BIOGRAPHY OF JUDITH SHATIN, composer

Judith Shatin's music has been called "exuberant and captivating... vividly orchestrated and bursting with imaginative detail...both logical and surprising" (San Francisco Chronicle). Described as a composer"fully in control of her material at all points and attuned to what makes an audience come back for more," (Washington Post), Judith Shatin has created an extraordinary body of music that reflects her inventive use of instrumental color and her strong sense of the physicality of music.

Shatin's most recent work, Ockeghem Variations (2000), commissioned by the Hexagon Ensemble, was premiered by them at the Concertgebouw with a subsequent broadcast on Dutch radio. Her score for the chamber music theatre piece, Houdini: Memories of a Conjurer, commissioned by the Core Ensemble, was premiered by them at the Portsmouth Music Hall in New Hampshire and then traveled to the Kravis Center in Palm Beach (January 2000).

Her palette includes electronic as well as acoustic media, and she happily combines them. This can be heard in Elijah's Chariot, for string quartet and electronic playback, commissioned and toured world-wide by the Kronos Quartet, or in Three Summers Heat for soprano and electronic playback, recorded on the Centaur label by Susan Narucki. Shatin is also captivated by the interactive possibilities of new technologies, as is clear in her Sea of Reeds for amplified clarinet and live electronics, toured in Asia, Africa and the US by F. Gerard Errante; and Kairos for amplified flute, computer and live electronics, performed at the International Computer Music Conference in Beijing by Patricia Spencer.

Since 1979, Judith Shatin has lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor and Director of the Virginia Center for Computer Music at the University of Virginia. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Douglass College (AB), she holds degrees from The Juilliard School (MM) and Princeton University (Ph.D). Additional studies included two summers as a Crofts composition fellow at Tanglewood as well as studies at the Aspen Music Festival.

Ms. Shatin's music has been performed by such ensembles as the Denver, Houston, Minnesota, National and Richmond Symphonies; Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Ciompi Quartet, Kronos Quartet, and the New Ear. Her 1492 for amplified piano and percussion was played by the Core Ensemble at the Moscow Autumn Festival, and at the Contrasts Comtemporary Festival in Lvov, Ukraine; it was most recently featured at the 2000 West Cork Festival in Ireland. Other recent international performances include the The Wendigo (treble chorus and electronics) performed by Carmina Slovenia in Ljublana, Slovenia; and in Caracas, Venezuela.

Judith Shatin's awards include four NEA Composer grants, as well as those from the American Music Center, Meet the Composer, the New Jersey State Arts Council, the West Virginia Arts Council and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Her music has also been commissioned by such groups as the Barlow Foundation, Monticello Trio, National Symphony, Virginia Chamber Orchestra, and the Women's Philharmonic. A two-year retrospective of her music in Shepherdstown, WV, was supported by a major grant from the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Arts Partners Program (1992-94). It culminated in the premiere of her folk oratorio, COAL. Scored for chorus, Appalachian ensemble, electronic playback and synthesizer, with a libretto by the composer, it reflects her efforts to musically touch an entire way of life.

Recorded on Centaur, CRI, Neuma, New World and Sonora Records, Ms. Shatin's music is published by Arsis Press, C.F. Peters Corporation and Wendigo Music, the latter distributed by MMB/Norruth. She has held residencies at Bellagio (Italy), Brahmshaus (Germany), La Cit1  des Arts (France), Mishkan Amanim (Israel) and in this country at MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo,

Beyond her contributions as a composer, Judith Shatin is a strong advocate for her fellow composers. She is currently on the Advisory Board of the International Alliance for Women in Music. She served from 1989-93 as President of American Women Composers, Inc., was for two terms a board member of the League/ISCM in New York, and sat on the Board of the American Composers Alliance. She has also served on NEA panels, as well as juries for the American Composers Forum and the Civitella Ranieri Center, an artist colony in Umbertide, Italy.

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BIOGRAPHY OF ANNA RUBIN, composer

Anna Rubin's music has been heard and performed on four continents. She composes instrumental and electroacoustic music, often with an engaged political narrative. She has received awards, grants, and fellowships from such organizations as ASCAP, New York Foundation for the Arts, Ohio Arts Council, National Orchestral Association, Meet the Composer and the Gaudeamus Foundation. She been awarded residencies at Harvestworks, Inc., Brahmshaus, and Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music. Commissions include the California E.A.R. Unit, New American Radio, Radio Station WNYC, Abbie Conant, F. Gerard Errante, Thomas Buckner, and the New England Foundation for the Arts.

She is a member of ASCAP, International Computer Music Association (ICMC), Member-at-Large for the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music, U.S. (SEAMUS), as well as a Member of the Board of the International Association for Women Musicians. She has served as panelist for the New York Foundation for the Arts, Ohio Arts Council, Arts International, ICMC, and SEAMUS. She has a doctorate in composition from Princeton University and her principal teachers have been Mel Powell, Leonard Stein, Ton de Leeuw and Pauline Oliveros.

She has taught courses and lectured on women in music and helped organize one of the first campus festivals of women in music at CalArts in 1974 as well as one of the first academic courses on the subject. She has taught at Lafayette College and Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and in the fall of 2002 became Director of the Linehan Artists & Scholars Program at the University of Maryland/ Baltimore County where she created a new interdisciplinary arts program.

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BIOGRAPHY OF MARIO DAVIDOVSKY, composer

Mario Davidovsky was born on March 4, 1934, near Buenos Aires, Argentina. As a child, he studied violin and began composing at the age of 13. While studying composition, theory and history, he had lessons with Teodoro Fuchs, Erwin Leuchter, Ernesto Epstein and his principal teacher was Guillermo Graetzer. In 1958 he studied at the Berkshire Music Center with Aaron Copland, who encouraged him to settle in the United States, where he has lived since 1960.

Davidovsky has taught at the University of Michigan, the Di Tella Institute of Buenos Aires, the Manhattan School of Music, Yale University, City College, CUNY, and at Columbia University where he directed the Columbia Electronic Music Center. In January 1994, he joined the music department at Harvard University. Since 1971, he has served as director of the Composers Conference at Wellesley College. He was composer-in-residence at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 1981 and 1994.

His many honors include two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Rockefeller Fellowships, a Koussevitzky Fellowship, the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award, an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, the 1971 Pulitzer Prize, a Naumburg Award, a Guggenheim Award, and the 1994 National Seamus Award. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 1982. In addition, Davidovsky has received commissions from such major institutions as the Pan American Union, the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Juilliard and Emerson String Quartets, Speculum Musicae and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, among others.

Mr. Davidovsky prefers to point to no specific influence on his music. Despite the fact that his main teacher, Graetzer, was a Hindemith student, he was greatly influenced early on by the second Viennese school, and later by the wide range of styles and techniques found in the musical life of New York. But perhaps the most defining influence on his music is born out of his own seminal work in the field of electronic music. He is best known for his compositions combining live instrumental performance with recorded electronic sound. For tape music he draws on the full range of "classical" studio procedures and requires performers to match the inventiveness of his electronic compositions by using an expanded spectrum of playing techniques. Davidovsky has never been interested in "sound effects;" rather, his concerns are those of continuity and expression.

The music of Mario Davidovsky is greatly admired by his professional colleagues and the musical public alike. Its acknowledged aesthetic value stems from the convergence of an extraordinary musical mind with the eloquence of profound simplicity.

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BIOGRAPHY OF ERIC CHASALOW, composer

Eric Chasalow (USA 1955) is widely recognized as one of the few composers equally at home in both electro-acoustic music and music for traditional instrumental ensembles.  He is especially well known for works that combine traditional instruments with electronic sound. According to a recent review in ARRAY, the journal of the International Computer Music Association, his 2003 CD Left to His Own Devices,

"clearly establishes him as one of the leaders of our times…offer(ing) a wondrous fusion between distinct styles and mediums, nullifying many of the preconceived limitations and/or political borders beset by the ongoing struggle to recognize electro-acoustic art as an equal to the tradition-abundant world of acoustic music."

Eric Chasalow's music is programmed throughout the world, with recent performances in Annecy, Ann Arbor, Bacau (Romania), Bari, Beijing, Berlin, Boston, Bratislava, Brno, Canberra, Houston, La Paz, London, Los Angeles, Lyon, Minneapolis, Milan, New York, Padova, Pittsburgh, Rome, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore, Sudbury (Ontario), Tempe, Torino, Versailles, and Warsaw.  He produces the biennial BEAMS Electronic Music Marathon, recently featuring over fifty pieces, including works by Babbitt, Dashow, Davidovsky, Risset, Stockhausen, Vinao, and Xenakis among many others. Since 1996 Eric Chasalow and his wife, Barbara Cassidy have directed the The Video Archive of Electroacoustic Music an oral history project chronicling the pioneer electronic music composers and engineers from 1950 to the present.

Major projects for the 2004 and 2005 seasons include the premiere of Concerning Sunspots for large orchestra by Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and an oratorio, The Puzzle Master, a retelling of the Icarus myth by poet and Wesleyan University Professor of Letters, F.D. Reeve. In the Fall of 2005, Auros Group for New Music will produce a concert in honor of Eric Chasalow's 50th birthday.  This concert will feature the premiere of a new flute chamber concerto composed for Auros flutist, Susan Gall and a consortium of flutists: Tara Helen O'Connor, Rachel Rudich, Patricia Spencer, and Dorothy Stone, with their respective ensembles, New Millenium Ensemble, DaCapo Chamber Players, and the California EAR Unit.

Eric Chasalow is Professor of Music at Brandeis University, and Director of BEAMS, the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio.  He holds the D.M.A. from Columbia University where his principal teacher was Mario Davidovsky and where he studied flute with Harvey Sollberger. Other teachers included Elliott Schwartz, William T. McKinley, George Edwards, and Jack Beeson.  Among his honors are awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Fromm Foundation at Harvard University (two commissions), New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters (awards in 1986 and 2003).  His music is available from Suspicious Motives Music, G. Schirmer, McGinnis & Marx (New York) and Edition Bim (Switzerland) and on CDs from New World Records, ICMC, Intersound Net Records, SEAMUS, and RRRecords.  Additional information may be found at www.ericchasalow.com and  www.brandeis.edu/departments/music.

A new CD of chamber, electronic, and orchestral music, Left to His Own Devices, was released by New World Records in February 2003.

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BIOGRAPHY OF ARTHUR KREIGER, composer

Arthur Kreiger, composer, holds degrees from the University of Connecticut and from Columbia University. His catalog contains pieces for orchestra, chorus, mixed chamer ensembles, solo performers and the electronic medium. Kreiger's honors include the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award. He is the recipient of a 1999 Koussevitzky Foundation Commission. His Music appears on Neuma, Odyssey, Spectrum, Finnadar, CRI and New World Records.