Shih-Hui CHEN (1962 Taiwan/TX)
EXTREME ALTITUDES (Composer-in-Residence)
Jin (metal) (pipa, vln, vla, cb, fl, ob, cl, bcl, trp, tbn, perc)
World Premiere of new version

As the recipient of a Koussevitzky Music Foundation Commission, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Academy in Rome Prize, the music of Shih-Hui Chen has received significant recognition in recent years. A performance of Twice Removed at Lincoln Center was described by the New York Times as "...ruminative and involving, drawing the listener in through a process of gradual thematic metamorphosis." String Quartet No. 3, premiered by the Arditti Quartet at the Tanglewood Music Festival, was praised by The Boston Globe as having "... a sureness of step and gentleness of spirit that are very winning." In 66 Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer finds a sensitive text setting which "... abounds in arching vocal lines, harmony that sits on the precipice of tonality, and richly hued atmospheres that depict the various seasons." This work has also been analyzed by German ethnomusicologist Barbara Mittler for the Asian Music Journal CHIME, who also has written an entry about Ms. Chen in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Shih-Hui Chen came to the United States in 1982 and received her master’s degree from Northern Illinois University and her doctoral degree from Boston University. There have been many performances of her works, including those by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, and Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. Also frequently appearing in programs abroad, her music has been featured in China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Germany, Singapore, Italy and Amsterdam. As a recipient of fellowships, Ms. Chen has been awarded grants from the Fromm Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Harvard University, and the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation.

Shih-Hui Chen currently serves on the faculty at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University where she teaches music composition. She has also been the Composer in Residence at Boston University's Tanglewood Institute(2000, 2001, 2004).

More information at www.trigonmusic.com/shihhuichen.html

Peter CHILD (1953 UK/MA)
EXTREME ALTITUDES (Composer-in-Residence)
Promenade (vln, vla, db, cl, trp, tbn, perc)
World Premiere/CrossSound Commission

"Why should anyone compose music? Why devote a lifetime of learning and endure any amount of hardship in order to acquire and practice that skill? Surely there are more useful pursuits, more practical vocations?" writes MIT composer Peter Child. "Composers feel an urgent necessity to make music in their bones. When they try to express it in words however, they feel the way children do when they try to jump outside their own shadows. It feels like you should be able to do it, you almost did it!, but of course you never succeed. [...] The irreducible essence of the experience of music is a wordless illumination of our humanity. This is what I believe draws composers irresistibly to their work. [...] The arts illuminate our humanity in ways that cannot be duplicated by other fields. It is for this reason that a curriculum of higher learning that aims to educate the complete human being cries out for the arts to be included. [...] Through their rigor and discipline the arts reveal for us an essential dimension of what it is to be human that is quite different from those dimensions revealed by the rigors and discipline of science and the humanities. [... Why do I compose?] I stand with [Carmen Bernos de Gasztold's poetic] "Little Pig," who says: "Yes, I grunt. Grunt, and snuffle. I grunt because I grunt and I snuffle because I cannot do anything else."

Peter Child is Professor of Music and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT, where he chaired the department of Music and Theater Arts from 1996 to 1999. He joined Reed College in 1973 through an exchange scholarship from Keele University in England and received his B.A. in music from Reed in 1975. After studying Karnatic music in Madras for a year through a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship (1975-76), he entered the graduate program at Brandeis University and earned his Ph.D. in musical composition in 1981. His composition teachers include William Albright, Bernard Barrell, Arthur Berger, Martin Boykan, Jacob Druckman (Tanglewood) and Seymour Shifrin.

Child has been awarded an American Symphony Orchestra League-Meet the Composer "Music Alive" residency with the Albany Symphony Orchestra for 2005-08; he is also composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic Orchestra for the same period. His compositions won the 2001 Music of Changes award, which culminates in a commission and a concert in Los Angeles devoted to his music. He was a recipient of a 2000 commission from the Harvard Musical Association and a 1998 commission from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University. In 1994 the Council for the Arts at MIT awarded Peter Child the Gyorgy Kepes Fellowship Prize. He has been honored by two Composition Fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation in 1986 and 1989, as well as fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and the Composers' Conference. The Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities awarded him four 'New Works' commissions in conjunction with the Boston Musica Viva, the New England Conservatory Contemporary Ensemble, the MIT Experimental Music Studio, and the Cantata Singers. His compositions have also been awarded prizes from Tanglewood (Margaret Grant Memorial Prize, 1978), East and West Artists (First Prize, 1979), WGBH Radio (Recording Prize, 1980), New England Conservatory ('New Works' Prize, 1983), and League-ISCM, Boston (New England Composers Prize, 1983). Recordings of some of Child's music have been recorded on New World, Albany, Innova, CRI, Neuma, Rivoalto and Centaur compact discs. In addition to his compositional work, Child has published papers concerning music by Shostakovich and Bartok in Music Analysis and College Music Symposium. He won the 2004 Levitan Award in the Humanities at MIT to support his work in musical analysis.

Peter Child has written music in many different genres, including music for orchestra, chorus, computer synthesis, voice, and a wide variety of chamber groups.

More information at web.mit.edu/child/www/

Thomas REINER (1959 Germany/Australia)
EXTREME ALTITUDES (Composer-in-Residence)
Sweet-Spots (doublebass clarinet, vln, vla, vcl, cb, fl, ob, cl, tbn, perc, pipa)
World Premiere/CrossSound Commission

When it comes to creating new music, Australian composer Thomas Reiner writes, one “cannot simply uphold modernist ideals of aesthetic unity and of continuous progress without a health dose of suspicion and a search for more realistic propositions.”

Born in 1959 in Bad Homburg, Germany, Reiner moved to Australia at the age of 20. Since then, he has studied composition with Keith Humble, Barry Conyngham and Peter Tahourdin in Australia, and with Wolfgang Hufschmidt and Hans Werner Henze in Germany.

Reiner is an award-winning composer with prizes in the International Witold Lutoslawski Composers' Competition, the ALEA III International Composition Competition at Boston University, and the International Boswil Composers' Competition. In Australia, he received the Dorian Le Gallienne Award for Composition and the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award. His prolific compositional output consists of solo pieces, chamber works, orchestral compositions, works for music theatre, vocal works, concept pieces, electroacoustic and electronic works. His music has been performed, broadcast and recorded in many countries and by some of the leading exponents of contemporary music. Most of his works are published with the Australian Music Centre.

In 1996 Reiner was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne for his research into the semiotic nature of musical time. The New York publisher Peter Lang published his book "Semiotics of Musical Time" in 2000. He has written the entries on techno music, DJ culture, and dance parties for the "Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia." In 2003, Move Records released "Hard Chamber," a compilation of his chamber music (MD 3280), which was launched at the Monash University Centre in Prato by the Italian trio Altrove 1.3. In 2004 he was invited to become a councillor with the Music Council of Australia and was subsequently elected for the Individual Member Position Computer Music and Multimedia. In 2005 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Australian Music Centre. He is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne where he coordinates music composition and where he has designed a PhD program in research-based composition. Thomas is the founder and artistic director of "re-sound" - a contemporary music group that has made a substantial contribution to new music over a period of 10 years.

Bun-Ching LAM(1954, Macao/NY)
EXTREME ALTITUDES (Composer-in-Residence)
The Child God (shadow puppet chamber opera: narrator, counter tenor, vcl, cb, dizi, xiao, xun, suona, bcl, perc, pipa, guzheng)

Praised as "alluringly exotic" (New York Times), "hauntingly attractive" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "powerfully descriptive" (Star-Ledger), Bun-Ching Lam's music defies cultural boundaries and confounds categorization. She combines her Chinese sensibility with contemporary Western compositional techniques to create a highly personal and mesmerizing musical voice.

Born in the Macao region of China, Bun-Ching Lam began studying piano at the age of seven and gave her first public solo recital at fifteen. In 1976, she received a B.A. degree in piano performance from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She then accepted a scholarship from the University of California at San Diego, where she studied composition with Bernard Rands, Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and earned a Ph.D. in 1981. In the same year, she was invited to join the music faculty of the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, where she taught until 1986.

A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, she also won the Rome Prize and was awarded first prizes at the Aspen Music Festival, the Northwest Composer's Symposium, and the highest honor at the Shanghai Music Competition, which was the first international composers' contest to take place in China. She has also been a recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, New York Foundation for the Arts, King County Arts Commission and Seattle Arts Commission. She was in residence at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center and was awarded a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council for a three-month study trip to Japan. she also received a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was a composer in residence at the America Dance Festival, and the Music Alive! Composer-in-Residence with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra for the 2000-2001 season.

Active also as a pianist and conductor, Lam was recently invited to conduct the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra/Macao Chamber Orchestra in a program of her works including "Saudades de Macau," commissioned by the Macao Cultural Institute at the 16th Macao International Music Festival. Among her other commissioned works are "Song of the Pipa" for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, "Sudden Thunder" for the American Composers Orchestra, "The Great River Flows East" for the Lincolon Center Out-of-Doors, "The Child God" for "Bang on a Can," and "Omi Hakkei" for Music From China as Part of the Millennium Commissioning program from Chamber Music America.

In 2002, Bun-Ching Lam had the privilege to be one of the ten alumni invited to speak in the Distinguished Alumni Lecture series celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Chung Chi College in Hong Kong, where she received her undergraduate education. She was also the Jean MacDuff Vaux Composer-in-Residence at Mills College, California. In 1997, Bun-Ching Lam served as a Visiting Professor in Composition at the School of Music, Yale University, and at Bennington College in Vermont. She now divides her time between Paris and New York. Her music has been recorded on CRI, Tzadik, Nimbus, Koch International Classics, Sound Aspect and Tellus.

More information at www.bunchinglam.com.

CHEN Yi (1953, China/MO)
RECITAL PROGRAM
Ancient Dances (2005) pipa and percussion

"There are a number of composers these days trying to forge a musical link between East and West, but few who bring as much exuberant pizzazz to the task as Chen Yi," writes Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle. Rober Carl, in Fanfare magazine, agrees: "First, Chen writes with real fluency for traditional Chinese instruments and combines them sensitively with Western instruments. There is no sense of a precious or false fusion here. Second, Chen has a feel for color that is fresh, immediate, and gives her music a strong profile. Especially using Western percussion, she creates sonic images that have real presence and mystery." Art Lang, also at Fanfare, finishes the thought, "It's easy to understand how she has achieved so much success; these works are loaded with unusual orchestral colors, vibrant rhythms, and tart melodies, primarily inspired by Chinese folk and court musics…the off-kilter, often jolting rhythms are tempered with tranquil episodes, giving Chen's music an engaging drama and satisfying balance."

As the Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and the recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award (01-04) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Dr. Chen Yi has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005. Chen Yi has received bachelor and master degrees in music composition from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, China, and Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University in New York. Her composition teachers have included Wu Zu-qiang, Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky, and Alexander Goehr. She has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Women's Philharmonic, the vocal ensemble Chanticleer, & Aptos Creative Arts Center (93-96) supported by Meet The Composer, and as a member of the composition faculty at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University (96-98). Fellowships have been received from Guggenheim Foundation (96), American Academy of Arts and Letters (96), and National Endowment for the Arts in the United States (94). Honors include a first prize from the Chinese National Composition Competition (85), the Lili Boulanger Award (93), the NYU Sorel Medal Award (96), the CalArts/Alpert Award (97), the UT Eddie Medora King Composition Prize (99), the ASCAP Concert Music Award (01), the Elise Stoeger Award (02) from Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Friendship Ambassador Award from Edgar Snow Fund (02), an Honorary Doctorate from Lawrence University (02). Her music is published by Theodore Presser Company, performed world wide, and recorded on Bis (02, 03, 04), New Albion (97), CRI (99), Teldec (97, 99 with Grammy Award, 03), Nimbus (93/00), Cala (95), Avant (98), Atma (99), Hugo (00), Angel (01), Albany (04, 05), Koch International Classics (04), Delos (04), Eroica (05), Centaur (04. 05) & China Record Corporation (86, 90).

Stefan HAKENBERG (1960, Germany/AK)
RECITAL PROGRAM (Composer-in-Residence)
Emergence (1993) bass clarinet and percussion

Born in Wuppertal, Germany, composer Stefan HAKENBERG now resides in Alaska's capital Juneau. His work includes a wide variety of musical media. The integration of players of non-western classical background has particularly shaped HAKENBERG's creative thought. Reviewers have praised his music as "highly original," "dramatic and memorable," "creating strong musical expressions in a densely contrapuntal style." Full of innovations his work is an ongoing reflection on musical styles of today that he finds along an international career path that has taken him from Cologne's experimental 80s New Music scene to Boston's 90s multicultural academic world, to the particularly Asian combination of influences in Seoul, Korea at the turn of the millennium.

HAKENBERG attended the conservatories of Düsseldorf and Cologne where he studied composition with Hans Werner HENZE. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University where he studied with Bernard RANDS and Mario DAVIDOVSKY. Other grants and fellowships brought him to the summer festivals in Tanglewood (where he studied with Oliver KNUSSEN on a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship), Aspen (where he studied with John HARBISON), and Fontainebleau (where he studied with Betsy JOLAS), to the artist colonies "The MacDowell Colony" in New Hampshire, "Yaddo" in Saratoga Springs, and the "Atelierhaus Worpswede" in Lower Saxony. Meet the Composer, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, various Alaskan arts and humanities councils, and the Endowments for the Arts in North-Rhine Westfalia and Lower Saxony have directly sponsored his work repeatedly.

Films by Theo LIPFERT with scores by Stefan HAKENBERG, "The Displacement Map" and "Taubman Sucks," won awards at festivals in Kansas City, Honolulu, at Portland's Northwest Filmfestival in Oregon, and three screenings at the Tribeca Film Festival among many more places.

HAKENBERG's music is published by AUGEMUS Musikverlag, Bochum, Germany and TONOS Musikverlag, Darmstadt, Germany. Recordings are available on the Capstone Records label, Brooklyn, New York.

More information at www.StefanHakenberg.com.

Roberto SIERRA (1953, Puerto Rico/NY)
RECITAL PROGRAM
Bongo-o (1986) Bongos

In recent years, Roberto Sierra's colorful and rhythmic music has attracted a growing audience both in North America and Europe. Acclaimed as one of Latin America's most active contemporary composers, Sierra came to prominence in 1987 when his first major orchestral composition, "Júbilo," premiered at Carnegie Hall with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Since then, he has been performed at important festivals and by top orchestras large and small all over the world.

Born in Puerto Rico, Sierra studied at the Conservatory of Music and the University of Puerto Rico. Upon graduation, he travelled to Europe to further his training, first at the Royal College of Music and the University of London, and later at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht. Between 1979 and 1982, he completed advanced work in composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg under the renowned György Ligeti. In 1982, Sierra returned to Puerto Rico to occupy administrative posts as a Director of the Cultural Activities Department at the University of Puerto Rico and as Chancellor of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. Throughout this period, he was vigorously engaged as a composer on the international scene. In 1989, Roberto Sierra became Composer-in-Residence of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra -- a position he held for three years. In addition to advising the MSO on American repertoire, Mr. Sierra contributed to the musical life of Milwaukee with a number of new works, including pieces for local chamber and choral ensembles, and for individual musicians. In the autumn of 1992, Sierra joined the composition faculty at Cornell University where is currently the Old Dominion Foundation Professor of Composition.

In 2003 Sierra was awarded the Academy Award in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award states:  "Roberto Sierra writes brilliant music, mixing fresh and personal melodic lines with sparkling harmonies and striking rhythms. . ." His Sinfonía No. 1, a work commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, won the 2004 Kenneth Davenport Competition for Orchestral Works. Sierra has also been the Music Alive Composer-In-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra  and New Mexico Symphony.

Roberto Sierra's Music may be heard on CD's by New World Records, Albany Records, Gasparo, Koch, Newport Classic, New Albion, ADDA, Musical Heritage Society, Koss Classics, CRI, BMG, Fleur de Son, Dorian Records, and EMI Classics.

More information at www.robertosierra.com.

Eric MOE (1954, USA)
RECITAL PROGRAM
Teeth of the Sea (2003) percussion

Composer Eric Moe's music has been variously described as "maximal minimalism", "Rachmaninoff in hell", and "music of winning exuberance". The New York Times says recently that Moe "subversively inscribe[s] classical music into pop culture". Although the surfaces and genres are varied, his works share a concern for rhythmic propulsion and a disregard for stylistic orthodoxies. Sometimes tonal, sometimes not, harmony (generally crunchy) and melody (often angular) play privileged roles in his work.

Eric Moe, has received numerous grants and awards for his work, including the Lakond Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship; commissions from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Fromm Foundation, the Koussevitzky Foundation, and Meet-the-Composer USA; fellowships from the Wellesley Composer's Conference and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Bellagio, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, the Montana Artists Refuge, and the American Dance Festival.

Moe was educated at the University of California at Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.) and at Princeton University (A.B.) He is currently Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh, where he directs the graduate program in composition and the department's electroacoustic music studio.

Moe's compositions can be found on the Koch International Classics, Albany Records, and Centaur labels. Active as a pianist and keyboard player, Moe writes music he enjoys playing, and otherwise plays music he wishes he'd written.  His playing can be heard on the Koch, CRI, Mode, and AK/Coburg labels.

More information at www.ericmoe.net

Javier ALVAREZ(1956, Mexico/UK)
RECITAL PROGRAM
Temazcal (1984) Percussion

Javier Alvarez has lived in London (United Kingdom) since 1982, and devotes his time to composition, performance and research. He is also active as a professor, teaching composition and technology at the Royal College of Music and at the Guildhall School of Music in London. International honours have included the 1987 ICEM prize, awarded to Papalati for piano and computer, and prizes at the Bourges Competition (1985-87-89) and at the Prix Ars Electronica (1988,93 and 95). In 1993 he was awarded an honorary fellowship by the Mexican Endowment for the Arts and Culture for his contribution to Mexican music.

Shih-Hui CHEN   Peter CHILD   Thomas REINER   Bun-Ching LAM   
CHEN Yi   Stefan HAKENBERG   Roberto SIERRA   Eric MOE   
Javier ALVAREZ