New York Women Composers, Inc.
      Biographies

A B C D F G H I J K L M N O P R S T V W Z

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Beth Anderson

A composer of neo-romantic music, text-sound works and musical theater events. University of California, Mills College (MFA, MA). Recorded by New World, Pogus, Albany, Capstone, Other Minds, North/South Consonance, Opus One, 1750 Arch, Widemouth Tapes and Newport Classics. Taught: Greenwich House Music School, NYU, College of New Rochelle. References: "New Grove Directory of American Music", "The Pandora Guide to Women Composers", St. James Press' "Contemporary Composers." Host of the concert series Women's Work presented each March in New York City.

Elizabeth R. Austin

Goucher College(BA), Fontainebleau Conservatoire Americaine (1958:Boulanger), Hartt School (M.M.), University of Connecticut (Ph.D.); Publishers: Arsis Press, Peter Tonger Verlag; Recordings: Capstone; recent grants: Connecticut Commission on the Arts; recent awards: Nashville Music Awards nominee; ties to Mannheim (Germany) Musikhochschule, Brandenburg (Germany) Colloquium for New Music. A complete list of works is available from the composer, as well as from Dr. Michael K. Slayton (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN), whose doctoral dissertation (2000) was based on Austin's music. Scores are available either from the publishers (Arsis Press, Peter Tonger Verlag), from the American Composers Alliance, or from the composer. Recordings are available either from Capstone Records or from the composer.

Eleanor Aversa

Eleanor Aversa is a Benjamin Franklin Fellow in the University of Pennsylvania's doctoral program in Composition. Honors include the Northridge Composition Prize, the Brian M. Israel Prize, First Prize in the San Francisco Choral Artists' New Voices Competition, and a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Ms. Aversa's compositions have been played at new music festivals at Symphony Space, Tanglewood, and June in Buffalo. She has completed two electroacoustic commissions for choreographer Danuta Petrow-Sek, the second of which was supported by a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts.

Ms. Aversa completed her Master’s Degree in Composition from Queens College CUNY, where she studied with Bruce Saylor and was awarded the Herbert Sukoff and Marvin Hamlisch Awards in Composition. She holds a B.A. in Russian Language and Literature from Princeton.

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Elizabeth Bell

Wellesley College (Music), 1950; Juilliard (composition: Mennin, Giannini), 1953. Music Critic Ithaca Journal, 1971-1975. Commissions: New York State Council on the Arts, David Bradshaw/Cosmo Buono, Inoue Chamber Ensemble, North/South Consonance, Putname Valley Orchestra, Max Lifchitz, Vienna Modern Masters. Awards: Delius Prize for Keyboard, 1994; First Prize (1986) and Grand Prize (1996), Utah Composers Competition; numerous Meet-the-Composer grants. Recorded on CRS, Classic Masters, VMM, North/South, and MMC labels (the latter an all-Bell CD). performed world-wide. One of the founders, a former officer, and currently a director of New York Women Composers. Member of the Board of Governors of American Composers Alliance. A member of BMI and numerous professional organizations.

Marilyn Bliss

Iowa-born Marilyn Bliss has written many widely performed orchestral, chamber, and solo works. Educated at Coe College and the University of Pennsylvania, her teachers include such distinguished composers as George Crumb, George Rochberg, Jacob Druckman, Jerry Owen, and Harvey Sollberger. Her many awards include a Charles Ives Prize from the American Academy/Institute of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Young Composers Award, Newly Published Flute Music awards from the National Flute Association, fellowships from Tanglewood, the Composers Conference, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and commissions from the Azure Ensemble, Haydn-Mozart Chamber Orchestra, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Powell Quartet, the flutists James Zellers, James Pellerite, and Nina Assimakopoulos, and the National Flute Association. About her orchestral piece Huatzu Hill, the Boston Globe said “…a series of rich landscapes – the colors sharp, the feelings powerfully concentrated, the language eloquent, the expression precise.” Records International Catalogue calls her piano work Fantasies “a virtuosic, highly varied work, fantastic and wide-ranging.” Her Rima for piccolo and piano has been used as a standard contest piece for the National Flute Association’s piccolo competition. Several of Ms. Bliss’s recent scores have featured the Native American flute, both as a solo instrument and in combination with other instruments. Ms. Bliss is currently President of New York Women Composers. Her music has been performed throughout the world; she has been a guest of the SS. Cyril and Methodius Foundation in Sofia, Bulgaria, and of the Fechin Institute in Taos, New Mexico. Her works have also recently been performed in Russia, Armenia, and Italy. Ms. Bliss is published by the American Composers Alliance, Marimba Productions, and Zalo/JP-Publications.

Adrienne Fried Block (1921-2009)

Adrienne Fried Block died on April 5, 2009 in New York City. She was eighty-eight years old. A long standing member of AMS, Block was received her Ph.D in musicology from the Graduate Center, City University of New York in 1978. Her splendid biography of Amy Beach (Oxford University Press, 1998) won numerous awards and widespread recognition for its significance, originality, methodological richness, and literary quality. She also edited a volume devoted to Beach's String Quartet in the series Music in the USA. An early tenacious advocate for gender equity in the field, for scholarly attention to music written by women, and for feminist approaches to musical scholarship, Block contributed to the activities of the Committee on the Status of Women in the AMS, CMS, and SAM, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.

More recently, Adrienne turned her attention to musical life in New York in the nineteenth century, both as co-director of the Music in Gotham project and as the author of scholarly papers and presentations, including some she was working on right through her final illness.

Her biography Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian can be found at Oxford University Press and her bibliography, Women in American Music is available through Greenwood Publications.

Victoria Bond

Composer and Conductor, Victoria Bond has written for every medium including opera, orchestra, ballet and chamber music. Recent commissions include The Gettysburg Chamber Orchestra (2007), The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra (2006); Fontana Chamber Arts (2006), Pianofest(2005) and The American Society for Jewish Music (2005). She has been commissioned by American Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Shanghai Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Women’s Philharmonic, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Joy in Singing, Symphony Space and the Audubon Quartet. Her operas Mrs. Satan, and A More Perfect Union were presented as part of the New York City Opera’s VOX and Friends.

She is principal guest conductor of Chamber Opera Chicago, and has guest conducted the Houston, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Richmond, Utah, Albany, Buffalo, Dallas, Honolulu, Wuhan, Hunan and Shanghai Symphonies, the Central Opera in Beijing and Opera Carolina. She has recorded with the Shanghai Symphony and The Cleveland Chamber Symphony and has served as Music Director of the Roanoke Symphony, Opera Roanoke, The Bel Canto Opera, Harrisburg Opera and the New Amsterdam Symphony, and as Music Advisor of the Wuhan Symphony in China.

The first woman to be awarded a doctorate in orchestral conducting from the Juilliard School, Bond worked with Roger Sessions, Pierre Boulez, Sixten Ehrling Jean Morel, and Herbert von Karajan. Born into a family of professional musicians, Victoria Bond began her formal training at the Mannes School of Music, where she studied piano with Nadia Reisenberg. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California where she studied composition with Ingolf Dahl. She has Honorary Doctorates from Hollins College, Roanoke College and Washington & Lee University.

Her numerous works for young audiences include a musical, Everyone is Good for Something, commissioned by Stage One in Louisville, KY, two works for Sesame Street’s Bob McGrath, The Frog Prince and What’s the Point of Counterpoint? three works commissioned by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, How Brer Raccoon Outsmarted the Frogs; The Corn in the Rock and The Long Haired Girl.

She is the President and Artistic Director of Welltone New Music, Inc. and produces Cutting Edge Concerts. This new music series at Symphony Space in New York presents living composers in conversation together with performances of their music by the Cutting Edge Ensemble.

Victoria Bond has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and on the NBC Today Show, featured in People Magazine, The East Hampton Star, The Southampton Press and in the New York Times.

Alla Borzova

Composer Alla Borzova rapidly gained prominence in the West after arriving in the U. S. in 1993 from Minsk, Belarus. When honoring her with its prestigious Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters hailed her as a "force on the American musical scene". Ms. Borzova’s highly imaginative music combines lyricism and “mischief” (The New Yorker), classically balanced form and refined contemporary technique. Two-time winner of the All-Union Composition Contest before her arrival to the U.S., the First Prize winner of the Delius Composition Contest, the recipient of the Susan Rose Recording Award, she has also received awards from ASCAP, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, NYFA, Trust for Mutual Understanding, U.S. Artists International, Meet the Composer, and the American Music Center. Ms. Borzova has been awarded residencies at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, USA, and at Brahmshaus in Baden-Baden, Germany. She served as a panelist for the NYSCA. Ms. Borzova’s music has been presented by the Aspen, Cabrillo, Delius, and Sonic Boom music festivals in the U.S and as well as a number of major music festivals in Russia and Belarus, such as Moscow Musical Autumn (Moscow), Sound Ways (St. Pertersburg) and Belarusian Musical Autumn (Minsk). Her music has also been commissioned and presented by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Guggenheim Museum, Cutting Edge concert series, Da Capo Chamber Players, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Cassatt String Quartet, Dale Warland Singers, New Amsterdam Singers, The New York Concert Singers, Gregg Smith Singers, National Symphony Orchestra of Belarus, Symphony Orchestra and choirs of Belarusian Radio and Television and several distinguished individual performers.

Among recent premieres is the first complete performance in January of 2009 of the 40-minute cantata Songs for Lada by the Michigan State University Children Chorus and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin’s direction. To The New World was premiered 2007 in Minsk by the National Symphony Orchestra of Belarus under Alexander Anissimov’s direction and received its U.S. premiere on August 10, 2008, at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California, under the baton of Marin Alsop. In September of 2009 Maestro Slatkin and the orchestra performed To The New World. Both the cantata and To The New World were recorded live and will be released on Naxos in summer of 2010. Merry Hour, Seven Songs to the poems by Mikhail Lermontov, was premiered in February of 2008 at Merkin Hall in New York City by tenor Steven Ebel and the Naumburg Award winning ensemble Da Capo Chamber Players under the composer’s direction. Gulliver’s Travels: A Voyage to Laputa for piano solo, was commissioned by Susan Rose through Meet the Composer’s New Music/New Donors program and premiered in Savannah, Georgia, by Russian-American pianist Vassily Primakov. Alla Borzova’s compact disk “Pinsk & Blue”, recorded by the Da Capo Chamber Players and the distinguished American soloists has been released by Albany Records in May of 2007. The upcoming New York City performances in the spring of 2010 include The Ballad of Barnaby by Central City Chorus in New York City and Fairy Tale Pictures by pianist Max Lifchitz (presented by North-South Consonance).

Alla Borzova was born in Minsk, Belarus. She holds D.M.A in composition from Moscow State Conservatory named after P.I. Tchaikovsky, where she studied composition with Alexander Pirumov. In the U.S., she has pursued additional doctoral studies with David Del Tredici at CUNY Graduate School. Formerly Professor of Composition at the Special Music School at the Belarusian Academy of Music in Minsk, Dr. Borzova taught at Hunter and Lehman Colleges of the City University of New York, and, in addition to composing, maintains an active career as a pianist, conductor, and organist.

Svjetlana Bukvich-Nichols

A child prodigy in her native Sarajevo, Svjetlana Bukvich-Nichols is one of the few, if not only, woman composer and producer from Bosnia and Herzegovina working in the U.S. today. Described as “powerful and atmospheric, evocative of the sacred” (International Alliance for Women in Music Journal) and “an ecstatic musical experience, in its own dream sound-world…” (New Music Connoisseur), her genre-bending work draws upon the unique musical and cultural energies of both places. Her music has been heard on four continents, at venues such as the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the 2008 Beijing International Congress on Women in Music, the American Festival of Microtonal Music, The 15. International Review of Composers in Belgrade, International Video and Audio Festival in Sweden, SABCTV Art Works in South Africa, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, and the International Festival for Cutting Edge Dance Theatre in London, broadcast on the Voice of America International, the New York’s Public TV Channel 56 and News 12 Cable, and performed by members of the Philip Glass ensemble. Billed as a “concert composer/performer whose music defies boundaries” (ASCAP), her work spans from acoustic and performer-driven to electronic and theatrical, and often includes video, voice and tuning of her own design.

At eight years of age, Svjetlana sang with the National TV Orchestra in former Yugoslavia and was performing as a piano soloist with the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra by the age of fifteen. She earned a B.A. in musical Composition, and a B.A. in Musicology from Sarajevo University's Academy of Music and collaborated with some of Europe’s foremost and forward-thinking musicians at the International Federation of the Jeunesses Musicales in Istria. In the United States, Svjetlana received a full scholarship from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - iEAR Studios, in New York, for her M.F.A in integrated electronic arts. She was one of the pioneering graduate students in this first multimedia program in the country. Among her teachers were Martin Bresnick, Janis Brenner, Neil Rolnick, Miroslaw Rogala, and Robert Ashley. She received Soros Foundation’s Award for Exceptional Artists from Eastern Europe, and grants from American Composers Forum, Massachusetts Cultural Council, New England Foundation for the Arts, the ASCAP Foundation, and the Institute On The Arts And Civic Dialogue at Harvard University.

Noted appearances in New York include the Times Center, Music With A View at the Flea Theater, The Knitting Factory, The Kitchen, LaMama, E.T.C., Cooper Union, The Anthology Film Archives, ASCAP’s Thru The Walls Series, Mannes College of Music, and AMC Theaters, as well as Inner Voices New Music Festival in Los Angeles, Berklee College of Music, Museum of Science in Boston, and The Digital Hybrid Show at the University of Michigan.

Her work in film has been nominated for Best Independent Feature at the 2006 Black Reel Awards for “Proud” which was an official selection at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York before its commercial release in 2006. The soundtrack from her multimedia fantasy play theVoyage is highlighted in Sabine El Chamaa’s documentary “Crossroads” produced by Media City’s Productions in Dubai. As a writer and publisher member of ASCAP she has received multiple ASCAPlus Awards and was the recipient of the ASCAP’s Buddy Baker Film Scoring Scholarship in New York. Her music is published with Frost Music A/S, Norway, Naked Ear Records and CBCO Music.

Recent activities include the First Prize at the International Chamber Music Festival in Sarajevo, and performances in the Light and Sound Festival in New York City. She teaches at New York University and Pratt Institute.

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Jennifer M. Castellano

Jennifer received her Bachelor of Arts in Music at Manhattanville College and a Master of Music at Purchase College. She has studied classical piano with Donna DeAngelis, Catherine Coppola, and Flora Kuan. Teachers of composition include Mary Ann Joyce-Walter, Huang Ruo and Joel Thome. Besides her great love of birds, many of her compositions reveal her philosophy regarding the similarities between sound and color as well as music and visual imagery. Such works include Spectrum: Seven Preludes for Piano and Bionic Birds, an electronic, audio-visual presentation. Jennifer is a member of Association of Adult Musicians with Hearing Loss, Piano Society and is Secretary/PR Coordinator for New York Women Composers.

Chen Yi

Born in China; BA & MA, Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing; DMA, Columbia University in NYC. Teachers: Davidovsky, Chou, Wu and Goehr. Composer-in-Residence, Women's Philharmonic, Chaticleer, Aptos School (93-96). Composition Faculty, Peabody Conservatory (96-98), Distinguished Professor, UMKC Conservatory (98-). Fellowships: Guggengeim, NEA, and the AAAL. Winner of the Ives Living Award, Lili Boulanger Award, NYU/Sorel Medal for Excellence in Music, CalArts/Alpert Award, UT/Eddie Medora King Composition Prize, Grammy Award, ASCAP Concert Music Award, CMSL/Elise Stoeger Prize, and the first prize from the Chinese National Composition Competition. Major commission awards from the Koussevitzky, Fromm Music Foundations, Chamber Music America, MTC, Cary Trust. Published by Theodore Presser Co., CD's available on New Albion, Bis, Teldec, CRI, Nimbus, Cala, Avant, Atma, Hugo, Angel, and China Record Co. Chen Yi's last name is Chen, first name Yi. She can be referred to as Dr. Chen, Ms. Chen, or Chen Yi.

Sheree Clement

Eleanor Cory

Teachers M. Kupferman, C. Wuorinen, Chou Wen-Chung and Bulent Arel; DMA Columbia. Teaching Yale, CUNY, Manhattan School of Music. Pres. ACA. NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, Hilles grants. ACA recording award. 1st Prize, Tapestries, Hollybush International Competition. 1st Prize Music in the Mountains Orchestral Competition. Recorded CRI, OPUS ONE, Advance.

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Stefania M. De Kenessey

States that she writes music in an unabashedly consonant, triadic, tonal idiom, and is active in a wide variety of genres. Performances throughout the United States.

Lois Dilivio

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Elisenda Fábregas

Catalan/American composer and pianist Elisenda Fábregas (b. in Terrassa, Barcelona) has been praised by The New York Times for writing with an "imaginatively colored tonal idiom." Her music integrates organic logical structures and a love for voice leading with freer Mediterranean-flavored harmonies, the rhythmic vitality of Spanish music and the lyricism of Catalan folksong. This past season, Elisenda’s music received over 50 performances in the US and Europe. Past performances of her works include The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.; Merkin Concert Hall, NY; the Bodensee International Music Festival and Sanssouci Musikfestpiele (Potsdam), Germany; UN Conference in Beijing; La Salle Cortot, Paris; Ibero American Institute, Berlin; Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; and Palau Maricel in Sitges (Concerts de Mitjanit). Compositions published by Alphonse Leduc & Cie. (Paris), Friedrich Hofmeister (Germany), Southern Music Co., and Hidden Oaks Music Co.; and recorded on Haenssler (Profil Edition), Albany Records, Centaur Records, and Leonarda Productions.
She received doctorates from the Barcelona Conservatory, Columbia University Teachers College and the Peabody Institute of the John Hopkins University (composition), and a Masters in piano performance from The Juilliard School.

Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy

BS Juilliard, MM Converse School of Music; Composer in Residence for Performing Arts, Bennington College, Cornell University. Commissions: Georgia Comm. on Arts; New Arts Gallery, Atlanta; Walker Art Center, Minnesota; Pro-Mozart Society Atlanta; Bennington, Agnes Scott College; Cornell University Theater Arts Dept. Awards: NY Composers Forum; NYWC Competition, 1989; NEH, NEA, MTC, Mary Cary Flagler Trust, Cornell Council for Arts.

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Jennifer Griffith

As composer, pianist and jazz vocalist, Jennifer Griffith's creative life combines genre and performance practices from early 20th-century French and New Orleans jazz to contemporary intersections of musical theater and opera. Griffith's political dramas draw from the under-represented individuals that have influenced her urban life. A concert reading of her opera Dream President, given by the New York City Opera in their series, VOX: 2004 provoked controversy. At Smith College, her beloved teacher Donald Wheelock encouraged her to compose and Griffith went on to earn her D.M.A. at the CUNY Graduate Center where she studied with Tania León, David Del Tredici, Thea Musgrave, and George Brunner. She has played piano and sung jazz at home and abroad, and currently resides in New York City. Her electroacoustic work "Who is Miranda" will be out on Pogus Records in 2010, and her bestiary "A Little Beastliness" can be heard on Oren Fader's First Flight cd.

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Lisa Hogan

Lisa Hogan is a Composer, Singer and Songwriter. Her work has been performed at Symphony Space, the New England Conservatory, Greenwich House, and the Aaron Copland School of Music. She has been commissioned by New York Women Composer's grant winner, Siri Howard and written music performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Second Instrumental Unit. Ms. Hogan has written music for soprano and tenor voice, solo piano, chamber orchestra and Pierrot ensemble. She has won numerous songwriting awards, and appeared in concerts sponsored by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS), the Songwriter’s Guild, ASCAP, and New York Music Festival. She currently has one CD in release, The Other Way, and appears on a CD featuring top New York City songwriters, entitled The East Side of Fascination. She received an A.B. in English from Cornell University, and an M.A. in composition at the Aaron Copland School of Music in 2006. She has studied composition with with Bruce Saylor, and Robert Aldridge.

Katherine Hoover

Composer, flutist. NEA Composers Fellowship. Published by Presser, Fischer. Extensively recorded; performed world-wide. Performs, records frequently. Eastman; taught at Juilliard and Manhattan SM.

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Marie Incontrera

Marie Incontrera is a composer and pianist living in Brooklyn, New York. She began playing the piano at age five and was composing short piano pieces by the age of seven. Currently, Marie is a Graduate student in Composition at CUNY Brooklyn College, and studies Composition with Tania Leon and Jason Eckardt; she has also studied with Anna Clyne, Kenji Bunch and Bernadette Speach. Her works have been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, and the New York Youth Symphony's Symphony Singers, and she has participated in the Making Score program with the New York Youth Symphony under the instruction of Derek Bermel, which led her to work closely with Martin Bresnick. Marie works as an Adjunct Lecturer at Brooklyn College.

Dorothy Indenbaum

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Mary Ann Joyce-Walter

Mary Ann was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and received B.A. from Fontbonne University, St. Louis, and her M.A. and Ph.D in theory and composition from Washington University, St. Louis. After graduate school, she moved to the New York City area where she has remained. She is an active composer and Professor of Music at Manhattanville College. Her works have been performed at international festivals through Europe, Russia, and the United States. Mary Ann's recent compositions include "In Anguish and in Hope," commissioned by the Manhattan Choral Ensemble and performed at Columbia University; a setting of Ann Silsbee's poem, "Winter Weather Advisory"(soprano, piano)at Greenwich House, NYC; "Oh, Only For So Short A While," (SATB, piano, drums) performed by the Vanguard Singers, Detroit, Michigan; "A Summer Fantasy" (string orchestra and flute), premiered at the Botanical Gardens, Krakow, Poland. "Cantata for the Children of Terazin" (orchestra, SATB, soloists and children's choir) was selected as one of the winning works to be included in Volume 16 of MASTERWORKS OF THE NEW ERA and ACELDAMA (string orchestra and flute solo) will be on Volume 17; both works were recorded by the Prague Symphony. Her most recent works are song settings by the poets Joan Rudel, Heather Dubrow and Edward Hirsch. Mary Ann's works are published by Pioneer Drama and Gold Branch, and recorded by Capstone, ERM Media and Pioneer Drama. Mary Ann is a member of ASCAP, American Composers Forum, the American Music Center, and is Treasurer of New York Women Composers.

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Debra L. Kaye

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Celeste Lederer

Binnette Lipper

Binnette Lipper received her music education at Hunter College and the Juilliard School. She studied composition privately with Ludmila Ulehla, Ron Herder and Meyer Kupferman. Formerly on the faculty of Hoff-Barthelson Music School in Scarsdale, NY, for many years, Lipper now serves on the school's board of trustees. An active member of the New York Women Composers and the Aviva Players, Lipper is the recipient of an American Music Center grant, Meet-the-Composer Grants, ASCAPlus Awards, and numerous commissions. Her works have been heard in the U.S., Canada, Europe and the Far East. Her compositions are published by Frank E. Warren Music and the Hildegard Publishing Company.
Lipper’s works are recorded by North/South Recordings, Musicians Showcase Recordings, Euterpe Recordings and Capstone Records.

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Julie Mandel

Julie Mandel, a composer of both chamber music and musical theater, is Treasurer of the Long Island Composers Alliance, and a member of the American Composers Forum. Majored in Music at UCLA. Studied 12-tone composition with Ernst Krenek and was in the BMI Musical Theater Workshop. Her new musical theater work featuring the Meridian String Quartet will be produced in December of 1999 at Queens College. Her Trio for Flute, Viola and Harp; and her String Quartet #3 have been published by Theodore Presser.

Nataliya Medvedovskaya

Sarah Meneely-Kyder

Composer/pianist Sarah Meneely-Kyder is a graduate of Goucher College, Peabody Conservatory and Yale University. Her composition teachers have included Robert Hall Lewis, Earle Brown, and Robert Morris. In the years following her formal education in Western musical tradition, she studied the North Indian sitar and was eventually initiated by Roop Verma, a student of world renowned sitarist, Ravi Shankar. As a composer, she is noted for pieces that fuse disparate musical elements and traditions into unified works. She is a member of American Composers Alliance, New York Women Composers, and she was a founding member of Connecticut Composers Inc. Her creative endeavors have been rewarded with many commissions, grants, and prizes including Yale University's Rena Greenwald Memorial Prize and several Artist Project Grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. She has two CD recordings on the NORTH/SOUTH RECORDING, INC. label, the second of which was nominated for a Grammy award in December of 2003. In March and April of 2006, Sarah organized performances of the music of Ann Silsbee and music set to her poetry by members of New York Women Composers in Ithaca, NY and in New York City.  Recent commissions include a work for Friends of Voce, (Soprano/Clarinet/Piano) which was premiered in February of, 2008 and a work for choral ensemble Voce (S-A-T-B/Piano) to be premiered in February of 2009. Sarah has been working in collaboration with poet (and sister) Nancy Fitz-Hugh Meneely on a War Oratorio which depicts the life of her father during and following his experience as a doctor in the Tenth Mountain Division in WW 11. She is published in the Dictionary of Contemporary Music, edited by John Vinton, and she has an entry on her music in the revised edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary, edited by Nicholas Slonimsky.

Sarah is on the faculty of Wesleyan University where she teaches piano, chamber music and composition.

For reviews and pictures go to www.meneely-kyder.net

Beata Moon

Composer, performer, educator. Juilliard School, BM-Piano (Adele Marcus). Lincoln Center Institute: Teaching Artist. Solo, chamber, orchestral works.

Gladys Smuckler Moskowitz

B.A. M.A., Brooklyn College.
"Retired Folk singer-Instrumentalist, and teacher.
Active composer of music which glorifies the human voice.
Employs folk, classical, and jazz elements to create bel-canto style arias in Chamber Operas,"The Fountain of Youth" and the satirical "Chicken Little, the Sky is Falling." Her work also includes settings of Art Songs by American poets (Teasdale) "Advice to a Girl," "Joy," "Gifts," and (Sandburg) "Grass," for voice and piano, and has been performed in Europe and New York.

Julia Muench

Composer, pianist and performer, Julia Muench resides on the Faculty of the Monmouth Conservatory of Music in Red Bank, New Jersey, composing, teaching and giving concerts and workshops. Her styles of composition range from modern classical and blues to world. Some of her original compositions for piano include: Prismatika (2006) which was specially choreographed. Folia Variations, Six Pieces for Piano (2007) : Nautilus II, Hanley’s Theme, 6/8 Waltz, Blue Bell Sway, Phasing and Mirrors, 3 Guatemalan Folktunes arranged for Trumpet in Bb, and is currently publishing her book of 32 Obscure & Exotic Scales and Chords for the Composer, as well as A Beginning Handbook of Obscure Scales from Around the World. Her recent compositions include: Takes Two and Syzygisms with Tango which premiered at the Monmouth Conservatory in a Faculty recital. Other recent works include: Spiralesque, Modality, and Untitled Light and Sound, © 2008. Her Vistas I © 2007 piano book for students is the result of over 20 years experience in teaching music.
She currently organized and performed music for Hispanic Heritage Month at Eastern Connecticut State University in April 2008. There she taught a world music class and gave 3 music programs which included her owncompositions. Her original piano suite “Seven Pieces for Piano” was performed live as the soundtrack to a special Guatemalan children’s photo essay.
In 2007, she organized a combined benefit concert and photo essay in Rumson, New Jerseyfor the Children of Guatemala City. Her original compositions were featured on the program. For further info go to www.classicpro.com.
Julia has a Master’s Degree in Music and Applied Piano from the University of Miami and training in Dalcroze music education from Juilliard.

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Angelica Negron

Angelica Negron (b. 1981) received an early foundation in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. While pursuing a bachellor's degree in the aforementioned conservatory, she became more interested in other instruments such as the harp, cello and accordion before finally deciding to study composition formally. She also holds a B.A. in audiovisual communications from the University of Puerto Rico. Negron has a particular interest in electro-acoustic music, folk, chamber & orchestral music, and film music. She has written music for documentaries, films, short films, television shows, theater and modern dance. Her music has been peformed by the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. In her last year at the Conservatory, Negron joined the faculty, teaching theory and conducting the creative music laboratory. She is a founding member of the puertorrican electro-acoustic pop trio Balun (www.balunonline.com) where she plays the accordion, violin, keyboards and also sings. Her solo project is called Arturo En El Barco (www.arturoenelbarco.com) where she concentrates on working with lo-fi ambient compositions. With releases on Observatory Online (Austria) and Carte Postale Records (Belgium), Arturo En El Barco has earned comparisons to other artists such as Piana, Brian Eno, Colleen, Sigur Ros, among others. Her latest album Music For Students And Their Friends has received positive reviews from sources such as Autres Directions, Les Inrockuptibles, Angry Ape, and it featured remixes from other artists such as I Am Robot And Proud (Canada), .Tape. (Spain), Text Adventure (Scotland), etc. She recently joined the Paris-based collective Haiku-Bang and finished her master's degree in music composition at NYU under the guidance of Portuguese guitarist and composer Pedro Da Silva and film composer Ira Newborn.

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Joyce E. Orenstein

Joyce Orenstein's compositions include chamber music, a work for orchestra, and song settings. Her composition Noon, for chamber ensemble, was commissioned by the Composers Guild of New Jersey and won a performance grant from American Composers Forum. She is a three-time recipient of fellowships from the Composers Conference at Bennington College and Johnson College in Vermont. Ms. Orenstein's compositions have been performed in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Ms. Orenstein attended the University of Chicago and Stanford University. After receiving a bachelor's degree in English from UCLA, she studied composition with Leonard Stein. Moving to New York, she studied composition with Mario Davidovsky at The City College of the City University of New York, where she earned a masters degree in music composition and twice received the Mark Brunswick Award for Composition. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in music composition from Rutgers University, where she studied with Robert Moevs, Rolv Yttrehus and Charles Wuorinen. She has taught both music and English at the college level.

Alexandra Ottaway

Zan graduated from G.S. in '88. During her time there she had two chamber pieces performed with Columbia Composers. Then she went to NYU for her Master's in Music Education.

In academic year '92-'93 she was at the Nightingale-Bamford school, teaching mostly general music in K-8, but also 10th grade music appreciation. From '92-'98, Zan taught at the Children's Storefront School, a tuition-free private school in Harlem(towards the end of that run she had five songs produced in the musical, Stuff of Legends, in Norwell, MA). Between '92 and '02 she accompanied adult choruses, as well as working with the New Amsterdam Boys Choir, from '97-'99.

In '99 she began focusing on chamber music literature for piano. She had a trio for flute, clarinet and piano performed at the Lucy Moses School while playing there several semesters. On Feb. 11, '07, She also played, with clarinet and bassoon, two movements of a trio inspired by her nephew. The third movement was done as of April '07, and rehearsed but not performed. A series of piano variations, on a 1954 theme by her father, has been made into a CD and given to a few interested friends and family.

Since 1980, Zan always wrote songs and recorded them, not always with state-of-the-art technology. Two pop/classical choral pieces were performed, from '97 to '99, by the New Amsterdam Boys Choir: "Psalm 77" and "Mass for the New Amsterdam Boys Choir". These were arranged by Tomoko Kamawukai, a Juilliard grad specializing in cello accompaniment and arranging, who was the accompanist for the Boys' Choir then. Her trio, Ensemble Toki, has done several works by women composers.

Zan still writes concert music and folk songs, and enjoys singing with A Capella singing groups. Her last recorded chamber music piece, Radio Silence, was just two movements. She's been putting guitar songs up on YouTube.

No good live recordings of Radio Silence or Jakob in Blue exist but Z. has put up some movements here that were all too easily computer-generated!

Her "Sound of Music Medley"(mashed up with Chopin's Eb Nocturne and G Minor Ballade + Do-A-Deer in Mozartian style) and "De Minimis" were performed by pianist Boris Ivanov in Moscow, June '08. De Minimis became a funny spoken-word song.

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Alla Pavlova

Alla Pavlova was born on July 13, 1952 in Ukraine. As a girl she lived in Vinnitsa city and moved with her Russian-born parents to Moscow in 1961. In 1975 she received her Bachelor’s Degree at the Music Institute named after Russian composer Ippolitov–Ivanov. In 1983 she received her Master’s Degree at Gnesin Academy of Music in Moscow. From 1983 to 1986 she lived in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, where she worked for the Union of Bulgarian composers and Bulgarian National Opera. From 1986 to 1989 she was in Moscow, working for the Russian Musical Society Board. During that period her articles, now numbering over a hundred, have appeared in Russian and Bulgarian publications. Since 1990 Alla lives in New York and is a member of New York Women Composers, Inc.

Alla Pavlova has written a number of compositions for orchestra, including six symphonies and the ballet SULAMITH (2003–2005), based on the 1908 story by the famous Russian writer Alexandre Kuprin about the love of King Solomon for Sulamith, a servant from his vineyard. She is also the author of numerous instrumental and vocal works that have been performed in the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan.

Her works combine classical, romantic and contemporary styles, and sometimes include elements from gospel and popular genres.

Barbara Peterson

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Anita Randolfi

Marga Richter

Juilliard. Performed world-wide. Atlanta, Milwaukee Symphonies, Minnesota, London Philarmonic Orchestras, Dusseldorf Ensemble, Western Wind, Joffrey Ballet, Jessye Norman, Menahem Pressler, Walter Trampler. Dramatic, personal, emotionally charged chromaticism (not 12-tone) combined with strong tonal centers, modal orientation, strong rhythmic drive. As of October, 1995 has 19 works recorded on CD/LP.

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Valerie Saalbach

An accomplished singer and performer, Ms Saalbach brings a special understanding to her vocal compositions. She received her musical training at the Eastman School of Music, Indiana University and the Juilliard School and is the recipient of several awards and grants, including the Sullivan Grant, Indiana Scholarship (to attend the Aspen Music Festival) and the Lawrence Korwin Award, given by the United Nations to facilitate vocal competitions abroad (she earned several top prizes through this program). Ms Saalbach also was a winner in the New York Regional Metropolitan Opera Auditions and placed first in the Palm Beach International Opera competition, which resulted in a principal contract with the Vienna State Opera.
She has appeared in leading roles with the opera companies of Palm Beach, Virginia, Michigan and Kansas City and has sung at the summer festivals of Aspen, Caramoor, the Santa Fe Opera and the Mermoz Festival Cruise, where she collaborated with pianist Byron Janis.
Ms. Saalbach has been a soloist with the orchestras of Atlanta, Cincinnati, Birmingham, Musica Sacra (Lincoln Center) and Mid-America Productions (Carnegie Hall).

Ms. Saalbach was recently the featured guest artist/composer at New Music Week 2009 at the Palm Beach Atlantic University, where she sang her song cycle "Journey of Desire" (a cycle of eight songs for soprano and piano based on erotic poetry of ancient India), as well as her setting of "How do I love thee". Another song cycle "Caterina to Camoens" based on the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett, received its European premiere in the Spring of 2006 in Innsbruck, Austria. She was also honored at the 2003 International Women Composers Festival.

Myrna F. Schloss

Myrna Schloss is originally from Vancouver, Canada. Her music is influenced by several musical experiences, beginning with a 12 year classical piano background, instrumental classical music, sounds of unusual instruments, sounds found in Javanese Gamelan music, voice, both spoken and/or sung, and sounds from other sources than music. Several works include video presented on a large screen behind the performers, as well as sparse dramatic props. She often performs in the intermedia works.

She has a B.A. in Honors English, a Master of Music degree from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR, and a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. She performed in the Javanese Gamelan while at Wesleyan University, in New York City and numerous other places.

Ruth Schonthal (1924-2006

Born in 1924 Hamburg, Germany, died 2006). Comp. Conservatory Stern, Berlin. Liljefors, Stockholm, M.M. Ponce, Mexico, Paul Hindemith, Yale. Compositions for solo instruments, voice, chamber music, orchestra, ballets and opera. Published: Oxford, Hildegard, Sisra, C. Fischer, E. Schirmer, Fine Arts. LPs & CDs. Performed worldwide. Distributor: Fine Arts Music Co., Box 311, Wykagyl, NY 10804.

Inessa Segal

Born Kiev, Ukraine, Finished Kiev Music Conservatory. Started playing piano at the age of 5 and writing music at 5 1/2 years of age.
Lives: New York, New York.
Compositions: Chamber Music, neo-romantic style For Solo Instruments: Piano, Cycle of Etudes, Ballet, Sonatas, Symphonic Poems), Voice. Diverse styles of work from traditional style to contemporary.

Nivedita Shivraj

Composer, Performer, Teacher

Nivedita Shivraj is a carnatic musician (the South Indian style of classical music) trained in vocal and veena, an ancient multi-stringed instrument from South India. Mentored by great masters of carnatic music, her musical compositions are based on Indian classical ragas blended with contemporary style of rhythms and melodies. Combining the resounding veena and a carnatic chorus, she has developed a new and unique style in carnatic music which has received overwhelming appreciation from all audiences. She has many productions to her credit, including the Veena Melodies, Veena Isai Thendral (The Breeze of Veena), Ranjani Mala (Garland of Ragas) and Charanams (The Ultimate Dedication) and her latest compositions include The Prayers from the Vedas and The Rain Dance.

She has authored two books “Carnatic Varisas” and ‘Carnatic Geethams” which are basic courses in carnatic music. She is the first carnatic musician to have been featured in the Spiral Music series at the Rubin Museum of Arts in New York. She is also the very first artist to have taken the carnatic music to stages such as the Gracie Mansion of the Mayor of NYC, Macy’s and Queens Public Library. She has presented concerts and workshops for prestigious institutions such as the Weill’s Institute of the Carnegie Hall, Bronx Community College and Kingsboro Community College. She collaborates with musicians and artistes of other styles for various projects and concerts.

She offers an exclusive workshop “Carnatic Concepts”, an appreciation program on carnatic music, in schools and colleges. She teaches vocal exercises that are based on carnatic ragas to aspiring singers and music students.

She is a member many arts and cultural organizations, including the Queen Council on the Arts.

Ann Silsbee (1930-2003)

Composer, pianist, poet. Born Cambridge, Mass. Received musical degrees from Radcliffe and Syracuse and a DMA at Cornell University where she studied with Karel Husa. NEA, MacDowell, Yaddo, Ives, NYSCA, MB Rockefeller. Member BMI. Her music has been performed throughout the USA, in Canada, Europe, China, Japan and South America, and recorded on Leonarda, Northeastern, Vienna Modern Masters, Finnadar and Spectrum. Silsbee was an accomplished pianist whose music, although carefully notated, gives the impression of improvisation, as exemplified in the virtuosity and spontaneity of her song Iris from "Four Songs" (voice and piano).

Judi Silvano

Composer, arranger and voice. Classical, jazz idioms. Temple U. Performed classical, world premiere, choral works with Ormandy, Phildelphia Orch. Composition with Bob Brookmeyer, Gunther Schuller. Compositions recorded by Joe Lovano. Performances: Muhlenberg, Merkin, Maison de Culture (Amiens, France), Cami, Knitting Factory, Greenwich House Music School. Song Form to more contemporary ensembles: voices, winds, harp, strings and percussion. Comm: Opus One Chamber Ensemble.

Faye-Ellen Silverman

Faye-Ellen Silverman, born in New York City, holds a BA from Barnard College, an AM from Harvard University, and a DMA from Columbia University. Her compositions are published by Seesaw Music Corp., a division of Subito Music, and recorded on Albany, New World Records, Capstone and Crystal Records. She has received awards from UNESCO, the National League of American Pen Women, ASCAP, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and commissions from the Edinboro University Chamber Players, Seraphim, Philip A. De Simone, Larry Madison, Thomas Matta, the IWBC for Junction, the Monarch Brass Quintet, the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse, the Fromm Foundation, NEA, Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates, Con Spirito, the Greater Lansing Symphony, and the Chamber Music Society of Baltimore. She has taught at Columbia, various branches of City University, Goucher College, the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, and the Aspen Music Festival, and is currently on the faculty of Mannes College the New School for Music and Eugene Lang College. She is also a Founding Member of Music Under Construction, a Founding Board Member of the International Women’s Brass Conference and the author of the 20th-century section of the Schirmer History of Music.

Jeanne Singer (1924-2000)

Composer and pianist. BA Barnard College, Phi Beta Kappa, Honorary Ph.D. in Music. Performed world-wide. Jeanne Singer set over 150 poems to music as art songs, choral works and vocal-chamber settings combining voice with solo instruments. The poets are mainly American with a sampling of other languages. She composed a number of chamber works for various combinations of instruments including flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, French horn, harp, violin, viola, cello, piano. She completed a large work for orchestra and solo voice in two parts, "TRIBUTE TO RAOUL WALLENBERG" based on 2 American poems: TO BE BRAVE IS ALL (Madeline Mason) and AVENUE OF THE RIGHTEOUS (Anne Marx).

She studied composition at Columbia University under Douglas Moore and others. She was a private piano pupil of Nadia Reisenberg for 15 years. A recipient of the Artist Diploma (gold medal) from the National Guild of Piano Teachers, she has concertized extensively. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music from World University in 1984.

Style is tonal, melodic, neo-romantic. Scores of all works available.

Pamela Sklar

Pamela Sklar performs frequently on flute, bass flute, alto flute & piccolo, and composes chamber music which includes flute(s). She works closely with other composers & jazz musicians and appears annually with Dave Brubeck. With crossover composer Claude Bolling she toured extensively as solo flutist throughout the USA, Canada, Mexico, in Paris & Marrakesh. She played in the JVC Jazz Festival orchestra at Carnegie Hall and performs with various groups/ orchestras in many venues.

Other performing and composing highlights include The National Flute Association, Annual Songwriters' Hall of Fame Awards (piccolo for Joel Grey), televised appearances with tenor Andrea Bocelli, performances in Japan and for The Grammy Awards in orchestras for Gil Shaham and Aretha Franklin.

Pam can be heard on many recordings for other artists including Luciano Pavarotti, Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole and her own CD with guitarist David Burgess.

This past Fall, 2009 Pam premiered her compositions "Heritage 5770","Remember" and "Wood". She is currently composing several works which include a commission for alto flute, bass flute and English horn for Englewinds, as well as another movement of her Jazz-Native American composition "A Tune For America".

Pam received her Bachelor of Music Degree with Honors from the Mannes College of Music. Major teachers include John Wummer, Samuel Baron, Karl Kraber, Marcel Moyse. Musical influences include Prokofiev, various stories and dreams.

Mira J. Spektor

Born in Europe, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she then studied at Mannes College of Music and Juilliard. In 1975 she founded The Aviva Players, a group that performs chamber music and songs by women composers of the 12th to 21st centuries. She has written songs and scores for theater, feature films, and PBS documentaries. Recent CDs: The Houswives' Cantata, Lady of the Castle, and Mira Chante/French Love Songs on Original Cast Records, and Lullabies and Love Songs on Airplay. The Road to November, a new collections of poems, is published by JWRC Press. Affiliations: BMI, Dramatist Guild, League of Professional Theater Women and NYWC. Some press quotes about Ms. Spektor's music: The New York Times: "an interesting composer" "The setting was attractive and tonal, and recalled some of the me graceful music in Bernstein's 'Trouble in Tahiti'" "A sprightly songfest" New Choices: "A mini miracle of a musical" The Jewish Week: "powerful, moving music"

Joyce Hope Suskind

Joyce Hope Suskind has become established as a composer, performer and teacher in New York, her native city. Her interest in Yeats developed after setting "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Enthralled by the seemingly endless supply of wondrous poems, she is now working on her twentieth Yeats song. But she has not abandoned other poets. A song to a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins has recently been released on a CD.

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Hilary Tann

Welsh-born composer, Hilary Tann now lives in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York where she is the John Howard Payne Professor of Music at Union College, Schenectady. Her early musical studies were with Alun Hoddinott at the University of Wales, Cardiff, and with J. K. Randall at Princeton University, USA.

Her music continues to be influenced by her love of Wales and by her strong identification with the natural world. A deep interest in the traditional music of Japan has led to private study of the shakuhachi and guest visits to Japan, Korea, and China.

Numerous organizations have supported her work, including the Welsh Arts Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Meet The Composer, and National Endowment for the Arts.

Many works are available on CD from North/South Recordings, Channel Classics, Deux Elles, Albany Records, and others. Her music is published by Brichtmark Music, Inc., Rowanberry Music, and Oxford University Press. Ensembles that have commissioned and performed her works include the European Women’s Orchestra, Knoxville Symphony, North American Welsh Choir, Tenebrae, Presteigne Festival, American Guild of Organists, North American Saxophone Alliance, Louisville Symphony Orchestra, Women’s Philharmonic, Meininger Trio, Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Thai Philharmonic, and KBS Philharmonic in Seoul, Korea.

Shakkei, a diptych for oboe solo and chamber orchestra, was premiered by oboist Jinny Shaw in the Presteigne Festival, August 2007, and has since been recorded (North/South Recordings) and performed with different soloists in Dublin, at the 2008 IAWM Congress in Beijing, in New York City, in Rio de Janeiro, in San Francisco, and at the 15th World Saxophone Congress in Bangkok, Thailand, with Susan Fancher, solo soprano saxophone, July 2009.

Other websites include: ukcatalogue.oup.com, www.deux-elles.co.uk, www.upstatedimsum.com, and www.composersofwales.org.

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Awilda Villarini

A native of Puerto Rico who has made New York City her home for the past fifteen years, composer-pianist Awilda Villarini has gained increasing international attention for her unique synthesis of Hispanic and European musical traditions Educated at the Juilliard School of Music and New York University (where she received a Ph.D. in piano performance) in New York, the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and the Hochschule fur Musik in Vienna, Dr. Villarini has created work for piano, chamber music, theatre and orchestra. While residing in New York City she has taught at N.Y.U. and C.U.N.Y. International honors include awards from Artists International and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Louis Vogelstein Foundation. Her work has been performed at the American Composers' Orchestra Festival at Carnegie Hall in New York, at the Salle Gaveau in Paris, at the Brahms Saal in Vienna, and other international musical venues. Her musical style is eclectic and her works are strikingly innovative. Today, considered one of the most gifted younger composers working on the international scene, Ms. Villarini continues to extend her musical vocabulary, exploring the possibilities of electronic sound and multimedia.

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Joelle Wallach

Joelle Wallach composes music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo voices and choruses. Her String Quartet 1995 was the American Composers Alliance nominee for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The New York Philharmonic Ensembles premiered her octet, From the Forest of Chimneys, written to celebrate their 10th anniversary; and the New York Choral Society commissioned her secular oratorio, Toward a Time of Renewal, for 200 voices and orchestra to commemorate their 35th Anniversary Season in Carnegie Hall. Wallach's ballet, Glancing Below, a 1999 Juilliard Dance Theater showcase production originally commissioned by the Carlisle Project, was premiered in Philadelphia during the summer of 1994, entered the repertory of the Hartford Ballet in February 1995, and received its New York City premiere that June. As early as 1980 her choral work, On the Beach at Night Alone, won first prize in the Inter-American Music Awards.

Wallach grew up in Morocco, but makes her home in New York City, where she was born. Her early training in piano, voice, theory, bassoon and violin included study at the Juilliard Preparatory Division, and she earned bachelors and masters degrees at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University respectively. In 1984 the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with John Corigliano, granted her its first doctorate in composition.

A pre-concert lecturer for the New York Philharmonic for several subscription series, Ms. Wallach speaks on a broad range of musical subjects, bringing fresh insights to familiar works and opening doors to modern ones and to those less frequently heard.

Rain Worthington

Rain Worthington has a distinctly unique voice within the field of contemporary music. As critic, Kyle Gann noted in Chamber Music magazine, her music

"take(s) ideas of American musical style to a new place - like a walk in a familiar, yet very different park... And isn't afraid to come up with its own startling conclusions."

Using the palette of chamber and orchestra instrumentations, Rain’s work touches the human heart with emotionally evocative music that is nuanced, delicate, powerful and transporting.

Her music has been heard in loft concerts, performance spaces and dance clubs, to orchestra recordings in Europe and chamber concerts in India. World music, romanticism and minimalism have influenced her compositional style.

Four of Rain’s orchestra compositions are recorded on ERMMedia with Robert Ian Winstin, conducting. Pianist, Max Lifchitz recorded her piano music for North/South Recordings. A new orchestra work, conducted by Ovidiu Marinescu, is scheduled for a 2010 release through PARMA Recordings.

Rain’s music has been the subject of articles by music journalists Kyle Gann and Joseph Dalton, featured in festivals and radio broadcasts internationally, and commissioned by Englewinds.

She currently serves as Director of Development for the New York Women Composers.

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Judith Lang Zaimont

Queens College, Columbia University. Performances world-wide. Professor of Composition, University of Minnesota School of Music (1992-present), Music Department Chair, Adelphi University (1989-1992); Fellowships: Guggenheim, Woodrow Wilson, Maryland Arts Council, NEA, Presser. Commissions: Connecticut Opera, Greenville Symphony, Baltimore Dance, Exxon, Gregg Smith, Florilegium, Huntingdon, Vox Nova, Arleen Auger, American Guild of Organists. Profiled: American Groves, others. Recordings on Koch, Arabesque, Leonarda, 4-Tay, Albany.

Margarita Zelenaia