The Society of Composers
Sixth Annual Student National Conference

ECHOES OF A PASSING ERA    
with special guest composer
Vladimir Tarnopolski
and guest performers
Craig Hultgren, Esther Lamneck and Marian Lee

Clapp Recital Hall
Friday & Saturday, April 2 & 3, 2004

Center For New Music Concert

Clapp Recital Hall
Saturday, April 3, 2004, 8:00 p.m.

Program

Notes & Bios

 JEFF MYERS

Jeff Myers (b.1977), a California native who grew up in the outlying suburbs of San Francisco, came to music midway through high school when he discovered a passion for writing music and playing piano. Not long after he began to write music, Jeff enrolled in nearby San Jose State University where he honed his skills as a composer and musician. Not long after enrolling, Jeff began to explore the possibilities of writing for Disklavier, a MIDI-based player piano of sorts. At San Jose, his teacher Brian Belet suggested writing some short etudes for the Disklavier. His work "Five Parametric Etudes" was the result, showcasing the virutosity of the electronic medium. He was subsequently awarded a BMI Student Composer Award in 1998, given many opportunities to play the piece (including Sonic Circuits VI and various radio programs), and finally it was recorded on SCI's CD series in 2001. After San Jose, he took a year off and worked on his next major work, "Metamorphosis" for violin and orchestra. Finally completed in 2001, under the tutelage of David Liptak at the Eastman School of Music, it received its premiere in 2002 by the Eastman Philharmonia under David Gilbert, with Yuki Numata as soloist. That year Jeff won the BMI again, with his "Metamorphosis". Subsequently, three commissions followed, first with the Fromm Foundation Commission for "Metamorphosis II" in 2002, then with New York Youth Symphony's First Music Commission in 2003 for "Regeneration", and finally with the SCI/ASCAP Commission, which will be worked on this year under Bright Sheng at the University of Michigan, where Jeff will work on his final degree, the DMA in Composition.

ORIANNA WEBB

Orianna Webb's music has been described as "abound[ing] in urgent and mysterious detail" (Cleveland Plain Dealer). Her newest orchestral work, Xylem, was the winner of the 2003 Leo Kaplan Award, the highest honor in the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. In addition to receiving one of this year's SCI/ASCAP commissions, Ms. Webb was recently awarded a First Music Commission from the New York Youth Symphony for a piano trio to be premiered at Weill Recital Hall this spring. Other performances slated for the current season include Xylem under the baton of Emily Freeman Brown at the Bowling Green State University New Music and Art Festival, and a new chamber work with guitar commissioned by Daniel Lippel for premiere in Cleveland at the Guitars International Guitar Weekend. Ms. Webb's music has recently been heard at the the Norfolk Contemporary Music Workshop (CT), the Minnesota Orchestra's Composer Readings and Institute, the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival (MA), the Rock Hotel Pianofest Piano Bowl (Society Hall, NY), New Music New Haven, and the Cleveland Museum of Art's AKI Festival of New Music. Her music has also been performed by the Yale Philharmonia conducted by Delta David Gier, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO) conducted by Steven Smith, the Mostly Modern Chamber Music Society, the University of Akron New Music Group/Daedalus, the Music2000 Festival (Cincinnati), AugustArt (Raw Space Studios, NY), and the Ohio & Erie Canal Opera Project. Other awards and honors include a First Prize in the International Alliance for Women in Music's Search for New Music, the Victor Herbert/ASCAP Award from the National Federation of Music Clubs, the International Trombone Association Composition Competition Prize, and the Darius Milhaud Award. Ms. Webb has been commissioned by Two Percussion Group, Chamber Music at Historic St. Peter's (Philadelphia), the Akron Art Museum, COYO, and numerous soloists. A native of Akron, OH, Ms. Webb holds degrees from the Yale School of Music, the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), and the University of Chicago. Her teachers have included Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick, Margaret Brouwer, John Eaton, and Roger Zahab, and she has also studied at La Schola Cantorum in Paris with Samuel Adler and Philip Lasser. She has taught music theory in Yale College and in the CIM Preparatory Division, and will be teaching composition at CIM for part of this academic year. Ms. Webb is also a founding faculty member of the Young Composers Program at CIM. She studied piano with Nicolas Constantinidis and Ethel Burke, and bassoon with Dr. Georgia Peeples. She is a member of ASCAP. More information is available at www.oriannawebb.net

DIMITRI PAPAGEORGIOU

Dimitri Papageorgiou (1965) was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds a degree in composition from the University of Music and Dramatic at Graz, where he studied with A. Dobrowolski , who introduced him to the techniques of New Music, and H. M. Pressl who taught him aleatoric counterpoint and introduced him to the work of Hauer. He graduated in 1991 with special distinction and received the "Doris Wolf Prize" of the Ministry of Culture for outstanding academic and artistic achievement. In 1991, Papageorgiou returned to Greece where he has taught composition and music theory until 1998. In 1998, he was awarded an Iowa Fellowship to attend the University of Iowa and decided to leave his teaching position in Greece and move to the United States. In Iowa, he studied composition with Martin Jenni, Jeremy Dale Roberts and, currently, David Gompper. Papageorgiou's creative output includes works for chamber, choral and orchestral music. He also composed music for the theater in 1990 when he was commissioned by the Austrian National Radio and the Forum Stadtpark Graz to write music for the theater play "Mein Schrank riecht nach Tier," by W. Grond and L. Cejpec. His music has been performed in several public concerts in Austria, Greece and the United States. Several of his works have been recorded and broadcasted by the Austrian National Radio. In 1997, Undr II for orchestra was recorded for the Third Program of the Greek National Radio. In 1998, Papageorgiou was invited by the Center for New Music to Iowa City to take part in the Festival of Contemporary Greek Composers. He has already been active in the Midwest Composers Symposium, where his compositions Tasten for piano and Kylang for contrabass and tape were performed in 1998 and 1999 respectively.

JOSEPH DANGERFIELD

Joseph Dangerfield (b. 1977) holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in music theory and composition from Marshall University, where he studied piano with Leslie Petteys, and composition with John Allemeier, Michael Golden, and Marshall Onofrio. In the summer of 1998, Dangerfield attended the Aspen Music Festival and School. There he studied privately with Michael Czajkowski (Juilliard) and attended master classes and seminars with John Harbison (MIT), Bernard Rands (Harvard), Augusta Reed Thomas (Northwestern), and Mark Anthony Turnage (UK). Dangerfield recently received a masters degree in music composition from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, where he studied composition with Mikel Kuehn, and Marilyn Shrude and electronic music with Elainie Lillios. Dangerfield is currently a PhD candidate in composition at the University of Iowa, where he manages the Center for New Music and teaches composition, and aural skills. He studies composition with David Gompper and electronic music with Lawrence Fritts. His music has been performed throughout the United States, England, and Italy at various festivals. Dangerfield was recently accepted for study at the Moscow Conservatory where he will work with Vladimir Tarnopolski beginning in 2004. During his visit to Russia, Dangerfield will also research the music of Dimitri Shostakovich, Alfred Schnittke, and Edison Denisov. This research will then culminate in a series of theoretical essays outlining definitive works by these important Russian composers.

VLADIMIR TARNOPOLSKI

Vladimir Tarnopolski (1955) was born in Dniepropetrovsk. He studied composition at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Nikolai Sidelnikov and Edison Denisov and music theory with Yuri Kholopov. His composition for the Conservatory's final exam was his Concerto for Cello (1988); it was selected by G. Rozhdestvensky for a series of concert programs, titled From The History of Soviet Music

Tarnopolski is a frequent guest in many western contemporary music festivals, such as: The World Music Days of the ISCM, The Berliner Festwochen, The Munchener Biennale, Wien Modern, Holland Festival, Frankfurter Musikfest, Almeida Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Hommage aux Russes Paris, The Schleswig-Holstein Musikfest, Tage fur Neue Musik Zurich, Make Music Together (Boston U.S.A.), The San Diego Arts Festival, Aktive Musik Dortmund, Rencontres Musicales d'Evian, Warsaw Autumn and many others. Numerous famous Russian conductors, such as Gennady Rozhdestviensky, Mstislaw Rostropovich, Alexander Lazarev and Vladimir Yurovsky have conducted his works. His music has been performed by such ensembles as Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble InterContemporain, Schoenberg Ensemble, Ensemble Reshershe, Ensemble of Soloists of the Bolshoi Theatre. His stage works were premiered in Russia, Germany, France, and Netherlands.

In Tarnopolski's compositions there is a fulminantly charged musical substance, which fits into a concisely articulated, well-balanced construction. The composers' music paradoxically combines two aesthetical aspects. The first is a search for a new euphony, which is developed on the basis of a complexly constructed sound material, which abolishes the juxtaposition between consonance and dissonance, sound and noise, harmony and timbre, as well as electronic and acoustic instruments. The second is a refined post-modernist theatricality, filled with either a joyful irony or a surrealistic grotesquerie.

Tarnopolski plays a significant role in the development of contemporary Russian musical life. He was one of the initiators of ACM, the Association of Contemporary Music in Moscow (1989), which represented a group of composers who reacted against the official Soviet cultural philosophy (the so-called socialistic realism). In 1993 he had founded the Centre for Contemporary Music at the Moscow Conservatory as well as the Studio for New Music Ensemble, which had performed many works by the Russian Avant-garde composers. In 1994 Tarnopolski had also founded Moscow Forum, a new annual International Festival of Contemporary Music in Moscow, the main focus of which is the integration of contemporary Russian and East-European contemporary music with Western European contemporary music.

Since 1992 Tarnopolski has been a professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory. He holds numerous composition seminars in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, USA and other countries.

Tarnopolski's musical compositions have been awarded many prizes including the Dimitri Shostakovich Prize (Russia 1991) and the Paul Hindemith Prize (Plon 1991).