March: Composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

"There are not many composers in the modern world who possess the lucky combination of writing music of substance and at the same time exercising an immediate appeal to mixed audiences. Zwilich offers this happy combination of purely technical excellence and a distinct power of communication."

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, is widely considered to be one of America's leading composers. She studied at the Florida State University and the Juilliard School, where her major teachers were Roger Sessions and Elliott Carter. She also studied violin with Richard Burgin and Ivan Galamian and was a member of the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski.

Zwilich is the recipient of numerous prizes and honors, including the 1983 Pulitzer Prize in Music (the first woman ever to receive this coveted award). She was elected to the Florida Artists Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in 1995, was named to the first Composer's Chair in the history of Carnegie Hall. Musical America designated her the 1999 Composer of the Year. A prolific composer in all media except opera, Zwilich has produced four symphonies and other orchestral essays, numerous concertos for a wide variety of solo instruments, and a sizable canon of chamber and recital pieces. Her works are commissioned and played regularly by the leading orchestras and ensembles throughout the world.

Zwilich marked the beginning of her 70th birthday season – featuring two major premieres, recordings, and performances of her work across the country – with the world premiere of Symphony No. 5, commissioned by the Juilliard School, and performed October 27, 2008, by the Juilliard Orchestra conducted by James Conlon at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY. The new symphony’s premiere launched a season that concluded with the world premiere of another major work, the Septet for Piano Trio and String Quartet, performed by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio and the Miami String Quartet. In addition, a disc of three of Zwilich’s works performed by artists from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center was released by Koch Records, the Claremont Trio is released a new disc titled American Trios which will include Zwilich’s Piano Trio, and a half-hour television program of her work Peanuts Gallery, which has been broadcast over local PBS stations nationwide almost 700 times, recently received an award from the National Educational Telecommunications Association.

Host John Clare spoke to Zwilich at her home in Riverdale, NY about composition, awards and creativity.

Listen to the interview in two parts:

Part 1 [mp3 file]

Part 2 [mp3 file]

You might also enjoy this selection of the Boston Trio:

March: Composer Augusta Read Thomas

"Augusta Read Thomas's impressive body of works embodies unbridled passion and fierce poetry. Championed by such luminaries as Barenboim, Rostropovich, Boulez, and Knussen, she rose early to the top of her profession. Later, as an influential teacher at Eastman, Northwestern and Tanglewood, chairperson of the American Music Center, and the Chicago Symphony's longest-serving resident composer, she has become one of the most recognizable and widely loved figures in American Music."

Augusta Read Thomas is one of the most outstanding younger generation American composers. Augusta has had her work conducted by everyone from Boulez to Barenboim to Knussen and was Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra 1997-2006. She was the Wyatt Professor of Music at Northwestern University and in 2005, was the Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Music Center. Her work is published exclusively by G. Schirmer.

Thomas has been appointed as University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music and the College at the University of Chicago. University Professors are selected for internationally recognized eminence in their fields as well as for their potential for high impact across the University. Thomas will become the 16th person ever to hold a University Professorship, and the fifth currently at the University. Thomas is widely considered to be among the world's most accomplished and original contemporary composers. She has won acclaim for the dramatic, spontaneous quality of her work and her masterful use of instrumental color. Her extensive body of work has won praise from conductors, performers and music critics worldwide.

Clare and Thomas

Augusta will be in residence at Trinity University, sponsored by the Stieren Arts Enrichment Series. Her residency will include meetings with student composers and a lecture and performance (by the Walden Chamber Players) of her music on Friday, March 25, at 7:30 p.m. in the Ruth Taylor Recital Hall. The closing concert by the Walden Chamber Players will feature some of her music as well as works by Turina and Brahms on Sunday, March 27 at 3 p.m., also in the Ruth Taylor Recital Hall.

Host John Clare spoke with Thomas in early 2010 as she prepared a new work for the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Listen to their conversation here. [mp3 file]
You might also enjoy her talk filmed by the Boston Symphony:


You might also want to hear some of Gusty's incredible music, played here by Rachel Barton Pine:

March: Composer Judith Lang Zaimont

Judith Lang Zaimont’s music is internationally acclaimed for its drama and expressiveness and has been programmed around the globe by major ensembles such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore and Mississippi Symphonies, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Czech Radio Orchestra, Kremlin Chamber Orchestra, Women’s Philharmonic, Connecticut Opera, New York Virtuosi, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestras (New York and Boston), American Guild of Organists, Harlem String Quartet, International Double Reed Society, World Viola Congress, Norway’s Bergen Wind Quintet, Zagreb Saxophone Quartet and others.
Her 100+ works cover almost every genre: three symphonies, chamber opera, music for wind ensemble, works for solo voice and choral ensembles, and solo instrumental and chamber pieces. Zaimont has been widely honored through composer prizes (including the Gottschalk International Competition First Prize: Gold Medal and International McCollin Competition First Prize), and awards (including a Guggenheim Fellowship, 2003 Aaron Copland Award, and 2005 Bush Foundation Fellowship); two of her works were named to Century Lists: Doubles – 1993 (oboe and piano: Chamber Music America), and Sonata – 1999 (Piano & Keyboard magazine); and her pieces have been selected and commissioned as required repertoire for international performance competitions in voice, piano and conducting. Her music is widely recorded (Naxos, Koch Classical, Harmonia Mundi, MSR, Albany, Leonarda, Arkiv Music, and 4-Tay ) and her principal publisher is Subito Music Corp.
Zaimont is a distinguished teacher, formerly a member of the faculties of Queens College and Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory of Music, where she was named "Teacher of the Year" in 1985. She held the post of Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at Adelphi University from 1989-91, and from 1992 to 2005 she served as Professor of Composition at the University of Minnesota School of Music, as well as division chair and Scholar of the College of Liberal Arts. Since retiring from full-time college teaching in fall 2005, she continues to be active as clinician, frequent adjudicator and masterclass presenter across the US and abroad. Zaimont is also the creator and editor-in-chief of the critically acclaimed book series, The Musical Woman: An International Perspective (3 vols., Greenwood Press). For the books, she received a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1989) and the 1993 First Prize in the international musicology awards, the Pauline Alderman Prizes.
In late 2009, John Clare met up with Zaimont in Baltimore where the Peabody Conservatory was preparing the world premiere of her piano concerto.
Listen to their discussion here. [mp3 file]

See and hear the world premiere of her piano concerto, Solar Traveller with the Peabody Wind Ensemble, Dr. Harlan D. Parker conducting and soloist Timothy Hoft. Filmed by John Clare October 7th, 2009 on location in Baltimore, MD.

Movement 2

Movement 3

JLZ: Piano Concerto 3 from John Clare on Vimeo.

March: Composer Ursula Mamlok

March is Women's History Month and we'll be celebrating Women composers on KPAC and KTXI...to start, here is a profile on Ursula Mamlok by host John Clare.

"My main concern is that the music should convey the various emotions in it with clarity and conviction. It interests me to accomplish this with a minimum of material, transforming it in such multiple way so as to give the impression of ever-new ideas that are like the flowers of a plant, all related yet each one different."

The American composer Ursula Mamlok is a distinguished representative of the Central European Jewish intellectual culture that was transplanted to the United States as a result of the Holocaust. Mamlok was born in 1928 in Berlin and came to the U.S. in 1941. She studied with George Szell at the Mannes College of Music, and received her B.M. and M.M. from the Manhattan School of Music, where she was a pupil of Vittorio Giannini. Among her other teachers were Roger Sessions, Stefan Wolpe, and Ralph Shapey, who exercised a particularly strong influence on the development of her com-positional technique. Her study of twelve tone music afforded her to employ Arnold Schönberg‘s system, however modified to suit her own work.

Ursula Mamlok taught composition at New York Univer sity, Temple University, City University and over 40 years composition at the Manhattan School of Music. Her work list encompasses over 60 works: for orchestra, chamber music, vocal music, compositions for solo instruments as well as music for children. Her works are published by C.F. Peters New York, Mc Ginnis and Marx, Theodore Presser and Furore. Since 2006, Ursula Mamlok lives at her birthplace, Berlin.

John Clare spoke with Mamlok about her music and the first volume of her music on Bridge Records. Listen to their conversation here. [mp3 file]
Volume Two has now been released on Bridge Records!