Contact: Paula Mlyn

skell Másson was born in Reykjavik in 1953 and studied percussion at the Reykjavik College of Music and privately in London with James Blades. In the early seventies, he worked as a composer and percussionist for the Ballet of the National Theatre in Iceland and from 1978 to 1983 he was a producer at the Music Department of the Iceland State Radio. He also was secretary general of the Society of Icelandic Composers 1983-85, and became president of the Icelandic Performing Rights Society in 1989.  As a composer, Mr. Másson has worked on numerous projects, collaborating with soloists such as Gert Mortensen, Roger Woodward, Benny Sluchin, Evelyn Glennie, and Christian Lindberg. His 1980 Clarinet Concerto was acclaimed at the Rostrum of Composers in Paris and elsewhere. In 1993 his chamber orchestra piece Elja was performed at ISCM World Music Days in Copenhagen and by the New Juilliard Ensemble on the 1998 FOCUS! festival. His principal compositions include an opera, a symphony, six concerti (for clarinet, viola, snare drum, piano, marimba, and trombone), other orchestral pieces, and chamber works. In addition to concert music, he has composed music for numerous plays, films, and television.

Colin Matthews was born in 1946 in London and studied with Arnold Whitall and Nicholas Maw, and later with Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst. Mr. Matthews received his doctorate from the University of Sussex for a study of Mahler that included collaboration with Deryck Cooke on creating a performing version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. He has won numerous prices and commissions, writing for many of Britain's most prominent ensembles such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. He has been the featured composer at the numerous festivals as well as Visiting Composer at Tanglewood in 1991.  He serves as the administrator of the Holst Foundation, director of the Britten estate, and was formerly was a director of the Performing Rights Society.  In 1998 Mr. Matthews was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Nottingham.  He currently is Prince Consort Professor of Music at the Royal College of Music, a Governor of the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester), and Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Composition at the University of Manchester.  He also has been appointed Associate Composer with the Hallé Orchestra.  Mr. Matthews’ works include orchestral, chamber, solo, and vocal music and have been recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon and Collins Classics labels.  Last year his new Horn Concerto was given its first performance in London's Royal Festival Hall by Richard Watkins and the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Born in Massachusetts in 1938, composer Frederic Rzewski studied music with Charles Mackey and later with Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, and Milton Babbitt at Harvard and Princeton.  A Fulbright grant brought him to Italy in 1960, where he also studied with Luigi Dallapiccola and met flutist Severino Gazzelloni.  In Rome in the mid-sixties, he, Alvin Curran, and Richard Teitelbaum formed the MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva) group, which became known for its pioneering work in live electronics and improvisation.  Bringing together both classical and jazz avant-garde musicians MEV developed an aesthetic of music as a spontaneous collective process.  A few of his major works in the 1970s and 80s are: The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, Le Silence des Espaces Infini, The Price of Oil, Antigone-Legend, and The Persians.  Other works include The Triumph of Death, an oratorio based on texts adapted from Peter Weiss' 1965 play Die Ermittlung (The Investigation), and The Road (in-progress) a
4 1/2-hour "novel" for solo piano.  Mr. Rzewski music has been recorded on ART records, Vanguard, and Newport Classics.  Since 1983 Mr. Rzewski has been Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liege, Belgium. He also has taught at the Yale School of Music, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of California at San Diego, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, the Hochschule der Knste in Berlin, and the Hochschule fr Musik in Karlsruhe, among other institutions.

Composer Hartmut Schmidt was born in Bad Mergentheim near Wrzburg, Germany in 1946 and attended school in Germany, Port Washington, (New York), and Chicago, before moving to Salzburg where he studied viola, trumpet, piano and composition. After serving as a violist in the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz, Austria from 1969 to 1972, he joined the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg.  A self-taught composer, Mr. Schmidt has produced numerous solo, chamber and orchestra works, church music, and other choral music. He has composed concertos for viola, tympani, violin, double bass, and Alphorn. At this time he is preparing his third CD with three concertos, two for Alphorn and his concerto for bass tuba (on tonight’s concert). His most recent composition is a quartet for English horn, accordion, piano, and cello, which is to be premiered in November in Salzburg. His publishers include COMusic (Munich), Benjamin (Hamburg), and Tonger (Cologne). Mr. Schmidt is a member of many institutions which perform new music, such as the Salzburg Aspekte Festival, the ISCM, among others.

At the age of eleven Robinson Barnwell Love started playing the tuba.  Under the tutelage of David Porter of U.S. Air Force Band, he was selected to be the first tubist to participate in the National Symphony Orchestra’s prestigious fellowship program.  In 1995, Mr. Love was one of three finalists in the International Solo Competition of the International Tuba-Euphonium Conference in Chicago, Illinois.  While a student of David Bragunier of the National Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Love was heard frequently in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area as tubist for the American Youth Philharmonic and the Brass of Peace brass choir.  Mr. Love studied for three years at the Peabody Institute of Music with David Fedderly, principal tubist of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.  Upon entering The Juilliard School in the fall of 2000, Mr. Love studied with Warren Deck, former principal tubist of the New York Philharmonic.  Mr. Love has played with many professional ensembles including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, and New York’s Gramercy Brass Orchestra.  Currently, he is in his last year of undergraduate study at The Juilliard School where he studies with David Fedderly.  He is the recipient of the Jerome L. Green Fellowship. 

Juilliard faculty member Joel Sachs performs a vast range of traditional and contemporary music as conductor and pianist. A member of the music history faculty of Juilliard, Dr. Sachs currently is writing a biography of the American composer Henry Cowell and makes frequent appearances on radio as a commentator on recent music.  As co-director of the acclaimed new music ensemble Continuum, he has appeared in hundreds of performances in New York, nationally, and internationally. He produces and directs The Juilliard School’s annual FOCUS! festival, is artistic director of the annual 18-concert Summergarden festival at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (on hiatus until completion of the Museum’s renovations), and is a co-director of the Sonic Boom festival of contemporary music presented by a consortium of New York City’s most prestigious new-music ensembles.  In 1993 Joel Sachs, with Dr. James Allen (Juilliard’s dean at the time), proposed a new ensemble to Juilliard’s President Joseph W. Polisi.  Since then, the New Juilliard Ensemble has brought new audiences to new music with their annual series of free concerts featuring new music by composers from around the world as well as offering opportunities for Juilliard composers to showcase their works.  A large part of the repertory has been composed for the New Juilliard Ensemble - as of last season, 44 compositions, perhaps 20% of the total programming.  Over the past decade, the Ensemble has had numerous residencies abroad and, this November, a group of eight performers appear in the Festival Whynote in Dijon, France. The Ensemble just finished its second summer with the Lincoln Center Festival performing the music of Chinese composers Guo Wenjing and Bright Sheng.  They performed a concert of music by the groundbreaking Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino in their debut festival appearance last summer.