Women Composers – Page 9

Stella Sung is a Professor of Music on the music faculty at the University of Central Florida, and has also served on the Theory/Composition faculty of the Interlochen Arts Camp, Interlochen, MI. She holds the Bachelor of Music degree (piano performance) from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), the Master of Fine Arts degree ( composition) from the University of Florida, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree (piano performance) from the University of Texas at Austin. She has been recognized as a “Distinguished Alumna” and an “Alumna of Outstanding Achievement” of the University of Florida (Gainesville, FL).

Dr. Sung has been recognized as an American composer of national and international stature. Dr. Sung has received recognition and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, “Meet the Composer”, the American Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers (ASCAP), the American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL), the Southern Arts Federation, the German Ministry of Culture, the MacDowell Colony, the National Federation of Music Clubs, the National Flute Association, the International Clarinet Association, the Division of Cultural Affairs for the State of Florida, the Florida State Music Teachers Association, the Arts Services Council of Orlando, Florida, and various other music organizations. Her works are performed regularly throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Premieres have included performances at Carnegie Hall (New York, NY), the Sydney Opera House (Sydney, Australia),the Schauspielhaus (Berlin, Germany), the Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C), Merkin Hall (New York, NY), Washington Square Church (New York, NY), the Nathan H. Wilson Center for the Performing Arts (Jacksonville, FL), The Jacoby Concert Hall (Jacksonville, FL) and performances over radio stations WNYC-New York, WGBH-Boston, WKUT-Austin, TX., the Bayerisch Rundfunk (Bavarian Radio) in Munich, Germany, and the Swedish National Radio. Commissions have included works for world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the German Ministry of Culture (Rhineland-Pfalz), The New Renaissance Chamber Artists (New York, NY), the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra (Orlando, FL), the Dayton Symphony Orchestra (Dayton, OH), Dance Alive! (State touring ballet company of Florida), the Lyric Arts Trio (Kansas City, KA), saxophonist Claude Delangle (Conservatoire de Paris), PRISM Saxophone Quartet (NY, NY), the Rollins College (Winter Park, FL), the 2000 Alabama All-State Festival Orchestra (Tuscaloosa, AL), the Etowah Youth Orchestra (Gadsden, AL), the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art, and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra (Jacksonville, FL). Dr. Sung was recently commissioned by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra (Orlando, FL) for their 2002-2003 10th Anniversary season, and completed a highly successful multi-media and orchestral work titled Constellations.

from the composer’s website

References

Stella Sung Official Website

Williams, Amy

1969, Buffalo NY
American composer, pianist, and educator

JB Montage (2003) for brass ensemble

Biography

Amy Williams started playing the piano at the age of four and took up the flute a few years later (her first teacher was the legendary Robert Dick, so she could soon play “Chopsticks” in multiphonics…). She grew up in the heyday of the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, hearing all the latest contemporary music and meeting composers who would later become influential to her: John Cage, Morton Feldman, Lukas Foss, Elliott Carter and many others. She went to Bennington College and, while there, decided to devote her life to performing and composing contemporary music. After a fellowship year in Denmark, she returned to Buffalo to complete her Master’s degree in piano performance at the University at Buffalo with pianist-composer Yvar Mikhashoff and her Ph.D. in composition, working primarily with David Felder. She returned to Bennington in 1998 as a member of the music faculty and she then moved on to a faculty position at Northwestern University in 2000. Since 2005, she has been teaching composition and theory at the University of Pittsburgh, where she is an Associate Professor. She was a 2017-2018 Fulbright Scholar at the University College Cork, Ireland.

Amy’s compositions have been presented at renowned contemporary music venues in the United States, Asia, Australia, and Europe, including Ars Musica (Belgium), Gaudeamus Music Week (Netherlands), Dresden New Music Days (Germany), Festival Aspekte (Austria), Festival Musica Nova (Brazil), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Thailand International Composition Festival, Music Gallery (Canada), LA County Museum of Art, Piano Spheres (Los Angeles), Lincoln Center, Roulette, Bargemusic (NYC) and Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. Her works have been performed by leading soloists and ensembles, including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Surplus, Dal Niente, Wet Ink, Talujon, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), H2 Saxophone Quartet, Bent Frequency, pianist Ursula Oppens and bassist Robert Black. Amy’s pieces appear on the Parma, VDM (Italy), Centaur, Blue Griffin, New Focus and New Ariel labels, in addition to two portrait CDs of solo and chamber works on Albany Records: “Crossings: Music for Piano and Strings” (2013) and “Cineshape and Duos” (2017).

Amy formed the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo with Helena Bugallo, while both were graduate students at the University at Buffalo. The Duo has been featured at important contemporary music festivals and series throughout Europe and the Americas, including the Ojai Festival, CAL Performances (California), Miller Theatre (New York), Musica Contemporanea Ciclos de Conciertos (Buenos Aires), Festival Attacca (Stuttgart), Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City), Warsaw Autumn Festival, Cologne Triennale, and Wittener Täge für Neue Kammermusik. The Duo’s debut CD of Conlon Nancarrow’s complete music for solo piano and piano duet (Wergo, 2004) garnered much critical acclaim. Subsequent Duo CDs on Wergo include: Stravinsky transcriptions (2007), Morton Feldman/Edgard Varèse (2009), György Kurtág (2015) and a second volume of Stravinsky transcriptions (2018).

Amy has received fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (the 2016 Goddard Lieberson Fellowship), American-Scandinavian Foundation, Howard Foundation and John S. Guggenheim Foundation. She received a Fromm Music Foundation Commission to write “Richter Textures” for the JACK Quartet. An avid proponent of contemporary music, she served as Assistant Director of June In Buffalo, Director of New Music Northwestern, and is currently on the artistic boards of the Pittsburgh-based concert series, Music on the Edge, and the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music. She has been the Artistic Director of the New Music On The Point festival in Vermont since 2015.

References

Amy Williams Official Website

Zaimont, Judith Lang

8 November 1945, Memphis, TN
American composer and pianist

Works for Brass Ensemble

Winter Music Chanty (1985) for brass quintet

Biography

The music of Judith Lang Zaimont is internationally acclaimed for its immediacy, dynamism and emotion and is performed world-wide. Critics repeatedly term it “enjoyable, consistently inventive and accomplished” (Music Web International), citing its “richly eloquent vocabulary” (Records International), and note overall that “Zaimont is a serious artist, formidably endowed, and capable of a broad audience appeal… one of the most consistently rewarding composers of her generation” (Fanfare).

Her style is distinguished by its spirit of rhapsody featuring sudden shifts in texture, instrumental coloring, and atmosphere. Her 120 works include many prize-winning pieces covering every genre: Four symphonies, chamber opera, music for wind ensemble, for chorus and solo voice, and works for individual instruments plus a wide variety of chamber music.

Zaimont’s music is widely performed throughout the U.S. and Europe: Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore and Mississippi symphonies, Berlin and Czech Radio symphonies, Slovak National Philharmonic and the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra. Two dozen CDs are currently available on Naxos, MSR Classics, Harmonia Mundi, Parma/Navona, Koch International Classics, Arkiv Music, Albany, Jeanné, Inc., and Leonarda. Recent all-Zaimont recordings include a 2010 CD of orchestra music (Kirk Trevor: Slovak National Philharmonic – Naxos. three world premieres), 2011 chamber music CD (Eternal Evolution. The Harlem Quartet and Awadagin Pratt – Navona. three world premieres ); 2012 piano solo CD (Christopher Atzinger – Naxos); and the just-released 2012 2-CD album surveying her solo piano music (Elizabeth Moak: MSR Classics – Fifteen works, including three world premieres).

Judith Zaimont is actively commissioned, and her recent works include Attars for piano solo commissioned as the required work for the 2017 American Pianists Association (APA) competition (2016), Mondale Cycle for dramatic tenor and chamber orchestra (2015) commissioned by the Three Bridges Festival to honor Vice President Walter Mondale, the second string quartet A Strange Magic (2016), PURE, COOL (Water) – Symphony No. 4 (2013), Violin Sonata-Rhapsody (2012), JoyDance in Spring (2012) commissioned by Camerata Bern to honor its 50th anniversary, Concerto for Piano and Wind Orchestra ‘Solar Traveller’ ( 2009-2010), and String Quartet ‘The Figure’ (2007). She is the subject of 20 doctoral dissertations, and a Featured Composer at U.S. Festivals and Residencies. Music by Judith Zaimont appears on repertoire lists for major international performance competitions in voice, conducting and piano (Cliburn ’01, San Antonio, ’03, Kapell ’12, APA 2017), and two of her compositions are on Century Lists: Doubles (oboe and piano; Chamber Music America), and Sonata (Piano & Keyboard magazine).

Her numerous prizes and honors include the 2015 The American Prize for Chamber Music Composition, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, awards from both National Endowments (NEA: composition / NEH: scholarship), a 2005 Bush Foundation Fellowship and earlier American Pen Women Fellowship, IAWM, CBDNA, Maryland, and New York State arts fellowships, the Andrew G. Mellon Foundation (2007), and an Aaron Copland Award (2003). There are a number of significant prizes especially for her orchestral music: First Prize – Gold Medal – Gottschalk Centenary International Composition Competition (1972); First Prize – contest to honor the Statue of Liberty Centennial (1986); and First Prize – International McCollin Competition for Composers (1995; Symphony No. 1). Zaimont’s music for wind ensemble, commissioned over the past ten years, has been particularly well –received. These works include the Concerto ‘Solar Traveller’, Israeli Rhapsody, and Symphony for Wind Orchestra in Three Scenes. Additional honors include grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts (2009, 2012), and Meet the Composer and ASCAP awards over a 30-year period.

A notable pianist from childhood on, Zaimont is also distinguished educator with professor appointments over 36 years at US universities, including Peabody Conservatory, CUNY, and the University of Minnesota. She is equally skilled as writer, creating and editing the Greenwood book series The Musical Woman: An International Perspective; her American Music Teacher magazine article “Embracing New Music” was named 2009 Article of the Year by MTNA.

Resources

Judith Lang Zaimont Official Website

Young, Nina C.

1984

The Glow that Illuminates, The Glare that Obscures 2019 20