Artists

Barbara Jazwinski studied composition and theory at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, Poland. She received her M.A. degree in composition and piano from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in composition from the City University of New York. Her teachers included Mario Davidovsky, Andrzej Dobrowolski, Gyorgy Ligeti and John Chowning.

Alan Beeler completed his graduate study in theory and composition at Washington University, where he received an M.A. and Ph. D. He studied composition with Robert Wykes, Robert Baker, and Harold Blumenfeld, theory with Leigh Gerdine, and musicology with Lincoln Bunce Spiess and Paul Amadeus Pisk.

Stefan Poetzsch (b. 1963 in Magdeburg, Germany) began studying violin in his early youth in what was formerly East Germany. At the age of 16, he happened to catch a radio show broadcasting a piece focused on the music of Polish violinist Zbigniew Seifert and his subsequent death. Upon hearing Seifert's approach to the instrument, Poetzsch's interest in music from this moment on was forever changed. It instantly made the teenager look at the violin differently and how he approached the sound of its strings.

Welsh-born composer Hilary Tann lives in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York where she is the John Howard Payne Professor of Music Emerita at Union College, Schenectady. Her compositions have been widely performed and recorded by ensembles such as the European Women’s Orchestra, Tenebrae, Lontano, Marsyas Trio, Thai Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and BBC National Orchestra of Wales.  Recent composer-residencies include the 2011 Eastman School of Music Women in Music Festival, 2013 Women Composers Festival of Hartford, and 2015 Welsh Music Center.  Praised for its lyricism (“beautiful, lyrical work” – Classical Music Web) and formal balance (“In the formal balance of this music, there is great beauty …” – Welsh Music), her music is influenced by a strong identification with the natural world.

Born in Long Beach CA, Mark Edwards Wilson is a composer of remarkable artistic range and diversity. His earliest influence was undoubtedly his mother, Rosalie Brashears Wilson, a talented pianist, who, as a teenager, was among the last generation to work as an organist for silent film theaters in the Los Angeles area. In a recent interview, Wilson commented on his earliest memories of her playing. “I can remember her thundering away at the family piano. Given a melody, she could improvise on the spot, filling the house with cascades of show arpeggios and runs.” Wilson began his musical training in earnest with violin studies starting at the age of six and he played in various chamber music groups and orchestras throughout his youth and early twenties.