David Liptak: Dove Songs

David Liptak

David Liptak’s music has been described as “luminous and arresting,” “richly atmospheric,” and having “transparent textures, incisive rhythms, shimmering lightness.” His compositions have been performed throughout the United States and abroad by the San Francisco Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Group for Contemporary Music, EARPLAY, the Ying, Cassatt, and JACK String Quartets, the Dinosaur Annex Ensemble, the New York New Music Ensemble, the 20th-Century Consort, baritone William Sharp, soprano Tony Arnold, and by many other soloists and ensembles. In 1995 David Liptak was awarded the Elise L. Stoeger Prize, given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in recognition of distinguished achievement in the field of chamber music composition. He has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, both in 2002, and he is the 2006 recipient of the Lillian Fairchild Award from the University of Rochester. Commissions for new music have included those supported by the Fromm Foundation, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the California Music Center, and the Hanson Institute for American Music. Recordings of David Liptak’s music can be found on Bridge, Innova, Albany, Centaur, and other recording labels. He is President of the American Composers Alliance, and his music is published by several publishers, including Keiser Classical, Alfred Music - Donald Hunsberger Wind Ensemble Library, and American Composers Edition. Much of his music written very recently has explored the poetry and magical quality of stars and starlight, imagined and real. A dedicated teacher of composition students for the past three decades, David Liptak is Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music, where he has taught since 1986.

Tony Arnold

Celebrated as a “luminary in the world of chamber music and art song” (Huffington Post), Tony Arnold is internationally acclaimed as a leading proponent of contemporary music in concert and recording as a “convincing, mesmerizing soprano” (Los Angeles Times) who “has a broader gift for conveying the poetry and nuance behind outwardly daunting contemporary scores” (Boston Globe). Her unique blend of vocal virtuosity and communicative warmth, combined with wide-ranging skills in education and leadership were recognized with the 2015 Brandeis Creative Arts Award, given in appreciation of “excellence in the arts and the lives and works of distinguished, active American artists.” Arnold’s extensive chamber music repertory includes major works written for her voice by Georges Aperghis, George Crumb, Brett Dean, Jason Eckardt, Gabriela Lena Frank, Josh Levine, George Lewis, Philippe Manoury, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Christopher Theofanidis, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, John Zorn, and numerous others. She is a member of the intrepid International Contemporary Ensemble and enjoys regular guest appearances with leading ensembles, presenters, and festivals worldwide.

With more than 30 discs to her credit, Arnold has recorded a broad segment of the modern vocal repertory with esteemed chamber music colleagues. Her recording of George Crumb’s iconic Ancient Voices of Children (Bridge) received a 2006 Grammy nomination. She is a first prize laureate of both the Gaudeamus International and the Louise D. McMahon competitions. A graduate of Oberlin College and Northwestern University, Arnold was twice a fellow of the Aspen Music Festival as both a conduc- tor and singer. She currently is on the faculties of the Peabody Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Center.

Alison d'Amato

Pianist Alison d'Amato is passionately engaged as performer and teacher in the full spectrum of collaborative music genres, particularly skilled in song and text-based projects. She is Artistic Co-Director of Florestan Recital Project, Assistant Professor of Vocal Coaching at Eastman School of Music, and Lecturer in Voice at University at Buffalo. In all these activities, Alison is dedicated to energizing the relationships and communication in music and bringing students’ love for music to the forefront of their work. Alison pursues interdisciplinary arts and new approaches to the performer-audience relationship. She is Program Director of Art Song Lab (www.artsonglab.com), an intensive that presents new songs in collaboration with composers, poets, and performers. Her projects include one with Florestan and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts on a Leonard Bernstein program in Florestan’s series “Composers in Words and Song,” audio-biographical programs with songs and read correspondence from the composer’s life. In 2017, she joined the faculty of ArtsBridge in their flagship Artsong summer intensive. Recent recording projects include The Complete Songs of Virgil Thomson (New World Records) and Music for Violin and Piano by Joseph Achron with violinist Michael Ludwig (Naxos).

Renée Jolles

The violinist Renée Jolles enjoys an eclectic career as soloist, chamber artist, and pedagogue. She has premiered hundreds of works, including the American premiere of Schnittke’s Violin Concerto No. 2. Jolles is a member of the Jolles Duo, Continuum, Intimate Voices, the Bedford Chamber Players (with Baroque harpsichordist Anthony Newman), the New York Chamber Ensemble, and is a Concertmaster of the Grammy Award-winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Honored to be a featured soloist in three world premieres as part of the Orpheus “New Brandenburg” commissions, she can be heard as soloist on the WQXR website in live performances from Carnegie Hall performing the music of Paul Moravec, Melinda Wagner, and Peter Maxwell Davies. Committed to recording new music, she can be heard as soloist and chamber artist on the Cambria, CRI, North/South Recordings, Albany, and New World record labels. A dedicated teacher, Jolles is a Professor of Violin at the Eastman School of Music, in addition to teaching each summer at Bowdoin International Music Festival and Aria Summer Music Academy. She received her bachelor and master degrees from The Juilliard School, where, upon graduation, she was presented with the school’s highest award, the William Schuman Prize. Her teachers have included Lewis Kaplan, Felix Galimir, Jacob Lateiner, and members of the Juilliard, Tokyo, and American Quartets.

Margaret Kampmeier

Pianist Margaret Kampmeier, Artistic Director and Chair of MSM’s Contemporary Performance Program, enjoys a varied career as soloist, collaborative artist, and educator. Since receiving her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at SUNY Stony Brook, she has performed in hundreds of concerts, premiered numerous works, and recorded extensively. “Envy any composer who secures Kampmeier’s services. Here is an artist with astounding technique, dramatic intensity and clarity of purpose,” wrote Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle. Ms. Kampmeier is a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New Millennium Ensemble and performs regularly with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. She has appeared with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Chamber Ensemble, New York Philharmonic Ensembles, Kronos Quartet, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Cassatt Quartet, Sherman Chamber Ensemble, Saratoga Chamber Players, Richardson Chamber Players, Peter Schickele, Sequitur, Speculum Musicae and New York New Music Ensemble. In addition to her work at MSM, Ms. Kampmeier teaches piano at Princeton University. She joined the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music in the fall of 2012.

Dieter Hennings Yeomans

The musical endeavors of Dieter Hennings Yeomans span from new music on guitar to early music for lute, baroque guitar, and theorbo, and he can be heard on the Nonesuch, Bridge, Parma, Nre Branch, and Innova recording labels. He has been a soloist with Canada’s New Music Concerts Ensemble, Tito Sccipa Orchestra of Lecce, Italy, Eastman BroadBand Ensemble, Eastman School Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Universidad de Guanajuato, Orquesta Filarmónica de Sonora, the University of Arizona Philharmonia, the Orquesta Filarmonica de Monterrey, among many other ensembles. Dieter Hennings is an active proponent of new music, particularly that of Latin America, having worked with composers Mario Davidovsky, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Juan Trigos and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. He has premiered works by Jacob Bancks, Wes Matthews, John Aylward, Beth Wiemann, Hebert Vazquez, Luca Cori, Juan Trigos, Scott Worthington, and many other composers. His professional grants to commission and premiere contemporary works for guitar have included those from the Howard Hanson Institute for American Music, the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (México), and the Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes (Sonora, México). Among his performances have been concerts with pop-singer Natalie Merchant and baroque violinist Monica Huggett as well as appearances at the Mexican Embassy in Rome, Festival SpazioMusica of Cagliari, Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia, Mexico, the University of Chicago, Festival Internacional de Chihuahua, New York’s Joyce Theater, Juilliard’s Paul Hall, and the New England Conservatory of Music. Dieter Hennings is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Kentucky where he curates the International Guitar Series, which has brought to Lexington some of the finest guitarists in the world.

Steven Doane

Internationally known soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, recording artist, and pedagogue Steven Doane appears at festivals and on concert series throughout the United States and overseas. Doane received his BM from Oberlin Conservatory and his MM from SUNY Stony Brook. He received a Watson Foundation Grant for overseas study in 1975, and had further studies with Richard Kapuscinski, Bernard Greenhouse, Jane Cowan, and Janos Starker. Steven Doane and pianist Barry Snyder have made a series of recordings for the Bridge label. The duo’s recording of the complete music of Gabriel Fauré for cello and piano was awarded the Diapason D’or in France, and it has been broadcast throughout the United States and Canada, over the BBC in England, and throughout Europe. The second recording in the series, of works by Benjamin Britten and Frank Bridge, was also released to critical acclaim. Professor of Cello at the Eastman School of Music, Steven Doane received Eastman’s Eisenhart Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1993. As a member of the New Arts Trio, Doane was awarded the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1980. He made his Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center debuts in Don Quixote with David Zinman and the Rochester Philharmonic in 1983. His Tully Hall recital debut occurred in 1990 and has been followed by numerous recital appearances, including in London’s Wigmore Hall, which elicited the following remarks in The Strad: "The quality of his playing continually aspired toward genuine greatness. He treads the tightrope between technical rigor and total expressiveness, never sacrificing one for the other." In addition to his appointment at Eastman, Steven Doane currently holds the title of Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he has done several residencies.

Barry Snyder

Barry Snyder is an internationally acclaimed pianist and teacher, whose entry onto the international stage came after winning three major prizes at the 1966 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition: Silver Medal, Pan American Union Award, and the Chamber Music Prize. Since then, Snyder has toured the world performing concerti, presenting solo collaborative recitals, and leading master classes. Snyder has performed with conductors such as Robert Shaw, Leopold Stokowski, David Zinman, Sixten Ehrling and Arthur Fiedler. He has appeared with such orchestras as the Detroit Symphony, Houston Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Singapore Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Krakow Radio Symphony, Brno Radio Symphony, Japan Philharmonic, Toronto Chamber Orchestra, and the Aspen Summer Festival Orchestra. A well-known collaborator, Snyder has appeared with artists such as Hermann Prey, Jan DeGaetani, Zvi Zeitlin, Ani Kavafian, Sylvia Rosenberg, Bonita Boyd, Steven Doane, and the Chilingirian and Cleveland Quartets. Many of these collaborations can be heard in Snyder’s substantial discography of over fifty-four recordings. Snyder is committed to performing 20th and 21st century repertoire, and he has given world premieres of works by such composers as Sydney Hodkinson, Toshio Hosakawa and Augusta Read Thomas. Many compositions, such as those by Carter Pann and Verne Reynolds, have been written specifically for him. Since 1970, Snyder was Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York and has given masterclasses in the United States, Europe, and Asia. As of 2018, Snyder became Professor Emeritus at Eastman and accepted an Adjunct Professor position at New York University.