Artists

A native of Niagara Falls, Canada, Jane Solose leads an active career as a featured concerto soloist, solo recitalist, chamber musician, duo pianist and master teacher that has taken her to Korea, Japan, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, Russia, Argentina, Canada, and around the United States. She is listed on the distinguished international roster of Steinway Artists. Eroica Classical Recordings released three of her albums, and her articles have been published in the journals 20th Century Music and Clavier. Duo Solose, a duo-piano collaboration with her sister Kathleen, perform to enthusiastic ovations. Solose received her DMA degree from the Eastman School of Music, where she was awarded their prestigious Performer's Certificate and was David Burge's first teaching assistant. She is currently Professor of Piano at the Conservatory of Music and Dance, University of Missouri-Kansas City.

John Beall, a native Texan born in 1942, has been Composer in Residence at West Virginia University since 1978. Through his increasing devotion to hymn and folk sources of West Virginia and the surrounding Appalachian country, he has undergone a sort of musical adoption. He himself is a string player (bass, cello) and pianist, he is also the father of another musician, violist Stephen Beall, and husband of pianist Carol Allen Beall. His love of string playing, and the combinations of strings with the piano resound through many of his greatest works of chamber music.

Utah composer, Marie Nelson Bennett (1926 – 2018), earned her music degree from Yale while studying with Paul Hindemith. She earned her PhD in composition from the University of Utah.

Robert Dusek received his academic training at the Eastman School of Music, Southern Methodist University, and the University of Colorado – Boulder, where he received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1990. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors in the field of composition, including Columbia University's Bearns Prize, the ASCAP Raymond-Hubbard Award, an A.H.A.B – Neodata Fellowship for his Symphony No. 1, and several national and local awards and grants. His music has been performed worldwide and recorded by such groups as North-South Consonance and the Warsaw Philharmonic. Dusek is the Founder/Director of DaCapo LLC, an organization devoted to the pursuit and development of artistic and compositional endeavors.

Bryan Pezzone is the consummate cross-over pianist of his generation. He excels in classical, contemporary, jazz, and experimental genres and is well known for his versatility and virtuosity as a recording and performing artist, improviser, and composer.

Richard Lavenda composes music that is sometimes boldly dramatic and sometimes poignantly lyrical, but always emotionally expressive and formally coherent. No matter what the piece, there are always clearly defined motives, an imaginative and personal use of instrumental color and melodic counterpoint, and strong rhythmic energy that comes as much from jazz and rock and roll as from his classical role models. His catalog of more than sixty works ranges from works for solo flute to an opera, and includes numerous pieces for orchestra and for a wide diversity of chamber ensembles.

Gheorghe Costinescu, born in Bucharest in 1934 and residing in New York since 1969, has been active as a composer, conductor, pianist, musicologist, and educator.

Graham Hair divides his time between Scotland and Australia with frequent visits to the United States. In Scotland he is Professor Emeritus (formerly Gardiner Chair in Music) of Glasgow University's Music Department and a Research Fellow of its Centre for Music Technology (Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering). Recent visits to the US include several 2003-2007 to Radford University and to Boston College. In Australia, he has been Adjunct Professor at Monash University in Melbourne 1999-2005, and at the Australian National University in Canberra since 2006.

The Boston University Wind Ensemble is the premiere wind band of the Boston University School of Music. Under the baton of Professor David J. Martins, the Wind Ensemble is designed to prepare wind, brass, and percussion players for the professional world, and provide future teachers with concepts related to the study of band repertoire. The ensemble, made up of undergraduate and graduate level music majors, has participated in collaborations with composers and other universities, resulting in several world premieres.

David J. Martins is Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Adjunct Professor of Music at Boston University. Combining an active teaching and conducting schedule, Martins directs both the Boston University Wind Ensemble and the University of Massachusetts Lowell Wind Ensemble. During the past several years, he has been in demand as a guest conductor and has conducted festival ensembles throughout the Eastern United States. As clarinetist of both orchestral and chamber music, he performs with the Boston Classical Orchestra, and as substitute, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and the Boston Ballet Orchestra. He can be heard on orchestral and chamber recordings on the CRI, Koch, Titanic, Gasparo, and Albany labels.

Composer/pianist Ketty Nez joined the Boston University School of Music in 2005. Her ethnographic chamber opera, The Fiddler and the Old Woman of Rumelia, was premiered in 2011 by Xanthos Ensemble, and staged by Juventas Ensemble in 2012. Her portrait CD with Albany, Listen to a Wonder Never Heard Before!, was released in 2010. Ketty's first opera, An Opera in Devolution: Drama in 540 Seconds, was premiered at the A*Devantgarde Festival in Munich in 2003. A visiting composer/scholar at Stanford Universityís Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) in 2001, Ketty studied at IRCAM in 1998-9, after working for two years with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam.

Barry Seroff was born in Flushing, Queens on July 4th 1978. He earned his Bachelorís Degree at the Aaron Copland School of Music where he studied theory with Joe Strauss, composition with Paul Alan Levi, Jeff Nichols, and Bruce Saylor, and musicology with Henry Burnett. At the same time outside of school, he studied classical flute with Michael Laderman and Petina Cole, modern and traditional jazz guitar with Joe Giglio and Bern Nix, and shakuhachi with Ronnie Nyogetsu Seldin.

Hope Wechkin is best known for her simultaneous and virtuosic pairing of voice and violin that innovatively combines elements of folk, classical and world music. She is also known as a soprano soloist and interpreter of contemporary music for the voice. She performed her one-woman show "Charisma," featuring her unique compositions and arrangements, to sold-out audiences in an extended run at Seattle's ACT Theater. She was a founding member of the quartet Sorelle, specializing in 20th- and 21st-century music for piano, cello, flute and voice, and has appeared as soprano soloist with numerous Northwest-area musical ensembles. Hope is also a physician specializing in palliative medicine and lives in Seattle with her husband and son.

A pianist who “can create whatever type of music he wants at the keyboard” (Chicago Sun-Times) and a composer who writes “with uncommon imagination” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), James Adler’s extensive list of compositions is headed by Memento mori: An AIDS Requiem. A 75-minute for work for chorus, soloists, and orchestra, Memento mori has been performed worldwide since its 1996 premiere, and recorded by AmorArtis Chorale and Orchestra under the direction of Johannes Somary on Albany Records. Other works by Adler include the often-performed Carols of Splendour, which premiered at Carnegie Hall; It’s Gotta Be America, commissioned for the Centennial Celebration of the Statue of Liberty; and Canticle For Peace, written for the opening of the 43rd session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Kyong Mee Choi, composer, visual artist, painter, organist and poet, received several prestigious awards and grants including John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Robert Helps Prize, Aaron Copland Award, John Donald Robb Musical Trust Fund Commission, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, First prize of ASCAP/SEAMUS Award, Second prize at VI Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo, Honorary Mentions from Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges, Musica Nova, Society of Electroacoustic Music of Czech Republic, Luigi Russolo International Competition, and Destellos Competition.

Described by The Washington Post as "tantalizing ... engaging, with a touch of the provocative," Jessica Krash's compositions have been presented in both traditional and experimental settings. Many of Krash's works have been collaborations with choreographers, including a piece for saxophonists on both sides of the C & 0 Canal (in a thunderstorm); a children's ballet in a rundown, former amusement park; a piece for voice, dancer and large mobiles at the Joyce SoHo in New York City; and her performance of Beethoven's Appassionata in a Pierrot costume for a dance concert at Lincoln Center. The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts has presented a full concert of her work. Schools and synagogues have commissioned her to write music for the dedications of their new buildings, including a piece combining klezmer band, jazz percussion, and classical piano.

A native of Texas, Mel Mobley (b. 1966) currently resides and teaches in Monroe, Louisiana. He holds degrees from the University of Texas, University of South Florida, and University of Illinois. Active as a performer, composer, and advocate of new music, Mel has been involved in new music festivals and performances all around the country. Performed here and abroad, his works include orchestral, band, chamber, choral, and electronic music. His largest work to date, a chamber opera titled Sylvan Beach, premiered in the spring of 2010. His percussion trio with piano titled [pleez], (plez), /pliz/ was released on the 2013 Revello Records compact disc, Piano Concerti with Percussion Orchestra.

Having been taught and mentored by Henry Cowell and having developed his electronic music techniques in the studios under the direction of Ianis Xenakis, Barton McLean has had a 20-year teaching career in which, as director of the electronic music/music technology programs at Indiana University-South bend and the University of Texas-Austin he pioneered the first large-scale commercially-available digital sequencer (Synthi 100) and sampler (Fairlight CMI), and with his wife Priscilla produced 14 LP recordings and ten CDs, some of which have become staples in electronic music courses. In 1983 he and Priscilla McLean left academia to develop their electroacoustic duo The McLean Mix, which has proven itself in hundreds of concerts and installations throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, as a full-time career.

Priscilla McLean has had a long and illustrious career as composer and performer, first as composer of orchestral, chamber, solo and choral music, then beginning in 1974 as composer and performer of electronic and electroacoustic music, and recently as video artist as well. With husband Barton McLean she toured as The McLean Mix , from 1974 until 2010, fulltime since 1983, performing their music in yearly concert tours and giving audience interactive installations in 42 U.S. states, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Malaysian Borneo.

David Bennett Thomas was born in 1969, in Westminster, Maryland. His official music studies began in high school, when he began taking lessons with jazz pianist Michael Connell. Thomas says "I knew at the first lesson that the course of my future was set." He would later be mentored by Lukas Foss, Ron Thomas, Jacques Voois, and Fred Hersch; and receive degrees from West Chester University, and The Peabody Conservatory of Music.