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Composers New to ECS PublishingECS Publishing recognizes that new composers are its lifeblood. Whether just starting out or established artists transferring their works, these new composers add depth and quality to the ECS catalog. Most of these new works are scheduled for New Issue, but, as they are currently available, we would like to introduce you to these new ECS composers and their exciting compositions. |
GILDA LYONSGilda Lyons is active both as composer and vocalist. Her recent work, Bone Needles, for two voices and dancer, (commissioned by Amy Pivar Dances), was premiered at Dance New Amsterdam, NYC, in April 2006. Her one-act opera for three voices and chamber ensemble, The Walled-Up Wife, is due to be recorded in spring of 2007. She is the Artistic Director of The Phoenix Concerts series of St. Matthew & St. Timothy, NYC, and a featured composer in American Opera Projects’ 2005-06 Composers and the Voice Series. Her Three Robes, for voice and piano, was presented at the 2005 New Music and Art Festival at Bowling Green State University. Ms. Lyons made her professional debut as composer and vocalist with the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra in 1997, performing the world premiere of her orchestral song cycle Feis. She received her Ph.D. in Music Composition from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and Bard College. Ms. Lyons has studied composition with Anne LeBaron, Eric Moe, Daria Semegen, Joan Tower and Roger Zahab; conducting with Roger Zahab; and voice with Arthur Burrows, Barry Busse and Elaine Valby. ECS Compositions A Small Handful A Small Handful: Throughout her troubled existence, Anne Sexton remained committed to turning the detritus of her life into poetry. Maxine Kumin, a close friend and trusted colleague of Sexton’s, wrote “I am convinced that poetry kept Anne alive for the eighteen years of her creative endeavors.” The three poems set for unaccompanied voice in A Small Handful span the length of these creative endeavors: from “Music Swims Back To Me” found in her first publication To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960); to Seven Times from the cycle “The Death Baby” found in her 1974 publication The Death Notebooks; and, finally, to “Where It Was At Back Then” from 45 Mercy Street (1976), Sexton’s first posthumous publication.
Three Robes: As I read the work of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, I feel that I am being allowed to witness the very private birth of some new mythology. Her poems have the weight of a world of Irish folklore, myth and tradition behind them, but they exist in this modern time. What is born is strange, wonderful and powerful. As a composer, I am moved to consider the balance that I strike between modernity and tradition: While my study of music has been shaped by a rich world of contemporary musical language, my earliest associations with music come from singing traditional Irish and Nicaraguan folk songs in my home with my mother and father. There is a place between both spaces that I look for now and that I sought out in writing Three Robes. |
TILL MACIVOR MEYN Till MacIvor Meyn earned his Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of California at San Diego, a Master of Music in Composition from Indiana University, and the Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition from the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. He studied composition with Frank Ticheli, Roger Reynolds, Rand Steiger, Frederick Fox, and Don Freund, among others. Dr. Meyn has taught at the University of Southern California, Pepperdine University, Saddleback College, and Irvine Valley College. Since 2001, he has held the position of Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Theory at Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music, where he is a member of the Graduate Faculty. Dr. Meyn is an active composer, and a member of the Cleveland Composer’s Guild. His compositions have been widely performed; recent highlights include performances at the 2006 SCI/CMS National Conventions in San Antonio, at the 2006 National Flute Convention in Pittsburgh, at the World Saxophone Congress in Slovenia, E.U., at the 2005 National Flute Association Convention in San Diego, at Cleveland State University (September 2005), at the Manhattan School of Music (January 2005), at the 2004 Intercollegiate Men’s Choruses National Seminar at Harvard, at the 2004 Midwest Regional ACDA Convention in Indianapolis, at the 2002 National Flute Association Convention in Washington, D.C., and at the 2002 MENC National Convention in Nashville. His fanfare for symphonic winds, Anthem, was commissioned as Youngstown State University’s theme music, and is used frequently in promotional pieces aired on both radio and television. Dr. Meyn is published by Alry Publications and C. Alan Publications, and he has upcoming releases from ECS Publishing. Dr. Meyn is also a baritone singer, and has performed with numerous choral ensembles, notably the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the University of Southern California Chamber Singers, and the Indiana University Pro Arte Early Music Ensemble. The City in the Sea The City in the Sea was composed in 2003 for Ethan Sperry and the Miami
University Men's Glee Club. The text is taken from a poem of the same
name by Edgar Allan Poe, and depicts a watery world beyond death of
spires, tombs, and ghosts. The music employs powerful tonal harmonic
and melodic ideas, and moves abruptly from one tonal center to another,
reflecting the quickly moving text. The piece is through composed, but
features the return of melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic ideas in a
natural unfolding of the ghostly tale. |
Vadim ProkhorovVadim Prokhorov is an author and composer as well as a concert pianist and choral conductor. His book Russian Folk Songs: Musical Genres and History was published in 2001 by Scarecrow Press. Prokhorov’s choral compositions and arrangements of Russian vocal compositions and folk songs have been published by Oxford University Press, Hal Leonard, Musica Russica, and ECS Publishing. A graduate of the Gnesins State Music Institute, Moscow, Vadim Prokhorov comes from Russia, where, as a concert pianist, he was an active performer of both solo and chamber music. There, he held a faculty position at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute and also served as an assistant conductor at the Moscow Academic Stanislavsky Opera. He has given lectures on Russian music at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Wesleyan and Boston Universities, among others. ECS Compositions Gopak (Gopak) Gopak is an Ukrainian folk dance and song of a vigorous character. Musorgsky’s Gopak is a “song/dance out of desperation” – as this type of emotional realization is called in Russian literature and music. The outer sections are of a robust dance character, with the middle lyrical episodes characterized by a slow tempo, gentle melodic gestures and a lullaby-like accompaniment.
Traveling Song by Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) is perhaps a first ever railroad song. It was composed in 1840 as a tribute to the opening of Russia’s first railroad, which connected St. Petersburg with the royal summer residence in Tsarskoe Selo. The song offers a dazzling picture of movement generated by the time’s biggest miracle, the locomotive engine. This express tongue twister of a song starts with the refrain, which moves in a perpetual mobile mode. The verse is of a lyrical character, despite the fact that the tempo never waives, staying the same throughout the work. The song is included in the song cycle “A Farewell to St. Petersburg.”
The song Was It a Night Wind From On High is from the cycle “In Spring,” Op. 43. It is composed in a three-part form. The outer sections are of a narrative character. The piano accompaniment is descriptive and features soft, “breezing” arpeggios. The middle section is more dramatic.
A khorovod, a round-dance song, is a syncretic genre of Russian musical folklore, which unites music (song), movement (dance), and a game act. A khorovod can last from 10 minutes up to 4 hours, depending on the number of members. It is always a colorful, bright and striking spectacle, which provides enjoyment for both the participants and their audience.
Hey, Bunny is a children’s folk dance song. It can be performed as a game, in which the words are imitated by acting of the two teams, lined up facing each other. Another way to act out this song is to form a circle and choose a leader who plays a “bunny.” His, or her, goal is to get out of the circle by breaking it. |
David Evan Thomas is the recipient of a Citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Möller-A.G.O. Award in Choral Composition, and a McKnight Foundation fellowship. Born in Rochester NY in 1958, he received degrees from Northwestern, Eastman and the University of Minnesota, studying with Dominick Argento, Samuel Adler and Alan Stout. Thomas’s new ECS publications are the fruit of an American Composers Forum Faith Partners residency with The Cathedral of Saint Paul, Minnesota and Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis. While choral music is a significant part of his work, Thomas has also been recognized for orchestral, chamber, keyboard music and art song. From 1997-2005, he was composer-in-residence for The Schubert Club. He lives in Minneapolis. ECS Compositions An Echoing Song (2003) An exuberant setting of Rilke’s meditation on the soul’s relationship to God, asking: “Am I a falcon, a storm, or an echoing song?” Festive Prelude (2004) A Joyful Symphony (2004) This is my beloved Son (2003) While the sung music is essentially the same in both versions of this anthem for the Transfiguration, the organ version provides an imposing organ introduction to the music that follows. |