2021 COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE
Hannah Lash
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Hannah LashHannah Lash’s music has been performed at the Times Center in Manhattan, the Chicago Art Institute, Tanglewood Music Center, Harvard University, The Chelsea Art Museum, and on the American Opera Project’s stage in New York City. Commissions include The Fromm Foundation, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, American Composers Orchestra, The Naumburg Foundation, The Orpheus Duo, The Howard Hanson Foundation’s Commissioning Fund, Case Western Reserve’s University Circle Wind Ensemble, MAYA, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Arditti Quartet, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival and the Aspen Music Festival and School, among many others. Lash has received numerous honors and prizes, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fromm Foundation Commission, a fellowship from Yaddo Artist Colony, the Naumburg Prize in Composition, the Barnard Rogers Prize in Composition, the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky Prize in Composition, and numerous academic awards. Her orchestral work Furthermore was selected by the American Composers Orchestra for the 2010 Underwood New Music Readings. Her chamber opera, Blood Rose, was presented by New York City Opera’s VOX in the spring of 2011. In addition to performances of her music in the USA, Lash’s music is well known internationally. In April of 2008, her string quartet Four Still was performed in Kyev in the Ukraine’s largest international new music festival, “Musical Premieres of the Season,” curated by Carson Cooman. In the summer of 2010, her piece Unclose was premiered by members of Eighth Blackbird at the MusicX festival in Blonay, Switzerland. Recent premieres include Three Shades Without Angles, for flute, viola and harp, by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Pulse-space, for string quartet, by the Flux Quartet, as well as several new orchestral works: Eating Flowers, for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Nymphs, for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and This Ease, for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. In October 2015, the American Composers Orchestra premiered Lash’s Concerto for Harp and Chamber Orchestra, conducted by George Manahan and with Lash as soloist. Other recent premieres include God Music Bug Music in January 2011 with the Minnesota Orchestra, the monodrama Stoned Prince by New York based ensemble Load Bang in April 2013, Subtilior Lamento with the Da Capo Chamber Players at Carnegie Hall in 2012, and Glockenliebe, for three glockenspiels, with Talujon Percussion in December 2012. Her 2011 orchestral work, Hush, was featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Brooklyn Festival in April of 2013. Upcoming premieres include a new chamber opera, Beowulf, commissioned by Guerilla Opera, and a new work for Loadbang, commissioned by Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. Lash obtained her Ph.D in Composition from Harvard University in 2010. She has held teaching positions at Harvard University (Teaching Fellow), at Alfred University (Guest Professor of Composition), and currently serves on the composition faculty at Yale University School of Music. |
2021 GUEST FACULTY
Barry Finnerty
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Barry Finnerty (Improvisation, Jazz Studies)A native of San Fransisco, Barry Finnerty studied classical piano from age 5, and received his first guitar at age 13. After living in Hong Kong at a young age, his family returned to the Bay area where he got his first electric guitar and began playing professional gigs, including opening for Herman's Hermits and performing at the Fillmore West and the Avalon Ballroom. He attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston in 1971 and afterward moved to New York City where he began playing and recording for the renowned Brecker Brothers Band (Heavy Metal Bebop), the Crusaders (Street Life), Miles Davis (The Man With The Horn), Chico Hamilton, Airto and Flora Purim, Hubert Laws, Joe Farrell, Ray Barretto, Billy Cobham, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Taj Mahal. Didier Lockwood, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis, Teruo Nakamura, and The Negatives, among others. Finnerty continues to work professionally, tour and record worldwide. His two "Serious Jazz" practice books, published by Sher Music, have been internationally acclaimed. |
Enrico Merlin
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Enrico Merlin (Musicology, Jazz Studies)Enrico Merlin is one of those unusual cases of an accomplished musician and composer who is at the same time an acclaimed expert on the subject of 20th century music. These two worlds which rarely come together in a single person, have infused the artist with an exceptionally creative and expressive performing talent and at the same time have inspired numerous successful literary publications. As a musician he has played on more than 35 different recordings alongside artists such as Steven Bernstein, Giorgio Gaslini, Michael Manring, Markus Stockhausen, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, to name but a few, and has also performed at numerous international Music Festivals together with artists such as Carla Bley, Mederic Collignon, Garrison Fewell, Paolo Fresu, Mark Baldwin Harris, Lee Konitz, Boris Savoldelli, Maria Schneider, Giovanni Sollima, Elliott Sharp, John Surman, Steve Swallow, Henry Threadgill, Tino Tracanna, and many more besides. He also writes music for the theatre and for documentaries and promotes, together with Andrea Brunello, an innovative form of interaction between words and sounds which they call "Jazz Teatrale" (Theatre Jazz). At the Fringe Festival of Edinburgh in 2013, Enrico performed for an entire month in the show "The Principle of Uncertainty". In 2015 he was elected one of the 10 best Italian guitar players by Jazzit Magazine readers. On the musicology front, Enrico has an undisputed worldwide reputation as one of the most important experts on the music of Miles Davis. His comprehensive and painstakingly detailed catalogue of released and unreleased works, parts of which have been published both in written and in multimedia form (first and foremost the DVD «A Different Kind of Blue – Miles Davis at Isle of Wight», Eagle Vision), led to his nomination back in the 90's by Gordon Meltzer (Davis' last producer) as the official discographer for the milesdavis.com website. In November 2012, he published a new book "1000 dischi per un secolo. 1900-2000", (960 pages, Il Saggiatore) dedicated to the history of Western Music seen through the evolution of recording techniques and the innovation in musical languages. Enrico holds regular seminars and workshops in many of the most important music schools and italian conservatories and in 2014 he became a member of the prestigious teaching staff of the Nuoro Jazz Seminars. He has also been the artistic director of the NonSoleJazz Festival (now known as TrentinoinJazz) from 2003 through 2016 |
Alex Lubet
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Alex Lubet (Composition, Improvisation)Alex Lubet, Morse Alumni/Graduate & Professional Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music, is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and researcher, who joined the School of Music faculty in 1979. While he was written works in many media, his creative output in this millennium has focused almost exclusively on works featuring his own performance, mostly on a variety of plucked string instruments associated with American folk traditions. These include acoustic guitar, mountain dulcimer, National steel guitar, and ukulele. He performs solo and with groups including the Japanese-inspired Ensemble Ma, Deep State, with pianist and fellow School of Music faculty member Guerino Mazzola, and One World, with Kurdish-Canadian kamanche (spike fiddle) player, Shahriyar Jamshidi. In addition to his own works, many composers have written works for Lubet, in particular composers from China, where he was lectured, taught, and concertized live and on television. Of late, he has become particularly well-known for his unique approach to mountain dulcimer. Lubet is well-represented on recordings, as a soloist (Spectral Blues: New Music for Acoustic Guitar, Ravello), with Guerino Mazzola (Deep State, pfMENTUM) and with School of Music faculty guitarist Maja Radovanlija (The Enchanted Guitar Forest, Big Round). Noted critic Ted Gioia named Spectral Blues a “Best Album” of 2013. His works have received hundreds of performances on six continents and he has concertized in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. As a scholar, Lubet is widely acknowledged to have pioneered the field of disability studies in music. His writings include Music, Disability, and Society, the first solo-authored monograph in that field, and dozens of chapters and articles on disability issues within and beyond music. He is also known for his articles on Bob Dylan and other popular, jazz, and blues artists. His work appears in both scholarly and popular media, the latter including such media outlets as Newsweek, Salon.com, Associated Press, and San Francisco Chronicle. He regularly teaches courses in the U of M's Center for Bioethics. As a composition teacher, Lubet’s primary commitment is to enabling students to find their own voices, to become better versions of themselves. Thus, his students write in a great variety of styles and media, ranging from oratorios to sound installations. He fosters a strongly collegial environment in his culturally and gender diverse studio and endeavors to promote performances and readings of student works, including having premiered and performed their pieces in such locations as New York, Canada, China, and South Korea. |
2021 RESIDENT FACULTY
Elliott Miles McKinley
BIOGRAPHY
Elliott Miles McKinley has had music performed in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Commissions include those from the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Music Society, the SOLI Chamber Music Ensemble, the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra, the Martinů String Quartet, the Mirari Brass Quintet, and the Janaček Trio. The Minnesota Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, and the Czech Radio Symphony have performed his orchestral music, and his works have been featured in international festivals; he is the recipient of a number of awards, grants, and fellowships including those from BMI, ASCAP, SCI, Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, the American Composers Forum, and Indiana University. McKinley earned degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music, University of Michigan, and University of Minnesota. He has taught at the University of Tennessee, Washington and Lee University, and is currently Associate Professor of Music Composition, Theory, and Technology at Roger Williams University. |
David Post
BIOGRAPHY
David Post was born in New York City and holds degrees from the University of Chicago, the New School for Social Research and Brandeis University. He started musical training early, studying ‘cello with Samuel Reiner and Charles Forbes and composition with Charles Whittenberg and later Ralph Shapey at the University of Chicago. He pursued further study with Larry Bell and Lukas Foss. His music has received wide exposure on radio and in the concert hall, and his Fourth String Quartet was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in music. His orchestral and chamber works have been played and recorded by international organizations including the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Moravian Philharmonic, the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra and the Salem Philharmonic, among others. He has received numerous commissions from groups and individuals, including the Aiolos Collective, the Terezin Music Foundation, the Martinu Quartet, the Fenimore Quartet, the Hawthorne String Quartet and many others. |
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