April 6, 2014

New York Women Composers

Biographies

Soprano Shannon Roberts holds dual US and Irish citizenship, dividing her time between New York City and Europe. She finds it an important and rewarding endeavor to collaborate with living composers, and has premiered works by several, including award winning Juilliard composer Bruce Lazarus and most recently Nailah Nombeko’s William Blake Songs. Ms. Roberts is a multiple award winner receiving prizes, grants, and or scholarships from: The Wagner Society of New York, the Liederkranz Foundation, and the Lee Schaenen Foundation, among others. Ms. Roberts attended the Hartt School of Music, received a Bachelor of Music from the University of Florida, and was awarded a Special Artists' Diploma from Miami's prestigious New World School of the Arts. Ms. Roberts is managed by John Miller of Pinnacle Artists Management.

Born in Osaka, Japan, pianist Yumi Suehiro started piano at age 6, and started marimba a year later. Ms. Suehiro has won numerous national and international competitions, including the top prize at the KOBE International Competition in Japan as the youngest winner. In 2007 and 2008, she was invited to perform her debut at the Carnegie Weill recital hall as a winner of AMTL audition, and in following year, she was featured as a guest marimba player in Latin percussionist, Victor Rendon's recoding “Fiesta Percussiva”. Ms. Suehiro won the second prize at Dora Zaslavsky Koch piano concerto competition in Manhattan School of Music where she currently earned Master of Music under the tutelage of Mr. Zenon Fishbein and Dr. Peter Vinograde.

Guest Curator Nailah Nombeko, a native of New York, comes from a musical family. She attended the Preparatory Division of Manhattan School Music, LaGuardia High School (Music and Art) and she received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Mannes College of Music. Ms. Nombeko is active as a composer. Her works were performed by a variety of ensembles, soloists and choirs such as, the Orfeo Duo (violin/piano), Shannon Roberts, Tiffany DuMouchelle, and Marcia Eckert. Ms. Nombeko’s music has been performed at Symphony Space, Columbia University, as well as other venues in New York City. Her music was featured on Classical Discoveries 103.3 FM and What’s Next Radio 91.1 FM.

Adrienne Patino Dunn, soprano, is originally from Livermore, California and graduated from California State University, East Bay with a BA in Vocal Performance. Adrienne is now actively working as an oratorio and sacred singer, and teacher. Recently she premiered the oratorioEnoch with Taconic Opera, sang the soprano solos in Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass and in Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor with orchestra. Adrienne regularly sings with the St. Patrick's Cathedral, National Chorale at Lincoln Center, the Salvatones, the Cornerstone Chorale, and the Mineola Choral Society. She made her Avery Fisher Hall debut as a soprano soloist with the National Chorale in 2009. She is a co-founder, producer and performer of Opera Collective, a group of young performers that strives to make opera accessible to the general public.

Marcia Eckert is active as piano soloist and collaborative artist and has appeared in the Mostly Mozart Festival, as well as at Merkin, Alice Tully, and Weill concert halls, and London’s Leighton House. She has travelled throughout the United States presenting lecture-recitals on piano music by women composers and on the music of Charles Ives. She recorded Songs by Women on the Leonarda label with soprano Susan Gonzalez and has performed with sopranos Lucy Shelton, Tiffany DuMouchelle and Helen Gabrielsen and tenor Daniel Molkentin. She is the pianist of the Beehive Piano Trio and has collaborated with Deborah Gilwood in the Eckert-Gilwood Piano Duo. Her recording of the music of Germaine Tailleferre with English violinist Ruth Ehrlich is on Cambria Records.

Elisenda Fábregas has been praised for writing with an “imaginatively colored... idiom” (The New York Times). During the 2013-2014 season, Fábregas Symphony No. 1 for Symphonic Band will be premiered at ‘L’Auditori’ in Barcelona, and her Triple Concerto for violin, cello and piano will be premiered by the Atlanta Virtuosi (US) in the Fall of 2014. Recent premieres at the Seoul Arts Center, the International Percussion Festival of Seoul, and the Wonju Philharmonic. Her music is published by Hofmeister Musik Verlag, and Alphonse Leduc & Cie. and is recorded on Haenssler, Albany, Centaur, and NCA. Fábregas is currently an Invited Professor of Music at Kyung-Hee University. She has graduate degrees in composition (Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University), piano performance, and education (Teachers College Columbia University), and from the Barcelona Conservatory.

Pianist Luda Lee was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, She began studying piano at the age of 6 and later attended the Sunwha Arts School & High School. She earned a Bachelor's degree in piano performance and English literature at Ewha Womans University and earned credits at Indiana University in Bloomington in 2010. Currently she attends the Manhattan school of Music, pursuing a Master's degree in piano performance. Luda performs in piano duo, piano solo and chamber music. Luda won at the international piano competition and baroque philharmonic orchestra competition. Luda was the accompanist for the Palm choir at Gangnam Church at Seoul for 2 years. Now, she is an official accompanist/pianist at Manhattan School of Music.

Binnette Lipper received her music education at Hunter College and the Juilliard School. She studied composition privately with Ludmila Ulehla, Ron Herder and Meyer Kupferman. Formerly on the faculty of Hoff-Barthelson Music School in Scarsdale, NY, for many years, Lipper now serves on the school's board of trustees. An active member of the New York Women Composers, Lipper is the recipient of an American Music Center grant, Meet-the-Composer Grants, ASCAPlus Awards, and numerous commissions. Her compositions are published by Frank E. Warren Music and the Hildegard Publishing Company. Lipper’s works are recorded by North/South Recordings, Musicians Showcase Recordings, Euterpe Recordings & Capstone Records.

Adrianna Mateo is a new music violinist and singer-songwriter. In thepast year, she has performed as a soloist at the American Museum ofNatural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with its first Artist-In-Residence, DJ Spooky, Ars Nova, the Living Room, and abroad in France, Italy, the Philippines, and South Africa; and as an orchestral musician at Carnegie Hall (Zankel Hall) and Lincoln Center (Avery Fisher Hall). She has been featured on the front cover of the TimesLedger's QGuide, with additional features by the Queens Tribune and the Savona News. Ms. Mateo graduated with a B.Mus/French minor from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College in May 2013. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Instagram, Google+, or Tumblr.

Joyce Hope Suskind, lifelong New Yorker, scholarship student in oboe and voice at Juilliard, is a self-taught composer. Her composing career grew out of her work as a pianist for the Martha Graham School. She was commissioned by Lehman College to write the score for a Balinese Dance, using gamelons, flute, and drums. She is published by Casia and American Composers Alliance. Leonarda Productions has released a CD of her Six Yeats Songs. Her setting of the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem Peace, performed at the annual Hopkins Festival in Ireland was later incorporated into a cycle, Meditations on War and Peace presented at the American Composers Alliance June Festival. She composed The Bottom Line, a revue performed in Oxford.

Welsh-born composer, Hilary Tann, lives in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York where she is the John Howard Payne Professor of Music at Union College. Praised for its lyricism and formal balance, her music is influenced by her love of Wales, a deep interest in the traditional music of Japan, and a strong identification with the natural world. Website: hilarytann.com.

Rain Worthington has a distinctly unique voice within the field of contemporary music. As critic, Kyle Gann noted inChamber Music magazine, her music take(s) ideas of American musical style to a new place - like a walk in a familiar, yet very different park... And isn't afraid to come up with its own startling conclusions. Using the palette of chamber and orchestra instrumentations, Rain Worthington’s work touches the human heart with emotionally evocative music that is nuanced, delicate, powerful and transporting. Rain Worthington’s music has been heard in New York City loft concerts, performance spaces and dance clubs, to orchestra recordings in Europe and chamber concerts in India. World music, minimalism and romanticism have influenced her compositional style.

Program Notes

Presenters:

Remarkable Theater Brigade

Vox Novus

With Support from the New York Women Composers

Puffin Foundation