Arturo Márquez

Arturo Márquez was born in Alamos, Sonora, Mexico in 1950. He began his musical training in La Puente, California in 1966, later studying piano and music theory at the Conservatory of Music of Mexico and composition at the Taller de Composición of the Institute of Fine Arts of Mexico with such composers as Joaquín Gutiérrez Heras, Hector Quintanar, and Federico Ibarra. He also studied in Paris privately with Jacques Castérède, and at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnick, Stephen Mosko, Mel Powell, and James Newton. In February 2006, Arturo Márquez received the "Medalla de Oro de Bellas Artes" (Gold Medal of Fine Arts), the highest honor given to artists by Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. That evening the concert “El Danzón según Márquez" (The Danzón According to Márquez) was presented at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The concert included six danzones, all later recorded on a CD of the same name. Márquez has received commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Organization of American States, the San Antonio Symphony, the Universidad Metropolitana de Mexico, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM), Festival Cervantino, Festival del Caribe, Festival de la Ciudad de Mexico, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He has received grants from the Institute of Fine Arts of Mexico, the French Government, and the Fulbright Foundation. In 1994 he received the composition scholarship of Mexico’s Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.

Elaine Hugh-Jones

Elaine Hugh-Jones

Elaine Hugh-Jones songs have recently been performed in recital by Roderick Williams, Elizabeth Watts, James Gilchrist and Diana Moore. In 2015 her songs made their Royal Opera House debut, performed in a lunchtime concert by mezzo-soprano, Fiona Kimm with David Cyrus at the piano. Her songs are finding an increasing audience, as singers become aware of her unique talents in setting poetry to music. She is particularly drawn to 20th century poets including Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen and Walter de la Mare, but has also made very memorable settings of Shakespeare and American 19th century poets. Elaine has recently added settings of poems by A E Housman and Yeats to her list of works. Elaine was born in London and grew by the Solway Firth, near Carlisle. She has enjoyed a busy career as a pianist, composer and teacher. Her keyboard training was with Dr. F. W. Wadeley, Harold Craxton and Julius Isserlis. In the post-war years, Elaine was an official accompanist for radio and television programmes with the BBC, work which she combined with teaching at Derby High School, where she was appointed Director of Music in 1949. From 1956 to 83, she continued her radio (and latterly, television) work for the BBC in Birmingham whilst teaching at Kidderminster High School from 1955, and from 1963 at Malvern Girls' College and then at Malvern College. Elaine Hugh-Jones has developed her work as a composer mostly over the last 30 years. The emphasis of her creativity has been in the vocal and choral category, in which there are to be found song-cycles, songs, choral music and a number of instrumental pieces, as well as songs with instrumental accompaniments. Much of her work has been broadcast by the BBC radio networks. She received lessons in composition from Lennox Berkeley and orchestration from John Joubert.

Gwyneth Walker

Widely performed throughout the country, the music of American composer Gwyneth Walker is beloved by performers and audiences alike for its energy, beauty, reverence, drama, and humor. Dr. Gwyneth Walker (b. 1947) is a graduate of Brown University and the Hartt School of Music. She holds B.A., M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in Music Composition. A former faculty member of the Oberlin College Conservatory, she resigned from academic employment in 1982 in order to pursue a career as a full-time composer. For nearly 30 years, she lived on a dairy farm in Braintree, Vermont. She now divides her time between her childhood hometown of New Canaan, Connecticut and the musical community of Randolph, Vermont. Gwyneth Walker is a proud resident of New England. She was the recipient of the 2000 "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Vermont Arts Council and the 2018 "Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award" from Choral Arts New England. In 2020, her alma mater, the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford, presented her with the Hartt Alumni Award. A composer since age two, Gwyneth Walker has always placed great value on active collaboration with musicians. Over the decades, she has traveled to many states to work with instrumental and choral ensembles, soloists, and educational institutions as they rehearse and perform her music. A number of these visits have developed into ongoing relationships. In 2018, Walker was named Composer-in-Residence for the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra in Petoskey, Michigan. Walker's catalog includes over 350 commissioned works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, and solo voice. A special interest has been dramatic works that combine music with readings, acting, and movement. The music of Gwyneth Walker is published by E.C. Schirmer (choral/vocal/instrumental music) and Lauren Keiser Music (orchestral/instrumental music).

Elena Kats-Chernin

Anna Clyne

Anna Clyne

Anna Clyne

London-born Anna Clyne is a GRAMMY-nominated composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music. Described as a “composer of uncommon gifts and unusual methods” in a New York Times profile and as “fearless” by NPR, Clyne’s work often includes collaborations with cutting-edge choreographers, visual artists, filmmakers, and musicians. Upcoming premieres include Stride, a new work for string orchestra inspired by Beethoven's Sonata Pathétique for the Australian Composers Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Lausanne Orchestra and River Oaks Chamber Orchestra; Color Field a new work inspired by the artwork of Mark Rothko for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; and Overflow, a new work for wind ensemble inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. This fall sees the release of Clyne's Mythologies, a portrait album featuring the works Masquerade, This Midnight Hour, The Seamstress, Night Ferry, and <<rewind<<, recorded live by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with soloists Jennifer Koh and Irene Buckley and conductors Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton, and André de Ridder. Other recent premieres include Sound and Fury, performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Pekka Kuusisto in Edinburgh; Breathing Statues, a new string quartet for the Calidore String Quartet; Shorthand for solo cello and string quintet premiered by The Knights at Caramoor in New York; her Rumi-inspired cello concerto, DANCE, premiered with Inbal Segev at the 2019 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, led by Cristian Măcelaru; and Restless Oceans with the Taki Concordia Orchestra and Marin Alsop at the Opening Ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Clyne served as composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, L’Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, and Berkeley Symphony. Clyne currently serves as The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Associate Composer through the 2021-2022 season, with a series of works commissioned over three years, and as the mentor composer for Orchestra of St Luke's DeGaetano Composer Institute. Her music is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes. boosey.com/clyne Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.

Stacy Garrop

Kats-Chernin, who was born on 4 November 1957 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as the younger of two daughters of a physician and an engineer, grew up from the age of four in the Russian regional capital of Yaroslavl. She devoted herself since earliest childhood to piano playing. She received instrumental instruction at music school, and later also composition lessons at the Sobinov Conservatory in Yaroslavl. At the age of fourteen, she passed the entrance examination at Moscow’s Gnessin Academy of Music and was one of nine candidates accepted from among 600 applicants. During her training there, her family decided to follow Kats-Chernin’s aunt and uncle, who had emigrated with their family to Australia, and so in 1975, at the age of seventeen, she settled in Sydney, where she continued her studies at the Conservatory of Music with Richard Toop (composition) and Gordon Watson (piano), among others. She received her diploma in 1979, whereby she was the first graduate to be granted a double degree as pianist and composer; for her concert exam, she played her own piano concerto, which also won her the Frank Hutchens Scholarship for Composition of the Music Teachers’ Association of New South Wales. By means of a DAAD scholarship, she came to Germany, where she studied with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover from 1980 to 1982 and lived for nearly fourteen years. Kats-Chernin wrote many works for theater and ballet. Her collaborations with director Andrea Berth and choreographer Reinhild Hoffmann led to productions at Vienna’s Burgtheater, at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, and the municipal theaters in Hamburg and Berlin. A close collaboration developed with Ensemble Modern, for whom Kats-Chernin composed the piece Clocks, which was premiered in late 1993, attracted great international attention, and subsequently played by many ensembles, as was the Concertino with solo violin (1994). Shortly before this, in 1993, she composed her first large-scale orchestral work, Retonica, a commission from the Australian Music Centre. Starting around this time, Kats-Chernin underwent a fundamental turn away from modernistic, noise-like musical language to a more accessible tonal style as, for example, in Zoom and Zip (1998). Since then, her music can be described as a personal amalgam of different influences; these include elements of minimal music, dance-like music, classical models, for example from Russian music or the Baroque, as well as Jewish and other folk music traditions. Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes

Joan Tower

Faye-Ellen Silverman

Faye-Ellen Silverman began her music studies before the age of four at the Dalcroze School of Music in New York City. She first achieved national recognition by winning the Parents League Competition, judged by Leopold Stokowski, at the age of 13. She played her winning composition in Carnegie Hall (main hall) - her professional piano debut - and also appeared on the Sonny Fox Wonderama TV program. She holds a BA from Barnard, cum laude and honors in music, and an AM from Harvard and a DMA from Columbia, both in music composition. She spent her junior year of college at Mannes College. Her teachers have included Otto Luening, William Sydeman, Leon Kirchner, Lukas Foss, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and Jack Beeson. Seesaw Music, a division of Subito Music, publishes about 100 of her compositions. She became a published composer at age 24 and an ASCAP member at age 25. Stories for Our Time is recorded on MSR Classics; Zigzags is available on two recordings, one on Crystal Records (Velvet Brown) and the other on a CD available from record outlets (Joanna Ross Hersey); Taming the Furies is available on Capstone, and Passing Fancies, Restless Winds, and Speaking Alone are on New World Recordings. Two entire CDs of her chamber works are on Albany Records. The first, Manhattan Stories, has Translations, Dialogue, Dialogue Continued; Taming the Furies (second recording of this work), Love Songs, and Left Behind. The second CD, Transatlantic Tales, a co-production with the German-Danish guitarist Volkmar Zimmermann, contains Processional, 3 Guitars, In Shadow, Wilde’s World, Danish Delights, and Pregnant Pauses. Oboe-sthenics, her first recording, was released on Finnadar-Atlantic. The LP is out of print, but can still be found. Silverman's awards include the selection of her Oboe-sthenics to represent the United States at the International Rostrum of Composers/UNESCO, resulting in international radio broadcasts; winning the Indiana State [Orchestral] Composition Contest, resulting in a performance by the Indianapolis Symphony; a Governor's Citation; and having September 30, 1982 named Faye-Ellen Silverman Day in Baltimore by Mayor Donald Schaeffer. Additionally, she has been the recipient of the National League of American Pen Women’s biennial music award, yearly Standard Awards from ASCAP (now known as ASCAPlus) from 1983-2015, several Meet the Composer grants, and an American Music Center grant. She has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Le Moulin å Nef (France), a resident scholar at the Villa Serbelloni of the Rockefeller Foundation (Italy), a resident artist at the Fundación Valparaíso (Spain - where she received Ayuntamiento de Mojacar Artist-in-Residence Grant), a Composers' Conference Fellow, a Yaddo Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. She is currently a Founding Board Member of the International Women's Brass Conference (for which she has served as composer-in-residence), a Board member of New York Women Composers, and a founding member of Music Under Construction, a composers’ collective. (ABI). She is currently on the faculties of Juilliard and New York University and teaches privately. Prior teaching experience includes New York University (School of Professional Studies, the Mannes School of Music (College of Performing Arts, The New School), Eugene Lang College (The New School), the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College, several branches of the City University of New York and Columbia University. Silverman has lectured in Europe and throughout the United States, often as a visiting composer. European engagements have included lectures at Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw sponsored by the Maestro Foundation (April 2014), and a lecture to members of the Lithuanian Composers Union and composition students from the Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy followed by pre-concert talks and a radio interview (May 2009), sponsored by the U.S. State Department, and guest composer at Donne in Musica (4th International festival) held in Fiuggi, Italy (September 1999). In the United Staes, she has been a visiting composer at the Aspen Music Festival, Capital University, Edinboro University Indiana State University, the International Women’s Brass Conference, the Philadelphia Arts Alliance, Southern Methodist University, SUCO at Oneonta (1st Festival of Women Composers), Tidewater Festival, University of North Texas, University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, to cite a few examples.

Judith Weir

Tawnie Olson

Described as "especially glorious... ethereal" by Whole Note, "mesmerizing," by critic Tim Smith, and "a highlight of the concert" by the Boston Musical Intelligencer, the music of Canadian composer Tawnie Olson draws inspiration from politics, spirituality, the natural world, and the musicians for whom she composes. She is the winner of a 2019 Copland House Residency Award, the 2018 Barlow Prize and the 2015 Iron Composer Competition, and her Three Songs on Poems by Lorri Neilsen Glenn took second prize in the 2018 NATS Art Song Competition. In 2018 she was the Composer-in-Residence of the Women Composers Festival of Hartford, an American Composers Forum BandQuest Composer-in-Residence at E.C. Adams School in Guilford, CT, and received a 2018 Connecticut Artist Fellowship. In 2017, she received an OPERA America Discovery Grant to develop a new work about Hildegard of Bingen and Eleanor of Aquitaine with re:Naissance Opera (libretto by Roberta Barker), and a Canada Council for the Arts Professional Development Grant to study field recording at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Her opera Sanctuary and Storm is a finalist in the 2020-2021 National Opera Association Dominick Argento Chamber Opera Composition Competition. Olson has been commissioned by the Canadian Art Song Project, Third Practice/New Music USA, the Canada Council for the Arts, Mount Holyoke College/The Women’s Philharmonic, the Blue Water Chamber Orchestra, Ithaca College, the American Composers Forum, and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music’s Robert Baker Commissioning Fund, among others. Recent projects include Beloved of the Sky, commissioned by the Barlow Foundation for Seraphic Fire, The Crossing, and the BYU Singers, the chamber opera Sanctuary and Storm (libretto by Roberta Barker), co-commissioned by the Women Composers Festival of Hartford and the Canada Council for the Arts for re:Naissance Opera, Composition en rouge, bleu et jaune, commissioned by Pentaèdre Woodwind Quintet, Supreme, commissioned by saxophonist Carrie Koffman, That's one small step..., for SATB, string quartet, and percussion, co-commissioned by the Virginia Choral Society and the Alexandria Choral Society, Pop!, for concert band, commissioned by the American Composers Forum, Reformation, for SATB, mezzo-soprano and tenor soloists, brass quartet, and organ, commissioned by the University Church in Yale for the UCY Chapel Choir, and Magnificat, commissioned by Karen Clute for the Elm City Girls Choir and Yale Schola Cantorum. Olson's music is performed on five continents; it can also be heard on recordings by percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum, Parthenia viol consort (with bass-baritone Dashon Burton), the Yale Schola Cantorum and Elm City Girls Choir, bassoonist Rachael Elliott, the Canadian Chamber Choir, Chronos Vocal Ensemble, soprano Magali Simard-Galdès, clarinetist Shawn Earle, oboist Catherine Lee, and Shawn Mativetsky, McGill University professor of tabla and percussion. Her scores are available from the Canadian Music Centre, Galaxy Music, Hal Leonard's BandQuest and Mark Foster series, and E.C. Schirmer. Olson holds a doctorate in music composition from the University of Toronto, a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music, an Artist Diploma from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Calgary.

Ida Gotkovsky

Of French nationality, Ida Gotkovsky grew upin a family of musicians. Her studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris won her numerous first prizes. Ida Gotkovsky is known for a broad range of works, amongst which chamber music, symphonic works, instrumental, vocal and lyric pieces are widely represented. Since the beginning of her career, the character and form of her works have won her many prizes, including : Prix Lily Boulanger - Prix Blumenthal - Premier Prix du Référendum Pasdeloup - Prix International de Divonnes les Bains - Médaille de la Ville de Paris - Grand Prix Musical de la Ville de Paris - three prizes from the Institut de France - Golden Rose (U.SA.), etc… Her fame quickly spread, and Ida Gotkovsky was asked first to join, later to preside over, numerous international juries. Meantime, her works were being performed in Europe, the United States, the U.S.S.R, Japon, Asia, Australia ... She was named Professor of Composition in Texas. AIl her works are commissioned by the State or by foreign countries.

Education University of Missouri-Kansas City 2007 — 2010 DMA, Music Composition University of Missouri-Kansas City 2005 — 2007 MM (Master of Music), Music Composition Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico 1997 — 2003 Bachelor of Music, Composicion

Federico García-Castells