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Recent Accomplishments of University of Maryland Theory/Composition Students and Alumni (2010)
Student Compositions
Two Movements for Piano, No. 1, 2010 Jacob Polasky, 2010
Tu sheng Jing (excerpt) Chao-Juny Wu, electronic tape, 2010
For Whom the Bell Tolls John Leszczynski, 2009
Scherzo à la Britten John Leszczynski, 2009
Fire Music (excerpt) Evan Meier, 2010
Wind Quintet, Mvt, III "Adagio" (excerpt) Tomek Regulski, 2009
Current Students
Scott AuCoin (BM Composition) is a native of Baltimore and a graduate of the Baltimore School for the Arts. His composition studies include work with Mark Hardy and with Martin Amlin at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and workshops with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, and members of the contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird.
Matthew Jaskot (DMA Composition) is Visiting Instructor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Winner of the Walsum Award at the University of Maryland in 2009, his orchestral piece Fireworks will be premiered by the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra in February 2011.
John Leszczynski (MM Composition) graduated from Indiana University in 2010 with a BM in Composition and Saxophone performance. In October, Zzyzx Quartet released his saxophone quartet They Might Be Gods on their debut CD. Funded by a 2010 Encore Grant from the American Composers' Forum, saxophonist Jeff Vickers will perform Obsidian Butterfly multiple times over the next eighteen months, including performances in Arkansas, Florida, Virginia, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Leszczynski's Scherzo à la Britten for wind ensemble will appear in an article in the MBM Times highlighting the best band pieces of 2010. For more information go to www.johnleszczynski.com.
Elisabeth Mehl Greene’s (DMA Composition) new opera, based on Azar Nafisi’s bestselling work Reading Lolita in Tehran will be read in February by the Maryland Opera Studio. Among recent work, her string quartet “Tango” was read by the Kronos Quartet and her song cycle on poems by Carl Sandburg was premiered in Italy at the Alba Music Festival. The Longy Chamber Orchestra premiered Greene’s Borges Symphony as the winner of the Longy Orchestral Composition Competition.
Evan Meier (DMA Composition) holds a B.M. from Chapman University in California and an M.M. from California State University, Northridge (CSUN). He taught harmony and music history at CSUN and currently teaches aural skills at the University of Maryland. In the summers of 2010 and 2008 he attended the Aspen Music Festival (Master Class and Individual Studies). Commissions include Tema e Cadenze for the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble and Variations/Revisions for Chamber Ensemble for a recording session with the Nimbus ensemble. His website is www.evanmeier.com.
Mark Nowakowski (DMA Composition) has served as an adjunct lecturer at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and as the 2008 Composer-in-Residence for the Canton Symphony Orchestra. His works have received recent international performances, including the first String Quartet in NYC and the “Vavel Fanfare,” performed in Poland and Austria by the Cracow Brass Quintet. He currently serves as the Curator of Music for the Foundation for Sacred Arts.
Jacob Polasky (DMA Composition) is a former adjunct faculty member of Anne Arundel Community College. He publishes his music through his own company, Alloutwarsaw Music. His Music for Orchestra was read and recorded by the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra on May 6, 2010; Two Movements for Piano was premiered on April 27, 2010 on a New Music at Maryland concert.
Tomek Regulski (DMA Composition) studies with Dr. Thomas DeLio and is acting Vice-President for the Tempo Contemporary Music Ensemble. His Wind Quintet (2009) was performed on a New Music at Maryland concert in May of 2010. In addition to his studies at Maryland, Tomek teaches Musicianship at American University.
Alumni
Matthew Halper (DMA Composition, 1996) is Professor of Music at Kean University. His music has received performances in leading venues such as Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Recent recordings include his Flute Concerto on the Albany label, which the American Record Guide lauded as "ambitious, ... lyrically dramatic, majestic and broadly American in flavor." 2011 performances include his Guitar Concerto commissioned by the Arco Ensemble, Stewart Robertson, conductor. Dithyramb was an invited submission to the Van Cliburn 2009 American Composers Invitational.
Joshua Davis (DMA Composition 2006) joined the faculty at Susquehanna University as Director of Jazz Studies in 2006, having served as Director of Jazz Studies at Towson University from 2002—2006 and taught at the Berklee College of Music. At Berklee Davis was recognized as a leader of curriculum development. He has performed with the musicians Peter Erskine, Randy Brecker, Sean Rickman, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Cedric Dent (Ph.D. Theory, 1997) is a professor in the School of Music at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro and a member of the ten-time GRAMMY Award-winning vocal group TAKE 6. Their recording “The Standard” (released in 2008) was nominated for three GRAMMY Awards. Dent’s composition for chorus, “Examine Me” was recently performed at the “105 HBCU Voices of History” concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
Ellen Rennie Flint (Ph.D. Theory, 1989) is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Undergraduate Education at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and an active pianist and scholar. A regular participant in the World Piano Conference in Novi Sad, Serbia, she has presented lecture-recitals on the Brahms “Edward” Ballad and on the works for solo piano by the late Ellsworth Milburn. Flint has recently embarked on a project to edit, transcribe, and bring into publication Milburn’s entire body of compositions.
Martin Gendelman (DMA Composition, 2007) is a faculty member at the Levine School of Music in Washington, DC. He has also taught at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Towson University, and The Catholic University of America. Recently, he took part in the Forfest Festival (Kromeriz, Czech Republic) where his Giocoso was premiered. For more on Martin’s work, go to http://www.martingendelman.com
Patricia Julien (Ph.D. Theory, 2003) is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Vermont, where she teaches courses in music theory and jazz composition and arranging. Her continuing research focuses mostly on Wayne Shorter’s contributions to the transformations in harmonic practice after bebop, and she has articles and reviews published or forthcoming in Theory and Practice, Annual Review of Jazz Studies, Jazz Perspectives, and Jazz Education Journal. Patricia is an active jazz flutist and composer: her 2006 CD, Glee by the Patricia Julien Project, is available at www.cdbaby.com and her compositions are published with Imagine Music Publishing.
Kari Henrik Juusela (DMA Composition 1992) is Dean of the Professional Writing Division at Berklee College of Music. The Writing Division’s 850 students major in five areas: Film Scoring, Composition, Jazz Composition, Song Writing, and Contemporary Writing and Production. The Writing Division also provides the theory curriculum to Berklee’s 4,300 music majors. In 2010, Juusela released a new CD (Tri-Polar Order), performed at the Moscow Autumn Music Festival and received numerous performances of his works.
Jonathan Leshnoff (DMA Composition, 2000) is Associate Professor of Music at Towson University. His music has been performed by the Philadelphia, Baltimore, Iris, Curtis Institute, Buffalo, Kyoto, Kansas City, Columbus, Duluth, Extremadura (Madrid), National Symphony of Mexico, and National Repertory orchestras with conductors including Charles Dutoit, Marin Alsop and Michael Stern. Naxos has released two CDs devoted exclusively to his music, with his Violin Concerto CD listed among its top 40 CDs for 2009. He is now composer-in-residence with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra.
Benjamin Levy (Ph.D. Theory, 2006) is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Arizona State University. His article “Shades of the Studio: Electronic Influences on Ligeti’s Apparitions” was recently published in Perspectives of New Music. Levy has presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory as well as internationally in Austria, Switzerland, and Canada. Before arriving at Arizona State, he served on the faculties of Towson University, the University of Maryland, and the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University.
Liviu Marinescu (DMA Composition, 2000) is Associate Professor and Chair of Music Composition and Theory at California State University Northridge. His works have been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Orchestra 2001, Czech Bohuslav Martinu Symphony, and the Bucharest National Radio Orchestra. He has received awards from ASCAP, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, Meet the Composer Fund, and the American Music Center. His music is available on the Centaur and Capstone Records labels.
Josh Perry-Parrish (DMA Composition, 2010) conducted a performance at the Clarice Smith Center in April 2010 of his dissertation composition, All This the World Well Knows, a 35-minute symphonic cantata setting texts from Shakespeare and from the King James Bible on love, betrayal, and reconciliation. The performance featured the four soloists he had previously led in an October 2009 performance of David Lang's Little Match Girl Passion, along with Maryland Cantabile and a 17-piece student orchestra. In March 2010, Josh performed his 2009 song cycle Nativity in a Time of Revolution, as well as presenting a lecture-recital on social justice in art song, at the Society of Composers National Student Convention.
Asha Srinivasan (DMA Composition, 2008) is Assistant Professor of Music at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. Her music has been presented at national and international festivals including SEAMUS, ICMC, and the National Flute Convention, among others. She has won national competitions, including BMI’s Women’s Music Commission and the Flute/Cello Commissioning Circle. Other honors include the Walsum and the Prix d’été competitions as well as multiple ASCAPlus Awards. At the University of Maryland, she studied with Dr. Robert Gibson.
Erich Stem (DMA Composition, 2003) is Associate Professor of Music and resident composer at Indiana University Southeast and founder and director of New Dynamic Records (www.erichstem.com). His music has been performed by the Richmond Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra (Composers Institute), Sunrise Quartet, Opus 3 Trio, and Aurelia Saxophone Quartet; featured on radio programs throughout the U.S.; and can be heard on Living Artist Recordings and Challenge Records. Commissions and future recordings include those by counter)induction, the Chelsea Symphony Orchestra, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, and saxophonists Johan van der Linden and Cory Barnfield.
Dale Trumbore (BM Composition, 2009) is pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Southern California, where she holds a teaching assistantship. Recent performances of Trumbore’s pieces include a commissioned work by the Orange County Women’s Chorus and the New York Virtuoso Singers’ premiere of “Est autem fides credere,” which won the Society for Universal Sacred Music’s Composition Contest. Trumbore’s piece “How it will go,” written for and premiered by the Kronos Quartet, also won the Lyrica Chamber Music Composition Contest. Trumbore’s music can be heard at www.daletrumbore.com.
Altin Volaj (DMA Composition, 2008) is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre, School of Media, Film and Music, University of Sussex, (UK). He was recently awarded a George Solti grant to assist with the costs of attending the 45th International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt. His latest work “Impromptu” for solo piano was released in July 2010 under the Music & Arts Records label.
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