Instrumentation: | Flute & cello |
Ingredient: | A broad assortment of sticks and stones |
Performers: | Marcia Kamper (flute), Regina Mushabac* (cello), Josh Ryan (found objects) |
Judges: | Loris Chobanian, Bernard Molyneux, Regina Mushabac |
Top Prize: | Natalie Williams, Iron Composer |
The secret ingredient was a vast assemblage of sticks and stones culled from local sources, including the banks of the Rocky River in Berea. The stones ranged in size from tiny pebbles and gravel to a large chunk of genuine Berea sandstone. The sticks included twigs and branches as well as logs and an entire sapling complete with dried leaves still intact. The composers were only given one percussionist to play these items during their pieces.
Anthony Green (b. 1984) holds a B.mus from Boston University, and a M.mus from New England Conservatory. As a pianist, he has performed at Jordan Hall and Symphony Hall in Boston, MA, performed solo, chamber, and orchestral pieces of colleagues, and personally worked with composers David Liptak, Theodore Antoniou, George Crumb, and Steve Reich for performances of their works. As a composer, he had commissions from, and performances and readings by ALEA III (Gunther Schuller, guest conductor), the Providence String Quartet, the Zukovsky String Quartet, the Playground Ensemble, Ossia New Music Ensemble (as the winner of their 2nd International Composition Prize), and Alarm Will Sound, among others. He has had grants for composing, lecturing, and giving masterclasses from the Argosy Foundation, Meet the Composer, and Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation. He was a resident artist at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in 2009. As an electronic composer, he has had works diffused in festivals and concerts in the United States, Spain, and Venezuela, most notably serving as an interpreter of Mark Applebaum’s The Metaphysics of Notation, which he realized with electronics and vocal improvisation. Part of his performance will be released on Innova records. Recent performances include Ahnungen for solo clarinet, which toured Europe and America by Gaudeamus Interpreter winner Guido Arbonelli, his piano reduction of a work for solo snare drum and orchestra, which toured Europe and the Middle East by Dame Evelyn Glennie and Philip Smith, and Scintillation II for viola and cello at the IC[CM] Conference in A Coruña, Spain, performed by members of Grupo Instrumental Siglo XX. He is currently pursuing doctoral work at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is the recipient of their first ATLAS Fellowship.
Yotam Haber, 33, born in Holland and grew up in Israel, Nigeria, and Milwaukee. He has been a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival and been in residence at the Aaron Copland House, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, Bogliasco, Yaddo and MacDowell Colonies. His music has been performed in prestigious halls throughout Germany, Italy, Ireland, Holland, and across the U.S. Haber resides in New York City and is a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow. Most recent performances include the Flux Quartet performing Torus in New York City’s Bargemusic, and the Knights Ensemble premiering A Wine-Dark Sea at the Brooklyn Lyceum, commissioned the MATA Festival, and hailed by the New Yorker magazine critic, Alex Ross as “deeply haunting.” He was a 2007-2008 Rome Prize Fellow in Music at the American Academy in Rome where he researched the music of the Jewish community of Rome as well as collaborating in Berlin with Bulgarian-American artist Daniel Bozhkov on the 30th anniversary of the first German in space; in Holland with Dutch artist Maria Barnas on a Stendhal Syndrome project; and in Switzerland with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor on two chamber music works. Haber consequently received a 2009 Meet the Composer commission for a large-scale work for the NYC-based Knights Ensemble based on this tradition. Haber directs the premier installation of a modern music+cuisine festival, Tablemusic as part of the 2011 Spoleto Festival season. He is the Artistic Director of MATA Festival.
Marie Incontrera, composer and pianist, is a native of Brooklyn, New York. Her music has been performed throughout the United States and internationally at respected venues including Symphony Space, Christ and St. Stephen’s Church, Galapagos Art Space, Roulette, the Kaufman Cente, and at the Meridian Festival in Bucharest, Romania. She has been a featured composer on the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest, the International Electroacoustic Music Festival, the Hartford Women Composers’ Festival, as part of Max Lifchitz’s North-South Consonance Series, and won Remarkable Theater Brigade’s Art Song Competition. Her Music has also been performed and read by the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, New York Youth Symphony’s Symphony Singers, Remarkable Theater Brigade, American Composers’ Orchestra, and New York Youth Symphony Players and Basso Moderno. Marie serves as Opera Liaison for the New York Chamber Virtuosi, and is the General Director and Composer in Residence of Alphabet soup Productions. She has been a recipient of the Miriam Gideon Composition Award for women composers.
In 2010, Marie will receive her Carnegie Hall debut with Picture Perfect, as part of Remarkable Theater Brigade’s Opera Shorts program. She will also be the recipient of Meet the Composer’s Metlife Creative Connections to be a featured guest composer and speaker at the Hartford Women Composers’ Festival. She has also been invited to the Virginia Arts’ Festival John Duffy Composers’ Institute, where a scene from her new opera, Paul’s Case, will be workshopped and performed under the guidance of seasoned opera composers John Duffy, Libby Larsen, Fred Ho, and others.
Marcus Karl Maroney studied composition and horn at The University of Texas at Austin (B.M.) and Yale School of Music (M.M., D.M.A.). His principle composition teachers were Joseph Schwantner, Ned Rorem, Joan Tower and Dan Welcher. In 1999, he received a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center, the First Hearing award from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (for Those Teares are Pearle ) and an ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer’s award. Other awards and fellowships followed, including: a Charles Ives Scholarship from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Music 2000 Prize from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, further awards from ASCAP, a residency at the Copland House and consecutive Woods Chandler Memorial awards from Yale University.
Commissions have come from such organizations and individuals as eighth blackbird (Rhythms), the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (Hudson), The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Introduction and Barrage for the Gryphon Trio), Timothy McAllister (Denk Dir:), the Moores School Percussion Ensemble (Pantheon), the Texas Music Festival (Märchenbilder), the Deer Valley Music Festival (Three Pieces for String Quartet) and the Juventas! New Music Ensemble (Dust of the Road). Three Pieces for Sting Orchestra was recently premiered by the Utah Symphony, and he was recently named the winner of the inaugural College Orchestra Directors Association Composition Contest.
Mr. Maroney served on the faculty of the Yale School of Music from 2002-2004. He is currently Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music.
Natalie Williams is currently a Doctoral Fellow, and Associate Instructor in Composition at the Jacob’s School of Music at Indiana University. She completed a Masters Degree in Composition at the University of Melbourne in 2002 and holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Adelaide (Elder Conservatorium), graduating with first class Honours in 1998. She has studied under composers; Claude Baker, Don Freund, Robert Beaser, Brenton Broadstock, Aaron Travers and Graeme Koehne.
Her works have been commissioned and performed by international ensembles, including the Adelaide, Melbourne & West Australian Symphony Orchestras, the Australian and Sydney Youth Orchestras, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Song Company, the Zephyr String Quartet, Adelaide Youth Orchestra, the Cameo Trio, Melbourne University Orchestra, Elder Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra, Fiorini Trio (UK), Syntony and the Brenton Langbein String Quartet. Her output includes music for film, theatre, chamber and orchestral genres.
Further academic training will be completed in September 2010 at the Society for Music Analysis Summer School in Durham (UK). She also furthered her studies in composition in July 2007, at the European American Musical Alliance summer school at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. Williams was a joint recipient of the Inaugural Schueler Awards for a new work “Whistleblower”, commissioned for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and premiered to an audience of 30,000 in February 2007. Recent major projects include a commission from Adelaide Baroque for a series of four new works for their 2007 concert season, through funding from the Australia Council. She was the youngest Australian composer commissioned by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra to compose a Fanfare for their 75th Birthday series in 2003. She has worked with composers such as Philip Glass, Peter Sculthorpe, Robert Beaser, Brett Dean and Narcis Bonet and conductors MartynBrabbins, James Judd, Kevin Field and Professor John Hopkins. In 2005 Williams was commissioned by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for a new work for their Metropolis series which was premiered to critical acclaim. She was also commissioned by Ars Musica Australis to compose a Viola Concerto for the Australian Youth Orchestra’s 2005 Young Symphonists Program.
In 2006 Williams won the APRA Professional Development Awards in the Classical Music category, and a scholarship from the Opus 50 Charitable Trust (Melbourne) enabling further overseas study. She reached the finals of the 2001 Young Australian of the Year Awards and held an Australian Postgraduate Research Scholarship for Composition studies at Melbourne University. In 2006 she was awarded a Jacob’s School of Music Fellowship which includes full scholarship and a teaching position at the Indiana University School of Music.
Before each piece is performed, the composer is asked to speak about how they handled the challenge they were assigned.
Natalie Williams’ introduction
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Marcus Maroney’s introduction
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Anthony Green’s introduction
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Yotam Haber’s introduction
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Marie Incontrera’s introduction
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Natalie Williams, Sticks and Stones (First Prize)
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Marcus Maroney, Break My Bones (Second Prize)
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Anthony Green, Horizon (Third Prize)
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Yotam Haber, Words Will Never Hurt Me
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Marie Incontrera, Outgrowth
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Loris Chobanian (2010) is the Emeritus Professor of Composition and Guitar as well as Composer-in-Residence at Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory. He was born to Armenian parents in the Middle East. Chobanian performed the Classical Guitar regularly on Baghdad TV In the 1950s. He came to the US in 1960. |
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Bernard Molyneux (2010) is an associate professor of philosophy at UC Davis. He specializes in cognitive science. His publications include Aspects of Consciousness Explained, “Why Experience Taught me Nothing about Transparency,” and “Intuitions are Inclinations to Believe”. |
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Regina Mushabac (2010) is professor of cello at the Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory of Music. She was trained by some of the most distinguished cellists of the era. She studied at Juilliard with Leonard Rose for six years and continued with Janos Starker at Indiana University and became his teaching assistant. In addition to the complete standard repertoire, Mushabac is well known for her exploration into new music. She has performed dozens of world premieres and can be heard in solo recordings on GM Recording Label, Trumedia Records, and New World Records. |
After each piece is performed, the three judges are asked to share some brief comments:
On Natalie Williams’ entry
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On Marcus Maroney’s entry
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On Anthony Green’s entry
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On Yotam Haber’s entry
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On Marie Incontrera’s entry
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Marcus Maroney, 2nd Prize ($250, 127 points)
Anthony Green, 3rd Prize ($100, 119 points)