CLIFFORD GAGLIARDO

Brass Quintet 

My goal in writing a brass quintet was to write a piece for a standard ensemble that was idiomatic for that ensemble, but not cliche. However, I did not want the result of my endeavors to sound like an arid exercise and determined that the piece must have a visceral emotional arch.

Clifford Gagliardo is from Ventura County, California and studies composition at Indiana University. In addition to his studies, he also works for WFIU radio in Bloomington, Indiana.
  

 
JUDY BOZONE

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano 

The first movement is a declaration. There is a sense of emergency and alarm throughout the piece. While writing the movement, I imagined giant cathedral bell towers ringing with anger instead of comfort, and twisted dancers joining in - changing poses with each punch of the piano.

The second movement was inspired by a bedtime story I improvised about a whale, a sailor and his travels across the ocean. In the story, the sailor becomes daunted by the vastness of his journey across the sea. One night, in his loneliness, a whale comes to visit him. They talk all night and both the sailor and the whale are so enchanted with each other that they decide to take the journey together - the sailor riding above the ocean and the whale underneath. Each day at sunrise and sunset the whale rises up to tell the sailor a story to ease his time while they travel across the sea, after his story he sinks back down into the ocean only to come up again with the sun.

Judy Bozone, a native Texan, received her undergraduate degree in composition from Baylor University where she studied with Scott McAllister. Judy is currently pursuing her Masters in composition at the University of Michigan under the direction of Michael Daugherty.
  

 
PETER JUFFERNBRUCH

Vestige 

Vestige grew out of an attempt to write a piece with nice and neat textbook form. What was the original eight-bars became the opening two and a half minute opening section. This also increased the dramatic intensity of this one movement, ten minute piece.

Peter Juffernbruch received his BM from Illinois State University in 1998 studying with Roque Cordero. After earning his Masters degree from Northern Illinois University, Peter is now working toward a PhD in Composition from the University of Iowa studying with David Gompper. Peter is also active as TA for the theory department.
  

 
BRIAN LENTH

In A Shrinking Room 

In A Shrinking Room was completed in April 2007. It makes frequent use of echoes and imitative textures between the two instruments. The "shrinking room" is depicted in the final section of the piece, when the echo gradually becomes metrically closer to its "source" with each repetition of the melody. Wood blocks make brief statements at the divisions between the piece's five sections.

Brian Lenth is a fourth-year undergraduate student of composition at the University of Iowa, where he has studied with Lawrence Fritts, Jean-Paul Perotte, and currently Michael Eckert. Brian also studies viola with Christine Rutledge. In addition to music, he divides his time between visual art, animation, theatre, and television projects.
  

 
CHING-MEI LIN

Dream Rhapsody 

Everyone holds a dream to live with and we are also trying to carry out our dream. Even though the path to a dream is paved with sacrifices, with the strong faith to believe and keep on fighting, we will find ourselves living in joy and triumph. Dream Rhapsody was composed for a Taiwanese concert at the time Taiwan was rejected from joining the United Nation again.

Ching-Mei Lin is currently a doctoral fellow in composition at the University of Michigan, where she is studying composition with William Bolcom and piano with Louis Nagel. Holding degrees from the National Taiwan Normal University and the Eastman School of Music, she was awarded a Taiwanese government sponsorship for overseas study. She has received ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, 1st Prize in the NACUSA Young Composers Competition, China Sun River Composition Prize, and Taiwan Literary and Artistic Creation Award among others. Her music has been performed in the United States, Germany, China, and Taiwan, and presented in "Young Composers Forum" by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Midwest Composers Symposium, SCI conference, Bowdoin Music Festival, and Aspen Music Festival.
  

 
JENNIFER JOLLEY

Raga 

Ragas are precise melody forms, where improvisational melody solely determines the movements and transitions in a piece. Similarly, this piece does use melody lines initiated by the clarinet and mirrored by the piano to sculpt the direction of the music, but unlike traditional ragas, however, traditional free improvisation is not used. I did not intend to write a true raga, although when listening to them, I wished to replicate the never-ending spiritual quality I experienced when listening to Indian classical music recordings. The piano acts as the tambura, the drone instrument in the background, and the piece features the clarinetist, highlighting subtle turns and stresses on particular notes.

Jennifer Jolley (b. Bellflower, CA) is a 2003 graduate of the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music with a B.M in Music Composition, and is currently pursuing a M.M. in Music Composition at CCM. Her composition teachers include Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli, and Joel Hoffman. While at USC, Jennifer placed first in the Arts category at the Undergraduate Symposium for Creative and Scholarly for her chamber opera Fish, and later on in 2006 she placed third in Music 06's composition competition for her piano quartet Fantasy on WOODSTREET. In March 2008, a new work for chamber ensemble will be premiered at Bard College in New York.
  

 
ELLIOTT BARK

Ballade Mystique 

My family lives on Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles, which is one of the biggest local streets in L.A. and also where many people pass to enter and exit the 10 freeway. Since my parents' house is pretty old, I can hear almost everything from the outside. At 2 o'clock in the morning, these "Harley Davidson" guys wake me up quite frequently, and during the daytime, honking cars make me want to flee the house. However, while writing this piece, I discovered serenity inside myself - though surrounded by thunder-like noises, I heard a ballade, not just beautiful, but mystic.

Elliott Bark (b. 1980) had served as a pianist in the Republic of Korea Navy Band for the General of the Ministry of National Defense in Korea from 2001 to 2003 after he studied composition for three years with Jong Uk Kim at Kyung Sung University. In 2003, he was a first place recipient of the 2003 Korean Anglican Church Music Composition Competition with his choir piece "Hallelujah!" and Yesol Publishing Co., Seoul, Korea, has published the piece. After finishing his military service, he arrived at Los Angeles where his whole family was immigrated. From 2005 to 2007, Bark transferred and achieved his Bachelor of Music in Composition at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, studying with P.Q. Phan and Don Freund. His Good Fight and Race for saxophone quartet (AATB) was performed in 2007 Midwest Composers Symposium. In the 2007 Beethoven Club Student Composition Contest, his Duo for flute and cello won a second place and was performed by Luna Nova New Music Ensemble in the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival, Memphis, TN. Currently studying with Claude Baker, he is pursuing his Master of Music in Composition at Jacobs School of Music.
  

 
SARAH GIBSON

Amalgamation 

I wrote this piece during the summer of 2006. The Bloomington Saxophone Quartet had told me they would play a piece of mine if I composed one for them, so I took them up on it! I tried to give each voice an equal balance and distribute the melodious content evenly. I view this piece as a mixture of different ideas that come forth at different times until finally they are able to agree in the end.

Sarah Gibson is a senior at Indiana University double majoring in both piano and composition. Sarah was a winner of the MENC National Young Composer Award four times and also an active pianist having debuted with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 2005. She has studied with Don Freund, Claude Baker, and Sven-David Sandstrom at IU and her piano teachers have included Evelyne Brancart and Jean-Louis Haguenauer.