested in acoustic, electroacoustic, vocal, and interdisciplinary art music. She finds her inspiration in the picturesque scenery of the Maritimes where she grew up, as well as in various performance and visual art forms. Her work has been commissioned and performed by soloists and groups including Duo Holz, Made in Trio, Din of Shadows, Ballet-Opéra-Pantomime, Thin Edge New Music Collective, ECM+, the Naden Band of the Royal Canadian Navy, Quasar saxophone quartet, and Esprit Orchestra.

Martha Hill Duncan’s passion for music started early, inspired by her mother, who sang and played the piano by ear. She was a member of the first graduating class of the Houston High School for Performing and Visual Arts, (Vocal Music ’74) and earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Composition from the University of Texas at Austin (1979). She is grateful to many inspirational and generous teachers including composers Dr. Donald Grantham and Dr. Sam Dolin and pianists Danielle Martin, Gregory Allen, Dr. Errol Haun, and Trudy Borden.

Peter Drew passed through many lifetimes until he honed in on a career in music. As a teenager, he joined the high school orchestra but nothing came of it. He then bought a student clarinet, looked at it, blew a few notes and stuck it in a closet.

John Downey studied musical composition with Lewis Spratlan and electroacoustics with Eric Sawyer at Amherst College. During medical school at Stanford, John continued his involvement in music as a collaborator with Jenny Kallick and Lewis Spratlan on ARCHITECT. John's most recent work for orchestra, The Tides at Golden Gate, had its world premiere at Stanford University and its east coast premiere in 2010 at Amherst College. Dr. Downey is currently a resident radiologist at Stanford University hospital.

Quinn Dizon was born in Santa Rosa CA in August of 1989. When he was nine, Dizon began taking private lessons on the clarinet. Soon, he began playing in his school music program and various youth orchestras in the area. At fifteen, he became interested in composing, and sought out private instruction.

Dominick DiOrio (b. 1984) is a conductor and composer who has won widespread acclaim for his contributions to American music. He has been recognized with The American Prize in both Choral Composition (2014) and Choral Performance (2019, with NOTUS). Since 2012, he has been a member of the choral conducting faculty at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he serves as Professor of Choral Conducting and leads the select, new-music chamber chorus NOTUS. DiOrio has conducted ensembles around the world, from the Houston Chamber Choir and Choral Arts Initiative in the United States to Allmänna Sången and Ars Veritas abroad. In July 2020, he became the 14th Artistic Director & Conductor of the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia.

The music of Christopher Dietz (b. 1977) has been recognized by honors and awards from Copland House, Canada's Banff Centre and National Arts Centre, the Camargo Foundation, ASCAP's Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions and Composer Institute, the League of Composers/ISCM Orchestral Competition, the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, the Riverside Symphony Composer Reading Project (NYC), North/South Consonance (NYC), the Chicago Ensemble's Discover America competition, the Utah Arts Festival's Orchestral Commission Prize, the NewMusic@ECU festival, as well as numerous academic scholarships and fellowships.

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.

Kim Diehnelt (b. 1963) is compelled to create beauty through her work as a conductor, composer, and artistic coach. Trained in the United States and Europe, Kim Diehnelt established her musical crafts in Finland and Switzerland, leading Baltic, Russian, and European ensembles. Trained in the United States and Europe, Kim Diehnelt established her musical crafts in Finland and Switzerland, leading Baltic, Russian, and European ensembles. She currently resides in Burlington VT. Diehnelt has been composing works for solo instruments, chamber, orchestral and choral ensembles since 2011 when, after decades on the conductor’s podium, she “suddenly had something to say.”

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.

Dr. David Dickau is a choral conductor and composer residing in Mankato, Minnesota where he is Director of Choral Activities at Minnesota State University, Mankato. As a part of his duties, Dr. Dickau conducts the Concert Choir and teaches conducting and composition. Dr. Dickau holds advanced degrees in Choral Music from Northwestern University (Evanston IL) and the University of Southern California (Los Angeles CA) where he studied with Morten Lauridsen and Rodney Eichenberger. He has taught choral music on both the high school and college levels and has conducted community and church choirs.

Dave Dexter (b. UK, 1985) came to composing relatively late, without formal music education, by unsuccessfully entering a contest with the Liverpool Philharmonic in 2015. The rejection spurred him into a long period of self-tuition in composition, engraving, and orchestration — by the following year he had recorded his first works with string quartet, then orchestra and choir, and finally a full symphony orchestra in 2018.

David DeVasto (b.1979) has presented works in the United States and Europe; including The IAEF International Summer Arts Institute, The Council for Undergraduate Research, Society of Composers, Charlotte New Music Festival, Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers, Electronic Music Midwest, The Iowa Composers Forum, Nevada Encounters of New Music, and The Electro-Acoustic Juke Joint.

Herbert Deutsch was a composer, author, educator, and performer, and was Professor of Music at Hofstra University for 57 years. He is a composer of music in various media and his work has been widely performed, and commissioned works have been featured at national and regional conferences. In 1972, Deutsch co-founded the Long Island Composers Alliance. During his career at Hofstra, he founded Jazz Ensemble, Electronic Music Studios, New Music Ensemble, and created the B.S. Degree programs in Jazz, Composition/Theory and Music Business. He received the George Estabrook Distinguished Alumni Award in 1996 and the Hofstra Alumni Achievement Award in 2001. The Music Department has established the Herbert Deutsch Award for highest honors in Music Education.

L Peter Deutsch is a native of Massachusetts, now living in Sonoma County CA, and British Columbia, Canada. He writes primarily for small instrumental or a capella vocal ensembles, spanning styles from devotional to romantic to jazzy, and from Renaissance to early 20th century. Works to date include four choral commissions; releases through PARMA Recordings include music for chorus, string quartet, woodwind and brass quintets, piano trio (featuring work with Trio Casals), and full orchestra.

Douglas Detrick is a composer, songwriter, trumpeter, banjoist, writer, podcast producer and arts leader whose work in these diverse areas is distinguished by its quiet thoughtfulness and its embrace of good ideas from unconventional sources.

Ferdinando DeSena is a Miami-based composer who was born in Brooklyn NY. His earliest musical experiences were with neighborhood pop, rock, and doo-wopp groups. He worked as a musician in Ithaca NY for 13 years, playing in several regional bands as keyboard player and lead singer. His final group was Uptown Revue, which he led for seven years.

A native of New York City, pianist Robert DeGaetano (1946 – 2015) enjoyed a widely esteemed career as both a virtuoso interpreter of the great keyboard repertoire and a composer of striking originality and communicative intensity.

Malcolm Dedman was born in London, England, on November 3, 1948. Fascinated at an early age by his mother’s piano playing, she taught him to play when he was around 5 years of age. Once Dedman had a basic understanding, he found himself improvising alongside his regular practice. By the age of 12, he realized that he wanted to write some of these ideas down, so this became the starting point to his career as a composer.