November 13, 2011 - Composer's Voice Concert

Performers

Samantha K Enriquez

Samantha K Enriquez, NY, NY, BM & MM - NYU. Member of W4 New Music Collective, Brooklyn Wind Symphony, ensemble mise-en. Performances with One World Symphony, New York Youth Symphony (under Ryan McAdams and Paul Haas), the NYU Orchestras and the Queens College Orchestra. Heard at Alice Tully, Carnegie Hall, United Nations, NPR's "From the Top" and various WQXR and UN Radio broadcasts. Collaborations with Charles Neidich, Shanghai Quartet, Mindy Kaufman, Carter Brey, Alan Gilbert. Studied with Keith Underwood, Mindy Kaufman, Robert Langevin, Michael Parloff; master classes with James Galway, Davide Formisano, Maxence Larrieu, Leone Buyse, Robert Dick.

Jenny Greene

Soprano Jenny Greene has made a name for herself specializing in new works on both coasts, creating the roles of Amy (The North Arcade) and the Cat (Jack Prelutsky's Something Big Has Been Here) in Seattle before moving to NYC. She created the role of The Composer (Elodie Lauten's The Two Cents Opera) and participated in Remarkable Theatre Brigade's Summer Young Artist Program. In 2010, Jenny made her debut with Village Light Opera, Opera Manhattan and Regina Opera and the production team of Alphabet Soup Productions as Director of Opera & Artist in Residence. This season, Jenny made a well-received debut as Pamina (Die Zauberflote) for Opera Manhattan and is Resident Artist at Dicapo Opera Theater. She is joining Regina Opera as Peep-Bo (The Mikado).

Lindsey Marie Kowalik

Lindsey Marie Kowalik is a graduate of Old Dominion University and Texas State University, where she obtained her Masters Degree in Vocal Performance. She frequented the stages of both institutions, most notably as The Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, Marenka in The Bartered Bride, and Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte. She recently had the honor of performing a concert with Alphabet Soup Productions for contemporary New York Women composers in New York City. She is currently studying with Tyson Deaton.

Suzanne Oberdorfer

Suzanne Oberdorfer is a mezzo soprano performer and teacher in the Hampton Roads, Virginia region. She graduated magna cum laud from Old Dominion University with a Bachelors of Music in Vocal Performance. While there on vocal scholarship, she performed as a regular soloist for all vocal ensembles. She has performed as both a soloist and chorus member in the Todi Festival and Operafestival di Roma summer programs as well as performing as a soloist for the Virginia Arts Festival Duffy Composer's Institute. Currently Suzanne is a soloist of St. Pauls Episcopal Church and Ohef Sholom Temple, both in Norfolk. She also performs with Virginia Opera as a cover artist and in their chorus and teaches voice privately.

Jasmine Presson

Jasmine Presson (soprano) recently completed her MM at Northwestern University, where she performed in Street Scene (Greta Fiorentino), The Ghosts of Versailles (Opera Box Soprano), and in scenes as Donna Anna and Fiordiligi. She originated the role of the Barista in the Too Much Coffee Man Opera by Daniel Steven Crafts and the role of Michelle in Rain by Hae Kyoung Park. Jasmine toured Oregon in Hansel & Gretel (Gertrude) as part of Portland Opera's outreach ensemble. Before receiving a bite from the opera bug, Jasmine spent half a decade acting and directing in NYC in venues including WOW Cafe Theatre, Dixon Place and The Looking Glass Theatre. She holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Kalamazoo College and studied music at Brooklyn College.

Sam Theuring

Flutist Sam Theuring is currently earning her Master's degree in flute performance at NYU with Robert Dick. She holds a Bachelor's degree in flute performance from the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point where she studied with Paul Doebler, Jessica Dunnavant and Julie Hobbs, and substituted with the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra. Sam has participated in masterclasses with Trevor Wye, Chris Norman, Jill Felber, Eva Amsler, Gro Sandvik and Bud Beyer.

Ashley Williams

Ashley Williams, flutist, earned her Bachelor of Science in Music Education, Magna Cum Laude, from Western Connecticut State University where she attended on full scholarship and studied flute with Dr. Kerry Walker. She is currently attending New York University to obtain her Master of Music in Flute Performance. She has performed as principal flute in many Connecticut orchestras, and has also performed on various woodwinds in pit orchestras all over Connecticut. She has performed in masterclasses for many notable artists, including Juilius Baker, Jeffrey Khaner, Sandra Church, Gary Schocker, Jeanne Baxtresser, Keith Underwood, and others. She has also studied flute privately with Susan Hoeppner and Nobutaka Shimizu. She has performed as soloist with the Western Connecticut State University Wind Ensemble.

Composers

Richard Ford

Richard Ford is Houston Heights Orchestra's first Composer in Residence. His latest works for piano, string quartet, and solo horn recently premiered at the Highscore Music Festival in Pavia, Italy. Performances of new works are scheduled in Houston and New York this year. With a degree in Composition from the University of Oklahoma, Ford has studied with Michael Hennagin, David Diamond, Dan Welcher, and is an alumnus of the BMI Lehman Engel Music Theatre Workshop and Aspen Music Festival.Ford has written five musicals, incidental music for six plays, and scored the feature film iCrime and twelve short films. He is an accomplished theater and film producer. His first ballet for choreographer Kate Buck Jr. is available on iTunes and iCrime is available on DVD

Matt Frey

Matt Frey is a Brooklyn-based composer of contemporary concert music, both for vocal and instrumental ensembles. Recent projects have included residencies, commissions, and/or premieres with the JACK String Quartet, the NYU Symphony Orchestra, the Manhattan Wind Ensemble, and the BACK Vocal + Percussion Duo. Currently studying with composers Joan La Barbara and Julia Wolfe while pursuing his Master's degree in composition at New York University, Frey is a co-founder/artistic director of the West 4th New Music Collective, a cooperative of NYC-based composers and performers. Combining inspiration from modern concert composers with a love for the bold gestures of electronic and popular music has become Frey's trademark, creating a sound uniquely recognizable and popular.

Julie Hill

Julie Hill is a composer/ vocalist from Hollywood, Florida. She currently studies with Dr. Nils Vigeland and Dr. Reiko Fueting from Manhattan School of Music. Her music incorporates evocative sonorities into a form that is accessible and stimulating to both the well-rounded listener and the individual listening to classical music for first time. Jazz, rock, and sounds of the street are among her many influences, and she strives to create music that spans across multiple genres. She believes that rigorous development and a clear presentation of musical ideas are paramount in guiding one's listener to a place of reflection as a result of musical interaction. Through this language, she communicates innovative ideas that awaken and reaffirm those old adages we have heard over and over again.

Marie Incontrera

Pianist/composer Marie Incontrera has been a recipient of the Miriam Gideon Composition Award for women composers, a winner of the Remarkable Theater Brigade Art Song Competition, a 2010 recipient of the ASCAPlus award, a winner of the 2011Vocalessence/American Composers Forum "Essentially Choral" readings, and was a finalist in the Iron Composer 2010 competition. She was awarded a Meet the Composer Metlife Creative Connections award , and a New York Women Composers Seed Money Grant. Commissions have come from Remarkable Theater Brigade, ANALOG arts, the Virginia Arts Festival, and The Atlanta Opera. Marie has participated in the New York Youth Symphony's Making Score program and the John Duffy Composer's Institute.

Alex Weiser

Alex Weiser is a composer of patient and thought provoking, yet visceral and dramatic chamber, orchestral, and vocal music. Alex recently graduated from Yale University where his teachers included Michael Klingbeil, Kathryn Alexander, Martin Bresnick, David Lang, Ingram Marshall, and Chris Theofanidis. Alex's music has been performed by groups such as the JACK quartet, Argento New Music Project, Fifth House Ensemble, and New Triad. At Yale Alex's works were commissioned and performed by many of the school's premier ensembles including the Jonathan Edwards College Philharmonic, Berkeley College Orchestra, Resonance Chamber Ensemble, Opera Theater Yale College, Yale Percussion Group. Alex was also the president of Yale's undergraduate composer's organization "IGIGI" which hosts numerous concerts of new music each year.

15 Minutes of Fame Composers

15 one-minute selections for Jenny Greene
Precipice

Danielle Barry

Danielle Barry is a young Australian composer currently searching through the musical world to find the intriguing and bizarre. She seeks to create blends of musical styles and genres, music that draws on all manner of experiences and cultures in an effort to represent the muddled world from which we all come.

Precipice explores the gradual breakdown of order and destruction of the world, and our feeble attempts to hold it together as it crumbles away.
A Drinking Song

Jeremy Beck

Jeremy Beck is "an original voice celebrating music. Without self-consciousness, without paralyzing abstraction, [he] reminds us that music is movement, physically and emotionally." A graduate of the Yale School of Music, Duke University and the Mannes College, Beck also holds a law degree from the University of Louisville. www.BeckMusic.org

A Drinking Song by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), was first published in his collection Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910). The music reflects the text, which is both amusing and wistful. And while the title may suggest merriment, there is a sense here of unrequited longing.
Figureheads

Scott Brickman

Scott Brickman (b. Dec. 28, 1963, Oak Park, Illinois) was educated in the Chicago Public school system and holds music degrees from the University of Wisconsin and Brandeis University. Since 1997 he has taught at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, where he is Professor of Music and Education. In the fall of 2009, Scott helped initiate intercollegiate club baseball at UMFK; he coaches their team and also plays on their squad.

Figureheads is part of my song cycle "Dear Darwin", written to texts of poet Kathleen Ellis.
no msg

Andy Cohen

Andy Cohen did the classical-music-studies thing at Oberlin and Manhattan School of Music, and enjoys revisiting that universe from time-to-time. For the most part, he is keeping busy doing sound, original music, and keyboard programming for theater shows. For more information, visit him at www.andycomusic.com.

no msg is a setting of a spam email I received a few years ago: the text is almost certainly machine-generated, and nonsensically conflates its sources (the U.S. Constitution and "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea") into a wonderful piece of happenstance poetry which I thought would make for a nice short song.
Spit Out Your Gum!

Douglas DaSilva

Douglas DaSilva is a composer, guitarist, educator and Artistic Director of the Composer's Voice Concert Series and Premiere Salon Concerts in New York City. He composes in various styles including jazz, pop, children's music, chamber music and experimental. Much of his writing is influenced by Brazilian music and self-inflicted stress.

The oft-heard cry Spit Out Your Gum! explores the frustration of the gum-control faction versus the rebellious self-assertion of gum-chewers who feel that it their right to keep and chew gum. I have no issue with gum, only with what is done with it when it is no longer being masticated. (Illegal in Singapore)
Don't Let Me Sleep

Wolfgang Devine

Wolfgang Devine, nee Maas, was born in 1954 into a German family with 300 years of musical history. He migrated to Australia in 2002. In the 1990s he started composing sacred music. Art-compositions followed since 2004 in Melbourne. He lives in Sydney and works as a nurse in Palliative Care.

For Don't let me sleep an art song for Jenny Greene, composed July 2011 In Palliative Care many patients get drugged for fear of pain. The song expresses the desire to stay awake for departing consciously and consoling each other with the hope of some different connection. Its mood is drawn between the 'breaking shell' and the 'lifting soul'.
Fifth Blackbird

David Drexler

David Drexler has written dozens of miniature works, including "Y2K Bugs," a set of ten-second pieces for l'ensemble Decadanse's concert "2000 miniatures pour l'an 2000," and a series of pieces of 100 notes or less called "Tiny Cheesehead Music" for the New York Miniaturist Ensemble and other groups.

Everyone has their favorite blackbird.
Sorry

Matt Frey

Matt Frey is a Brooklyn-based composer of contemporary concert music, both for vocal and instrumental ensembles. Currently studying with composers Joan La Barbara and Julia Wolfe while pursuing his Master's degree in composition at New York University, Frey is a co-founder and artistic director of the West 4th New Music Collective.

Sorry, based on the poem Self-Pity of D. H. Lawrence, is a short study in three-dimensial writing. The soprano's meandering figures are echoed as pianistic sound objects, swirling amongst each other and interacting in various shades of colors and tempos.
If Music Be the Food of Love

Marie Incontrera

Marie Incontrera is a wayward ballerina and heavy metal pianist who writes music in Brooklyn, NY. Her music has been performed throughout the United States and internationally at respected venues and festivals such as Weill Recital Hall, the Kaufman Center, the highSCORE New Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest, the Virginia Arts Festival, and others.

If Music Be the Food of Love is a miniature intended to blur the presence of meter. I was inspired by the honesty and clarity of Shakespeare's text.
Antiprism

Paul Lombardi

Paul Lombardi (b. 1973) holds a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Oregon. His music has been performed in more than 20 states across the US, as well as in other areas in North America, South America, and Europe. Dr. Lombardi's published theoretical work focuses on mathematics and music. He has been a member of the theory and composition faculty at the University of New Mexico since 2003.

Antiprism (2011) is a setting of the one-line poem "Einstein" by Florentin Smarandach (b. 1954). An antiprism is a type of polyhedron, and this song is based on an antiprism comprised of 30 pitch classes. The song conveys the text, as the music is refracted through the antiprism.
Unsex Me Here

David Morneau

David Morneau is a composer of an entirely undecided genre, a provider of exclusive unprecedented experiments. In his work he endeavors to explore ideas about our culture, issues concerning creativity, and even the very nature of music itself. Learn more @ http://5of4.com

Unsex Me Here uses text from Lady Macbeth's soliloquy in Act I, scene 5 of Macbeth, in which she is preparing to help here husband murder Duncan, the king. Come, you spirits/That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/Of direst cruelty!
Spray

Russell Phillips

Russell Phillips is a Sydney-based composer currently studying at the Conservatorium of Music where he was awarded the Sydney Gordon Vicars Scholarship for composition. He was one of the original composers in the Volta Collective and continues to write for the group.

Spray is a piece concerned with movement. Energy is drawn out through fast repetition of a single note, or by mordent and acciaccatura figures that exist in both the piano and vocal part. The gestures resemble something akin to a recitative passage and are light, spontaneous and fleeting.
Broader Ripples

Kala Pierson

Kala Pierson is a composer and sound artist who focuses on multi-country projects and collaborations. Trained at Eastman School of Music and Bard College at Simon's Rock, she's seen her works performed in 16 countries on five continents. More at unfurl.org. She welcomes contact at k@unfurl.org.

Broader Ripples combines bright, fluid clusters of piano notes with very flexible vocal lines. The clusters slow and expand outward, like circles expanding on a pond's surface or eddies forming in a river.
The Inferno of Dante

Malcolm Rector

Malcolm Rector is a composer, a writer, and a director. Having earned a doctoral degree in composition from Rice University, he divides his time between the previous occupations and teaching at the university level. Rector recently performed his piano piece - Blitzkrieg - in South Korea at the College Music Society Conference.

The Inferno of Dante shows the dark and sadness of one's soul.
How Doth the Little Crocodile

Aleksander Sterneld-Dunn

Since he first started composing Aleksander Sternfeld-Dunn has always been concerned with the composer-performer-audience relationship. He has strived to write music that is memorable, interesting, and ranges from the humorous to the provocative. His music has been played throughout the United States and Europe. He is an Assistant Professor at Wichita State University where he teaches composition, electronic music and music theory.

"How Doth the Little Crocodile" is a setting of Lewis Carroll's parody on the famous moralistic poem Against Idleness and Mischief by Isaac Watts. The poem describes a crocodile who lures fish into his mouth with a crafty smile.

Program:

Performers

Samantha K Enriquez

Jenny Greene

Lindsey Marie Kowalik

Suzanne Oberdorfer

Jasmine Presson

Sam Theuring

Ashley Williams

Composers

Richard Ford

Matt Frey

Julie Hill

Marie Incontrera

Alex Weiser

15 Minutes of Fame Composers

15 one-minute selections for Jenny Greene

Precipice

Danielle Barry

A Drinking Song

Jeremy Beck

Figureheads

Scott Brickman

no msg

Andy Cohen

Spit Out Your Gum!

Douglas DaSilva

Don't Let Me Sleep

Wolfgang Devine

Fifth Blackbird

David Drexler

Sorry

Matt Frey

If Music Be the Food of Love

Marie Incontrera

Antiprism

Paul Lombardi

Unsex Me Here

David Morneau

Spray

Russell Phillips

Broader Ripples

Kala Pierson

The Inferno of Dante

Malcolm Rector

How Doth the Little Crocodile

Aleksander Sterneld-Dunn

Program Notes

Presenters:

Remarkable Theater Brigade

Jan Hus Church

Vox Novus

Funding by

Puffin Foundation