Title: Associate Professor of Composition
Office: Emery Hall
Tel: 513-556-9499
Email: michael.fiday@uc.edu

Michael Fiday, Associate Professor, has been commissioned and performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe and elsewhere by a diverse range of performers such as Atlanta Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Oakland East Bay Symphony, Percussion Ensemble of The Hague, pianists James Tocco and Marc-Andre Hamelin, and electric guitarist Seth Josel. His principal teachers in composition have included Richard Toensing at University of Colorado, George Crumb at University of Pennsylvania and Louis Andriessen, with whom he studied in Amsterdam under the auspices of a Fulbright Grant.

Fiday is the recipient of numerous awards, grants and residencies from, among others, BMI, ASCAP, American Composers Forum, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Headlands Center for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council.

 

Education
BM, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.
MA and PhD, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

 

 

 

Title: Adjunct Instructor in Composition
Office: ... Corbett Cntr Perform Arts
Tel: 513-556-2595
Email: ellen.harrison@uc.edu

Born and raised in Streator, Illinois, Ellen Ruth Harrison received her doctorate in composition from the University of California, Berkeley, where her teachers included Edwin Dugger, Richard Felciano, Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson. Supported by U.C. Berkeley's George Ladd Prix de Paris, she spent two years studying in Paris, also attending composer workshops at IRCAM. In addition she has studied with Milko Kelemen at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, with Thomas Frederickson and Paul Zonn at the University of Illinois and with Bernard Rands and Jacob Druckman at the Aspen Music Festival.
 
Penned for instrumental and vocal ensembles of various sizes, Harrison's compositions have been inspired by diverse experiences and circumstances. Echoing her evocatively titled movements, her music at times seems to dip into distant and antique sonic realms to portray a series of contrasting moods and atmospheres. At other times the tone is more jocular as she juxtaposes impetuous activity with infernal calm at multiple levels, presenting an extraordinary variety of textures, melodic materials and expressive gestures. Melody figures prominently in Harrison’s work, as do intricate textures and a wide variety of instrumental colors.
 
Harrison's music has been performed in both the United States and Europe. In Cincinnati she has had performances by the Cincinnati Symphony Chamber Players, Cincinnati Camerata, concert:nova, the Amicus String Quartet and the Linton Chamber Music Series. She has received three Individual Artist Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation and commissions from the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, concert:nova, David Schneider and Dorothea Riehm.  Her works have received awards from the American Guild of Organists, the IBLA International Music Foundation, the Rebecca Clarke Society, Spectri Sonori and the International League of Women Composers. For more information on Dr. Harrison, please see EllenRuthHarrison.com.

 

 

 

Mara M. Helmuth

Title: Professor of Composition 
Office: 282 Memorial Hall
Tel: 513-556-0807
Email: mara.helmuth@uc.edu
Web: http://www.marahelmuth.com

Mara Helmuth, Professor, is a composer with special interest in electroacoustic and computer music and research. Her compositions have received numerous performances in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia. Her recordings include Sounding Out! (Everglade, 2010), Sound Collaborations, v. 36 of Centaur Records Consortium to Distribute Computer Music Series (CRC 2903, 2007), Implements of Actuation, including collaborations with Allen Otte, released in January, 2001 by the Electronic Music Foundation (EMF 023), Open Space CD 16 and the 50th Anniversary University of Illinois Experimental Music Studios commemorative collection (2008).

 

She has participated in research involving granular synthesis, object-oriented and graphical user interface programming, Internet 2 applications and most currently, wireless sensors. She has created the composition applications StochGran and Patchmix, and the improvisation application Soundmesh. Her articles concerning computer and electronic music have appeared in the Journal for New Music Research, Perspectives of New Music, Computer Music Journal, and Computers and Mathematics with Applications, and a chapters in the monographs Analytical Methods of Electroacoustic Music (Simoni, ed.) and Audible Traces (Barkin and Hamessley, ed.).

 

Helmuth has received grants from the University of Cincinnati University Research Council, the Tangeman Sacred Music Center, Open Meadows Foundation, the Brazos Valley Arts Council and Texas A&M's Associate Provost for Computing. Dr. Helmuth plays the piano, and is currently learning to play the Chinese qin to incorporate in her compositions. She created two interactive installations for the SinoNordic Arts Space in Beijing.

 

She has been on the board of directors of the International Computer Music Association and Society of Electroacoustic Music in the United States, and is a recent ICMA President.

 

Education
DMA, Columbia University , New York, NY.
BA and MM, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL.

 

 

 

 

Title: Norman Dinerstein Professor of Composition Scholar
Office: 4232 Emery Hall
Tel: 513-556-9401
Email: douglas.knehans@uc.edu

Douglas Knehans has recently been a special guest of the Premieres of the Season Festival in Kiev, Ukraine where the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine gave the world premiere of his orchestra work ripple. This work has also been recorded for worldwide CD release on ERM Media Masterworks of the New Era series, distributed by Naxos. The Verdehr Trio also recorded his work rive on Crystal Records and piano virtuoso Michael Kieran Harvey has also recorded his Boyd panels for Move Records (Australia), which also was released in fall 2008. His music for electronic cello is also featured on the CRI Emergency Music series now distributed by New World Records. A disc of his music for acoustic and electronic cello will be released on Ablaze Records in the summer of 2010. His latest commissions are from the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (Australia) for ...mist, memory, shadow... a new work for string orchestra and violin solo; a new double concerto glow (clarinet and violin) for Elsa and Walter Verdehr; a new viola work for Miles Hoffman; and a new two piano work for The Pridonoff Duo.

 

He has been featured in three books on Australian music (A Handbook of Australian Music; Directory of Australian Composers and Sound Ideas: Australian Composers Born Since 1950: A Guide to Their Music and Ideas) as well as the International Who's Who in Music and Musicians Directory (U.K.).

 

Knehans has been a fellow of the Victorian Council of the Arts, MacDowell Colony and Leighton Artist Colony (Banff), has won awards from the American Music Centre and Meet the Composer and has fulfilled commissions for a wide variety of works from orchestral, to chamber music, opera, dance, choral, electronic and film. He has been a guest of the Czech-American Summer Music Institute in Prague, Czech Republic; New Music, New Faces Festival in Krakow, Poland; the Australian International Summer Orchestra Institute in Hobart, Australia; the Premieres of the Season Festival in Kiev, Ukraine and the Accent 09 Festival in Cincinnati, USA.

 

His music for the short film A Song of Air commissioned by the Australian Film Institute was screened at the prestigious Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival and over a dozen others world wide. Knehans' works have been broadcast on Australian National Radio and T.V., PBS TV, NPR, RAI (Italy) Radio and Television and National Radio and Television of Ukraine. He has been commissioned to write specifically for Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio and Television programs and his music to the PBS documentary Animal, Vegetable, Mineral was nominated for an EMMY award.

 

Knehans was a visiting professor of composition at the National University of Singapore (2006) and the Krakow Academy of Music, Poland (2007). He was Director of the University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music from 2000-2008, created and was the inaugural Artistic Director of the Australian International Summer Orchestra Institute from 2005-2008. Between 2008-2010 he was Dean of the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) in Cincinnati and is currently the Norman Dinerstein Professor of Composition Scholar at CCM.

Education
DMA, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
MMA, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
MA--Mus, Queens College, City University of New York, New York, NY.
BA--Mus, Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

 

 

Miguel A. Roig-Francoli

Title: Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music Theory and Composition
Office: 4225J Emery Hall
Tel: 513-556-1821
Email: miguel.roig-francoli@uc.edu
Web: http://www.miguelroig-francoli.com/index.html

Miguel Roig-Francolí, Ph.D., Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music Theory and Composition, has been recognized internationally for his work as a music theorist, composer, musicologist and pedagogue. His research interests include Renaissance instrumental music and history of theory, the music of Tomás Luis de Victoria, twentieth-century music, and music theory pedagogy. At CCM, he regularly teaches history of theory, sixteenth-century counterpoint, post-tonal theory, music theory pedagogy, and a seminar on the analysis of early music. He is the author of Harmony in Context (McGraw-Hill, 2nd edn., 2011) and Understanding Post-Tonal Music (McGraw-Hill, 2007; Chinese translation, Beijing: People's Music Publishing House, 2012).  He has published over twenty articles and reviews in Music Theory Spectrum, Journal of Music Theory, Early Music, Revista de Musicología, Notes, Indiana Theory Review, Journal of Musicological Research, College Music Symposium, Analisi: Rivista de Teoria e Pedagogia Musicale, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana, and several collections of essays. He has presented papers at numerous conferences, including several annual meetings of the Society for Music Theory, American Musicological Society, and Music Theory Midwest. Roig-Francolí has also taught at the Eastman School of Music, Northern Illinois University, Indiana University, and Ithaca College, and has been invited to lecture internationally at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Shanghai Conservatory, and EAFIT University in Colombia. He is currently on the editorial board for the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy.

 

Roig-Francolí’s compositions have been widely performed in Spain, England, Germany, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland, Colombia, France, and the U.S., including a 2013 monographic chamber concert at Weill Hall (Carnegie Hall), and he has held commissions from the National Orchestra and Chorus of Spain, Spanish National Radio, Fundación Juan March, Rawlins Piano Trio, Institut Ramon Llull, and the Foundation for Iberian Music (CUNY). His compositions are published by EMEC, Piles, Fundación Juan March (Madrid), and Perennis Music Publishing. Among his many honors are first prize at the National Composition Competition of the Spanish Jeunesses Musicales (1981) and second prize at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers (Paris, 1982), both for Five Pieces for Orchestra; the Dean’s Dissertation Prize, Indiana University (1991); the Dana Research Fellow Award, Ithaca College (1992); grants from the US-Spain Joint Committee for Cultural and Educational Affairs, Spanish Ministry of Culture, Ithaca College, Northern Illinois University, and the University of Cincinnati; the Medal of Honor from the Superior Conservatory of Music of the Balearic Islands (2004); the University of Cincinnati’s A.B. "Dolly" Cohen Award for Excellence in Teaching (2007) and George Rieveschl Jr. Award for Creative and/or Scholarly Work (2009); 2010 Ramón Llull Prize of the Government of the Balearic Islands (Spain); and the 2013 Distinguished Teaching Professor Award from the University of Cincinnati.

 

Education
MM, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 1985.
PhD, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 1990.
Título Superior de Composición, Madrid Royal Superior Conservatory, Madrid, Spain, 1988.
Título Profesional de Piano,, Professional Conservatory of the Balearic Islands, Majorca, Spain, 1982.