Cord Meijering

Dutch composer Cord Meijering was born in Esens, Germany in 1955, and lives now in Darmstadt, Germany. He studied guitar under Olaf Van Gonnissen, and composition under Dietrich Boekle and Johannes Fritsch. From 1983 to 1986 he was a member of Hans Werner Henze's master class in Cologne, Germany; he then completed his studies as a master student under Hans Juergen Wenzel at the Academy of Arts in East-Berlin. In 1985 he received a prize at a competition in Stuttgart for his orchestral composition “The Voice of The Winter.” In 1987 he received a commendation at the international composers' competition "Hambacher Prize" for his string trio "...bewegt..." and in 1996 the "Bad Homburger Foerder Prize" for the composition “Nights” from 1990. In 1991 Meijering received a grant to visit the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Meijering’s compositions have been performed at Festival de Tardor, Barcelona (Spain), at Steirischer Herbst Graz (Austria), at Festival d'Evian (France), at Frankfurter Feste, at the Internationale Ferienkurse fuer Neue Musik Darmstadt (Germany), at the Guggenheim Museum New York, at the CrossSound Festival Juneau and Sitka (Alaska) and other places. Meijering has written compositions for orchestra, chamber music, dance theater, film music (for Sharon Greytak's “The Love Lesson,” New York 1995, shown at the Museum of Modern Art, at Lincoln Center New York, Los Angeles Film Festival and other places). Cord Meijering is director of the Akademie für Tonkunst Darmstadt. More information on the Web at www.meijering.de

back to top

Peter Child

"Why should anyone compose music? Why devote a lifetime of learning and endure any amount of hardship in order to acquire and practice that skill? Surely there are more useful pursuits, more practical vocations?" writes MIT composer Peter Child. "Composers feel an urgent necessity to make music in their bones. When they try to express it in words however, they feel the way children do when they try to jump outside their own shadows. It feels like you should be able to do it, you almost did it!, but of course you never succeed. [...] The irreducible essence of the experience of music is a wordless illumination of our humanity. This is what I believe draws composers irresistibly to their work. [...] The arts illuminate our humanity in ways that cannot be duplicated by other fields. It is for this reason that a curriculum of higher learning that aims to educate the complete human being cries out for the arts to be included. [...] Through their rigor and discipline the arts reveal for us an essential dimension of what it is to be human that is quite different from those dimensions revealed by the rigors and discipline of science and the humanities. [... Why do I compose?] I stand with [Carmen Bernos de Gasztold's poetic] "Little Pig," who says: "Yes, I grunt. Grunt, and snuffle. I grunt because I grunt and I snuffle because I cannot do anything else."

Born in the U.K. in 1954, Peter Child is Professor of Music and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT, where he chaired the department of Music and Theater Arts from 1996 to 1999. He joined Reed College in 1973 through an exchange scholarship from Keele University in England and received his B.A. in music from Reed in 1975. After studying Karnatic music in Madras for a year through a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship (1975-76), he entered the graduate program at Brandeis University and earned his Ph.D. in musical composition in 1981. His composition teachers include William Albright, Bernard Barrell, Arthur Berger, Martin Boykan, Jacob Druckman (Tanglewood) and Seymour Shifrin.

Child has been awarded an American Symphony Orchestra League-Meet the Composer "Music Alive" residency with the Albany Symphony Orchestra for 2005-08; he is also composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic Orchestra for the same period. His compositions won the 2001 Music of Changes award, which culminates in a commission and a concert in Los Angeles devoted to his music. He was a recipient of a 2000 commission from the Harvard Musical Association and a 1998 commission from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University. In 1994 the Council for the Arts at MIT awarded Peter Child the Gyorgy Kepes Fellowship Prize. He has been honored by two Composition Fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation in 1986 and 1989, as well as fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and the Composers' Conference. The Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities awarded him four 'New Works' commissions in conjunction with the Boston Musica Viva, the New England Conservatory Contemporary Ensemble, the MIT Experimental Music Studio, and the Cantata Singers. His compositions have also been awarded prizes from Tanglewood (Margaret Grant Memorial Prize, 1978), East and West Artists (First Prize, 1979), WGBH Radio (Recording Prize, 1980), New England Conservatory ('New Works' Prize, 1983), and League-ISCM, Boston (New England Composers Prize, 1983). Recordings of some of Child's music have been recorded on New World, Albany, Innova, CRI, Neuma, Rivoalto and Centaur compact discs. In addition to his compositional work, Child has published papers concerning music by Shostakovich and Bartok in Music Analysis and College Music Symposium. He won the 2004 Levitan Award in the Humanities at MIT to support his work in musical analysis.

Peter Child has written music in many different genres, including music for orchestra, chorus, computer synthesis, voice, and a wide variety of chamber groups.

More information on the Web at web.mit.edu/child/www/

back to top

Garrett Fisher

Born in 1970, Garrett Fisher grew up in Michigan and Maine, and as part of his parents’ academic sabbaticals, the family lived in Istanbul, London, Paris, and other cities. He attended Oberlin Conservatory, studying composition and piano. His interest in music from other cultures also led to his studying the tabla and classical Indian singing. While in Seattle, he formed the Fisher Ensemble, which has performed his original operas at On the Boards, Consolidated Works, the Nippon Kan Theater, as well as the A.I.R. Gallery in New York, NY. He has received support from 4culture, the Allied Arts Foundation, the ASCAP Foundation/Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Bossack Heilbron Foundation, Centrum Arts Colony, City Artists, the King County Arts Commission, Puffin Foundation, the Seattle Arts Commission and the Wiggly World Foundation. His opera “The Passion of Saint Thomas More” was released on BIS. His operas are also available on 16 Visions Records.

More information on the Web at www.fisherensemble.org

back to top

Philip Munger

Philip Munger was born in 1946 and studied composition at Oberlin Conservatory and at the University of Washington. After working in Seattle, he moved to Alaska in 1973. Munger has sought to address concerns about environmental, humanitarian and social issues in a number of his compositions. He has spoken and written widely on these issues. He has received many prizes and other honors. His works have been performed at the Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Juilliard Institute, Cornish Institute, Warsaw Conservatory, the National Gallery, the National Cathedral and several other notable venues. His most recent award, from the service organization Bugles Across America, was in January 2005, for his composition “Shards,” honoring America’s Afghanistan and Iraq Wars’ dead, for which he was awarded their “For Valor” decoration. He currently teaches at the University of Alaska Anchorage and plays trombone in the UAA Wind Ensemble.

back to top

Stefan Hakenberg

Born in Wuppertal, Germany in 1960, composer Stefan HAKENBERG now resides in Alaska's capital, Juneau. His work includes a wide variety of musical media. The integration of players of non-western classical background has particularly shaped HAKENBERG's creative thought. Reviewers have praised his music as "highly original," "dramatic and memorable," "creating strong musical expressions in a densely contrapuntal style." Full of innovations his work is an ongoing reflection on the musical styles of today that he has encountered along an international career that has taken him from Cologne's experimental 80s New Music scene to Boston's 90s multicultural academic world, to the particularly Asian combination of influences in Seoul, Korea at the turn of the millennium.

Amongst the presenters of his music are the "El Cimarron Ensemble" from Salzburg, "IIIZ+," "Sagye" from Seoul, "ALEA III," "Dinosaur Annex," "BMOP," and "Arcadian Winds" from Boston, "re-sound" from Melbourne, "The Chicago 21st Century Music Ensemble," "Ensemble Phorminx" from Darmstadt, "The New Millennium Ensemble" from New York, the "Bangkok Saxophone Quartet," "Duo Contemporain" from Rotterdam, "UnitedBerlin," the "Heidelberger Sinfoniker," and the "Gürzenich Orchester der Stadt Köln;" conductors like Thomas KALB, Roger NELSON, Jeffrey MILARSKY, Morris ROSENZWEIG, Richard PITTMAN, George TSONTAKIS, Johannes STERT, Markus STENZ, and Timothy WEISS; and soloists like Claudia BUDER, Phoebe CARRAI, Il-Ryun CHUNG, DAI Xiaolian, Makiko GOTO, JI Aeri, KIM Woongsik, Dimitris MARINOS, MEI Han, Heather O'DONNELL, SAITOH Tetsu, Robert SCHULZ, Jeremias SCHWARZER, Janet UNDERHILL, WANG Changyuan, and Martin ZEHN amongst many others.

HAKENBERG attended the conservatories of Düsseldorf and Cologne where he studied composition with Hans Werner HENZE. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University where he studied with Bernard RANDS and Mario DAVIDOVSKY. Other grants and fellowships brought him to the summer festivals in Tanglewood (where he studied with Oliver KNUSSEN on a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship), Aspen (where he studied with John HARBISON), and Fontainebleau (where he studied with Betsy JOLAS), to the artist colonies "The MacDowell Colony" in New Hampshire, "Yaddo" in Saratoga Springs, and the "Atelierhaus Worpswede" in Lower Saxony. MeetTheComposer, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, the Rasmuson Foundation, various other Alaskan arts and humanities councils, and the Endowments for the Arts in North-Rhine Westfalia and Lower Saxony have directly sponsored his work repeatedly. He is a 2005 winner of the Connie Boochever Fellowship from the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation.

HAKENBERG is a founder of the Alaskan contemporary music organization "CrossSound," which won a 2002 ASCAP-Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, and in 2005 received an NEA Creativity Grant for a program including HAKENBERG's p'ansori “Klanott and the Land Otter People.” Films by Theo LIPFERT with scores by Stefan HAKENBERG, "The Displacement Map" and "Taubman Sucks," won awards at festivals in Kansas City, Honolulu, at Portland's Northwest Film festival in Oregon, and three screenings at the Tribeca Film Festival among many more places. In 2007 Stefan was credited with having written the first “climate opera” with “The Egg Musher,” libretto by Michael Kerstan, on the topic of global warming.

HAKENBERG's music is published by AUGEMUS Musikverlag, Bochum, Germany and TONOS Musikverlag, Darmstadt, Germany. Recordings are available on the Capstone Records label, Brooklyn, New York.

More information on the Web at www.stefanhakenberg.com

back to top

Owen Underhill

Born in 1954 in British Columbia,Owen Underhill is a composer, conductor, and professor of composition in Vancouver, B.C. He studied composition with Rudolf Komorous at the University of Victoria, graduating with distinction in 1975. During 1973 - 1975 he also was an active flautist, performing with The Composer's Group. He then did his master's degree at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, studying with Bülent Arel. From 1976 to 1981 he was visiting composer at Wilfred Laurier University's Faculty of Music. In 1981, Underhill became a music instructor for the Centre for the Arts at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. Throughout the 1990s he conducted the Vancouver New Music Society as well as composed. His music has been performed widely throughout Canada and Australia, and is also frequently part of interdisciplinary art presentations. Underhill is an eagerly sought-after collaborator, both as a composer and conductor of unflagging professionalism. However, his catalog demonstrates an affinity for chamber music. It is not a particularly large output, but most of his music has proven durable. The music demonstrates much of the splendid, exuberant humanism heard frequently among the best students of Komorous. It frequently generates fascinating atmospheres through the manipulation of materials that are not especially radical but communicative and edifying for both casual listeners and the strident lovers of the avant-garde. His command of orchestration is particularly attractive and fascinating.

back to top

Robert Henson (1969 CA)

Currently a resident of Seattle, Robert Henson grew up in northern California and has written for a variety of ensembles, most currently for his own project transpacific.  A graduate of the University of Oregon School of Music, he has spent a good deal of time merging popular rock instrumentation with conventional classical idioms, for instance in his minimal post-rock ensemble “transatlantic icefloe.”  Robert has scored and created sound designs for many Seattle theater companies, including Printers Devil Theater, and has performed prepared piano with the dance troupe VIA. After being exposed to John Zorn's game piece Cobra in school and organizing local performances of it, he met up with like-minded musicians in Seattle and became a founding member of Strategic Improv Labs 2000 (sil2k), with whom he performs on guitar and for whom he composes and conducts.

back to top

John Cage (1912 CA — 1992 NY)

John Milton Cage was an American experimental music composer, writer and visual artist. He is most commonly known for his 1952 composition 4'33", whose three movements are performed without playing a single note.

Cage was an early composer of what he called "chance music" (and what others have decided to label “aleatoric” music), music where some elements in the music are left to be decided by chance; he is also well known for his non-standard use of musical instruments and his pioneering exploration of electronic music. His works were sometimes controversial, but he is generally regarded as one of the most important composers of his era, especially in his raising questions about the definition of music.

John Cage put Zen Buddhist beliefs into practice through music. He described his music as "purposeless play", but "this play is an affirmation of life, not an attempt to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living, which is so excellent once one gets ones mind and desires out the way and lets it act of its own accord."
Cage was also an avid amateur mycologist and mushroom collector: he co-founded the New York Mycological Society with three friends. He was a long-term collaborator and romantic partner of choreographer Merce Cunningham.
Cage is also known as the inventor of the mesostic, a type of poem.

back to top

Yoko Ono Lennon (1933 Japan)

Yoko Ono was born into a wealthy Japanese family, yet she decided at an early age that she wished to be a composer. In the early 50s she and her parents moved to New York. Her admiration for Franz Kafka, Vincent van Gogh, and Arnold Schönberg was fertilized by the New York avant-garde scene of the time. In the 1960s Yoko and her friend La Monte Young staged legendary loft events on Chambers Street, a space she provided also to John Cage and his ground-breaking classes of experimental music. To most people she is known as the wife of the English musician John Lennon.

back to top

Francis Schwartz (1940)

Francis Schwartz was born in the United States in 1940 and grew up in Texas, where he studied with the eminent pianist Patricio Gutierrez. Pursuing advanced studies in piano and composition, he received both a Bachelor's and a Master's degrees at The Juilliard School, where his principal teachers were Lonny Epstein, Louis Persinger and Vittorio Giannini. Subsequently, he was awarded a Ph.D. summa cum laude in musical aesthetics from the University of Paris.

He frequently incorporates the attending public as active participant in the artistic experience, stating:  "I wish to give both the performer and the public the opportunity to explore new ways of enjoying and discovering an artwork. During the past centuries, we have become too rigid, too fearful of the total art experience. I want the players to bathe in the wonders of their corporeal expressiveness, to savor the communicative power of facial gesture as much as they delight in a beautifully produced vocal or instrumental sound. Both artist and public grow in this discovery.”

back to top

Peter Schickele
Composer, musician, author, satirist Peter Schickele is internationally recognized as one of the most versatile artists in the field of music. His works — now well in excess of 100 — for symphony orchestras, choral groups, chamber ensembles, voice, movies and television, have given him "a leading role in the ever-more-prominent school of American composers, who unselfconsciously blend all levels of American music."

 
Cord Meijering    Peter Child    Garrett Fisher   
Stefan Hakenberg    Owen Underhill

Robert Henson    John Cage    Yoko Ono Lennon   
Francis Schwartz    Peter Schickele