Composers

Matthew Hetz (b. 1957) is a native to Los Angeles where he still resides. His formal music studies began at age 16 with piano lessons, and composing has always been in the forefront. He began playing the violin in his 20s, and joined local orchestras, an experience of tremendous importance and influence for composing. His study of composition and music at California State University, Dominguez Hills in the 1980’s was at the height of atonality, with the dissolution of harmony as the accepted compositional practices.

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.

Nan Avant’s music embraces thematic and rhythmic intentions often reflecting her Latin heritage, encompassing her passion for classical, jazz, world, and ethnic music. Avant has won numerous awards including two Global Music Awards Silver Medals in 2022, was named a Finalist for The American Prize in orchestral composition and is a four-time nominee in the Hollywood Music in Media Awards. Avant’s Tributum for Celtic Bagpipes and Orchestra, recorded by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, is on the ballot for first-round voting in the 65th Grammy Awards. Tributum enjoys airplay around the world, from Ireland’s Public Radio in the United Kingdom to Hawaii’s Maui Celtic Radio in the United States, and already boasts a Best Instrumental Song Award at the 13th Annual Independent Music Vox Populi Awards.

Storytelling is an important aspect in much of the music of American composer Christine Jancarz. Her recognizable melodies and rhythms are similar to the main characters of a novel, and along with aspects such as orchestration attempt to convey a narrative. Recurring melodies and rhythms are easily identifiable; like characters in a book, they become familiar. Much of her music is influenced by rock, jazz, and classical styles. She also frequently uses counterpoint, and mathematical concepts in her works, such as her Melodic Matrix series for solo instruments.

David Colson (b. 1957) is an American educator, administrator, percussionist, conductor, and composer of classical music. He is Professor of Music at the Western Michigan University (WMU) Irving S. Gilmore School of Music, where he has taught composition, music theory, and leads the new music ensemble Birds on a Wire. He served as Director of the School of Music from 2007 to 2014 and Director of the Gwen Frostic School of Art at WMU from 2017 to 2021. He came to WMU from California State University–Chico, where he taught composition and music theory, chaired the Department of Music, and was the David W. and Helen E.F. Lantis University Professor, the University's first endowed professorship.

Rae Howell is an award-winning Australian composer and multi-instrumentalist. She is founding director of Sunwrae, a music performance and production enterprise, and works across a vast range of music concert hall and multi-artform projects. She has studied music in Melbourne, London, and New York; she lectures in music and creative industry subjects; and has worked professionally in many places across the globe, producing a large catalog of original music albums, publications, and collaborative recordings.

Karl Blench is a composer and conductor who holds bachelor’s degrees in education and music theory from the University of New Hampshire, and a Master’s degree and DMA in composition from Rice University. His music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Cuba. Recent engagements include performances of his works by the Shepherd School Chamber Symphony, the h2 Saxophone Quartet, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the University of New Hampshire and University of Houston Wind Ensembles.

New York City composer Bruce Lazarus characterizes his extensive catalog of instrumental and vocal music as "diverse, concise, architectural, contemporary, and in turn meditative, energetic, humorous, moody, and exuberant.” Lazarus' music has often been inspired by astronomical imagery, woodlands and mountain trails, and lifetime involvement in the worlds of theater and dance. His works are published at Universal Editions and Swirly Music, and his albums - Musical Explorations of the Messier Star Clusters and Nebulae, Works for Solo Piano, November Sonata, and Song of the Earth - are available on iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify.

Beth Wiemann was raised in Burlington VT, studied composition and clarinet at Oberlin College and received her Ph.D. in composition from Princeton University. Her works have been performed nationally and internationally by the ensembles Continuum, Transient Canvas, Earplay, Guerilla Opera, and others.  Her compositions have won awards from the Orvis Foundation, Copland House, the Colorado New Music Festival, New York Treble Singers, and regional arts councils. She teaches clarinet, composition, and music theory at the University of Maine. 

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.

The deep humanitarian concerns that permeate much of Deon Nielsen Price’s music is represented in her duo War Ends-Song Endures, a tribute to the valiant spirit of Ukrainians, premiered in 2023 at the Mu Phi Epsilon International Convention in Texas by flutist Rik Noyce and commissioning pianist Mary Au. Named the "Tom Brady of Composers" (New York Times 12/24/2022), Price feels honored to represent octogenarian composers who are still professionally active. During her truly banner year of 2023, several long-term projects came to fruition with premier performances, album releases, new recording sessions, and two compositions that were finalists for The 2023 American Prize: Ludwig’s Letter to Eternal Beloved, song cycle in the category Vocal Chamber Music; and Ammon and the King, Immigrant Speaks Truth to Power in the Opera/Theater category.

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.

Matthew Heap, born in 1981, is an internationally-performed composer whose music has been featured in several American and English cities and on WQED and WCLV radio. He is also very involved in the theater community as an actor, director, and writer. Matthew received his B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University, M.M. from the Royal College of Music in London, and  Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. He has studied with Leonardo Balada, Eric Moe,  Nancy Galbraith, Mathew Rosenblum, Amy Williams, and Timothy Salter.

Michael J. Evans is an American composer based in Washington DC He has recorded with pianist Karolin Rojahn, Sirius Quartet, St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, Millennium Symphony Orchestra, Kiev Philharmonic, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Moravian Philharmonic and Janaček Philharmonic.

Dr. J.A. Kawarsky (b. 1959) is Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton in New Jersey. Kawarsky received his B.M. in composition from Iowa State University and his M.M. and D.M.A. from Northwestern University, where he studied with John Paynter, Alan Stout, and Frederick Ockwell. In 1982, Kawarsky conducted the Opera Company of the Negev Region in Be’er Sheva in Israel. Before coming to Westminster in 1989, he taught at Fort Hays State University, the University of Wisconsin, and Moraine Valley Community College.

Composer Mark Eliot Jacobs, born in 1960, lives in southern Oregonís Rogue River Valley. He is a frequent participant in the musical life of the valley: principal trombonist in the Rogue Valley Symphony, and musician with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among other engagements. He is an adjunct instructor at Southern Oregon University where he has taught in the areas of music theory, composition, and low brass. Mark holds the degree Doctor of Music from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in Music Composition (1986).

Inspired by Christian iconography, Nathan’s compositions emphasize music’s ability to propose emotional narratives by layering and/or juxtaposing simple musical ideas, or “sonic icons.“ This approach to composition—praised by the Boston Globe as “adroit and expressively efficient”—stresses the relationship between disparate musical ideas, which the audience is invited to reconcile of their own accord. And while the narrative journeys of Nathan’s compositions can thus be as varied as humanity itself, the subject of each work points only to One: the salvation of humanity.

Bernard Hughes’s music has been performed by various ensembles, including the BBC Singers and the London Mozart Players at major British venues such as the Royal Albert Hall and St Paul’s Cathedral. His music has won a number of awards both in the UK and internationally, and is regularly broadcast on the UK’s BBC Radio 3. Bernard Hughes’s BBC commission Birdchant was premiered at the Proms festival in August 2021. After studying music at Oxford University, and composition privately with Param Vir, Bernard was awarded a Ph.D. in composition by London University in 2009.

Mark Edwards Wilson, currently a member of the faculty of the University of Maryland, began his productive career in his native California. He studied with Henri Lazarof and Leon Kirchner at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he received a Ph.D. at the age of 25. He has received many prizes, awards, and other honors for his orchestral and vocal works, as well as his chamber music and electro-acoustic compositions, many of which have been commissioned and performed by major institutions and performing organizations.

Simon Andrews is an English composer who is earning a reputation as a creator of eloquent concert music that blends harmonic complexity and lyricism, introversion and broad gestures, delicate timbres and bold statements. His output ranges from large-scale orchestral works and opera to intimate chamber music, with a special delight in chamber music with solo voices. He studied at Oxford University, and the Royal Academy of Music, and gained a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Winner of the 1985 Benjamin Britten Prize, his music has been commissioned and performed to critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.