6:00 PM Program

Christian McLeer is artistic director and founder of Remarkable Theater Brigade (RTB), a company that creates and produces new musical works. Originally founded to produce his work, RTB has grown, and in its 6th season, will begin presenting the music of other living composers as well.

His musical success began as a youth, winning piano competitions and commissions while still in high school. He received his first commission at the age of 14 for the American Cancer Society for which he wrote and performed HOPE, later included on the CD Encores 2 by the renowned pianist Anna Marie Bottazzi. He attended Julliard Pre-College and worked his way through Manhattan School of Music where he acquired his Bachelor’s degree, composing and performing professionally for classical, jazz and rock ensembles. He has performed at many respected venues including Alice Tully Hall, Weill-Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, and the New Orleans Astro Dome among others. Performing his own compositions has won him special acclaim from publications such as The New York Times, Newsday and OCS.

Christian’s compositions have been commissioned for numerous groups and artists, including the Long Island Singers, the Harmonia Opera Company, The New Millennium Orchestra, concert pianist Phillip Dieckow, director Vincent Scott, OnTrac Productions, jazz pianist Mickey Laverine, conductor Ted Puffer, RTB, and numerous others. Musing has seen many performances and was recorded by flautist, Sophia Anastasia on her debut CD, Musing. His song cycle Longing Eternal Bliss, originally written for Monica Harte and Ken Merrill, will be recorded by McLeer and Harte on Harte’s upcoming CD of American art songs featuring Christian McLeer, Tom Cipullo and other respected living composers.

Douglas DaSilva is a composer, guitarist, educator and music curator in New York City. As Artistic Director of the Composer's Voice Concert Series and Premiere Salon Concerts he is dedicated to promoting new music and living composers. He has been curator for concerts in New York, Rio de Janeiro and Valencia. As a guitarist he has performed at places as diverse as Lincoln Center’s Rose Ballroom, the Jan Hus Church, The Bitter-End, and The Cutting Room. As a composer of chamber music with a background in jazz, rock and blues, Douglas composes in variety of styles from the hummable to highly experimental. Much of his music is influenced by Brazilian music and self-inflicted stress. His extensive and daily work with preschoolers (where he is known by his nom de guerre: Mr. Doug) manages to keep him sane while giving him the opportunity to share his love for music with future generations. His chamber music has been performed throughout the US, Europe and Brazil.

Composer/guitarist/rapper/Di.J. Gene Pritsker has written over four hundred compositions, including chamber operas, orchestral and chamber works, electro-acoustic music and songs for hip-hop and rock ensembles. All of his compositions employ an eclectic spectrum of styles and are influenced by his studies of various musical cultures.

He is the founder and leader of Sound Liberation; an eclectic hiphop-chamber-jazz-rock-etc. ensemble who have released cd's on Col-legno and Innova Records. Gene's music has been performed all over the world at various festivals and by many ensembles and performers, including the Adelaide Symphony, The Athens Camarata, Brooklyn and Berlin Philharmonic. He has worked closely with Joe Zawinul and has orchestrated major Hollywood movies.

The New York Times described him as "...audacious...multitalented." Joseph Pehrson, writing in The Music Connoisseur, described Pritsker as "dissolv[ing] the artificial boundaries between high brow, low brow, classical, popular musics and elevates the idea that if it's done well it is great music, regardless of the style or genre". Raul d'Gama Rose writes in All About Jazz: "Barring the obvious exceptions, much of 21st century composition appears to be thinning in significance, but this might be about to change. Gene Pritsker is one of a very spare handful of composers effecting this change." Evan Burke writes in ICareIf YouListen: "Pritsker seems to look at all music as one genre, in which all other possible styles, sounds and traditions are meant to be used as building blocks and palette colors, combined in various configurations to create a boundless whole. This result is almost always more interesting, and representative of how most new music will be born in the 21st century, as genres and barriers begin to vanish, and as styles begin cross-fertilizing in previously unimagined ways."

Alex Sramek is a Los Angeles-based clarinetist, composer, and purveyor of shenanigans. MFA from CalArts in hand, this refugee from software engineering has recently made a playful nuisance of himself playing in a klezmer/rock band, guesting with a drone/doom tuba duo, leading improv sessions across Europe, teaching a room full of Clarinetfest attendees grotesque extended techniques, writing minimalist songs for obsessive-compulsive children, and thrilling unsuspecting guests with impromptu restroom concerts.

Julius Bucsis is a composer, guitarist, music technologist, producer, and educator. He has performed extensively in many styles including jazz, rock, and improvisational music. His compositions cover a broad range of categories. His most recent activity involves performing a set of original compositions for electric guitar and live computer processing. Solifluction refers to water-saturated soil flowing down slope over impermeable material. On Earth this phenomenon can occur in regions where a surface layer of soil becomes mobile over a deeper layer of stable permafrost. The piece was inspired by data suggesting that this phenomenon also occurs on Mars.

Violinist Lynn Bechtold has appeared in recital throughout the U.S., Canada, Holland, and Switzerland. An advocate of contemporary music, she has worked with composers such as Gloria Coates, George Crumb, John Harbison, and John Heiss, and has premiered works on the Princeton Composers' Series and Composers Concordance. In 2001, she gave the premiere of "Violynn," a work for violin and electronics written for her by Alvin Lucier. As a chamber musician and member of the Lumina String Quartet, she has also performed in Italy, Japan, Russia, and Ukraine. She has performed with the Absolute Ensemble, the East Village Opera Company, the New York Symphonic Ensemble, the SEM Ensemble, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and the Vermont Symphony. Festival appearances include Kneisel Hall, Pacific Music Festival, Scotia, and both Spoletos, among others. Her performances have been broadcast on CBC Radio, CBS TV, and NHK TV.

An active performer, Ms. Bechtold has performed at diverse venues such as Alice Tully Hall, the Blue Note, CUNY, the Frick Museum, the Harvard Club, Joe's Pub, the Kosciuszko Foundation, Merkin Hall, the Nicholas Roerich Museum, St John the Divine, Weill Hall, and Zankel Hall. She is a past recipient of arts scholarships from the Leopold Schepp Foundation and the Hilda Mesta Willis Fund. Ms. Bechtold received her Master's Degree from the Mannes College of Music, where she was a student of Felix Galimir. Prior to that, she received a double-degree in Violin and English from the New England Conservatory of Music and Tufts University in Boston. She is on the faculty of Greenwich House Music School in NY

Dan Cooper's music has been noted in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Associated Press, Fanfare Magazine, American Record Guide, Berkshire Eagle, Greenwich Times, Metroland Albany, Albany Times Union, CurtainUp, and New Music Connoisseur, among others - "contemporary impressionism," "inventive," "drawing on vernacular styles," "vibrant," "capricious," "especially fascinating," “full of instrumental virtuosity and sly humor,” "utterly charming amidst a throbbing swirl of cacophony, all of it making unexpected sense," "virtuosic," "whimsical," "carefree," "acute," "daring," "well-plotted," "hauntingly beautiful," and with a "spirit of originality, verve, and humor, now being passed on to a new generation."

Cooper was born and raised in Manhattan, and educated at The Horace Mann School, Columbia University, The New England Conservatory, and Princeton University. Principal teachers include John Heiss, Steve Mackey, and Paul Lansky. For several years, Cooper worked as an assistant to American composer, flutist, and electronic music pioneer Otto Luening, who mentored him in composition, orchestration, and musical life in general; with Luening's recommendation, Cooper was awarded an ASCAP Young Composer's Prize for his electronic setting of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky". He also completed study at the Conservatoire de Nice and Fontainebleau, where he attended masterclasses of Betsy Jolas and Philippe Manoury, and won a composition prize.

Stuart Breczinski is a New York-based oboist, improviser, composer, and educator whose early interest in making unusual sounds on the oboe has developed into a passion for creating and sharing innovative audio with audiences of all backgrounds. A proponent of chamber and contemporary music, Breczinski is the oboist with The Academy, a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. He is an original member of ensemble mise-en, Ensemble Moto Perpetuo, and The Generous Ensemble, and he has performed as a chamber musician with Bang on a Can, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Contemporaneous, and Tactus, in addition to numerous independently organized collaborations with composers, performers, and other artists.

As the 2009 winner of the Paranov Concerto Competition, Breczinski presented the American premiere of Paul Patterson’s Phoenix Concerto for oboe and strings with the Hartt Symphony Orchestra. He was also the 2007 winner of the Iowa Center for the Arts competition and a two-time winner of both the Lillian Fuchs Memorial Chamber Music Competition and the Midwest Oboe Competition.

Breczinski holds degrees from The Hartt School (MM) and The University of Iowa (BM, BSE), with additional study at Manhattan School of Music. His principal instructors have included Jacqueline Leclair, Humbert Lucarelli, and Mark Weiger.

Douglas DaSilva is a composer, guitarist, educator and music curator in New York City. As Artistic Director of the Composer's Voice Concert Series and Premiere Salon Concerts he is dedicated to promoting new music and living composers. He has been curator for concerts in New York, Rio de Janeiro and Valencia. As a guitarist he has performed at places as diverse as Lincoln Center’s Rose Ballroom, the Jan Hus Church, The Bitter-End, and The Cutting Room. As a composer of chamber music with a background in jazz, rock and blues, Douglas composes in variety of styles from the hummable to highly experimental. Much of his music is influenced by Brazilian music and self-inflicted stress. His extensive and daily work with preschoolers (where he is known by his nom de guerre: Mr. Doug) manages to keep him sane while giving him the opportunity to share his love for music with future generations. His chamber music has been performed throughout the US, Europe and Brazil.

Based in New York City, saxophonist Zach Herchen performs contemporary music and improvisation. His influences range across classical, jazz, and rock music. This, along with technical training in saxophone performance and audiovisual electronics, make Zach uniquely equipped for contemporary music. He is constantly collaborating with composers to create new works that range from classical duets to jazz-inspired improvisation poems and multimedia pieces. Always in search of something new, he has premiered dozens of pieces. His first CD, “Emerging Voices” (music for voice and sax, with singer Elisabeth Halliday), was crowd-funded, self-recorded, and self-released in 2011.

Zach has performed as a soloist in Italy, Sweden, and Germany and at New England Conservatory, Duke University, the SEAMUS National Conference, University of Richmond’s Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival, and Boston University’s Spectral Summer Professional Performance Workshop. He has played at the Look & Listen Festival, the 4th International Master-Class for Classical Saxophone, the 32nd International Saxophone Symposium, The Stone (NYC), Carnegie Hall, Symphony Hall, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Heinz Hall, and more. Zach has served on faculty at New England Conservatory’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice and an artist-in-resident at Wildacres Retreat.

A Chicagoland native, Aleksandr Karjaka spent most of his musical upbringing in Valparaiso, Indiana. Immersed in all the arts at a young age by his parents, Mr. Karjaka began his formal training at the age of ten. Active within the Valparaiso music scene by his mid teens, Mr. Karjaka helped support his musical endeavors with his growing entrepreneurial skills. Founding several small businesses, he was able to foster an addiction for clarinet and bass clarinet, which marked a succession of professional gigs by the time he was fifteen. In addition to clarinet, Mr. Karjaka spent much of this time freelancing throughout the Midwest as a low woodwind doubler on saxophone and flute.

An in demand chamber musician, Mr. Karjaka is principal clarinetist and founding member of Ensemble Moto Perpetuo, and has appeared with Dorian Chamber EnsembleEmperor X, Eon Contemporary Ensemble, Feist, Lunatics at Large, Music from China, Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players. He is also former member of the Bowling Green New Music Ensemble, Perrysburg Symphony and Tactus Ensemble. Mr. Karjaka has recorded music videos and featured with Mason Jar Music and CollegeHumor.Com. No stranger to contemporary music, Karjaka has performed and recorded staples of the contemporary literature by such composers as Louis Andriessen, Alban Berg, De Falla, Jacob Druckman, Gyorgi Ligeti, Withold Lutoslawski, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky among others.

Alex Sramek is a Los Angeles-based clarinetist, composer, and purveyor of shenanigans. MFA from CalArts in hand, this refugee from software engineering has recently made a playful nuisance of himself playing in a klezmer/rock band, guesting with a drone/doom tuba duo, leading improv sessions across Europe, teaching a room full of Clarinetfest attendees grotesque extended techniques, writing minimalist songs for obsessive-compulsive children, and thrilling unsuspecting guests with impromptu restroom concerts.

A common thread among much of my music is the fleeting moment of “wouldn’t it be cool, awesome, horrible, or hilarious if” – moments that might come about when bored, idle, frustrated, or inebriated, and that would give the average musician a quick, short-lived chuckle. The difference with me is that I write them down and act on them (people frequently comment, “wait, you were serious?”). I find that the opposite of a good idea is often an even better idea, and I have a penchant for using the most uninteresting, irritating, even downright inappropriate sources as impetus for music. These are, to me, a vast source of untapped coolness, and have led to such gems as a death metal scam email, a solemn antiphonal chanting of parking receipt legalese, and a disco party in the middle of a clarinet solo.

My pursuit of the unlikely extends beyond musical source material to manner of musical presentation. Lately, I have been exploring possibilities within the music hall with elements like cohesive incidental music, as well as outside the hall setting, with interactive musical games and guerilla urban performances.

"The word ‘viral,’ comes to mind as a trendy but disquietingly accurate image for Robert Voisey’s infectious enthusiasm. He is always ready to mutate and reinfect the process as indicated to maintain the highest degree of project fever" -60x60: netsuke for the musical mind Richard Arnest, Sounding Board, Spring 2011

“With few opportunities and much competition, young composers show creativity in just getting heard.” And in Chris Pasles’s article in the Los Angeles Times, Robert Voisey is highlighted as one of those composers. Composing electroacoustic and chamber music, his aesthetic oscillates from the romantic to the Post Modern Mash-Up. His work has been performed in venues throughout the world including: Carnegie Hall, World Financial Center Winter Garden Atrium, and Stratford Circus in London

A native of Hong Kong, Viola Yip is an emerging music composer who always draws inspiration from life as well as visual arts imagery and transform them into her musical compositions.

Yip is graduating for her master’s degree in Music Composition in Bowling Green State University in August 2012, under the tutelage of Dr. Christopher Dietz and Dr. Elainie Lillios. During the residency at BGSU, she serves as a teaching assistant in undergraduate theory/aural skills area. Her compositions have been performed in Hong Kong, United States and Italy, which include the appearance at Radio 4 of Radio and Television of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Young Composers Program and HighSCORE Festival, Women Composers Festival at Hartford, Vox Novus Composers’ Voice concert series and Ravinia Festival. Recently, she was invited as a guest composer at the concert “In the Tranquil Night: A Night with the music of Donald Man-Ching Yu: series III” in Jan 2012, in Hong Kong.

She finished her bachelor degree in Hong Kong Baptist University, with a visiting year at Ball State University. Her composition teachers also included Dr. Christopher Coleman, Dr. Christopher Keyes, Dr. Keith Kothman and Dr. Derek Johnson.

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