[ Composer's Voice ]
Composer's Voice Concert
May 29, 2011
Jan Hus Church
351 East 74th Street
New York
,
New York
10021-3798
The Composer's Voice Concert Series is an opportunity for contemporary composers to express their musical aesthetic and personal "voice" created in their compositions. This is Composer's Voice featuring Fifteen Minutes of Fame with Ayssa Reit.

Program:

Performers

Cory Hills

Multi-percussionist, composer, and improviser Cory Hills thrives on breaking down musical barriers through creative, interdisciplinary projects. He has received degrees from Northwestern University, Queensland Conservatorium, and the University of Kansas, was awarded a research fellowship to Institute Fabrica, and has held artist residencies at Rocky Mountain National Park and the OMI International Arts Center. An advocate of new music, Hills has commissioned and premiered over 50 works for solo percussion. He is the creator of The Percussive Art of Storytelling, a percussion outreach program that brings classical music to underserved communities. As a member of SI2, an interdisciplinary arts duo with Matthew Coley, Hills has performed throughout the United States, Mexico, and Eastern Europe. In addition, Hills sponsors the Con/un/drum Composition Competition designed to increase repertoire for solo percussion. He is an artist for Innovative Percussion, Remo, and Black Swamp Percussion. For more information, please visit www.coryhills.com.

Alyssa Reit

For more than 30 years Alyssa Reit has worked as an independent performer, composer and arranger. She completed her Bachelors and Master's degrees at the Juilliard School as a student of the late Marcel Grandjany. As a harpist she has performed with institutions ranging from the world renowned vocal quartet Anonymous 4, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Metropolitan Opera, to contemporary music groups and traditional Irish bands; she has played in such well known, diverse venues as Carnegie Hall,Merkin Hall, Tully Hall, BAM, the Public Theater, and the Kitchen. She worked with composer John Cage and helped organize "The Grand Harp Event" at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and "The Garden of Harps" at the Museum of Modern Art. Recently, she joined forces with New Music New York, and co-produced a concert of new works for their spring 2008 series. As a composer, her work "American Songs" has been performed nationally by the Eastern Brass Quintet, she has done sound design for the well-known storyteller Laura Simms, and in January 2006 the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra premiered her work for strings, "Legends of Isis."

Mary-Elizabeth Thompson

Flutist Mary-Elizabeth Thompson performs frequently as a solo and chamber music artist, with recent performances in Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, New York, South Carolina, and at the XXXI Foro Internacional de Musica Nueva Manuel Enriquez in Mexico City, Mexico. She is a strong advocate for new music and has commissioned and premiered five works with more in progress. Thompson received her Bachelors degree in music education from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina and her Masters in flute performance from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. She is currently completing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in flute performance at the University of Kansas as a student of David Fedele.

Composers

Carson Cooman

Carson Cooman is an American composer with a catalog of works in many forms; his music has been performed on all six inhabited continents. Cooman's music appears on over thirty recordings, including twelve complete CDs on the Naxos, Albany, Artek, Altarus, and Zimbel labels. He serves as an active consultant on music business matters to composers and performing organizations.

Steve Cohen

Born in London in 1948, Malcolm Dedman was initially selftaught, having started to compose when he was 12. He had formal composition lessons with Patric Standford at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1974-75, but did not receive a formal qualification in music until 2005, when he passed his Masters Degree in Composing Concert Music at Thames Valley University with distinction. He has gained several composition awards, including the Stroud Festival and the Recontres Internationales de Chant Choral. He has recently had a piece for two cellos and piano, written for Polina Burdukova, performed in 2010 in South Africa, and he has written a Trio Sonata for flute, cello and piano, again for Polina, which has been promised a performance in 2011.

Jorge Sosa

Jorge Sosa is a contemporary classical music composer and Assistant Professor of Music at Elmhurst College in the Chicago Suburbs. His compositions have been performed in venues in Europe, the United States, and Mexico. Jorge received his Doctorate of Music from the conservatory at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and his Masters of Music in Composition from Mannes College of Music. Additionally, he has just released his first album of works, entitled Plastic Time.

Composers for Fifteen Minutes of Fame

Program Notes

Support from the Puffin Foundation "...continuing the dialogue between art and the lives of ordinary people."

Vox Novus is a collective of composers, musicians, and music enthusiasts collaborating together to create, produce, promote, and enjoy the new music of today. Our members are from a variety of composers committed to the creation and dissemination of new music. Their music is of a variety of styles, aesthetics, and ideologies. Vox Novus produces and promotes new music. They are dedicated to contemporary music, the musicians who perform, and the composers that write the music of today. Their mission is to cultivate a music community and make their work available to the greater public.

Remarkable Theater Brigade founded by Christian McLeer, Dan Jeselsohn and Monica Harte, creates and produces new operas and musicals and takes children's versions out to special-needs and at-risk children free of charge.

Presenters:

Remarkable Theater Brigade

Remarkable Theater Brigade founded by Christian McLeer, Dan Jeselsohn and Monica Harte, creates and produces new operas and musicals and takes children's versions out to special-needs and at-risk children free of charge.

Remarkable Theater Brigade creates and produces new works including operas, orchestral pieces, ballets, musicals, and electro-acoustic works and co-produces the Composer's Voice Concert Series concerts. Remarkable Theater Brigade was founded in 2002 by Christian McLeer, Monica Harte, and Dan Jeselsohn.

Jan Hus Church

This is the place you were welcome, long before you arrived!
www.janhus.org

Vox Novus

Vox Novus promotes contemporary music and its creators through concerts, recordings, publications, broadcasts, and online publicity. Vox Novus believes strongly in the intrinsic value of contemporary music, recognizing it as a force in the advancement of culture and art. Our goal is to keep music alive by strengthening the connection between composer and audience, providing greater exposure to new music.

Funding by

Puffin Foundation

Funding also provided by the Puffin Foundation, "...continuing the dialogue between art and lives of ordinary people."