artistic director     
vocalist     

Gilda Lyons (Artistic Director / Vocalist) is a frequent recitalist, performing her own vocal works as well as those of other living composers.  She received The ASCAP Foundation's Charles Kingsford Fund Commission in 2007/08.  Recent works include: Nahuatl Hymn to the All-Mother for treble choir commissioned by The Milwaukee Choral Artists on the occasion of their Tenth Anniversary and Phantoms and Visitations commissioned by Paul Sperry.  Her one-act opera The Walled-Up Wife was presented in workshop performance by American Opera Projects in spring of 2007.  Other projects include commissions by American Opera Projects; Amy Pivar Dances; ComposersCollaborative, Inc.; The Finisterra Piano Trio; voice and piano duo Two Sides Sounding; the Sweet Plantain String Quartet; and countertenors Gundlach and Mark Crayton, among others.  In the 2008/09 season, Ms. Lyons premieres her own new works with Anonymous 4's Ruth Cunningham and the powerfully expressive mezzo Elaine Valby; she serves as Visiting Artist for the Wintergreen Summer Music Academy, and as Artist-in-Residence for The Season's Music Festival in Washington State, returning to The Seasons in 2009/10 as Composer-in-Residence.  Her is published by E.C. Schirmer and is also available through Burning Sled Music (www.burningsled.org). Gilda Lyons is Artistic Director of The Phoenix Concerts on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Ms. Lyons performs regularly with Elaine Valby and Robert La Rue as the voice and cello trio Seraphim. 2007, she sang the role of Nora Barnacle in Daron Hagen's The Antient Concert, the centerpiece of Symphony Space's Bloomsday on Broadway XXVI; she appeared as soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic in their semi-staged concert production of Hagen's opera Shining Browin fall 2006 (Naxos, 2009). Ms. Lyons made her professional debut as composer and vocalist with the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra in 1997, performing the world premiere of her orchestral song cycle Feis.  She received her Ph.D. in Music Composition from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and Bard College. . (www.gildalyons.com).

ensemble in     
residence     

“Chamber music at the highest level,” says Richard Lester, cellist of the famed Florestan Trio. Members, Kwan Bin Park, violin; Kevin Krentz, cello; Tanya Stambuk, piano; use their combined talents to bring inspired performances to the “ends of the earth.” The Seattle-based trio has emerged as one of the most recognized chamber ensembles in the Northwest, with a rapidly growing audience across the U.S. The group has been featured on national broadcasts by NPR and Seattle’s classical station, KING FM. Sean MacLean of WGBH Boston said, "Their Brahms (B Major) was perhaps the finest performance I have heard, live or recorded, of that work."

In 2003, the three award-winning musicians began working as a self-promoted group with the name, “Finisterra” and quickly gained an enthusiastic and growing following. Individually, the three come from an impressive musical background bringing a rich variety of musical experiences to their work as a trio. Members of the trio have garnered recognition as performers and have been heard in such prestigious halls such as New York’s Lincoln Center, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, Seattle's Benaroya Hall and have been winners in competitions both nationally and internationally.

Their work as a group brought them much acknowledgment when they won the Silver Medal at the Zinetti International Chamber Music Competition in Italy out of groups from 20 different countries. Since then, the Finisterra Trio has garnered much praise, including winning in the Greenlake National Chamber Music Competition where they also won the Audience Prize. They have been invited to perform in Europe and the Americas, including an invitation from the Florestan Trio, who recently invited Finisterra to London for performances and dialogue.

Most recently, the Finisterra trio has been invited as Artists-in-Residence at The Seasons concert series in Yakima, Washington. The Trio is expanding its audience by highlighting a variety of musics “from the ends of the earth” while often incorporating various media, including story-telling, in a fresh and innovative fashion. In an innovative new concert series, called "Nachtmusik," Finisterra is broadening the spectrum of the chamber music concert by combining the setting of a chamber music nightclub with the joys of wine tasting in one of Washington's great winery districts, all in a traditional concert hall.

Comfortable in a variety of styles and genres, Finisterra was heard nationally in a live concert recording of a recent collaboration with the famed Bill Mays jazz trio. Renowned jazz critic, Doug Ramsey said, "Following two days of rehearsals laced with hard work and laughter, violinist Kwan Bin Park and cellist Kevin Krentz put aside the typical classical player's apprehension about whether they could swing. They could. They did--mightily--with pianist (Bill) Mays, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson."

Finisterra has recorded Daron Hagen's four piano trios for Naxos. Ned Rorem called Finisterra's first recording, of Hagen's third trio The Wayfaring Stranger, "exquisite."

Kwan Bin and Kevin both play magnificent modern American instruments and bows created within the last three years: violin by John Young, cello by Robert Young, and bows by Robert Morrow and Robert Shallock. Tanya Stambuk is a Steinway Artist. (www.finisterra.org)

pianist     

Jocelyn Dueck is a native of Kleefield, Manitoba. She has appeared on national broadcasts of Music da Camara with the MacPhail Trio, in recital at the fortepiano for the Schubert Club's Courtroom Concert Series in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and at Seiji Ozawa Hall as a Tanglewood Fellow. This summer, Jocelyn was an apprentice coach and pianist for Glimmerglass Opera's productions of Lucia de Lammermoor and Death in Venice. She was an assistant conductor and pianist for the Tanglewood Music Center's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2004. A frequent performer of new music, she collaborated on the Princeton Atelier premiere of The Antient Concert by composer Daron Hagen and poet Paul Muldoon, and was the pianist for the east coast premiere of Hagen's one act opera Broken Pieces. In the fall of 2003, Jocelyn was awarded a grant from the University of Minnesota Graduate School and traveled to Paris to meet with the family of French composer Louis Durey, a member of Les Six. She continues to document and perform the unpublished song cycles of Durey, a generous gift of his daughter, Arlette Durey. Jocelyn completed the D.M.A. in Accompanying and Coaching under Professors Margo Garrett and Karl Paulnack at the University of Minnesota in March 2004. Together with her pianist siblings, Byron Dueck and Valerie Dueck, Jocelyn has formed a trio known as Dueck Three that specializes in solo, four- and six-hand works for the piano. The featured young artist for the Steinbach Arts Council Young Artists in Concert series this past winter, Jocelyn performed alongside her brother and sister to a sold-out crowd. She lives in New York City with her husband, Nathan Dyrud, where she works as a freelance coach and pianist. (www.jocelyndueck.com).

tenor     
pianist     
conductor     

Robert Frankenberry leads a multi-faceted career as a tenor, pianist, actor and conductor. He has performed roles ranging from Mozart in Amadeus and John Adams in 1776 to Cavaradossi in Tosca and Pollione in Norma. Recent operatic engagements have included Don Jose in Carmen for Erie Opera Theater, 1st G’Bich in Twilight of the Gods for Opera Theater of Pittsburgh and the dual position of assistant conductor and cover for the title roles of Don Carlo and Poliuto for daCorneto Opera. Other credits in music direction include productions of Amahl and the Night Visitors, Madrigals of Love and War, La Serva Padrona, The Old Maid and the Thief and La Clemenza di Tito for the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh; the staged premier of Daron Hagen’s Vera of Las Vegas for the Center for Contemporary Opera; and The Tales of Hoffmann for Mercyhurst College and New York City’s After Dinner Opera Company. At the piano, Frankenberry is a member of the IonSound Project and the University of Pittsburgh’s Music On The Edge Ensemble. Devoted to new and recent works, he has participated in the premieres of solo and chamber music by such composers as Roger Zahab, Eric Moe, Bruce Taub, J. H. Kwabena Nketia, Dennis Riley and Barbara White. In 1999, Robert gave one of the first performances in the United States of Judith Weir’s Piano Concerto and last season played the North American premiere of her Piano Trio Two with violinist Roger Zahab and ‘cellist David Russell. Mr. Frankenberry holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Mercyhurst College, where he studied piano with Sam Rotman and conducting with Walter Hendl; and a Master’s Degree from Carnegie Mellon, where he was a student of John Shirley-Quirk.

pianist     
conductor     

Daron Hagen (b. 1961, Milwaukee) established his national reputation in the early eighties with performances by the New York Philharmonic (Philharmonia, commissioned to celebrate the orchestra's 150th anniversary in 1992), and the Philadelphia Orchestra; international recognition and acclaim followed with the première of his first major opera, Shining Brow (1992). A steady stream of commissions from major orchestras, ensembles, and soloists over the past quarter century have cemented Hagen's reputation as one of America's most respected and sought-after composers.

Current projects include an opera for the Seattle Opera; a fourth symphony (with chorus) for the Albany Symphony; and a violin concerto for Michael Ludwig, the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony. Recent projects include concerti for Gary Graffman, Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Jeffrey Khaner, Sara Sant'Ambrogio, the Amelia Piano Trio, and works for Present Music, Wisconsin Brass Quintet, the Kings Singers, and the Amernet, Carpentier and Elements String Quartets.

Mr. Hagen is active also as a conductor, pianist, and stage director. He made his debut as a stage director with the Buffalo Philharmonic (2006), and has since staged three of his operas in major venues. He has released two discs as a collaborative pianist with baritone Paul Kreider on the Arsis label. The recording of his opera Bandanna under his baton (Albany Troy 849/50) was chosen by Fanfare Magazine as one of the ten notable releases of 2006 and chosen as an "ArkivMusic Recommendation". Naxos will release the complete recording of his opera Shining Brow and his four piano trios (the Finesterra Trio) in 2009.

A Lifetime Member of the Corporation of Yaddo and past president of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, Mr. Hagen is a graduate of the Juilliard School and of the Curtis Institute of Music. He has received the Kennedy Center Friedheim, the Bearns, Barlow, and ASCAP-Nissim Prizes, two Rockefeller Bellagio Residencies, the Camargo Residency, multiple residencies at VCCA and MacDowell, as well as scholarships and development grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and Opera America. His music is published by Carl Fischer, EC Schirmer, and Burning Sled. Recordings are available on Albany, Arsis, Sierra, CRI, and other labels.

Mr. Hagen maintains a vigorous private teaching schedule and gives numerous master classes and residencies at colleges and music festivals. Artistic Director of the Seasons Festival in Yakima, Washington, Hagen will serve as composer-in-residence during the 2009 season for the Wintergreen and Methow music festivals, among others. Hagen is a frequent grants panelist and has served twice as Composer in Residence for the Princeton University Atelier; Composer in Residence at the Chicago Conservatory of Music of the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, as Franz Lehar Composer in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh; as Artist in Residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Sigma-Chi-William P. Huffman Composer in Residence at Miami University; Artist in Residence at Baylor University; on the musical studies faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music; nine years on the composition faculty of Bard College; as a Visiting Professor at the City College of New York; and as a Lecturer in Music at New York University. (www.daronhagen.com).

guitarist     

Paula M. Kimper, a 1979 graduate of the Eastman School of Music, is active in New York City as a composer for opera, theater, film, and dance. Ms. Kimper was commissioned by Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, of Deerfield Massachusetts, to compose the opera The Captivation of Eunice Williams for the 300th anniversay of the Deerfield massacre of 1704, with librettist Harley Erdman. The opera had its world premiere at Deerfield Academy's Reid Theatre in July 2004, and is now touring internationaly. Most recent performances were held at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian on October 13 and 14, 2006. The Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of Paul Phillips, premiered Suite from the Captivation of Eunice Williams. Kimper is at work on The Bridge of San Luis Rey, an opera based on Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The Suite from the Bridge of San Luis Rey will be performed by the Danbury Community Orchestra under the musical direction of Stephen M. Smith on May 6, 2007. Excerpts from BRIDGE were heard at OPERA America's "New Works Sampler" in Pittsburgh in June 2004. Her first opera, Patience and Sarah, with libretto by Wende Persons, had its world premiere in Lincoln Center 98, with further productions in Denver and Chicago in the 2000 season. The Act II duet, "I want to live," on CRI's release Lesbian American Composers won two 1999 GLAMA Awards. The European premiere is in the works in England and will be produced by OperaAmazons.

Ms. Kimper has composed music for theater since 1986, producing scores and sound designs for the Boston Post Road Stage Company, Westport Country Playhouse, Stamford Theatre Works, and The White Barn Theater. Douglas Moser's A Christmas Carol, featuring Kimper's score, won the 1992 Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Best Adaptation of a Classic. For the White Barn Theater in Westport, CT, and reknowned directed Burry Fredrik, Ms. Kimper created the music and sound design for Swansong, by Patrick Page, which permiered in August 2002. Washington Shakespeare Company's May 2002 production of Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Michael Comlish, featured two Kimper songs. She composed six new songs to poems by Heine for "Heinrich Heine: Doppelgänger," a 2001 AOP production, conceived and directed by Gabriele Jakobi.

Ms. Kimper appears as guitarist with singer Elaine Valby, dancer/choreographer Amy Pivar in an ongoing collaboration called Songs for Solo Dance and Voice April 2006 saw the premiere of (On Her Decision to Stop Wearing Clothes) commissioned by Pivar for performances at Dance New Amsterdam in New York City. 10 of 10,000: Mermaid Lullabys, scored for two voices and cello, setting haiku by Elaine Valby, was commissioned by Seraphim Trio and premiered in September 2005. Ms. Kimper's score for dancer/choreographer Richard Daniels, Bound Round, with text by Aaron Shurin, had its NYC premeire April 2-6, 2003 at the Connelly Theater, featuring Nurrit Tilles at the piano. The world premiere took place in the August 2002 Toronto Fringe Festival. Part 2, SKY PANELS, was presented at the 92nd Street Y in November 2001. She has received five commissions from the Walt Whitman Project for songs and fanfares. Broken Tale of Mouse a score for dancer Amy Pivar and playwright Freda Rosen, was produced at Wings Theatre in May 2000. Where Everything is Music, an SATB setting of Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks), was premiered at the GALA 2000 Festival of Choruses by SING OUT! PROUD BROOKLYN, and performed since by The Shrewbury Chorale and the Dalton Alumni Chorale under the direction of Stephen M. Smith, and by the Stonewall Chorale under the direction of Cynthia Powell.

Ms. Kimper has composed for films and television since 1987. A new film, Glacier Bay, directed by Douglas Moser, features music by Kimper and was released in the fall of 2006. Flight of the Harmonic Messenger, a one-hour meditation on Sacred Sites of the Earth, Ms. Kimper's 1993 CD release, has aired on New Age radio programs worldwide. Her music for film, documentaries and TV has been heard nationally on network, PBS and cable television. (www.patienceandsarah.com

cellist     

Robert La Rue is a member of the New York City Opera Orchestra, where he has been performing as assistant principal and principal cellist during the autumn 2006 season. He was First Prize Winner of the National Society of Arts and Letters Cello Competition, selected by a jury chaired by Mstislav Rostropovitch. A former member of the New England String Quartet, he has appeared at Alice Tully, Merkin and Weill Halls, the Miller Theater and Bargemusic in New York; at Jordan Hall and the Harvard Musical Association in Boston; at Princeton University's Richardson Auditorium, on concert series at Middlebury, Williams and Bennington Colleges, and throughout the eastern and northwestern U.S. Internationally, he has been heard at France's Evian Festival, the Banff Festival in Canada, the Listasafn Sigurjons Olafssonar Concerts in Reykjavik, Iceland (sponsored by the American Embassy), the Frederiksdal Slotskoncerter series in Denmark, and in numerous concerts in Germany, the United Kingdom and Brazil. Mr. La Rue is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, the New England Conservatory (with Distinction) and the Juilliard School, and also attended Indiana University; his teachers included Bernard Greenhouse, Aldo Parisot, David Soyer, Janos Starker, and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi. He was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in the Midwest, and lives in New York City.

mezzo-soprano     

Elaine Valby sang the role of Catherine Wright in Daron Hagen’s opera Shining Brow with the Buffalo Philharmonic in November of 2006, and will sing May Joyce in Hagen’s The Antient Concert in upcoming performances in New York and Washington. Valby originated the role of the grown-up Eunice in the premiere of Paula M. Kimper's opera, The Captivation of Eunice Williams, and sang the part again in October 2006 in performances at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. The mezzo-soprano also played Sarah in the premiere of Kimper’s first opera, Patience and Sarah, at Lincoln Center Festival 98. Valby recently formed the ensemble SERAPHIM with cellist Robert La Rue and singer/composer Gilda Lyons; the group’s repertoire includes music composed especially for them by Daron Hagen, Hayes Biggs, Paula M. Kimper and Gilda Lyons. A long-term project has been an ongoing collaboration with dancer/choreographer Amy Pivar and director Freda Rosen, in performances titled “Songs for Solo Dance and Voice” – venues have included Dance New Amsterdam in Manhattan and BAAD! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance). Favorite past projects include the first concert performance of Ari Frankel's opera about Primo Levi, to scratch an angel; a concert of American folksongs and spirituals with the jazz and improvisational pianist Uli Geissendoerfer; and Connie Beckley's performance piece The Aquarium. CD releases include Frank Lewin's song cycle Variations of Greek Themes, and April 15th Blues — a 30-minute musical by Ben Yarmolinsky about doing your taxes.

percussion     

Matt Ward has performed with groups such as the Boston Symphony, Albany Symphony, New World Symphony, New Music Consort and Associated Solo Artists. Mr. Ward has received a bachelor of music degree from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Duncan Patton and Chris Lamb. He has a masters degree from the State University at Stony Brook under the direction of Ray DesRoches and is currently enrolled in the school's DMA program. Through organizations such as Arts Connection, Flushing Council on the Arts, Young Audiences, and Marquis Studios, he has actively been working with elementary school children throughout New York City. He has also been working as a chamber and sectional coach with the Empire State Youth Orchestra, New York Inter-School Orchestra and the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Ward was the recipient of the Ridley-Tree Fellowship at the Music Academy of the West in 1998 and in 1999 he participated in the Tanglewood Music Center under the direction of Seiji Ozawa and returned the following year as a member of the 60th Anniversary TMC Alumni Concert. Recent performance highlights include a concert with Emmanuel Ax on the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center as well as a concerto performance with the North Shore Philharmonic. He can be heard on the recording labels Argo, Newport Classics, and Winston Ma. (www.timetablepercussion.com)

violinist     
conductor     

Roger Zahab’s multifaceted career as composer, violinist, conductor, teacher and writer has been encouraged by living in one of the most interesting vantage points of Time. His work straddles so many areas of endeavor that there are suspicions of a band of clones working all over the country under his identity.

He has written much chamber, vocal and orchestral music in addition to work in dance, theater and video. Recently, recordings on Albany Records have been made of levitation of pianos during a waltz played by pianist Eric Moe, and Earth’s Jig and Silence Orchids played by pianist Bennett Lerner. These recordings and others are also available on iTunes. Recent works include Ohio transparence for piano trio, ardent life for trumpet and orchestra, and Ohio entelechron, a multi-media performance work which uses various kinds of Time to explore the connections between identity, history and community.

As a violinist, Zahab has premiered more than a hundred works by such composers as John Cage, Daron Hagen, Gilda Lyons, Steven Mackey, Ursula Mamlok, Eric Moe, J.N. Kwabena Nketia, Dennis Riley, Tison Street, Orianna Webb and Christian Wolff. Recordings as violinist and composer are available on the Truemedia, Albany and Koch International Classics labels. His version of John Cage’s Thiurteen Harmonies for violin and keyboard instrument is published by C.F.Peters Corporation.

His conducting repertoire encompasses the history of ensemble music from Andrea Gabrielli up to the present. As conductor of the both the Music on the Edge Chamber Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra at the University of Pittsburgh he seeks to give students a well-rounded overview of Western music while exploring increasingly porous boundaries.

Zahab was awarded the first Louis Lane Scholarship (given by the Akron Symphony Orchestra) in 1978 and received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant in 1995 and an Individual Artist Fellowship in 2005. Zahab has been Director of the Orchestra and instructor at the University of Pittsburgh since 1993 and became a full-time Lecturer in 1999. At home in Akron he helps foster the ideal of communal music-making with the Highland Square Philharmonic. (www.rogerzahab.net)