David Ludwig

Composer David Ludwig's music has been performed internationally by leading musicians in some of the world's most prestigious locations. His music has been called “entrancing,” and that it “promises to speak for the sorrows of this generation,” (Philadelphia Inquirer). It has further gained recognition for its “expressive directness” (The New York Times) and has been noted for “a yearning, poetic quality” (Baltimore Sun). The New Yorker magazine calls him a “musical up-and-comer” and the Chicago Tribune says that he “deserves his growing reputation as one of the up-and-comers of his generation.” He has had performances in such venues in as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Library of Congress, and been played on PBS and National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition.  NPR Music listed him as one of the world’s top 100 composers under forty in 2011.

Ludwig has received commissions from many prominent artists and ensembles. The Grammy Award-winning eighth blackbird ensemble commissioned his work Haiku Catharsis.  In 2005, Ludwig wrote a new work for violinist Jaime Laredo that the composer conducted in a dozen concert halls. According to the League of American Orchestras, his Concertino was one of the top ten most frequently performed orchestra works by a living composer that year.  He joined the Curtis On Tour Ensemble in 2009 for a tour with his song-cycle From the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayám in a season that also featured performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, the National Symphony, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

This season features performances by Marina Piccinini, eighth blackbird, the American Modern Ensemble, and the Detroit Chamber Winds, as well as the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 The Book of Hours with the Vermont Symphony.  The 2009-2010 season featured commissions from the Minnesota Orchestra, Concert Artists Guild, The Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, the University of Michigan Wind Ensemble, as well as a double concerto for violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson.  Other commissions have been received from important musicians including pianist Jonathan Biss, flutist Jeffrey Khaner, violinist Soovin Kim, violist Michael Tree, and guitarist Jason Vieaux.

Recipient of the First Music Award, an Independence Foundation Fellowship, and a Theodore Presser Foundation Career Grant, Ludwig has been twice nominated for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Stoeger Award.  He has received awards from the American Composers Forum, American Music Center, and had a three-year residency with the Vermont Symphony funded by the Meet The Composer “Music Alive!” program.  He was honored in 2009 as a cultural leader by the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia.

Ludwig was the Young Composer in residence at the Marlboro Music School for three consecutive years.  In addition to Marlboro, he has been in residence at the Yaddo and MacDowell artist colonies.  He is a resident artist at the Isabella Gardner Museum, and is now the permanent New Music Advisor of the Vermont Symphony.  Ludwig directs several composition programs in prominent summer music festivals, as well.

Born in Bucks County, P.A., Ludwig comes from several generations of musicians.  His grandfather was the pianist Rudolf Serkin and his great-grandfather, violinist Adolf Busch.  He holds degrees from Oberlin, MSM, Curtis, and Juilliard, as well as a PhD from UPenn.  Ludwig is on the composition faculty of the Curtis Institute where he serves the Artistic Chair of Performance and as the director of the Curtis 20/21 Contemporary Music Ensemble

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Daniel Shapiro

Daniel Shapiro (b. 1985) serves on the musical studies faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he received his AD (summa cum laude) in composition as a student of Richard Danielpour, Jennifer Higdon, and David Ludwig. His music has been performed by Soli Fan Tutti, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra and "Curtis-on-Tour", the Network for New Music, the Windscape Quintet, and the Eastman Chorale, in venues including Lincoln Center's Allen Room, Bennett-Gordon Hall at the Ravinia "Rising Stars Series", the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the English Garden of Fontainebleau Château, and Durham Cathedral (UK). Daniel has served as Young Composer-in-Residence at "Music from Angel Fire" and the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, and has received fellowships to attend the Norfolk Contemporary Music Workshop, American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, and the Omaha Symphony New Music Symposium. He is a recipient of awards and grants from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, American Composers Forum, and Theodore Presser Foundation. Daniel is a Benjamin Franklin Doctoral Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania ('16).

His music is recorded on Darling Records (Cologne, DE).

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Eric Ewazen

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, and receiving his Bachelor’s of Music Degree from Eastman, and Master’s and Doctorate Degrees from The Juilliard School, Eric Ewazen has written many chamber works for brass, winds, percussion and increasingly strings, piano, and voice that have become standards of the repertoire. His music in all genres—including orchestra, wind ensemble and chorus—has been performed around the world with great acclaim. Distinguished soloists and chamber ensembles performing his music include players as diverse as percussionist Evelyn Glennie, the American Brass Quintet, and the Ahn Trio; trombonists Charles Vernon, Joseph Alessi, Ronald Barron, Christian Lindberg, Nitzan Haroz, David Taylor and James Lebens; clarinetists Franklin Cohen and Larry Combs; flutists Elizabeth Rowe, Mindy Kaufman, Julius Baker and Jan Gippo; trumpet players Chris Gekker, David Bilger and Philip Smith; among many others from major symphonies around the world, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Symphony, the Concertgebouw, the Paris Opera Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, and noted players from major symphonies and orchestras in every state of the U.S.

Recent orchestral performances of Ewazen's music include major symphonies such as the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the National Repertory Orchestra in Colorado, the Alabama Symphony, the Anchorage Symphony, the Boise Philharmonic, the West Virginia Symphony, the Calgary (CA) Symphony, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lille in France, the Birmingham (U.K.)Philharmonic, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Valladolid and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife in Spain, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, the Thailand Philharmonic, and the Moment Musicale Orchestra of Taiwan. His music for wind ensemble has been performed by all the major service bands in the U.S., including the USMA Band (which premiered his work commissioned for the 200th anniversary of West Point in Carnegie Hall), the U.S. Army Band, Marine Band, Navy Band, Army Field Band and U.S. Coast Guard Bands.

He has been a guest composer at conservatories, colleges and universities, doing residencies (so far) in 47 of the 50 U.S. States, and overseas at conservatories such as McGill and Laval Universities in Canada, the Birmingham (U.K.) Conservatory, the Paris Conservatoire, the Zagreb Conservatory, the Matera (Italy) Conservatorio, the Conservatories in Tenerife and Salamanca, Spain, the Lisbon Conservatory in Portugal, Saratov Conservatory in Russia, the Showa and Senzoku Gakuen Conservatories in Japan, Mahidol University in Bangkok, the Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, and Australian National University in Australia, Rio de Janeiro, Joao Pessoa and Recife Conservatories in Brazil, and at festivals such as the Festival of Wind Instruments in Jeju (Korea), WASBE (Singapore), Jonkoping Brass Festival (Sweden), and the Southeast Asian Brass Festival in Bangkok and all major Summer music Festivals in the U.S., including Tanglewood, Aspen and the Music Academy of the West.

His music can be heard on over 60 commercially released CDs, and over 400 Youtube clips.

He received his Bachelors of Music Degree from the Eastman School of Music and Masters and Doctorate Degrees from The Juilliard School. His teachers have included Samuel Adler, Milton Babbitt, Warren Benson, Eugene Kurtz, Gunther Schuller and Joseph Schwantner. He was Composer-in-Residence with the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, and Vice-President of the League of Composers - International Society of Contemporary Music.

For the 2011-12 season, he has been commissioned to write a Concerto Grosso for Three Trombones and Orchestra for the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphonies, with JoAnn Falletta. The Virginia Symphony will also be performing his “Hymn for the Lost and the Living,” an In Memoriam to 9/11, orchestrated by Otto Werner Mueller, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Three solo CDs of his music will be released in 2011, all on Albany Records: one devoted to his chamber music for flute, performed by Marya Martin with the Bridgehampton Chamber Musicians; another to his trumpet music, featuring Chris Gekker, Nathaniel, and James Lebgens; and a third devoted to his music for wind ensemble, featuring the University of Memphis Wind Ensemble.

Mr. Ewazen has been a faculty member at Juilliard since 1980.

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George Tsontakis

George Tsontakis has been the recipient of the two richest prizes awarded in all of classical music; the international Grawemeyer Award, in 2005, for his Second Violin Concerto and the 2007 Ives Living, awarded every three years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He studied with Roger Sessions at Juilliard and in Rome, with Franco Donatoni. Born in Astoria, NY into a strongly Cretan heritage, he has, in recent years, become an important figure in the music of Greece and his music is increasingly performed abroad, with dozens of performances in Europe every season. Most of his music, including eleven major orchestral works and four concertos have been recorded by Hyperion and Koch, leading to two Grammy Nominations for Best Classical Composition, in 2009 and 1999. He is Distinguished Composer-in-Residence at the Bard Conservatory and Composer-in-Residence with the Aspen Music Festival for decades, where he was founding director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, from 1991-99. He served for three years as Composer-in-Residence with the Oxford (England) Philomusica and is continuing a six-year Music Alive residency with the Albany Symphony and is the featured Composer-In-Residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, 2008-09 season. He lives in New York State’s Catskill Mountains, in Shokan.

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Ken Ueno

Winner of the 2006-2007 Rome Prize and the 2010-2011 Berlin Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer, vocalist, improviser, and cross-disciplinary artist. His music coalesces diverse influences into a democratic sonic landscape. In addition to Heavy Metal sub-tone singing and Tuvan throat singing, he is also informed by European avant-garde instrumental techniques, American experimentalism, and sawari or beautiful noise, an aesthetic in traditional Japanese music. Ken’s artistic mission is to champion sounds that have been overlooked or denied so that audiences reevaluate their musical potential. The music pushes the boundaries of perception and challenges traditional paradigms of beauty. In an effort to feature inherent qualities of sound such as beatings, overtones, and artifacts of production noise, Ken’s music is often amplified.

Ensembles and performers who have played Ken’s music include Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky, Frances-Marie Uitti, Mayumi Miyata, Teodoro Anzellotti, Alarm Will Sound, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Nieuw Ensemble, Wendy Richman, Greg Oakes, the Del Sol String Quartet, Vincent Royer, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the American Composers Orchestra (Whitaker Reading Session), the Cassatt Quartet, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Prism Saxophone Quartet, the Atlas Ensemble, Relâche, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Dogs of Desire, the Orkest de Ereprijs, and the So Percussion Ensemble.

Ken’s music has been performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MusikTriennale Köln Festival, Ars Musica, Warsaw Autumn, the Muziekgebouw, the Hopkins Center, Spoleto USA, and Steim. He has been the featured guest composer at the Takefu International Music Festival, Norfolk Music Festival, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Pacific Rim Festival, the Intégrales New Music Festival, and the MANCA Festival in Nice, France where he performed as a vocal soloist in his piece with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Recently, he performed his vocal concerto with the Warsaw Philharmonic. Ken’s piece for the Hilliard Ensemble, Shiroi Ishi, has been featured in their repertoire for over ten years, with performances at such venues as Queen Elizabeth Hall in England, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and was aired on Italian national radio, RAI 3. Another work, Pharmakon, was performed dozens of times nationally by Eighth Blackbird during their 2001-2003 seasons. A portrait concert of Ken’s was featured on MaerzMusik in Berlin in 2011. In 2012, he was featured artist on Other Minds 17.

Awards and grants that Ken has received include those from the American Academy in Rome, the American Academy in Berlin, the Fromm Music Foundation (2), the Aaron Copland House, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording, Meet the Composer (6), the National Endowment for the Arts, the Belgian-American Education Foundation, First Prize in the 25th “Luigi Russolo” competition, and Harvard University. Recently, he performed as soloist in the premieres of his concerto for overtone singer and orchestra in Boston and New York with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project to wide acclaim. A monograph CD of three of his concertos was released on the Bmop/sound label.

As a vocalist, Ken specializes in extended techniques (overtones, throat-singing, multiphonics, extreme registers, circular singing), and has collaborated in improvisations with Joey Baron, Robyn Schulkowsky, Joan Jeanrenaud, Ikue Mori, Pascal Contet, Gene Coleman, Tyshawn Sorey, David Wessel, Robin Hayward, John Kelly, Jorrit Dykstra, Kevork Mourad, Gilberto Bernardes, Hans Tutschku, James Coleman, and Vic Rawlings amongst others. Ken’s ongoing performance projects include collaborations with Tim Feeney, Matt Ingalls, Du Yun, and Lou Bunk.

In recent years, Ken has been collaborating with visual artists, architects, and video artists to create unique cross-disciplinary art works. With the artist, Angela Bulloch, he has created several audio installations (driven with custom software), which provide audio input that affect the way her mechanical drawing machine sculptures draw. These works have been exhibited at Art Basel as well as at Angela’s solo exhibition at the Wolfsburg Castle. In collaborating with the architect, Patrick Tighe, Ken created a custom software-driven 8-channel sound installation that provided the sonic environment for Tighe’s robotically carved foam construction. Working with the landscape architect, Jose Parral, Ken has collaborated on videos, interactive video installations, and a multi-room intervention at the art space Rialto, in Rome, Italy.

Ken is currently an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Nils Vigeland

Nils Vigeland was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1950 and made his professional debut as a pianist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969, Lukas Foss conducting. He later studied composition with Mr. Foss at Harvard College, graduating with a BA in 1972. Graduate studies were at the State University of New York at Buffalo in piano with Yvar Mikhashoff (MFA 1975) and composition with Morton Feldman (PhD 1976).

For eight years Mr. Vigeland was the director of the Bowery Ensemble, which gave an annual series of concerts at the Cooper Union in New York City. The ensemble gave the first performance of over thirty works by composers including John Cage, Jo Kondo, Pauline Oliveros, and Dane Rudhyar. With Jan Williams, percussion, and Eberhard Blum, flute, Mr. Vigeland has recorded all the extended length works of Feldman for this ensemble on HAT ART. His own work appears on CD releases from Mode and Lovely Music and is published by Boosey and Hawkes.

In 1992 The English National Opera commissioned and gave the first performance at the Almeida Theatre in London of Mr. Vigeland's chamber opera, False Love True Love , based on two scenes from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. In 1989 his orchestral work My Father's Song was a winner of the Rose Prize and given its first performance by the Brooklyn Philharmonic. He has been the recipient of grants from Harvard College, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Mary Flagler Cary Trust.

Mr. Vigeland has taught at Manhattan School of Music since 1984 and is presently the chair of the composition department.

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Robert Cuckson

Robert Cuckson was born in 1942 in the U.K., and grew up in Australia. He is a U.S. citizen and lives in New York City. His works have been performed in the U.S., Australia, the Far East, Europe, and Israel.

His principal compositions include three chamber operas and several orchestral works, including the Variations for Orchestra, three tone-poems, Concerti for Cello, Saxophone and Guitar, and a Rhapsody for Viola and Chamber Orchestra. He has written many chamber works, including a number of works with trombone. His piano works and violin works have received numerous performances in the U.S. and in Europe. In January, 2007, a concert of his chamber works was presented in the North River Music series at the Greenwich House Music School in New York City. In 2004, a concert of his vocal and chamber works was given by the Bach Society of Columbia University, conducted by David Rosenmeyer. His Piano Trio has been performed by the Mannes Trio on several occasions, including performances for the Philadelphia Chamber Society and at the Salt Bay Festival in Maine. A recording by Harvey Pittel of his Saxophone Concerto was released by the Contemporary Record Society in June, 2007.

He studied composition and piano in Australia, in the U.K., and the U.S., and holds a D.M.A. degree in Composition from Yale University (1978). He teaches at The Mannes College of Music in New York City and The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He is represented by the Australian Music Centre, Sydney.

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Robert Paterson

Cited by the press as “one of the major contenders in American music” and writing “exuberant and rhythmically vital music marked by energy and a wonderful sense of color,” Robert Paterson’s music continues to be in demand by audiences and musicians alike.

For the next three years, Paterson is the Music Alive composer-in-residence with the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association, sponsored by Meet The Composer and the League of American Orchestras. This residency will culminate in a major commission for a twenty-minute work for orchestra and chorus.

A recipient of the 2011 Composer of The Year Award from the Classical Recording Foundation, Paterson is also the winner of the 2010 Cincinnati Camerata Composition Competition with his setting of Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep (text by Mary Frye). The panel chose this work from his cycle Eternal Reflections for its “expressive choral writing, text painting and imaginatively beautiful textures.”

Recent performances include the European premiere and sixteen additional performances of Dancing Games by the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire (France), Wind Quintet by the Philharmonia Quintet (Poland), Eternal Reflections, commissioned for the San Francisco-based Volti choir, Embracing the Wind by the Aureole Trio and New York Harp Trio, the Louisville Orchestra world premiere of Electric Lines, winner of the orchestra’s new music competition, and a work previously selected for the Minnesota Orchestra and American Composers Orchestra Whitaker New Music Readings

Other recent performances include Enlightened City, commissioned for the 100th anniversary of the IHS Orchestra and the world premiere of Crimson Earth by the University of Connecticut Wind Ensemble. Ensembles that have performed his music include the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, New York New Music Ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, California EAR Unit, Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble, Ensemble Aleph (Paris), Naiades Ensemble (London), Ensemble Nouvelles Consonances (Belgium), the Kairos String Quartet, the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, the MANCA Festival presented by the Centre National de Création Musicale (CIRM) and the June in Buffalo new music festival.

Upcoming commissions through 2009-11 include a new work for the Vermont Symphony Orchestra to be conducted by Jaime Jaredo, two new choral works for the Chamber Choir of Europe conducted my Nicol Matt and a new work for orchestra and chorus for the Vermont Youth Orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Domoto. Paterson is also embarking on an orchestral opera in two acts with writer and librettist David Cote of which two scenes have been completed.

Awards include the Copland Award, Louisville Orchestra Composition Competition, Brian Israel Prize, two ASCAP Young Composer Awards and grants from Meet The Composer, the American Music Center, the American Composers Forum and ASCAP, as well as fellowships to Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Paterson appears on recordings for Mode Records, Centaur Records, Capstone, Riax and American Modern Recordings (AMR), and he will be releasing two additional CDs of his music in 2011-12 on the AMR Label.

Born in 1970, Paterson was raised in Buffalo, New York, the son of a sculptor and a painter. Although his first love was percussion, he soon discovered a passion for composition, writing his first piece at age thirteen. Paterson is active as a professional percussionist and pioneered the development of a six-mallet marimba technique, presenting the world’s first all six-mallet marimba recital at the Eastman School of Music in 1993. Paterson has received degrees from Eastman (BM), Indiana University (MM), and Cornell University (DMA), and his composition teachers include Frederick Fox, Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, Roberto Sierra, and Steven Stucky. He resides in New York City with his wife, Victoria, a violinist, and their four-year-old son Dylan.

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Stephen Cabell

A native of Owensboro, Kentucky, New York-based composer Stephen Cabell has received considerable acclaim for his deft orchestration and propulsive sense of rhythm. A graduate of Michigan’s renowned Interlochen Arts Academy, Mr. Cabell also holds a bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and a master’s degree from the Juilliard School. His principal teachers have included Christopher Rouse, Jennifer Higdon, Richard Danielpour, and John Boyle.

As a recipient of the Marylyn K. Glick Young Composer Award, Mr. Cabell’s LUX received its premiere performance from the Indianapolis Symphony in early 2009, with the Indianapolis Star recognizing the composition as “an arrestingly-wrought work.” Stephen has also been recognized by ASCAP as the winner of two Morton Gould Young Composer awards, as well as the recipient of the 2008 Nadia Boulanger Prize, awarded to him at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. In 2006, Columbia University awarded Stephen the distinguished Joseph H. Bearns Prize for his orchestral composition Cosmicomic.

In addition to his compositional output, Stephen is a horn player and pianist. His knowledge of instrumental technique has had a substantial effect on his writing, with much of his catalogue devoted to works for brass ensemble, percussion, and full orchestra.

Mr. Cabell has served on the composition faculty of the Atlantic Music Festival in Waterville, Maine, since the organization’s inception in 2009. In New York, Stephen is also currently on the theory faculty of the Manhattan School of Music’s Pre-College Division and teaches theory and composition at the Kaufman Center’s Young Artist Program, Lucy Moses School, and Special Music School.

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