dliptak@esm.rochester.edu

(585) 274-1573

 

David Liptak was born in 1949 in Pittsburgh. His music has been described as “luminous and arresting,” “richly atmospheric,” and having “transparent textures, incisive rhythms, shimmering lightness.” His compositions have been performed by the San Francisco Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Youngstown Symphony, the Sinfonia da Camera of Illinois, the New England Philharmonic, the National Orchestral Association, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the Group for Contemporary Music, EARPLAY, the Ying and Cassatt String Quartets, the Dinosaur Annex Ensemble, the New York New Music Ensemble, the 20th-Century Consort, and by many other soloists and ensembles.

 

Among his music found on recordings is Rhapsodies, commissioned for the Syracuse Society for New Music by the Meet the Composer/Readers Digest Consortium Commissioning Program, on the Innova CD American Masters of the 21st Century. Other recordings include two from Albany Records featuring music written for violinist Catherine Tait, and, with musicians from the Eastman School of Music in collaboration with those from the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, his chamber piece Giovine vagha, i’ non senti. His music is also found recorded on Bridge Records, including a recording of his Forlane by guitarist David Starobin. A second Bridge recording from 2005 is entirely Liptak’s music, and includes recordings of his Ancient Songs, with baritone William Sharp and the Dinosaur Annex Ensemble, Serenade, with saxophone soloist Chen-Kwan Lin and a string ensemble conducted by Brad Lubman, and Broken Cries, with the Tarab Cello Ensemble. Ice Flowers, for violin and koto, appears on a Centaur recording featuring the duo “vio-LINK-oto.” In 1994, he received a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation for a trumpet concerto for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, which was premiered in 1996 with soloist Paul Merkelo. Among his recent work is Concerto for Viola and Percussion for violist John Graham; Quintet for Piano and String Quartet, which was premiered by the Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble in Ithaca in 2006; Cold Litanies, a trio for flute, cello, and piano that was written for and premiered by Trio Xia; Sonata for Cello and Piano, written for cellist Steven Doane; and his String Quartet No. 2, written for the Cassatt Quartet and premiered by the ensemble in Philadelphia in 2003. His Folgore’s Months, a setting of 14th-century sonnets by the Italian poet Folgore da San Gimignano for soprano and wind ensemble, was premiered in 2009 by Mark Scatterday and the Eastman Wind Ensemble with soprano Tony Arnold.

 

In 1995 David Liptak was awarded the Elise L. Stoeger Prize, given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in recognition of distinguished achievement in the field of chamber music composition. His composition prizes include the 1986 Georges Enesco International Composition Competition and the 1978 Minnesota Orchestra 75th Anniversary Composers Competition; and he was a finalist in the 1982 St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Composition Competition, the 1989 Sudler International Competition for Wind Ensemble Composition, and the 2008 Sackler Composition Competition. Other distinctions include awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, both in 2002; he has also received the 2006 Lillian Fairchild Award. His music is published by Keiser Classical, Alfred Music – Donald Hunsberger Wind Ensemble Library, and others.

 

A dedicated teacher of composition students for the past three decades, David Liptak is Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music, where he has taught since 1986. He makes his home in Rochester with his wife, violinist Pia Liptak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

blubman@esm.rochester.edu

(585) 274-1443

 

Brad Lubman, conductor/composer, is founding co-Artistic Director and Music Director of Ensemble Signal, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most vital groups of its kind.”. Since his conducting debut in 1984, he has gained widespread recognition for his versatility, commanding technique, and insightful interpretations.

 

His guest conducting engagements include major orchestras such as the DSO Berlin, Netherlands Radio Kamer Filharmonie, Residentie Orchestra Den Haag, WDR Symphony Cologne, NDR Symphony Hamburg, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, Deutschland Radio Philharmonie, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Taiwan National Symphony, Cracow Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Finnish Radio Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, performing repertoire ranging from classical to contemporary orchestral works. He has worked with some of the most important ensembles for contemporary music, including London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, musikFabrik, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, and Steve Reich and Musicians.

 

He has recorded for AEON, Albany, BMG/RCA, Bridge, Cantaloupe, CRI, Kairos, Koch, Mode, New World, NEOS, Nonesuch, Orange Mountain, and Tzadik. Lubman’s own compositions have been performed in the USA and Europe and can be heard on his CD, insomniac, on Tzadik.

 

Lubman is Associate Professor of Conducting and Ensembles at the Eastman School of Music since 1997, where he directs the Musica Nova ensemble, and is on the faculty of the Bang-on-a-Can Summer Institute. He is represented by Karsten Witt Musik Management.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

rmorris@esm.rochester.edu

(585) 274-1558

 

 

Chair of the Composition Department (1999-2005, 2009-11), University Mentor (1982), Bridging Fellowship (Department of Religion and Classics, 1997), University Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching (1996). BM, Eastman; MM, DMA, University of Michigan.

 

Recipient, Margaret Lee Crofts Composition Fellowship (1967), MacDowell Colony Fellowship (1975), A. Whitney Griswold Award (1975), American Music Center grants (1975, 1991), NEA grant (1978), ACLS Fellowship (1983), Hanson Institute for American Music (1997, 2000, 2005). Winner, Harvey Gaul Composition Competition (1982), New Music Delaware Competition (1997). Commendation from Paris New Music Review (1997).

Guest composer: Composer to Composer Conference, Telluride (CO)(1990); ISCM Festival of Contemporary Music (1990); Composers’ Symposium, University of New Mexico (1991); Kobe International Modern Music Festival in Japan (1991); The UCSB Contemporary Music Festival (1992); the Heidelberg Festival (2005). Commissions include: Yale Summer School of Music and Arts, Pittsburgh Chamber Symphony, Yale Band, Blackearth Percussion Group, Festival of Contemporary Organ Music, Chamber Arts Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Alienor Harpsichord Foundation, Rochester Philharmonic, National Flute Association, New Millennium Ensemble, Speculum Speculae, CUBE Contemporary Music Ensemble, Smith Publications, Mid-American Center for Contemporary Music, Ossia, Hanson Institute for American Music, ISCM. Music published by Morris Music. Recordings on CRI, New World, Music Gallery Editions, Neuma, Music and Arts, Fanfare, Centaur, Open Space, Albany Records, Attacca, and Music Gallery Editions.

 

Publications include Composition with Pitch-Classes: A Theory of Compositional Design (Yale, 1987), winner of the Society for Music Theory’s Distinguished Publication Award (1988), Class Notes for Atonal Music Theory (1991, Frog Peak), Advanced Class Notes for Atonal Music Theory (2004, Frog Peak). Articles in Journal of Music Theory, Asterisk*, Perspectives of New Music, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music Theory Spectrum, and other journals. Co-Editor, Perspectives of New Music. Editorial Board, Open Space Magazine, Journal of Music Theory, The Stefan Wolpe Society. Vice-President of the Society for Music Theory (1998-2000).

 

Director, Yale School of Music Electronic Music Studio (1972-77), University of Pittsburgh Electronic Studio (1976-80). Faculty member, Yale (1969-77), University of Pittsburgh (1976-80), Berkshire Music Center (1982), Eastman (1980-).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

csanchez-gutierrez@esm.rochester.edu

(585) 274-1555

 

The music of Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez has been described by the press as “vigorously organized and highly visceral…neither eclectic nor post-modern nor owing allegiance to any passing fashion”.

Born in Mexico City in 1964, he studied at the Peabody Conservatory, Yale University, Princeton and Tanglewoodunder Henri Dutilleux, Jacob Druckman, and Martin Bresnick. He is Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.

 

Among the many awards he has received are the 2007 Barlow Prize, a Finalist Prize at the 2004 Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestral Composer Competition, as well as the 2003 Lee Ettelson Composition Award. He has also been honored in recent years with awards and fellowships from the Koussevitzky, Guggenheim, Fromm, Rockefeller,Camargo and Bogliasco Foundations. He was the 2000-01 American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Fellow and has received two B.M.I Composition Awards, the Mozart Medal from the governments of Mexico and Austria, and a Fulbright Fellowship.

Sanchez-Gutierrez’s work is performed and recorded frequently in the U.S, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

 

Recently Sanchez-Gutierrez has been Composer-in-Residence at several international festivals: Puentes Mexico/España,Chihuahua International Festival, Michoacan International New Music Festival, S.L.A.M. Festival in Seattle, as well as with the Binghamton Philharmonic (through a grant from the New York State Fund for Music.)

 

Among Sanchez-Gutierrez’s most recently completed works are “Diaries” (a commission from the Orchestra of the League of Composers/ISCM),  “Memos” (a Barlow Endowment-commissioned work for the percussion ensembles SO,Kroumata and Nexus); “Five Memos” (a Fromm Music Foundation commission, written for Eighth Blackbird); …Ex Machina, for marimba, piano and orchestra (NY State Music Fund for the Binghamton Philharmonic); and “[…and of course Henry the Horse…] Dances the…” (Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

oschneller@esm.rochester.edu

(585) 274-1575

 

Born in Germany, Oliver Schneller grew up in Africa, Europe, and Asia and studied in Germany and the United States, and his works reflect his interest in all aspects of interculturality in music. He is the recipient of such honors as Harvard University’s Paul Fromm Award, the Tanglewood Music Center’s Benjamin Britten Memorial Fellowship, the Rome Prize Fellowship, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s Composers’ Prize, and more.  

 

Schneller’s music has been heard at numerous international festivals, including the Festival Agora Paris, Maerzmusik Berlin, Wien Modern, Munich Biennale, Alternativa Moscow, the International Computer Music Conferences (ICMC) in Singapore and Göteborg, Musicaaaoustica Beijing, EXPO 2010 Shanghai, Indaba South Africa, Aspen, and Tanglewood. His works have been performed by Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Percussions de Strasbourg, Ensemble Mosaik, Antares, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, SWR Radio Orchestra, St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, and other ensembles. 

 

Schneller developed and expanded the Computer Music Studio at the City University of New York. As a composer-in-research at IRCAM, a French institute for science about music, sound, and electro-acoustical art music, he worked on “Jardin des Fleuves,” a work for ensemble and live-electronic spatial processing. He has taught seminars and master classes on composition, orchestration, and compositional applications of acoustics and psychoacoustics at Cornell University, the University of the Arts in Berlin, the Norwegian Theatre Academy, and Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, and has served as professor of composition at the State University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart and at the Hannover Conservatory of Music. 

 

In 2004, Schneller was the artistic director of the “Tracing Migrations” Festival in Berlin, which featured the works of contemporary composers from Arab countries. The following year, he curated the “The Musical Moment” at Berlin’s House of World Cultures, a project that explored Eastern and Western concepts of musical beauty involving composers Toshio Hosokawa and Helmut Lachenmann. In addition, Schneller designed the 48-channel sound installation that was part of an exhibition on Islamic and modern worlds prepared by TASWIR Projects. 

 

Schneller is a co-founder of the SinusTon Festival for Experimental Music, for which he also serves as artistic director, and of the composers collective “Biotope.” 

 

As a saxophonist, Schneller has performed with ensembles such as the George Russell Big Band, the Gustav Mahler Youth Symphony under Seiji Ozawa, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra as a soloist in Tan Dun’s Red Forecast. He also has worked with various jazz and improvisation ensembles in Cologne, Paris, Amsterdam, Boston, and New York. 

 

Schneller earned degrees at the University of Bonn and the New England Conservatory of Music, as well as the Doctor in Musical Arts degree in composition from Columbia University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mexican-born composer Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon joined the Eastman faculty in 2002. He received his undergraduate degree in guitar and composition from the University of California at San Diego, and both a master’s degree and Ph.D. in composition from the University of Pennsylvania. He studied with George Crumb, Jay Reise, Franco Donatoni, Keith Humble, and Jean Charles François. Prior to joining Eastman, Zohn-Muldoon held positions at the School of Music, University of Guanajuato, Mexico (1993-95), and the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati (1997-2002).

 

Zohn-Muldoon’s honors include being named 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work Comala, the 2011 Lillian Fairchild Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Tanglewood Music Center (Omar del Carlo Foundation), Camargo Foundation, Fondazione William Walton, Endowment for Culture and the Arts of Mexico, and the Embassy of Austria in México (Mozart Medal). He has been invited as guest composer, lecturer, and adjudicator by prominent cultural institutions in the U.S. and Latin America, including the University of Chicago, Cornell University, the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, and the Composers Conference, among others. In 2012 he was a Trotter Visiting Professor at the University of Oregon, in Eugene.

 

His works have been performed by groups such as as eighth blackbird, Riverside Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Neue Ensemble Hannover, and San Francisco Contemporary Players. Performances have taken place at ISCM World Music Days, National Public Radio’s “St. Paul Sunday,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gaudeamus International Music Week, Academy of Arts in Munich, Festival Internacional Cervantino, and Foro Internacional de Musica Nueva, among others.

 

His recent work has included collaborations with artists from other disciplines. Encounters, with illustrations by celebrated Mexican cartoonist José Ignacio Solórzano (Jis), was composed for a concert series leading to the FIFA World Cup of 2006, thanks to a commission from Globusklänge and Initiative Neue Musik Berlin. Silueta como Sirena, written thanks to a commission from the Fromm Foundation, is based on songs by distinguished songwriter Alfredo Sánchez. It was premiered by the Riverside Symphony, the Tarab Cello Ensemble, and Alfredo Sánchez in 2007. Pluck. Pound. Peel., for soprano and an unusual ensemble of plucked instruments, strings, and percussion, was written on texts by poet Raúl Aceves, for the Syracuse Society for New Music, in 2010.