| Performers |
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Oren Fader is distinguished as a performer of classical guitar repertoire, both traditional and contemporary. He has performed hundreds of concerts in the U.S., Europe and Asia with a wide range of classical and new music groups, including the Met Chamber Ensemble, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New York City Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Mark Morris Dance Group, New World Symphony, Absolute Ensemble, and Speculum Musicae.
A champion of new music, he has premiered over 200 works with guitar. He also performs, tours and records with the ensembles Cygnus, Fireworks, and Poetica Musica. Recent engangements include a three week tour performing in Turkey (Istanbul International Festival), Azerbaijan , and Tajikistan (US State Dept.), and the past two summers at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he performed works of Carter, Davidovsky and Chin.
Mr. Fader can be heard on over 40 commercial recordings and film, including the classical guitar parts for the recent film “Everything is Illuminated.” His latest solo recordings include “Another’s Fandango”, featuring 500 years of guitar music, and “First Flight”, a disc of 10 premiere solos written for Mr. Fader by New York City composers. Since 1994, Mr. Fader has been on the guitar and chamber music faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.
“His scholarship, technique, and intelligent musicianship are plainly evident and the beauty of his tone is consistently compelling.” – Guitar Review
“Oren Fader, a guitarist, played with confidence and style. ” -The New York Times
“Indeed, Oren is a guitarist who seems to have his hand in just about everything interesting.”- Nylon Review
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"An extraordinary American soprano, Beth Griffith sang with a focus and presence (as she did everything) that held a listener at rapt attention. Griffith, a Texan, recently returned to the United States after a 20-year career in Germany. It is our good fortune" --Mark Swed Los Angeles Times
Beth Griffith (soprano) has appeared with Sequentia, Musikfabrik, Ensemble13, L'Art pour L'Art, Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Paris Nouvel Orchestra Philharmonique and has worked with composers John Cage, Morton Feldman, Mauricio Kagel and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Her one-hour, solo recording of Feldman's "Three Voices" was awarded the German Record Critics Prize.
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Linda Wetherill is founder/director of www.Counterpoint-Italy.com International competition and festival for new music based in Tuscany and New York, and Professor of World Music, Chamber Music and Flute Studies at Adelphi University.
Ms Wetherill has toured as soloist cultural ambassador, collaborating and premiering modern composers' works and researching traditional musics since her selection by U.S.I.S to be featured recitalist for the 40th anniversary celebration in Frankfurt of German-American peace. Hans Stuckenschmidt called her "a brilliant flutist." She was the first American to be honored as featured soloist at the World Peace Festival of Langollen, Wales; and presented the first public concerts for mixed audiences by a woman in Saudi Arabia during her tours of the Middle East. Linda was the first American flutist to tour and teach in Central China in 2002. In 2003, her solo CD of collected compositions was placed on a short list of "Top Solo Flute Recordings Of All Time" by Amazon.com.
Linda has raised the profile of concert flute repertoire to include the exotic compositions gathered during extensive traveling throughout five continents. FANFARE praises the CD "Sound and Repercussion", saying "Wetherill impresses as much by her musicianship, specifically a resistance to overemphasizing the exotic elements of these pieces, as by her technique and tonal resources; and of the CD "Stellar Pieces": "From the list of outstanding soloists, Linda Wetherill captures the flute's subtle shades in "Sirius", her elegant and silvery tone providing a constant delight."
She joined the faculty of Adelphi University, in 1994, coming from Istanbul's celebrated Bosphorus University, where she was lecturer in World Music and Contemporary Music. During five years residence in Turkey, she also formulated courses in History of Western Music for Universities of Izmir, Istanbul and Ankara. Previously holding posts at the French National Conservatory, Philadelphia University of the Arts, Turkish Universities in Izmir, Ankara, and Istanbul,she has given artist master classes in major conservatories of Arabia, Austria, Argentina, Britain, China, Dubai, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Kuwait, Pakistan, Spain, The Netherlands, and Wales. Linda was the resident flutist of the famed Centre Pompidou for International Acoustical Research and there collaborated and premiered works with major composers from all over the world. She has also been principal flutist with the orchestras of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and Pierre Boulez' IRCAM Ensemble Intercontemporain of the world-famous Pompidou Centre in Paris. Mr. Boulez dubbed her "an instrumentalist without peer."
Linda performed her Carnegie Recital debut as winner of East and West Artists International Competition, and was received by the NEW YORK TIMES as "a musician with something to say; her ability to organize and inflect the line was nothing short of seductive. Both in terms of technical mastery and expressive élan, she is really a marvelous player." Her performances in Istanbul, as co-founder of the International Festival of Contemporary Music there produced the response from MILLYET: "Linda Wetherill presented a wonderful flute evening in Istanbul; this relaxing and beautiful concert brought joy to everyone - from beginning to end." In 2004, Linda gave the closing recital for the International Society of Contemporary Music's annual festival, judged the Salzburg, Austrian competition for solo flute compositions, and gave Bach, Mozart and premiere concertos and recitals across the U.S.
In 2005, her premiere performances of South American compositions for the Mozarteum's "Aspekte Festival" received the following critical account: "The superb American flutist was without doubt the star; she played more than 2 hours with stunning virtuosity and profound and lively interpretations - a true wizard of the flute."
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| Composers |
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William Anderson's reputation is derived from a great diversity of musical activities over the past 25 years-- committed performances with a great variety of ensembles and music festivals in the U.S and abroad; arrangements and compositions; work with the pioneering chamber ensemble, Cygnus, which he founded in 1985; performances with his guitar duo partner Oren Fader; and many ventures undertaken as Artistic Director of the Composers Guild of New Jersey.
David Denton in Fanfare exclaims: “Anderson’s playing is of a very high order of dexterity, virtuosity and brilliance, and is indicative of the tremendous advances made in guitar technique over the past four decades.”
--Anderson has performed with many of New York City's finest ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Chamber Players, Sequitur, the Group for Contemporary Music, the Da Capo Chamber Players.
--He founded the Cygnus Ensemble in 1985. Cygnus has built a substantial repertoire of chamber music with plucked strings.
--As a composer and arranger Anderson was the first to use a multiply partitioned array as an accompaniment to a 3-chord pop song (My Morphine--Welch/Anderson), This and other experiments in adapting modernist techniques to subversive, even populous ends, led Paul Griffiths, in the NY Times, to say:
“The mindful voice of Ives, of Stravinsky and of Mr. Wuorinen’s music would not seem to be implied much by such a song as “Night and Day,” but Mr. Anderson’s extraordinary arrangements of this and other numbers by Jerome Kern and Richard Rogers set them squarely and astonishingly in the same tradition...”
--Anderson is now working on the first in-depth critical study of Western plucked string music, entitled Einegezupfteweltanschauung (A Plucked Worldview). Portions of this work evolve gradually in connection with specific performances, immanently, Segovia, Magic Realist, on Feb. 18 2007.
At age 19 he began playing chamber music at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he performed from 1981 through 1988. In 1982 he began studying with America's premiere guitar pioneer David Starobin, who introduced him to the music community in New York City. His first solo recital was presented by the League of Composers/ISCM at Weill Hall, New York City (1990). He was also presented in recital by Music From Japan at the Asia Society (1993). He regularly appears in Washinton D.C.with the Theater Chamber Players at the Kennedy Center, performing both solo guitar and chamber music repertoire. Mr. Anderson has been a soloist in festivals and ensembles such as the Bang on a Can Festival, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and Modern Works! He has been heard on radio broadcasts on WNYC, WKCR, WGBH, and National Public Radio, Polish National Radio, Radio Bremen, and others.
Mr. Anderson appears on numerous recordings, and has given recitals and radio broadcasts in Europe, Mexico, Japan and the U.S. With Cygnus, he has performed in Denmark, Holland, Poland, Russia, Mexico and California. Cygnus also offers a series of three concerts each season at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, presenting important new works by America’s best composers. In the New Music Connoisseur, Leo Kraft wrote a review of a Cygnus performance in New York, saying, “If Mr. Anderson’s aim was to show how the guitar can play a significant role in chamber music, he certainly succeeded.” Anderson teaches guitar at Sarah Lawrence College and Queens College. |
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Jennifer Griffith creates vocal and instrumental works that are inspired by social issues, politics and human relationships. As a small child she listened to a steady diet of early jazz and blues when her pianist mother performed in Dixieland jazz and dance bands. In her teens and early twenties Jennifer performed as a pianist and jazz singer (she and her saxophonist brother were into bebop and modern jazz), but in the next ten years pursued studies in Western European music and graduated with a B.A. in piano performance. During these years, she also became active in worker politics and environmental issues. At Smith College she earned the masters degree in composition and moved to NYC to earn her doctorate. Her pocket opera Dream President was developed in New York City Opera’s VOX 2004, and again at the National Opera/Opera Index/Manhattan School of Music’s Opera Theater presentations in 2005. The fully-staged and final version was premiered in a collaborative production Opera After Hours, directed by Christopher Alden, at the Zipper Factory in 2008.
Griffith has received awards from the MacDowell Colony and the American Music Center, and her chamber works have been performed by American Opera Projects, the new music ensembles Cygnus, Glass Farm, Newspeak, and Vox Novus's electroacoustic 60x60 Dance concerts.
Currently Griffith is collaborating with playwright Dominic Orlando on a new one-act opera Beautiful Creatures, about politics and people in the environmental movement. The opera will premiere in June, 2011 in New York. She recently earned the doctorate in composition at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her dissertation examines the music of composer/bandleader/bassist Charles Mingus that explores his nods toward early and New Orleans jazz. Her article "Mingus in the Act: Confronting the Legacies of Vaudeville & Minstrelsy" was recently published in Jazz Perspectives. She sings jazz at NYC venues and is featured vocalist on saxophonist Steve Elson’s new cd, Mott and Broome. Griffith’s electroacoustic work for The Tempest Project (“Who is Miranda?”) is forthcoming on Pogus records. Her bestiary “A Little Beastliness for Guitar” for guitarist Oren Fader is available on his cd First Flight. In collaboration with writer/artist/filmmaker Zahra Partovi, she recently premiered a chamber oratorio setting of the Persian poet J. M. Rumi's The Reed, a commission for the Grace and Spiritus Chorale of Brooklyn. |
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Leonard Lehrman was born in Kansas, on August 20, 1949, but grew up in Roslyn, NY, becoming the youngest (and longest) private composition student of Elie Siegmeister (1909-1991).
His works number 167 to date, and have been heard throughout Europe, North America, Israel, Australia, and at the United Nations. His setting of Abel Meeropol (Lewis Allan)'s poem "Conscience" for chorus and orchestra won the 2002 Sunrise/Sunset Competition of the Brookhaven Arts Council and was premiered at the Brookhaven Choral Festival with an orchestra of 55 and a chorus of 160 on July 13, 2002. Editor 1999-2002 of Opera Today (the publication of The Center for Contemporary Opera), he has worked professionally for over three decades as conductor, coach, accompanist, translator, stage director, producer and critic for Opera Monthly, WBAI, the Metropolitan Opera, Bel Canto Opera, After Dinner Opera, Aviva Players, the Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus and the Jewish Music Theater of Berlin (both of which he founded), and various regional companies throughout the United States, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Since 1987, he has given over 380 concert performances together with soprano Helene Williams, including numerous productions of his own stage works, and concert tours of Europe (7 times), Canada, Hawaii, and Australia. Elie Siegmeister called him "my continuator," while Leonard Bernstein dubbed him "Marc Blitzstein's dybbuk."
He has a B.A. cum laude in Music from Harvard, a masters and a doctorate in music composition from Cornell, and a second masters in Library & Information Science from Long Island University, where he runs the Long Island Composers Archive. He also studied privately with Olga Heifetz; Nadia Boulanger (on a Fulbright grant); Erik Werba (in Salzburg and Ghent); Kyriena Siloti (at the Longy School); David Del Tredici, Earl Kim, Leon Kirchner and Lukas Foss (at Harvard); Karel Husa, Robert Palmer and Thomas Sokol (at Cornell); Tibor Kozma, Wolfgang Vacano, Donald Erb and John Eaton (at Indiana); and in the first Performance Seminar in Chamber Music with the Guarneri Quartet.
On May 1, 2003 he becomes Minister of Music at Christ Church Babylon, NY, having been Music Director of Community Presbyterian Church in Malverne, NY since Nov., 1992. Founder/Director of The Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus and (beginning Jan. 2003) Director of The Oceanside Chorale, since 1989 he has been Founder/Director of the Opera-Musical Theater Special Interest Group of The Naturist Society and since February 2004 Director of the Workmen's Circle Chorus in Manhattan.
A member of ASCAP, GEMA, the American Music Center, Society for American Music, the Music Critics Association of North America, the Music Library Association, and the American Civil Liberties Union, he is Artistic Administrator of The Professor Edgar H. Lehrman Memorial Foundation, Inc., Co-Founder of the Elie Siegmeister Society, and Archivist Emeritus of The Long Island Composers Alliance, Inc. (of which he was president for 7 years, 1991-98, the longest term in that organization's history.) He is in charge of the Long Island Composers Archive at Long Island University.
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Marco Oppedisano
Marco Oppedisano is an American guitarist and composer whose compositions focus on the innovative use of electric guitar in the genre of electroacoustic music. Since 1999, his musique concrète/acousmatic music compositions have utilized multitrack recording and extended performance techniques for electric guitar and bass.
His electroacoustic music has been described as “...mindbending music for guitar and electronics... hear Oppedisano’s intricate roar.” -Time Out New York
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Gal Ziv is a composer, singer-songwriter, guitarist and music producer who is known for crossing over between musical styles and genres. Born in Israel, Gal moved to New York to pursue a career as a jazz guitarist. Leading his own group and as side man in many ensembles, he played in the US and Europe, and released "The Flow", his original jazz CD, on Cadence Jazz Records. After completing his Bachelor of Music degree at Manhattan School of Music, Gal began concentrating on composition, and received an MA in music composition from Queens College, where he studied with Bruce Saylor and Thea Musgrave. Gal established "Forecast Music", a group of New York composers dedicated to the advancement of new music through concerts, collaborative projects and a close connection with popular culture. Gal's compositions have won several awards and are played around the world. As he has always been interested in collaborative projects, Gal has worked extensively composing music for other arts, including film, theater, dance and video. Currently, Gal lives in Tel Aviv. He has released a CD featuring original songs, "Ad Hagal Haba" (Until the next wave), and is performing and recording his latest project, a collection of songs by Israeli contemporary poets with whom he collaborates on a regular basis. Gal ran the Composition and Jazz programs at Matan, a national organization aimed at the advancement of gifted teenagers in the arts, and currently teaches and supervises the cross-disciplinary music program at Ironi A High School for the Arts in Tel Aviv.
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