Composers

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.

Composer, educator, and conductor Janice Macaulay received her D.M.A. in composition from Cornell University, where she studied with Karel Husa and Steven Stucky. Reviewers have said her music “creates an arresting playground of sounds and effects” (Gramophone) and features “dynamic, lyrical and playful interactions among the players” (Classical Music Review). She won the Alex Shapiro Prize from the International Alliance of Women in Music for Kaleidoscope for Wind Symphony, commissioned by the Cornell University Wind Symphony in memory of Karel Husa and recorded by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Wind Ensemble on the Albany Records label.

Paul Paccione was born in New York City in 1952. Paccione’s love of the popular music of the 1950's and 1960’s awakened his initial musical interests. He studied classical guitar and music theory at the Mannes College of Music (B.M. 1974). While at Mannes, he was influenced by composer Eric Richards to begin composition study.

Iowa-born composer Marilyn Bliss has written many widely performed orchestral, chamber, and solo works. She received her B.M. degree in composition, flute, and voice at Coe College in Cedar Rapids IA, and did her graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the City University of New York. Her composition teachers included such distinguished composers as George Crumb, George Rochberg, Jacob Druckman, Jerry Owen, and Harvey Sollberger. 

Native Floridian Henry Wolking (1948) is a composer, trombonist, conductor, teacher, and author. He completed his Bachelor Degree in music education from the University of Florida, and Master of Music in Composition at the University of North Texas in 1971. At the age of 24, he began his teaching career as head of the jazz area at the University of Utah. He retired in 2011 and is a University Professor Emeritus Of Music. He is the recipient of the 2018 School of Music Camerata Award, which celebrates the contributions of musicians and patrons of the arts to the University of Utah and broader community. He maintains a busy schedule of writing and arranging for classical and jazz groups. There are currently over 75 of his jazz works in the Walrus/EJazzlines online catalog.

David F. Wilborn has emerged as an internationally acclaimed composer, trombonist, conductor, and music educator. He is an award-winning composer whose compositions are enjoyed for their creative use of rhythmic development and innovative musical style. Occasionally, these features intersect with passages of main-stream jazz or Latin jazz, thus making his music accessible to many listeners and performers. Overall, his style may be regarded as contemporary classical while borrowing from traditional music forms.

Originally from the Washington DC area, Edward “Ted” Messerschmidt is a versatile musician who has been recognized in national contests in composition, conducting, and trombone performance. His original compositions, published by Cimarron Music Press and Warwick Music Publishing, have been performed in the United States, Europe, and South America by musicians and ensembles including Andy Akiho, Joseph Bello, Charley Brighton, Ruthanne Schempf, Patrick Smith, Harry Watters, the Luftwaffenmusikkorps Erfurt (forthcoming), and the United States Army Orchestra.

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. 

Shawn E. Okpebholo is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning composer whose music has been described as “devastatingly beautiful” and “fresh and new and fearless” (The Washington Post), “affecting” (The New York Times), “searing” (The Chicago Tribune), “staggering” (The New Yorker), “lyrical, complex, singular” (The Guardian), and “powerful” (BBC Music Magazine).

Tamas Szigyarto was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was schooled in classical piano from the age of 10 and progressed into drums & percussion from 17. For the following decade, he played in numerous alternative rock bands. Szigyarto studied Mathematics at St.Petersburg State University (graduated with MSc. in Math in 2006) and Commercial Music Performance at Tech Music School (BIMM Institute) in London. Here he met and played with London’s alt pop trio Fassine.

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.

John Summers began his professional composing career in 1973, writing music for schools for a touring theater company, where he produced every type of production, from educational musicals for young kids to setting curriculum poetry (Shakespeare, Eliot, etc) to music. This continued until 1977, and in the process, he visited every small and large town in the Eastern states of Australia.

Dr. Andre’ E. Godsey, Sr., Ph.D. has found his voice in the contemporary classical music venue. Over the last 15 years, he reveals an ability to inspire and entertain audiences nationally and internationally. At Lake Clifton Senior High school in Baltimore MD, he was awarded the Musician of the Year for 1979. In more recent times, several musical events include the world premiere of Symphony Number One in C# Minor: Themes for Soren Kierkegaard, “Movement One,” at the Sao Paulo Contemporary Classical Music Festival, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2019.

Brian Field’s music is an eclectic fusion of lyricism and driving rhythm that brings together elements of post-romanticism, minimalism, and jazz. Field has received a host of awards, including the RMN Classical recording prize, the Benenti Foundation recording prize, Briar Cliff Choral Music Competition (first prize), the Victor Herbert ASCAP Young Composers’ Contest (first prize), among many others.

Applauded by Aaron Copland, inspired by Desmond Tutu, and mentored by Hugo Friedhofer and Earle Hagen, Bruce Babcock has spent his working life composing music for the musicians of Los Angeles. Successful in both film and television, and the concert hall, he is known for vibrant, sonorous, expressive pieces that immerse audience and performers alike in an inclusive and exuberant celebration of the musical art.

Sarah Wallin Huff is a music lecturer at California Polytechnic University of Pomona, teaching “History of Technology in Music,” for which she published an original textbook with Great River Learning in 2019. She received her M.A. in Music Composition at Claremont Graduate University in 2008, and was the Professor of Composition and Advanced Theory — as well as conductor of the Chamber Ensemble — at The Master’s University in Santa Clarita from 2012-2016.

Santiago Kodela is an award-winning Classical Guitarist & Composer working in the areas of concert, solo instrument, chamber, and choral music. His works explore various aspects of sound and harmony, adventuring intensely into the areas of iso-rhythms, metric modulation, and chord harmonization. In 2022 the album PINNACLE VOL. 2 was awarded the 2nd Prize Silver Medal by North-American Global Music Awards in the classical category. Furthermore, his piece Delicate Soliloquies was shortlisted as a finalist in the 2nd Composition Competition by the Dutch Guitar Foundation by a jury integrated by Steve Goss, JacobTV, and Nikita Koshkin.

I have been fortunate in my life to have had three overlapping but distinct careers in music. As a younger woman I enjoyed freelancing as a pianist and singer; performing chamber music, solo and duo recitals, coaching, and doing some part time college teaching. Later I took a full time position as music professor at Los Medanos Community College, where I headed the piano, theory, and recital programs. Now, retired from teaching, I am turning my focus to composing, a long-neglected love. 

Peter Paulsen is an active performer on the Philadelphia jazz scene as well as Assistant Principal Bass of the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra and Principal Bass of the Allentown Symphony Orchestra. He has received three PA Council on the Arts composition grants and was recognized with a PEW Fellowship in Composition. Paulsen has released five critically acclaimed CDs of his compositions: Three-Stranded Cord by Peter Paulsen Quintet; Tri-Cycle by Peter Paulsen Trio; Peter Paulsen Change of Scenery Sextet; Goes Without Saying by Peter Paulsen Quintet; and A Few Thoughts by Peter Paulsen Trio.

Dr. Joseph T. Spaniola is a composer on a passionate quest to engage the hearts and minds of audiences and performers through the communicative powers of music. Spaniola is active as a composer, arranger, educator, conductor, lecturer, producer, clinician, and adjudicator. He has composed works for band, orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments, voice, choir, and electronic tape.