Born in Minnesota in 1977, CHRISTOPHER BRAKEL has received commissions by the Hanson Institute for American Music and the RochesterInk Festival, awards from ASCAP, the Eastman School of Music (Howard Hanson Large Ensemble Prize), and the University of Iowa (Henry and Parker Pelzer Prize in Composition), and scholarships from the Internationale Musikinstitut Darmstadt and the Eastman School of Music (Paul Sacher Scholarship).

His music has been performed across the United States, in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic at prominent international and national festivals, conferences, and concerts, including the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Darmstadt, Germany), the SEAMUS and SCI National Conferences, the FSU Festival of New Music, June in Buffalo, and the Czech-American Summer Music Institute. His prize-winning collaborative multimedia works with animator Keum-Taek Jung have been selected for dozens of festival performances around the world.

He holds advanced degrees in composition from the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D.) and the University of Iowa (M.A.), and a B.A. in Music from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Brakel is currently on the faculty at Chapman University’s Conservatory of Music, where he teaches in the music theory and composition department.

 

PATRICIO DA SILVA (1973) received formal musical training at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa where he studied piano with Jorge Moyano and composition with António Pinho Vargas (B.M. in piano, 1995). He then pursued his composition studies in the US, first as a recipient of the Betty Freeman Foundation Scholarship in Composition with Morton Subotnick, Stephen L. Mosko, and Mel Powell at the California Institute of the Arts (MFA, 1999), and later, with support from the Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento (Portugal), he completed the Ph.D. program in composition at the University of California (2003), having studied composition with William Kraft, computer music with Curtis Roads, and algorithmic composition and music with Artificial Intelligence with David Cope. Awards include the International Barto Prize, the Gould Family Foundation Composers Award, the Ojai Festival Music for Tomorrow, the Otto Eckstein Fellowship, the Norton Stevens Fellowship, the Susan and Ford Schumann Fellowship, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. His music has been recently heard at Tanglewood, Ravinia, Ojai Music Festival, Aspen, Ruhr Festival, Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal, Stadttheater Wels, London Festival of American Music, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Zipper Hall, Cistermúsica, International Music Festival Póvoa do Varzim, Yamaha's YASI, SCRIME, and Los Angeles Sonic Odyssey. His music has been played by notable soloists and ensembles including the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, California Ear-Unit, Lontano, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Piano Quartet, New Century Players, New Fromm Players, Orquestra do Algarve, Shakespeare & Co., Stefan Asbury, Tzimon Barto, and Gloria Cheng.

 

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, ROBERT DENHAM holds a DMA in composition from the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music (CCM) where he studied with Michael Fiday, Joel Hoffman, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. His other degrees are from UCLA (MA Composition) where he studied with Roger Bourland, Ian Krouse, and the late Jerry Goldsmith, and Biola University (BM, Trumpet Performance). Dr. Denham managed the annual new music festival MusicX for four years, and currently teaches Theory and Composition at Biola University in La Mirada California.

Denham’s music includes works of every genre and has been performed across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia by such performers and ensembles as Timothy Lees (Concertmaster, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra), the CCM Philharmonia, the Los Angeles Flute Quartet, the Orion Saxophone Quartet, the Vientos Trio, the CCM Chamber Players, and the Academia Musicale di San Casciano Orchestra e Coro di bambini (Florence, Italy). Performances of his music include such notable venues as the American-Bulgarian New Music Festival (Northern Kentucky University), SCI National, Regional, and Student Conferences, Composers Inc., Culver City Chamber Music Series, the Pacific Contemporary Music Center (Long Beach CA), and the Ernest Bloch Festival (Newport OR). He has won numerous competitions, including the Hvar International Composition Competition (Croatia), the CCM Philharmonia Composition Competition, the Gluck Brass Quintet Composition Competition, and was the 1998 recipient of the coveted Stanley Wilson Composer’s Award (UCLA). He has received annual awards from ASCAP since 2005.

 

ERIC GUINIVAN's music has been performed across the United States as well as in France, Japan, and Greece.  His compositions have been performed by the University of Southern California Thornton Symphony, Young People’s Symphonic Orchestra of St. Louis, the Delaware Youth Symphony, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, Quey Percussion Duet, USC Contemporary Music Ensemble, New York Symphony Singers, and by ensembles at Indiana University and USC.  Eric’s music has received several awards and honors, including two BMI Student Composer Awards, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and the Presser Music Award.  Eric has received commissions from the New York Youth Symphony, the Delaware Youth Symphony, the Michigan Music Teachers Association, and the Lotte Lehmann Foundation.

Eric began studying percussion at age 10 and is an active performer currently based in Los Angeles.  Currently a founding member of the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet and the Principal Timpanist of the YMF Debut Orchestra, Eric has performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles across the country.  Eric will make his Carnegie Hall premiere in 2011 performing as soloist with the New York Youth Symphony in a premiere of a new work commissioned by the orchestra.

Eric is currently pursuing a Doctor of Music Degree from the University of Southern California where he currently studies composition with Stephen Hartke

 

 

JEFFREY HOLMES was born in Los Angeles, California, and holds a BM degree from the San Francisco Conservatory and a MM and DMA from the University of Southern California. His music has been performed at festivals in Darmstadt (Germany), Microfest 2003 and 2005 in Venice (CA), at the Chamber Music Conference and Composer’s Forum of the East in Bennington (Vermont), and in venues such as Carnegie Hall (New York), the Historic Dvorak Museum (Prague, Czech Republic), and the Chapelle historique de Bon-Pasteur (Montreal, Canada). He has received commissions, performances and awards from various groups including The American Composers Forum, ASCAP, The California Institute of the Arts Orchestra, Society of Composers INC, Piano Spheres, Society for Chromatic Art, Inauthentica, The Nimbus Institute, ensembleGREEN and others. He has been on the faculty of the University of Southern California, and is currently Professor of Theory and Composition at Chapman University’s Conservatory of Music. He is published by Doberman-Yppan.

 

VERA IVANOVA graduated from the Moscow Conservatory (Honours Diploma), Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London (MM with distinction), and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D. in Composition). Her works have been performed in Russia, Europe and the U.S.A. After teaching as Assistant Professor of Theory and Composition at the Setnor School of Music of Syracuse University (NY), she was appointed as Assistant Professor of Music in the College of Performing Arts at Chapman University (Orange, CA) in 2007. Ms. Ivanova is a recipient of the Sproull Fellowship at Eastman, the Gwyn Ellis Bequest Scholarship at Guildhall School, Moscow Culture Committee grant, Honourable mention at the 28th Bourges Electro-Acoustic Competition, 3rd Prize at the 8th International Mozart Competition, 1st Prize in Category “A” at International Contest of Acousmatic Compositions Métamorphoses 2004 (Belgium), the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, and the André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud Composition Prize at the 8th International Piano Competition at Orleans (France). Her music is available in print from Universal Edition, on CD from Quartz Music Ltd and Musiques & Recherches.

 

Arthur Jarvinen (b. 1956) began establishing himself in the contemporary music community as a graduate student in percussion performance at CalArts in 1978. During the heyday of that institution's Contemporary Music Festivals Jarvinen was a prominent performer on major works by many of the leading composers of our era. He also began establishing himself as a composer in his own right, and joined the fledgling California E.A.R. Unit, with whom he continued for eighteen years.
Jarvinen's work is unusually diverse, to the extent that one could aptly descibe him as a "free-range artist". He has led and performed in all sorts of ensembles and bands – contemporary/experimental, jazz, rock, blues, live electronic, improvisation, Balkan traditional, surf – his composition catalogue includes nearly eighty chamber works as well as songs, rock instrumentals and film scores, and his creative work extends to experimental theatre, installations, visual and conceptual art, and "wordworks". Among his current interests is art made specifically for the internet.
Jarvinen's music is well represented on various labels including OO Discs, MA Recordings, CRI, Los Angeles River Records, and his own Lakefire Records. He has received commissions, grants, awards and fellowships from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Koussevitsky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, Ohio University (1997 Achievement In Music Award), the City of Los Angeles, and others.

 

Born in France in 1979, FRANCIS KAYALI moved to the U.S. in 1997 to enroll at Bowdoin College, where he studied composition with Elliott Schwartz and Robert Greenlee. He earned a master’s degree from SUNY Stony Brook, where his teachers included Perry Goldstein and Peter Winkler. In 2009, Francis Kayali earned a DMA in composition from USC’s Thornton School of Music, where he studied with Frank Ticheli, Tamar Diesendruck, and Donald Crockett.

Kayali has received commissions from the Chamber Opera of USC and Bowdoin College. His music has been performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the USC Thornton Symphony, the Chamber Opera of USC, the Bowdoin Concert Band, and the Bowdoin Chamber Choir. His set of miniatures for chamber orchestra, Croquis du Nil, will be performed next June in New York City by the North/South Consonance Ensemble.

 

LIVIU MARINESCU's works have received recognition in numerous festivals of new music throughout the world, and have been performed by prominent orchestras and ensembles, including the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Czech Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic, Orchestra 2001 in Philadelphia, the National Chamber Radio and Music Academy orchestras in Bucharest, as well as the 20th Century Consort, North-South Consonance, and Archaeus ensembles.

In the U.S., his music has been praised by numerous publications, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, while the critics of The Strad, Strings Magazine, and New York Concert Review recognized its "real expressive power and attractive rhetoric," "majestic assertiveness," and "startling moments." His works have been recorded and released by Centaur and Capstone Records and published by the American Society of Composers.

Since his 2002 appointment as coordinator of music composition and theory at California State University Northridge, Dr. Marinescu has received numerous awards and grants from the Fulbright Commission, the American Music Center, ASCAP, Meet the Composer Fund, as well as the Fromm Music Foundation Prize at Harvard University.

 

SHAUN NAIDOO’s music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, South Africa and Australia. Born in Ladysmith, South Africa in 1962 he composed extensively for the cabaret, musical theater, and modern dance stages in the 1980s. During this period he was closely associated with Shifty Records and released three records in collaboration with Warrick Swinney, including the“found” opera Season of Violence (1990) which received an Honorable Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica in 1992. He settled in California in 1990 and is currently an Associate Professor of Composition at Chapman University Conservatory of Music.
His music has been performed throughout the US, Europe, Australia and South Africa, and has been released by Island Records, C.R.I., New World Records, Capstone Records, and Evander Music, among other labels. Recent performances include a premiere of a new percussion quintet by the New World Percussion Consort (Miami Beach), and upcoming performances include premieres by the German Trio Ecco.

 

FRANK TICHELI's music has been described as being "optimistic and thoughtful" (Los Angeles Times), "lean and muscular" (New York Times), "brilliantly effective" (Miami Herald) and "powerful, deeply felt crafted with impressive flair and an ear for striking instrumental colors" (South Florida Sun-Sentinel). Ticheli (b. 1958) joined the faculty of the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition. From 1991 to 1998, Ticheli was Composer in Residence of the Pacific Symphony, and he still enjoys a close working relationship with that orchestra and their music director, Carl St. Clair.

Frank Ticheli's orchestral works have received considerable recognition in the U.S. and Europe. Orchestral performances have come from the Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Dallas Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, the radio orchestras of Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Saarbruecken, and Austria, and the orchestras of Austin, Bridgeport, Charlotte, Colorado, Haddonfield, Harrisburg, Hong Kong, Jacksonville, Lansing, Long Island, Louisville, Lubbock, Memphis, Nashville, Omaha, Phoenix, Portland, Richmond, San Antonio, San Jose, and others. Ticheli is well known for his works for concert band, many of which have become standards in the repertoire. In addition to composing, he has appeared as guest conductor of his music at Carnegie Hall, at many American universities and music festivals, and in cities throughout the world, including Schladming, Austria, at the Mid-Europe Music Festival; London and Manchester, England, with the Meadows Wind Ensemble; Singapore, with the Singapore Armed Forces Central Band; and numerous cities in Japan, with the Bands of America National Honor Band.

 

Isaac Schankler is a composer, pianist, accordionist and electronic musician living in Los Angeles. Isaac's concert music tends toward textures of high intensity and intricacy. His work often explores elements of other genres, encompassing new wave synthpop, klezmer and Balkan folk music, Weillian cabaret, experimental jazz, mystic minimalism, Oulipo, and more.
Currently, Isaac is co-director of the electroacoustic music ensemble People Inside Electronics. His recent honors include an Associate Artist residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (2009), and the Damien Top Prize in the ASCAP/Lotte Lehmann Foundation Art Song Competition (2007). He has also been a theory instructor and director of the new music chamber ensemble Itch at Brevard Music Center (2006-2007).
A variety of ensembles and venues have featured Isaac's work, including the Juventas New Music Ensemble, University of Southern California Contemporary Music Ensemble, University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, Midwest Composer Symposium, Threshold Electroacoustic Music Festival, Brevard Music Center, Boston Conservatory, and the University of Arizona, where he was a guest composer at the Global Perspectives symposium in 2005. He has also appeared on recordings by klezmer group Into the Freylakh and jazz quartet Anagram Ensemble.

 

Composer ALAN SHOCKLEY was born in Richmond, Virginia and grew up in Warm Springs, Georgia (population <475). He holds degrees in composition and theory from the University of Georgia, The Ohio State University, and Princeton University (M.F.A., Ph.D.).  He’s held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Centro Studi Ligure, and the Virginia Center for the Arts, among others, and has received premieres by many noted soloists and ensembles, including the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet, the Nash Ensemble of London, Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices, and the California EAR Unit.  Recent commissions include two piano works commissioned by Benjamin Binder in response to Schumann’s “Carnaval”, a virtuosic violin solo for the Montecito Summer Music Festival (“stn [adversary]”), and “Sechseläuten”, for the Rhode Island College Wind Ensemble.  These days his works are often experiments in musical form- attempts at tailoring the form to the material, resulting in a unique shape for each piece, and hopefully one that "works" in a strange and individual way.  In addition to his work as a composer and teacher, Shockley is also a scholar of the intersections between music and modernist literary works.  His book, “Music in the Words:  Musical Form and Counterpoint in the Twentieth-Century Novel”, was released in June 2009 from Ashgate Publishing.  He’s currently Assistant Professor of Composition/Theory in the Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University, Long Beach, where he also directs the CSULB New Music Ensemble.

 

DAVID PLYLAR is an accomplished composer, scholar, pianist and educator. His award-winning compositions range from solo piano pieces to large orchestral works and independent film scores. David has received awards and recognition from the Meet the Composer Foundation, American Music Center, ASCAP, the Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions and the Hanson Institute for American Music, among other organizations. An active champion-practitioner of new works, David is the co-artistic director and pianist for the ensemble Out of Context. This flexible-instrumentation group has toured across the United States presenting concerts and master classes since 2007. David holds degrees from Duke University, the University of Louisville, and the Eastman School of Music, where he earned his PhD in composition. When not composing or performing, David enjoys studying and writing about the music of his contemporaries and 19th/20th century music. An adaptation of his dissertation (exploring compositional, theoretical and musicological features of Franz Liszt’s Funeral Odes) will be published in Volume 59 of the Journal of the American Liszt Society.