Wiki Category: Women Composers

Sleeman, Anita

1930 2011 CAN

Quintet for Brass COMP
Fanfares, cannons and fugues COMP

Silverman, Faye-Ellen

2 October 1947, New York, NY
American composer and educator

Faye-Ellen Silverman Official Website

Works for Brass Ensemble
  • Dialogue (1976) for horn and tuba
  • Kalends (1982) for brass quintet
  • Quantum Quintet (1985) for brass quintet
  • Trysts (1982) for 2 trumpets
  • At the Colour Café (1997) for brass ensemble
  • Dialogue Continued (2000) for horn, trombone and tuba
  • From Sorrow (2001) for trumpet, horn and bass trombone
  • Triple Threat (2001) for 3 trumpets
Biography

Faye-Ellen Silverman began her music studies before the age of four at the Dalcroze School of Music in New York City. She first achieved national recognition by winning the Parents League Competition, judged by Leopold Stokowski, at the age of 13. She played her winning composition in Carnegie Hall (main hall) – her professional piano debut – and also appeared on the Sonny Fox Wonderama TV program. She holds a BA from Barnard, cum laude and honors in music, and an AM from Harvard and a DMA from Columbia, both in music composition. She spent her junior year of college at Mannes College. Her teachers have included Otto Luening, William Sydeman, Leon Kirchner, Lukas Foss, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and Jack Beeson. Seesaw Music, a division of Subito Music, publishes about 100 of her compositions. She became a published composer at age 24 and an ASCAP member at age 25. Stories for Our Time is recorded on MSR Classics; Zigzags is available on two recordings, one on Crystal Records (Velvet Brown) and the other on a CD available from record outlets (Joanna Ross Hersey); Taming the Furies is available on Capstone, and Passing Fancies, Restless Winds, and Speaking Alone are on New World Recordings. Two entire CDs of her chamber works are on Albany Records. The first, Manhattan Stories, has Translations, Dialogue, Dialogue Continued; Taming the Furies (second recording of this work), Love Songs, and Left Behind. The second CD, Transatlantic Tales, a co-production with the German-Danish guitarist Volkmar Zimmermann, contains Processional, 3 Guitars, In Shadow, Wilde’s World, Danish Delights, and Pregnant Pauses. Oboe-sthenics, her first recording, was released on Finnadar-Atlantic. The LP is out of print, but can still be found.

Silverman’s awards include the selection of her Oboe-sthenics to represent the United States at the International Rostrum of Composers/UNESCO, resulting in international radio broadcasts; winning the Indiana State [Orchestral] Composition Contest, resulting in a performance by the Indianapolis Symphony; a Governor’s Citation; and having September 30, 1982 named Faye-Ellen Silverman Day in Baltimore by Mayor Donald Schaeffer. Additionally, she has been the recipient of the National League of American Pen Women’s biennial music award, yearly Standard Awards from ASCAP (now known as ASCAPlus) from 1983-2015, several Meet the Composer grants, and an American Music Center grant. She has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Le Moulin å Nef (France), a resident scholar at the Villa Serbelloni of the Rockefeller Foundation (Italy), a resident artist at the Fundación Valparaíso (Spain – where she received Ayuntamiento de Mojacar Artist-in-Residence Grant), a Composers’ Conference Fellow, a Yaddo Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. She is currently a Founding Board Member of the International Women’s Brass Conference (for which she has served as composer-in-residence), a Board member of New York Women Composers (where she is Secretary of the Board), and a founding member of Music Under Construction, a composers’ collective. (ABI).

The Baltimore Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Greater Bridgeport Symphony, the New Orleans Philharmonic, the International Experimental Music Festival in Bourges, ISCM – Korea section, Nieuwe Oogst (Belgium), Grupo Musica Hoje (Brazil), the Corona Guitar Quartet (Denmark), Jauna Muzika (Lithuania), the Monday Evening Concert series (L.A.), Voices of Change (Dallas) and the Aspen Music Festival have performed Dr. Silverman’s works. She has received commissions from Julie Landsman (horn), Nicole Abassi (trombone), the IWBC for the IWBC Conference 2014 for SymbiosisDuo,the Phoenix Concerts, Edinboro University Chamber Players, Seraphim, Philip A. De Simone (in memory of Linda J. Warren), Larry Madison, Thomas Matta, the International Women’s Brass Conference, the Monarch Brass Quintet, the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse, the Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates, the Con Spirito woodwind quintet, the Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestra, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Chamber Music Society of Baltimore, and a joint commission from the American Brass Quintet, the Catskill Brass Quintet, the Mt. Vernon Brass Players, and the Southern Brass quintet (under the National Endowment for the Arts Consortium Commissioning Program). She has also created pieces at the request of flutist Nina Assimakopoulos (Laurels Project), Sergio Puccini (Argentina), and the Corona Guitar Quartet of Denmark, and Volkmar Zimmermann (Denmark), among others.

She is currently on the faculties of Juilliard and New York University and teaches privately. Prior teaching experience includes New York University (School of Professional Studies), the Mannes School of Music (College of Performing Arts, The New School), Eugene Lang College (The New School), the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College, several branches of the City University of New York and Columbia University.

Silverman has lectured in Europe and throughout the United States, often as a visiting composer. European engagements have included lectures at Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw sponsored by the Maestro Foundation (April 2014), and a lecture to members of the Lithuanian Composers Union and composition students from the Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy followed by pre-concert talks and a radio interview (May 2009), sponsored by the U.S. State Department, and guest composer at Donne in Musica (4th International festival) held in Fiuggi, Italy (September 1999). In the United Staes, she has been a visiting composer at the Aspen Music Festival, Capital University, Edinboro University Indiana State University, the International Women’s Brass Conference, the Philadelphia Arts Alliance, Southern Methodist University, SUCO at Oneonta (1st Festival of Women Composers), Tidewater Festival, University of North Texas, University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, to cite a few examples.

Silverman is also the author of several articles, record reviews for The Baltimore Sun, and the 20th century section of the Schirmer History of Music. An accomplished pianist as well, former student of Irma Wolpe and Russell Sherman, she has recorded for Radio Cologne (WDR), and has performed at the International Festival of Experimental Music in Bourges, the Library of Congress, and as soloist with the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

– from the composer’s website

Shrude, Marilyn

6 July 1946, Chicago IL
American composer, pianist, and educator

Works for brass ensemble
  • Odyssey - Flights of the Imagination (1984) for brass quintet
  • The Face of Water (2014) for brass ensemble
Biography

The music of composer Marilyn Shrude is characterized by its warmth and lyricism, rich timbre, multi-layered constructions, and complex blend of tonality and atonality. The result is a bright, shimmering and delicately wrought sound world that is at once both powerful and fragile. Her concentration on color and the natural resonance of spaces, as well as her strong background in Pre-Vatican II liturgical music, give the music its linear, spiritual, and quasi-improvisational qualities.

Shrude received degrees from Alverno College and Northwestern University, where she studied with Alan Stout and M. William Karlins. Among her more prestigious honors are those from the Guggenheim Foundation (2011 Fellow), American Academy of Arts and Letters, Rockefeller Foundation, Chamber Music America/ASCAP, Meet the Composer, Sorel Foundation (Medallion Winner for Choral Music 2011), and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was the first woman to receive the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for Orchestral Music (1984) and the Cleveland Arts Prize for Music (1998). Her work for saxophone and piano, Renewing the Myth, was the required piece for the 150 participants of the 3rd International Adolphe Sax Concours in Belgium (2002).

Active as a composer, pianist, teacher, and contemporary music advocate, Shrude has consistently promoted American music through her many years as founder and director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music (1987-99) and as chair of the Department of Musicology/Composition/Theory at Bowling Green State University (1998-2011). She joined the faculty of BGSU in 1977, has served as Visiting Professor of Music at Indiana University, Oberlin Conservatory and Heidelberg College, and was a faculty member and chair of the Composition and Theory Department at the Interlochen Arts Camp (1990-97). She has received four Dean’s Awards for Service and for the Promotion of Contemporary Music on the Campus of BGSU (1994, 1999, 2005, 2011) and a 2008 BGSU Chair/Director Leadership Award. In 2001 she was named a Distinguished Artist Professor of Music. Together with saxophonist, John Sampen, she has premiered, recorded and presented hundreds of works by living composers both in the United States and abroad.

Shrude’s compositions have been recorded for New World, Albany, Azica, MMC, Capstone, Orion, Centaur, Neuma, Access, and Ohio Brassworks, and are published by C. F. Peters, Editions Henry Lemoine (Paris), American Composers Alliance, Neue Musik Verlag Berlin, Southern Music, and Thomas House. She has had the honor to work with the impressive musicians of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Fromm Music Series, St. Louis Orchestra Chamber Series, Brave New Works, Contemporary Directions Ensemble, Icicle Creek Trio, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Ravenna Festival, Music Today, Spectrum Trio, Lost Dog Ensemble, Ryoanji Duo, Studio for New Music of the Moscow Conservatory, Flexible Music, CORE Ensemble, Duo Montagnard, Azmari String Quartet, Chicago Saxophone Quartet, New Music Chicago, Quatuor Apollinaire, Tower Brass, Masterworks Choral and Voices of Ascension. Her works for orchestra, wind symphony and choir have led to collaborations with conductors such as Emily Freeman Brown, Yuval Zaliouk, Stefan Sanderling, Andrew Massey, John Paynter, Robert Spano, Henry Charles Smith, Christophe Changnard, Kate Tamarkin, Steven Smith, Ed London, Bruce Moss, Mark Kelly, Steven Gage, Octavio Mas-Arocas, Grzegorz Nowak, Janna Himes, Robert Fitzpatrick, Vladimir Valek and Dennis Keene. Works featuring soloists have lead to rich opportunities with distinguished leaders in the field: saxophonists John Sampen, Frederick Hemke, Donald Sinta, Jean-Marie Londeix, Jean-Michel Goury (to mention but a few); sopranos Julia Bentley, Ekaterina Kicheegina, Ann Corrigan, Dawn Padula; violinists Maria Sampen, Stephen Miahky, Timothy Christie, Miranda Cuckson, Movses Pogossian, Jennifer Caine, Ioana Galu; flutists Judith Bentley, Nina Assimakopoulos; oboist Jacqueline Leclair; tubists Velvet Brown, Ben Pierce, Charles Guy; organists Karel Paukert, Emma Lou Diemer; pianists Robert Satterlee, Winston Choi, Hugh Hinton, Anne-Marie McDermott, Joan Tower; cellists Katri Ervamaa, Norbert Lewandowski, Andrea Yun, Andrew Mark; and percussionist Michael Parola. Guest appearances as a pianist and composer include tours to Russia, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Canada, South America, and Armenia, as well as numerous performances in the United States.

References

Marilyn Shrude Official Website

Schramm, Betsy

USA

Invitation to the Dance 1989 COMP
Illusions of the Masque 1991 8