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The Players, Composers and Conductors |
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The Players, Composers and Conductors |
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Composers of Current and Recent New Works |
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Composer and jazz pianist Marc W. Rossi received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Composition from New England Conservatory. His principal teachers were William Thomas McKinley and Donald Martino, (composition) George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre, Jaki Byard, (jazz studies) and Peter Row (sitar and North Indian music). Since then he has continued private studies in composition and orchestration with Frank Bennett, and jazz improvisation with Charlie Banacos, and sitar with Peter Row. Rossi's music has been performed here and abroad, and recorded by The Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra, SinfoNova, the Essex Chamber Music Players under Artistic Director Michael G. Finegold, concert pianists Jeffery Jacob and Cameron Grant, the New England String Quartet, soprano Margot Emery and pianist William Merrill, cellists Emmanuel Feldman, Rafael Popper-Keizer and Felix Simonian, Indian classical guitarist Prasanna, sitarist Peter Row, Indian violinist Krishnan Lalgudi, santoor player Satish Vyas, the Jimmy Giuffre 4, Stan Strickland and Ascension, and the Berklee Faculty Jazz Orchestra to name a few. As a keyboardist he has performed, recorded, and toured with Stan Strickland and Ascension, George Russell's Living Time Orchestra, The Jimmy Giuffre 4, Bo Diddley, pianist/historian Lewis Porter, the Robert Moore Quartet, the Row and Rossi Project, the Living Geometry Duo, and the Marc Rossi Group (MRG). Rossi's compositions have been favorably reviewed in Fanfare, The American Record Buyer's Guide, New Music Connoisseur, and The Boston Globe, and New Music Box. His original MRG jazz CDs has been favorably reviewed in Jazz Times, The LA Jazz Scene, Downbeat, All About Jazz, Jazz.com, Abstract Logix, Jazzreview.com, and Morrice's Internet Jazz Review. Rossi has been on the faculties of Tufts University and New England Conservatory, as is now a full time Professor at the Berklee College of Music where he has taught since 1989. To learn more about Marc Rossi, please visit http://www.marcrossi.com/ |
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David Bennett Thomas (b. 1969) David Bennett Thomas is a composer living in the Philadelphia area, where he teaches composition, theory, and piano at The University of the Arts. He holds degrees from West Chester University and The Peabody Conservatory; and studied privately with Lukas Foss. Thomas has composed music in many genres, most prolifically for chamber music and voice. Several recordings have been released of his works, on the Capstone Records label. Thomas is also enjoys a second life as an active jazz pianist. His website is www.davidbthomas.com, where you can find out more about his activities.
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Eric Sawyer (b. 1962) The music of Eric Sawyer receives frequent performances on both coasts, including at New York’s Weill and Merkin concert halls and at Tanglewood, as well as in England, France, Germany, and most recently in Romania and Bulgaria. Recent performances include works on programs by the Brentano String Quartet and San Jose Chamber Orchestra. His opera with poet John Shoptaw, Our American Cousin, on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, received its staged premiere from Boston Modern Orchestra Project in June 2008, and a recording of the opera just been released on the BMOP/sound label. His chamber music compilation String Works and cantata The Humble Heart are available on compact disc from Albany Records. Mr. Sawyer has received the Joseph Bearns Prize, a First Music commission from the New York Youth Symphony, and awards from the Tanglewood Music Center and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has held fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Harvard University. He teaches at Amherst College where he is chair of the music department. |
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Harold Shapero has lived most of his life in the Boston area, graduating from Harvard University in 1941. Shapero has studied composition with Nicholas Slonimsky(1936), Ernst Krenek(1937), Walter Piston(1938), Paul Hindemith (1940), and Nadia Boulanger(1942). He was composer in residence at the American Academy in Rome in 1970. As a composer, he has earned the Rome Prize, the Bearns Prize, a Naumburg Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and a Fullbright Fellowship. A fine pianist, he has given premieres of most of his keyboard and chamber works. Mr. Shapero has received commissions from the Koussevitsky Foundation, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the American Jewish Tercentenary, the Louisville Symphony Orchestra, the Ford Foundation, and George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet Company. A recent revival of his Symphony for Classical Orchestra by conductor Andre Previn, has led to performances of this work by the Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, and London Symphony Orchestras. For over thirty years he served on the music faculty at Brandeis University, directing its Electronic Music Studio, and teaching theory and composition. Currently retired, he lives in Natick, MA. |
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J. Windel Brown has been a teacher at Northern Essex Community College since 1971 where he has taught in the Mathematics Department. Many of his works have been performed locally and throughout Europe. He has written 6 pieces for ECMP that have been performed since 2001. A CD containing his Piano Concerto has been released on the MMC label. The MMC Recording Company is currently broadcasting the last movement, Ritmico, from his piano concerto over the web at mmcrecordings.com. The Czech Radio Symphony premiered ‘Before Time’ with Michael Finegold as flute soloist in Boston and recorded it in Prague in 1999. The London Symphony Orchestra recorded another of his compositions, ‘London Overture’, in 2000. The Moravian Philharmonic performed the premiere of and recorded his ‘Symphony #2’ in 2003. Locally the Chelmsford Community Band performed his ‘Chelmsford Fanfare’ in July of 2005 and ECMP performed his ‘Suite for Flute, Cello and Piano’ in November 2006.
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We are saddened by the passing of composer Ray Loring (May 20, 1943 - September 6, 2008). He was a graduate of Yale University and the Brandeis Graduate School of Music where he received his MFA in music composition. His teachers included Seymour Shifrin, Arthur Berger and Harold Shapero. He was also a classically trained pianist. He composed extensively for film and television, having received numerous commissions from PBS Nova, Frontline and the History and Discovery Channels. He scored the music for "Saving the National Treasures" for Nova that aired in February of this year. He had also provided the music for several important museum installations throughout the US. Locations have included the Harry Truman Museum, the theater at the National Archives Rotunda, the Museum of the Mississippi, and the Brooklyn Historical Society. In 2004 he was commissioned to provide an arrangement for the Astoria Jazz Band for inclusion in the Ninth Annual Festival of Women in Jazz held at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. We will miss Ray, his great friendship, contributions to the ECMP Board of Composers and the works he was intending to compose for ECMP.
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William Thomas McKinley (b.1938 ) One of the most highly regarded and well-known composers of his generation, William Thomas McKinley (b.1938) has been likened to “Ives on steroids” (Fanfare) and “Stravinsky gone mad” (Gerard Schwarz). He learned both classical and jazz piano at a very early age, becoming the youngest member of the American Federation of Musicians at just twelve years old. To date, he has composed over 350 works, is listed in Groves' Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and has received commissions from the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the Fromm Foundation, and the Naumburg Foundation. His many awards and grants include, among others, an award and citation from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and eight NEA grants. McKinley has studied with many renowned teachers and composers, including Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Gunther Schuller, and as a jazz pianist has performed, composed, and recorded with Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Eddie Gomez, Gary Burton, Miroslav Vitous, Rufus Reed, Roy Haynes, and Billy Hart, to name a few. In 1992, McKinley founded MMC Recordings with the goal of connecting composers with the finest orchestras, conductors, and performers in the world, releasing their recordings, and creating an archive of modern classical music. The label’s primary collaborators include luminaries such as clarinetist Richard Stoltzman (a long-time friend and supporter of McKinley and his music), conductors Gerard Schwarz, Marin Alsop, Carl St. Claire, George Manahan, Kirk Trevor, Gil Rose, as well as the London Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, Boston Modern Orchestra, and many more. In recent years, McKinley has become even more prolific, and his works are featured on releases from Koch, Delos, and RCA Red Seal in addition to those on MMC. 2006 saw the premiere of R.A.P. (Rhythm And Pulse), a double concerto for Richard Stoltzman (clarinet) and his son Peter (piano), with the Boston Modern Orchestra, and the Nonet for the Quintet of the Americas at Carnegie Hall. In 2007, selections from McKinley’s Piano Etudes will be premiered at the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, and Gil Rose will conduct the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in the world premiere of his 7th Symphony, The Cosmos. MMC Recordings is currently planning a retrospective CD to celebrate the composer’s 70th birthday.
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Elaine Erickson received a Master of Music degree in Music Composition from Drake University. She has won numerous awards, fellowships and residencies, including from the Ford Foundation (Contemporary Music Project), Meet the Composer, the Charles Ives Center (4 times, the National League of American Pen Women (including the $1000 Music Composition Award), the Pyle Commission Award from the Iowa Composers Forum, among others. She has done additional study in composition at the University of Iowa and at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. Her teachers have been Francis Pyle, Richard Hervig, Jean Eichelberger Ivey and Robert Hall Lewis. She has composed 5 operas, 3 of which were performed at Peabody. She travels to schools throughout Iowa, presenting workshops involving her compositions, as an artist for VSA arts of Iowa. She is a published poet. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa
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I studied music with Fu Yuan Soong and Walter Hilse who taught me to make music that is entertaining as well as artful. I’ve composed five full length operas and a musical, of which five have already been performed in New York and New England (Faustus, an updating of the tale to the current age based on Goethe and Marlowe; Azazel, about a Jesus-like rebel; Ulysses, based on the novel of James Joyce; Grace, the first full-length opera about AIDS based on the play by Edward Langlois and John Carmichael; and Onions, a musical for kids (performed at the Prescott Park Arts Festival). These received some good reviews when the critics and the stars were in alignment (“gorgeous and rewarding”,”his music mirrors the profundity of Joyce’s words”) and some really terrible ones (“slunk into town”,”not art”). More info link: www.rogerrudenstein.com |
