VoxO, directed by Claire Hodge, has scheduled a repeat performance of my comic choral work, Tongue Twisters, on their September 13th program. This is an important concert for VoxO, because Claire is stepping down as music director after today. Claire has championed my choral writing for several years and has become a dear friend as well. But she leaves VoxO in good health and in good hands, with Michael Creighton stepping into the music director role.
In the meantime, Natalie Tsaldarakis and Panayotis Archontides of the Ivory Duo Piano are reprising a performance of selections from my suite, From the Faraway Nearby. They first performed selections from this work in Essex and London in 2008.
Kurtág / Bach – Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106 Claude Debussy – Petite Suite Lola Perrin – Operating System Change/work written for the series (premiere). John Lewis – Praseodymium John Lewis – Cerium Charlie Griffin – Faraway Suite (Selections) Schubert – Fugue in E minor, D. 952 Frank Bridge – Ballet Suite (Selections) Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre, Op. 40
Contemporary Classical Series: Join us for an evening of new music for clarinet, cello, and piano from some of Central Florida’s best living composers.
Eight composers. Nine works. One evening. CF2 brings together music by Stella Sung, Erik Branch, Daniel Crozier, Skye Neal, Nick Scout, Rebekah Todia, Jeremy Umlauf, and Charlie Griffin. Featuring clarinetist Jessica Speak, cellist Abby Collins, and pianist Hannah Sun Ripert at Timucua’s white house.
From a teenage prize-winner in Portland to a UCF Pegasus Professor, from UCF Pegasus Professor, from jazz to elegies to musical daydreams, The Tidal Pull of Moonbeams will be an evening of memorable new music and first-rate performances. Come hear what Central Florida composers are writing right now.
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In-person and livestream tickets available. Discounted tickets are available for members, students, teachers, frontline workers, veterans, and seniors.
Free parking on Summerlin Ave. and at Wadeview Park.
Please bring a bottle of wine or non-alcoholic beverage to share.
I composed Two Trees for Guzheng and Erhu for this concert. Program notes and concert details:
I took the title and inspiration from an erroneously attributed proverb, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now,” and from the fact that both the Guzheng and Erhu are instruments made primarily of wood. The phrase is often attributed to a Chinese proverb, but likely originated in mid-20th-century Western agriculture, forestry, or conservation bulletins rather than in ancient China. In Western culture, attributing vague but deep advice to an anonymous “Chinese Proverb” or to Confucius is a common rhetorical trick. It gives the quote an aura of ancient, timeless authority. Another, attributed to Nelson Henderson, is “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” Regardless of attribution, the tree as a metaphor resonates with me on many levels, both as a person and as a composer. (And I have planted multiple fruit trees in my Florida yard!)
In any case, composers often start with a germinal seed of an idea from which a composition grows, as was the case with this piece. I have always loved the Erhu, as a New Yorker who has heard subway musicians perform gorgeous, plaintive melodies for passersby. And it was the perfect complement to the Guzheng in my thinking, because, while the Guzheng’s tuning limitations meant that it would be set to a pentatonic (five-note) scale, the Erhu could supply any other notes I liked, and you’ll hear that I use the Erhu to shift the tonality from section to section, so that the Guzheng stays rooted (see what I did there?) to its five notes, the Erhu allows for our perception of those five notes to take on different (branching?) emotional qualities.
The Central Florida Composers Forum (CF2) is excited to announce our first-ever collaboration with the Chinese American Association of Central Florida (CAACF), bringing you a night of new and original Chinese music.
With Ann Yao on guzheng and Rui Yang on the erhu — both Shanghai natives — our composers approached their pieces with awe and deep appreciation for China, its rich history and culture, and the instruments and techniques used to capture the essence of a beautiful land and its residents. From heart-racing, fast-paced melodies to calming, tranquil movements, our composers have worked to honor the traditional aspects of Chinese music, building on the guzheng and erhu’s emotional pull and distinctive sound.
Please join us and the CAACF on August 9th at Timucua Arts at 7:30. Ticket link in our bio or scan the QR code in this post!
Composers: Scout Nate Chivers Jeremy Umlauf Charlie Griffin Erik Branch
Musicians: Ann Yao Rui Yang
In-person and livestream tickets available. Discounted tickets are available for members, students, teachers, frontline workers, veterans, and seniors. This event is a part of Timucua Arts Foundation’s International Guitar Festival 2026. Free parking on Summerlin Ave. and at Wadeview Park. Please bring a bottle of wine or a non-alcoholic beverage to share.
This concert will be their second performance of my chamber orchestra piece, Looking Up in Perfect Silence at the Stars, a reprise of their 2023 premiere at Harriet’s Orlando Ballet Center. The title is adapted from Walt Whitman’s poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” The timing of the planned premiere coincided with the tailing off of the COVID-19 pandemic and influenced my choice of theme. I tried to capture in music the range of emotions that occur when truly contemplating both the beauty of the night sky and our deep connection to everything we see there.
Presented by the Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra (OCCO) Conducted by Todd Craven
About OCCO
Since 2017, OCCO has been dedicated to engaging, captivating, and uplifting audiences with new music performed by local, professional musicians and innovative collaborations with composers, poets, comic book artists, and more. As the only orchestral organization focused on local composers, musicians, and audiences, we aim to contribute to the cultural fabric of Orlando and Central Florida.
About Echoes & Encores
Join OCCO for a memorable evening of contemporary chamber music at the Blue Bamboo Center for the Performing Arts. Best of OCCO: Echoes & Encores brings together a vibrant, carefully curated selection of pieces by living composers, ranging from delicate representations of stillness to works of visceral, kinetic intensity.
This special program highlights favorite works by some of Central Florida’s finest compositional voices – including a new commissioned overture by OCCO’s founder, Jamie Wehr – alongside competition-winning works that have muscled their way to Orlando from national and international stages.
Program Guide
Act I
Jamie Wehr – Prelude to a Dream
The Piece: This work is a personal reflection on aspiration and longing, focused on the quiet resolve required to follow a beautiful, distant dream even when the path forward remains uncertain.
The Composer: Wehr founded the Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra in 2017, laying the groundwork for its ongoing mission to champion new music in Central Florida.
The Piece: This chaotic composition aims to evoke the frantic atmosphere of a television writers’ room, constantly introducing and abandoning wild ideas as a deadline rapidly approaches.
The Composer: Based in Colorado, Dr. Browne earned his DMA from the University of Michigan and is an award-winning composer whose witty works strive to astonishingly blend humor and relentless rhythmic energy.
ChanJi Kim – Dear Umma
The Piece: This deeply personal composition explores distance and maternal connection by weaving an expressive Korean folk tune through lyrical lines and gentle dissonance.
The Composer: Dr. Kim is a native of Korea who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Florida and serves as a Professor of Music and Chair of the Performing and Visual Arts Department at Eastern Florida State College.
Troy Gifford – Milonga Abandonada
The Piece: Serving as a heartfelt homage to the traditional music of Argentina, this piece synthesizes elements of Latin and classical styles into an expressive interpretation of the dance form.
The Composer: Dr. Gifford is an award-winning guitarist and composer who earned his doctorate from the University of Miami and currently serves as the chair of the music department at Valencia College.
Jeremy Umlauf – Hero of Time
The Piece: This narratively driven work is an abstract medley for a hypothetical Legend of Zelda video game, using original music to convey overarching themes of adventure and courage.
The Composer: An eclectic Orlando-area creator who received his Master of Arts in Music from the University of Central Florida, Umlauf frequently draws creative inspiration from spending time in Florida’s rich fisheries.
The Piece: Drawing on traditional French traditions, this light, dance-like sextet shifts smoothly between a pastoral elegance and lively, syncopated movement.
The Composer: Born in 2006, Waldman is a Los Angeles-based pianist and composer currently studying at the University of Southern California who won the 2024 National Young Composers Challenge at Steinmetz Hall.
The Piece: This intense chamber work acts as an expression of generational discontent, borrowing heavily from the heavy metrical language of metal music and incorporating a historical 1789 letter by Thomas Jefferson.
The Composer: Dr. Burtzos is a New York and Orlando-based composer, the founder of the ICEBERG New Music collective, and currently serves as the Endowed Chair of Composition Studies at the University of Central Florida.
Charlie Griffin – Looking up at Perfect Silence at the Stars
The Piece: Inspired by a Walt Whitman poem, this expansive work captures the wide range of emotions and moods that arise when contemplating the beauty of the night sky and our connection to the cosmos.
The Composer: Holding a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Dr. Griffin is an experienced educator who founded the Central Florida Composers Forum in 2011 to actively support local music creators.
The Piece: Originally commissioned for a high-energy German concert project, this amplified, gritty piece uses abrasive timbres and extreme dynamics to capture an unconventional EDM-inspired vibe.
The Composer: Haigh is an internationally recognized Irish/British creator whose unique, multi-stylistic music has earned prestigious accolades, including an Ivor Novello Award.
VoxO, directed by Claire Hodge, will perform my choral work, Tongue Twisters, on their June 13 program. This is the FIFTH (!) work of mine that they’ve performed here in Orlando, and I’m profoundly grateful for their support. Claire and the singers of VoxO are not just talented, but fun, wonderful people. Why else would they subject themselves to singing tongue twisters in public?!?
Here’s the copy from their event: Join VoxO in Timucua’s intimate concert hall for an evening of beloved vocal music that is a little jazzy, a little poppy, and a little nostalgic.
We are pleased to feature living composers from around the world and our local community alongside classical favorites. You don’t want to miss this fun, light-hearted evening with VoxO.
VoxO, under the Artistic Direction of Claire Hodge, is a vocal chamber ensemble dedicated to stunning vocal music literature. Currently in their fifth season, VoxO continues to dazzle audiences with their tight vocal harmonies, challenging works, collaboration with local composers, and sensitive artistic performance. They have performed at Harriet’s Orlando Ballet Centre, Timucua Arts Foundation, Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater, The Cathedral Church of St Luke and several private venues. The group performs a wide range of repertoire, both a cappella and in collaboration with solo instrumentalists and a chamber orchestra. Their goal is to provide an interesting, versatile, and eclectic musical expression for zealous music fans.
Inspired by “a loom, a fence, a wire, a thread”: The Art of Mär Martinez
Presented by: The Art & History Museums of Maitland, The Central Florida Composers’ Forum, the Howey Music Series, and Mudita America.
Event Details
Admission: FREE (Sponsored by Duke Energy)
Date: May 27, 2025
Time: * Event Window: 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM
5:30-6:00 – Stroll the A & H gallery.
6:00-6:45 – Interactive Q&A session with Mär Martinez
7:00 PM Concert in the Gallery
Location: Art & History Museums of Maitland, 231 W. Packwood Ave., Maitland, FL 32751.
Concert Program
Experience a stunning night of music where the instrumental accompaniment evokes the shifting patterns, tension, and texture of Martinez’s visual art. Works marked with an asterisk (*) are receiving their world premières.
Aysima Anik (Violin): Born in Istanbul, Turkey, AYSIMA ANIK began her musical journey at age four with piano and music theory lessons. In 2009, she started her violin studies with Ebru Yunkus and later joined the studio of Assoc. Prof. Nilay Sancar at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul State Conservatory. Aysima has participated in masterclasses at the Ayvalık International Music Academy. She performed as the concertmaster of the MSFAU Youth Orchestra (2017–2018), toured with the Doğuş Children’s Symphony Orchestra (2017–2019), and toured with the Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra (TUGFO) from 2021 to 2023, serving as Assistant Principal Violin in 2023. She earned second prize with Alg Quartet at the 2nd Chamber Music Competition at the Eğirdir Classical Music Festival.
Additionally, she has performed as a soloist with the MSFAU Symphony Orchestra and was a semifinalist in the 2022 International Suna Kan Violin Competition. In 2024, Aysima transferred to Rollins College as a Presidential Scholar, where she studied violin with Prof. Joni Roos. She performed with the Rollins String Ensemble and orchestra, appeared as a violinist in several choir concerts, and performed with the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park. In May 2026, she graduated from Rollins College summa cum laude and was inducted into Pi Kappa Lambda, the national music honor society. She will continue her studies at the Eastman School of Music under Prof. Juliana Athayde, pursuing a Master of Music in Violin Performance and Literature
Dennis Fleitz (Cello): the youngest of six musicians, Dennis grew up surrounded by the sounds of musical theater, classical piano, and jazz. This rich musical upbringing continues to shape his programming, guiding his belief that each concert is an opportunity to introduce audiences to an exciting and diverse range of genres and artists. Dennis is completing his MM in Cello Performance at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, studying under the former acting principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic, Alan Stepansky. He previously earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Florida, where he studied with David Bjella. He will continue his studies at the Yale School of Music under the tutelage of Paul Watkins and Ole Akahoshi. At Peabody, Dennis served as principal cellist of the Peabody Conductors’ Orchestra, performing for Marin Alsop’s conducting studio, and also held the principal role in multiple cycles of the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. At UCF, Dennis was the principal cellist of the UCF Symphony Orchestra and was awarded the Dr. Gale Sperry Music Scholarship, the Dr. Marilyn W. Whistler Award, and the Presser Award. Dennis has earned numerous accolades, most recently winning the 2026 VSA International Young Musicians Program, for which he is eligible as a musician living with Type 1 Diabetes.
In 2024, he was awarded second prize at the Music Teachers National Association Young Artists Competition, representing Florida and the Southern Division; judges praised his playing as “sensitive and colorful,” with “terrific virtuosity and showmanship.” He also won first prize at the Beth Mason Young Artists Competition in 2022, performing Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2 with the Lakeland Symphony Orchestra. He has participated in leading summer programs, including the Bowdoin International Music Festival, where he studied with David Ying, and the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he studied with Eric Kim and Kangho Lee. Dennis’ love for music doesn’t stop at playing cello. He also spends much of his time composing and singing. His passion for composing has led to successful commissions from a variety of parties, including the UCF Cello Choir, the Round Top Music Festival Cello Section, which performed his arrangement at a Round Top Festival Orchestra concert, and a wedding in Denmark. Song-writing is his favorite hobby, but beyond music, Dennis enjoys playing video games, working out, bowling, penny-boarding, and spending time with his family.
Emily Heumann (Mezzo-Soprano) has gained recognition for her “credible” storytelling (Orlando Sentinel) and “delicious vocals” (Arts + Culture Texas Magazine). She performs in a variety of settings, including concerts, oratorios, operas, musical theatre, and recitals, and has appeared with many companies across the U.S. and Europe. Emily is also an active voice teacher and clinician, currently part of the voice faculty at The College of Central Florida, where she was named the 2019 Adjunct Professor of the Year. She also serves as the Executive & Artistic Director of The Howey Music Series, a nonprofit that brings intimate classical and jazz concerts to nontraditional venues across Central Florida. Emily earned her Master’s degree in Voice Performance & Pedagogy from the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston and her Bachelor’s in Music from Rollins College. In her free time, she loves spending time with her husband, composer Dr. Eric Heumann, and their son, Lucas. Learn more at emilyheumann.com.
Christine Honein (Soprano): Praised for her vocal clarity, crystalline coloratura, and abundant musicality, Lebanese-American soprano Christine Honein has appeared on stages across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East in both operatic and concert repertoire. Most recently, she was featured as a soloist in New Year concerts with the Donau Philharmonie Wien and the Pilsen State Opera Orchestra, performing under the baton of Maestro Manfred Müssauer and Maestra Rima Tawil. Christine’s operatic highlights include Sœur Constance in Dialogues des Carmélites (Opera For Earth), Mrs. Hayes in Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah (St. Pete Opera, company debut), Maria in West Side Story (Eklund Opera), Dalinda in Ariodante (Eklund Opera), and Drusilla in L’incoronazione di Poppea (FSU Opera). In 2025, she also made her debut with the Nantucket Chamber Music Festival, performing works by Ned Rorem and Howard Frazin as part of The Rossini Club.
On the concert stage, Christine is deeply passionate about championing new works by her colleagues and friends, with a particular commitment to highlighting the music of Lebanese composers. In Spring 2025, she curated and presented Whimsical Melodies, a chamber program at the University of Tampa. The previous year, she appeared as a guest artist at the University of Wyoming, where she presented her recital A Musical Voyage: From Sevilla to Beirut and led a masterclass for voice students. Born in Lebanon to Lebanese parents, Christine spent her formative years in Beirut and Florida. She holds a Bachelor of Music from Florida State University and a Master of Music from the University of Colorado Boulder, and is a student of soprano and conductor Rima Tawil, whose mentorship has been central to her artistic growth. Through her work, Christine aspires to use music as a means of expression, connection, and cultural exchange-bridging the rich traditions of East and West.
Eric Rokni (Santour): Eric is a musician, physicist, and educator whose work bridges science, culture, and performance. He earned degrees in Music and Physics from Rollins College before completing a PhD in Acoustics at Pennsylvania State University. Eric currently teaches physics at High Point University, where he continues to perform on cello, santour, and other instruments. Drawing on his Persian and Jewish heritage, Eric’s musical background is deeply rooted in traditions where the santour holds a central cultural and artistic role.
Christian Snedeker (Percussion): Based out of Orlando, Florida, Christian Snedeker is a Percussionist, Drummer, Producer, Recording Artist, and Music Educator. A dynamic and diverse player, Christian maintains a busy performing schedule, split between many facets of the industry, including Theme Park, Musical Theater, Jazz/R&B, Orchestral, and Recording. He is a full-time drummer and Drum Captain for The Untrainable Dragon at Universal Epic Universe and performs in various other shows at Walt Disney World and Universal Studios, as well as being active as a freelancer with jazz and pop artists and with his jazz fusion group, Narrative. Christian is an active performer in the musical theater circuit as well, having played drums and percussion for theater companies such as New Generation Theatrical, The Renaissance Theater Company, Encore! Performing Arts, and for touring shows. Christian also subs in with professional orchestras across the state, including the Bach Festival Orchestra, The Nu-Deco Ensemble, The Brevard Symphony Orchestra, and The Villages Philharmonic. Christian is honored to have shared the stage with notable names including Joey Fatone, Grace Kelly, Josh Gad, John Stamos, Neil Patrick Harris, Chuck Findley, and Jodi Benson. Christian is a graduate of the University of Central Florida’s Percussion Studio and, since 2022, has proudly endorsed Constantine Cymbals.
Composers
ERIK BRANCH: Erik Branch was born in New York City and received a B.A. and M.A. in Music from Hunter College, where he studied composition with Myron Fink and Arthur Harris, piano with Peter Basquin and Marcia Eckert, and voice with Russell Oberlin. He lives near Orlando, Florida, where he is active as a pianist, music director, composer/arranger, operatic tenor, and actor on stage and screen. His compositions have been performed in New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Orlando, Tulsa, Austin; in Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, Athens, York, Bucharest, Hong Kong, and Hanoi; at Harvard University, and West Point, amongst other places.
DENISE BROADHURST (1970-2008): Denise Broadhurst was a composer, pianist, oboist, and educator active in the New York contemporary music scene. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota, and her PhD in Music Composition was awarded posthumously by the CUNY Graduate Center. As a composer, Broadhurst’s catalog includes orchestral works, instrumental chamber music (such as her flute Sonatina and violin Scherzo), and vocal text settings, including her 3 Christina Rossetti Songs and the spoken-word + audio + live saxophone piece Not Waving, But Drowning. A recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Broadhurst was a tenured Assistant Professor of Music at Nassau Community College and taught at Hofstra University. Her legacy is preserved through her compositions and an endowed memorial scholarship supporting young musicians.
CHARLIE GRIFFIN: Charlie Griffin is an accomplished composer, educator, and arts administrator with a distinguished thirty-year career. His music has been performed in over twenty countries and featured at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, as well as at international festivals including Spoleto and Aspen. Notable performances include collaborations with the St. Louis Symphony and Orlando Philharmonic. A versatile creative professional, Griffin has lectured at renowned institutions such as Hofstra University and Columbia University, as well as at U.S. Embassies in Latvia and Lithuania. In 2010, he helped launch Full Sail University’s Music Production program and, shortly after, founded the Central Florida Composers Forum. Beyond music, Griffin explores creativity through improv, acting, and creative writing.
GERALD LAW II: Gerald Law II is a composer based in the Central Florida area. Law’s approach brings a unique sound driven by his background as a drummer and cellist, combining rhythm and melody in an inspiring way. His recent work includes music written for Henry Severe’s short film, ‘Delusionally, Ari’.
RYAN McQUINN: Ryan McQuinn is an award-winning composer, audio engineer, and sound designer whose work spans concert music, musical theater, audio dramas, and video games. His work is driven primarily by emotion and intuition, with theory serving to understand and refine ideas rather than to generate them. His music often explores contrasts between beauty and tension, intimacy and scale, darkness and wonder. Alongside composition, McQuinn works extensively in audio production and live sound, continuing to explore the intersection of storytelling, immersive sound, and imaginative musical worlds.
NICK SCOUT: Nick Scout is a multi-instrumentalist whose foundation is rooted in stringed instruments, with a style that encompasses everything from Gypsy jazz to neo-soul, classical to country-western, Hindustani to punk. Scout marries emotion with lawless fantasia in an approach all his own.
About the Partner Organizations
Art & History Museums of Maitland (A&H): The Art & History Museums of Maitland (A&H) is a premier cultural destination and community gathering place in Central Florida, about 15 minutes from downtown Orlando. A&H is a group of sophisticated attractions that includes a contemporary art museum, 3 interactive history museums, and a campus recognized as Greater Orlando’s only National Historic Landmark. A&H also features a community art school nestled among its beautiful gardens and unique architecture. Founded in 1937 as an artists’ retreat, our space continues to fulfill this mission through artist residencies that serve both local and international artists. A&H provides the Central Florida community with many free, family-friendly activities every month. artandhistory.org
Central Florida Composers’ Forum (CF²): The Central Florida Composers’ Forum (CF2) is an organization of composers and new music practitioners dedicated to the proposition that a thriving local arts scene makes a city an infinitely better place to live. CF2 strives to be part of a larger cultural conversation where the musical, visual, and other performing arts connect with audiences through innovative music programming, vital collaborations, and multidisciplinary performances that aim not just to reach audiences but to move them. cfcomposers.org
Howey Music Series: The Howey Music Series, which presents performances at the historic Howey Mansion in Howey-in-the-Hills in Lake County, was founded in 2018 by soprano Arisa Kusumi Sullivan as a nonprofit organization with the mission to breathe new life into musical treasures by bringing approachable and educational concerts to Central Floridians by underscoring the captivating qualities of great classical and jazz music, performed by the best artists. In addition, the series has a Mansion Music program for young listeners and additional pop-up concerts. howeymusicseries.org
Mudita (Mudita America): Established to bring communities together through innovative arts collaborations that defy boundaries across genres, cultures, and people, Mudita serves as an artistic collective of tomorrow. Founded initially in Japan in 2019 to share diverse global art with youth through the mechanism of empathy, its American branch—Mudita America—was established in 2022 to expand this shared vision across the Central Florida community. Built on core values of collaboration, innovation, accessibility, and empathy, the organization crafts multi-cultural performance experiences and structural fusions of international instrumental traditions. In recognition of its community impact, Mudita America was nominated for Best Chamber Music Group in Orlando Weekly’s Best of Orlando 2025. Three of tonight’s featured musicians—Aysima Anik (violin), Dennis Fleitz (cello), and Eric Rokni (santoor)—are proud resident members of the Mudita collective. muditausa.com
Special acknowledgments to Executive Director Danielle Thomas, Chief Curator Dan Hess, and program assistant Logan Anderson. Program design by Erik Branch. Concert sponsored by Duke Energy.
Ballad of the Wild Girl (Charlie Griffin)
Program Note: Gülten Akın (1933–2015) was one of Turkey’s most influential contemporary poets, known for verses that look at isolation, gender, and structural barriers. In Ballad of the Wild Girl (originally Deli Kızın Türküsü), Akın explores the cyclical vulnerability of human longing (and fury when that vulnerability is frustrated or unrequited).
This setting utilizes an English translation by Filiz Turhan (a high school classmate!) and is scored for soprano, violin, and cello. Musically, the piece features frequent time signature changes designed to evoke the propulsive fluidity, asymmetry, and rhythmic shifting characteristic of traditional Middle Eastern and Turkish music. The composition was written to directly engage with Mär Martinez’s exhibition: a loom, a fence, a wire, a thread. Born from Martinez’s Fulbright research in Istanbul, her paintings contrast the organic, asymmetrical curves of human figures against the hard, rigid geometry of razor wire, checkpoints, and fences. Ballad of the Wild Girl aims to mirror this tension.
Filiz Turhan’s creative work has appeared in The Sonora Review, The Threepenny Review, The North American Review, The Closed Eye Open, and elsewhere. She serves as an Associate Prose Editor for The West Trade Review and has been a professor of English at SUNY Suffolk for many years. Like many of her students, she is a first-gen American and was a first-gen college student. Her family’s home city in Turkey is near Gülten Akın’s birthplace in Yozgat.
Poem by Gülten Akın (Translated by Filiz Turhan):
If I were to bump into you on a boulevard If I were to reach out and grasp your hand If I were to look into your eyes, but say nothing If only you could understand
If I stretch out my hand, but can’t reach you With all my love and my loneliness, too Oh, thinking does me no good And you haven’t a clue You never have a clue This ballad ends and starts anew
It rains, and the acacias drown By night, the clouds roam I’m crazy for the clouds, wild for the rain But to you, it’s all just a game Love me or kill me
Along the way, you lose it all An insect starting anew In the dark in this ungodly rain, I’ve stood Burn, my lonesome heart, burn ‘ cause what’s gone is gone for good.
Three Rossetti Poems (Denise Broadhurst)
Poems by Christina Rossetti:
1. When I am dead, my dearest
When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress-tree:
Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain: And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.
2. The wind has such a rainy sound
The wind has such a rainy sound Moaning through the town, The sea has such a windy sound, Will the ships go down?
The apples in the orchard Tumble from their tree. Oh will the ships go down, go down, In the windy sea?
3. A blue-eyed phantom far before
A blue-eyed phantom far before Is laughing, leaping toward the sun: Like lead I chase it evermore, I pant and run.
It breaks the sunlight bound on bound: Goes singing as it leaps along To sheep-bells with a dreamy sound A dreamy song.
I laugh, it is so brisk and gay; It is so far before, I weep: I hope I shall lie down some day, Lie down and sleep.
One of my compositions, Sinking City, is featured in this coming Sunday’s event, as covered in Artistry Magazine:
Experience the stunning beauty of the historic Sydonie Mansion in Mount Dora when it hosts Future Nature in Song: An Evening of Art, Wine, and New Music as part of the nonprofit Howey Music Series.
Begin the evening with a stroll through an exhibition of ecologically themed artwork by Sinuhé Vega Negrin, a Cuba-born multidisciplinary creator now based in Orlando. Then enjoy a concert of new compositions inspired by Negrin’s work from members of the Central Florida Composers Forum.
Composers whose work will be featured include Alex Burtzos, Charlie Griffin, Erik Branch, Gerald Law, Nate Chivers, Nick Scout, Paul Austin Sanders, and Troy Gifford. Their music will be performed by Anna Eschbach, soprano; Troy Gifford, guitar; and Olga Kolpakova, violin.
Here’s a performance of my work from the original exposition:
The art and wine stroll is slated for Sunday, May 3, 4:00–5:00 pm, with the concert following from 5:00–6:00 pm. Tickets are $55 ($60 at the door) and include wine, although a cash bar will also be available.
The beautifully restored Sydonie Mansion, itself a 22,000-square-foot work of art, was built in 1883 as a hunting lodge for Pittsburgh steel magnate James Laughlin. It is notable for being the only design in the state by architect Grosvenor Atterbury, who also masterminded mansions for John D. Rockefeller Jr., as well as such notable public buildings as the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Howey Music Series, which also holds concerts at the Howey Mansion in nearby Howey-in-the-Hills, presents world-class performances and free educational programming with the goal to inspire audiences of all ages, foster a love for the arts, and ensure the vitality of jazz and classical traditions for future generations.
Sydonie Mansion is located at 5538 Sydonie Drive, Mount Dora. For more information or to buy tickets, call 407.385.0646.
Presented by Voices of Orlando, Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra, Central Florida Youth Chorus, Central Florida Composers Forum, and Performing Arts Matter
Sunday, September 14, 2025 | 2:00 PM | Cathedral Church of Saint Luke | $30 Suggested Donation
Orlando, FL — On Sunday, September 14, audiences are invited to step into the glow of Celestial Light, a concert of music that explores radiance, memory, and transcendence. Performed in the soaring space of the Cathedral Church of Saint Luke, this collaboration brings together Voices of Orlando, members of the Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra, organist Michael Petrosh, and the Central Florida Youth Chorusunder the direction of Julie Simmons.
The program features a blend of choral and instrumental works by living composers, including local Central Florida Composers Forum members William Ayers, Charlie Griffin, and Enrique Ynaty. Together with music by Jonathan Dove, Mark Kilstofte, Pasquale Tassone, Michael Petrosh, Jacob Lack, and Julianna Hinton, the concert offers a rich palette of sound, from shimmering stars to solemn reflections to jubilant praise.
Highlights include:
O quam dulcis by William Ayers — evoking the comfort of a warm library on a cold day, as singers voice words of wisdom discovered among the shelves.
The Crown of Joy by Charlie Griffin — a moving homage to J.S. Bach for choir, organ, and timpani.
Lux Aeterna by Enrique Ynaty — a luminous meditation on eternal light.
four o’clock in the afternoon by Julianna Hinton — a powerful new work preserving the testimony of Armenian Genocide survivor Guleeg Haroian.
Everyone’s Voice by Mark Kilstofte — setting Siegfried Sassoon’s poetry, reminding us that “the singing will never be done.”
Flight Paths by Jacob Lack — inspired by Malcolm Arnold, a buoyant piece that imagines planes dancing across the sky.
Lauda Anima Mea Dominum by Pasquale Tassone — a majestic setting of Psalm 145 for choir, organ, brass, and timpani.
With brass quintet, timpani, organ, and two local choral groups, Celestial Light celebrates music’s power to lift us, comfort us, and connect us.
Celestial Light Sunday, September 14, 2025 | 2:00 PM Cathedral Church of Saint Luke 130 North Magnolia Ave, Orlando, FL $30 Suggested Donation
Presented by Voices of Orlando, Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra, Central Florida Composers Forum, Central Florida Youth Chorus, and Performing Arts Matter.
WINTER PARK, FL – The Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra (OCCO), led by Music Director Todd Craven, joins forces with Claire Hodge and the vocal ensemble VoxO for Between Islands, a compelling evening of new music for chamber orchestra and voices. The concert will be held on Saturday, July 19, 2025, at 8:00 PM at the Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts in Winter Park, Florida.
This performance marks one of the first concerts in the newly opened Blue Bamboo venue and features works by nine living composers, including several based in Central Florida. The program centers on themes of loss, renewal, community, and connection.
Ethan Soledad’s Legacy Songs of Unity is the centerpiece—a sweeping, lyrical choral work written in 2024 that celebrates resilience, community, and the power of music to unite and heal.
Central Florida Composers Forum members offer deeply personal contributions:
Charles Griffin’s Between Islands (2025) reimagines his 2016 trumpet‑and‑audio work with meditative winds and ritualistic percussion, tracing grief’s transformation into memory and peace.
Troy Gifford’s The Night is based on the poem The Night Has a Thousand Eyes by Francis William Bourdillon.
Alan Gerber’s sensitive setting of the traditional Irish blessing May the Road Rise to Meet You.
This program also includes:
Erich Barganier – Speaking in Tongues: Inspired by glossolalia and spiritual ecstasy, this piece explores fluid vocal expression and layered ensemble textures.
Saman Shahi – I HEARD A FLY BUZZ: A poignant SATB setting of Emily Dickinson’s poem emphasizing the fly’s “buzz” motif, silence, and stillness in death.
Maciej Bałenkowski – Comets: An early work (age 18) focused on expression, melody, and emotion, reflecting the composer’s fascination with the universe.
Robert Cohen – Connecticut Autumn: A choral‑orchestral setting of Hyam Plutzik’s poem, using autumnal imagery to explore aging, mortality, and passage of time.
Gerson de Sousa Batista – Babalon: A tribute to life, nature, and birth, inspired by the mother figure and celebrating creative origins.
These works span cosmic wonder, mystical ritual, personal reflection, and communal affirmation, offering a profoundly moving and varied evening of contemporary music.
Tickets are $30 and include an intermission. Location: Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts, 460 E. New England Ave., Winter Park, FL More Information:occo.music | voxomusic.org
A truly unique and fascinating event will feature premières of works by 8 composers from the Central Florida Composers’ Forum on Wednesday, January 29th, starting at 5:30 PM as part of the “Music in the Gallery” at the Art & History Centers of Maitland (231 W. Packwood Ave., Maitland, FL 32751.) This concert is in conjunction with “Future Nature: The Silent Conversations of Sinuhé Vega,” the new exhibit featuring works of the artist Sinuhé Vega Negrin, whose painting and ceramic sculptures explore ecological and human frailty, drawing on the Dutch Vanitas tradition, and themes of magic realism, surrealism, and of humanity’s mental constructs and disconnection from nature.
The artist will give a talk about his work. The soprano Anna Eschbach, violinist Galen Kaup, and guitarist Troy Gifford will be performing a recital of lush, intimate and arresting music comprised of the premières of Erik Branch’s “There Was Always Time” (poem by Logan Anderson), Alex Burtzos’ “Four Haiku” (poems of Natsune Sо̄seki, Aida Bunosuke, and Yosa Buson), Charlie Griffin’s “Sunken City” (poem by Ariel Francisco), Gerald Law II’s “Take a Look” (poem by the composer), Nate Chivers’ “A Cloud of Flowers” Matsuо̄ Bashо̄, Nick Scout’s “Conversing With Statues” (poem by the composer), Paul Austin Sanders’ “Nature’s Connection To Us…As One We Are,” and Troy Gifford’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” (setting Robert Frost’s well-known poem.) The event is free and open to the public and is a co-production with the Howey Music Series and Central Florida Composers Forum.
Percussionist Gregory Lyons (Professor of Music and the James Alvey Smith Endowed Professor at Louisiana Tech University) and Multi-wind player Trevor Davis (Director of Woodwinds at at Southern Utah University) commissioned a brand new 8-minute work from me for their Delamo Duo.
Between the Heaves of Storm is written in three movements: I. (Seductive, serpentine) scored for Alto Saxophone and Vibraphone; II. (Moderate, with a rock swing/attitude) for Tenor Saxophone and Marimba; and III. (Aggressive, ritualistic, dangerous) for Baritone Saxophone and mixed percussion/player’s choice
The premiere will be at Howard Auditorium (a 1,150-seat performance venue at Louisiana Tech University) this Friday, March 15 at 7PM. They’ll follow up that performance on Monday, March 18 at 7:30PM at Thorley Recital Hall on the campus of Southern Utah University.
Clarinetist Jessica Speak and guitarist Troy Gifford will reprise their premiere performance from last year of my Samba Variations, this time on September 17 at 3 p.m. at Stetson University’s Lee Chapel / Elizabeth Hall. This is part of a larger program of music that includes pianist Hannah Sun.
3:00 p.m., Lee Chapel, Elizabeth Hall 421 N. Woodland Blvd., DeLand, FL 32723 (386)-822-8950 Admission is free.
The 16-voice ensemble VoxO, directed by Claire Hodge and joined by pianist Libby Chippeaux, violinist Julia Gessinger, cellist Jamie Clark, and harpist Haley Rhodeside, presents a first-of-its-kind program ever heard in Orlando: regional or world premieres of choral works written entirely by living Central Florida composers.
The works in this program explore the depths of the emotional and spiritual human experience, from the Korean lullaby Jajang-ga by ChanJiKim to Alex Burtzos’s setting of Shakespeare’s Come Away, Death. New spiritual works set in Latin, like Brandon Martin’s Ave Maris Stella, Stan Cording’s Exaudi Me, and Alan Gerber’s Ubi Caritas, complement the secular deeply poetic expression found in works like Troy Gifford’s Like Water, Chaz Underriner’s Forget Sleep, and Charlie Griffin’s In After Time.
Many, many thanks to The Awesome Foundation for their support of this project, along with Full Sail University, University of Central Florida, Valencia College, Track Shack, and Tom Dyer.
Experience the adventurous spirit and wide-eyed wonder of childhood through music as Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra partners with 16-voice sensation VoxO for “Through a Child’s Eyes.” This exciting concert features five world premieres that contemplate life’s joys and sorrows from a youthful perspective.
Let William Blake’s poetic ode “A Cradle Song” transport you to a place of innocence shielded from life’s harshness. Feel the liminal space between dreaming and waking in Ella Higginson’s mystical “Dawn.” Learn music’s magic alongside Robert Louis Stevenson’s whimsical verses. Marvel at the child-like visual poetry of e.e. cummings’ imaginary world where effortless love reigns in Charlie Griffin’s setting of who knows if the moon’s a balloon, rearranged specifically for VoxO at the request of their director, Claire Hodge. Grieve a child taken too soon yet find resilience in his spirit with Abby Henkel’s setting of Mary Craig’s elegiac “Perigee.” Dance with shorebirds on sandy shores through the playful lens of “Gymnopedie.” And wander in awe through a meadow’s symphony of shimmering lights.
Under the direction of Todd Craven (OCCO) and Claire Hodge (VoxO), this imaginative program will be performed on September 9 at 8pm at the Alexis and Jim Pugh Theater of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Experience choral music anew as “Through a Child’s Eyes” offers a kaleidoscope of perspectives, allowing you to reconnect to life’s beauty.
Blue Bamboo Center For The Arts — 1905 Kentucky Ave, Winter Park, FL. Saturday, August 19, 2023 @ 8PM. Tickets are $25.
Experience contemporary chamber music at its finest when Performing Arts Matter presents the Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra and Central Florida Composer Forum in “OCCO Deconstructed: Landscapes of Shadow and Light.” Hear music by award-winning composers performed by small ensembles of OCCO’s outstanding musicians.
The program includes Alex Burtzos’ “King | Cawdor,” depicting the emotional turmoil of political power; Sharon Omens’ “Thoroughfare,” contrasting urban loneliness and natural connectedness; Troy Gifford’s energetic string quartet works “Lumina” and “Lacerta”; Dan Crozier’s haunting “Nocturne” for cello and piano; and Christian Yom’s “Sansori,” merging traditional Korean music and lush strings. The evening concludes with Charlie Griffin’s “Cambiando Paisajes,” a piano trio work inspired by Latin rhythms.
With passionate performances and thought-provoking new music, this evening of shadow and light is not to be missed. Experience contemporary music as it was meant to be heard – live on stage.
The performers for this event are: Jamie Clark – Cello Nora Lee Garcia – Flute Julia Gessinger – Violin Elliot May – Bass Haley Rhodeside – Harp Jazmin Skipper – Bassoon Jessica Speak – Clarinet Hannah Sun – Piano Anabel Tejada – Viola Andreas Volmer – Violin
The Orlando Contemporary Chamber Orchestra launches its 2022 summer concert season in partnership with the Central Florida Composers Forum, (CF2) with each concert featuring a premiere by a local composer member of CF2. The first concert of the series is called To There From Here, and features my Looking Up in Perfect Silence at the Stars, an 18-minute work for 18-piece chamber orchestra, along with David Wilborn‘s Rhapsody for Bass Trombone and Chamber Orchestra (featuring the composer on bass trombone), and Kyle Throw‘s Myth and Dreams.
The concert will take place at Harriet’s Orlando Ballet Centre (600 N Lake Formosa Drive in Orlando) on June 18 at 7pm. Tickets are $25 and are available here.
Friday, October 1, 2021 – Timucua Arts Foundation 2000 South Summerlin, Orlando, FL 32806. at 7:00 PM and 8:30 PM Tickets $20/$10 students, veterans, Timucua & CFCF members
Pianists Will Daniels, Rose Grace, and Barry Snyder perform a striking and stimulating program of new music by local composers. Join us for the Central Florida Composers’ Forum’s fall concert, which will present new music for piano by local composers. Pianists Will Daniels, Rose Grace, and Barry Snyder perform a striking and stimulating program of music by ChanJi Kim, Keith Lay, Troy Gifford, Stan Cording, Charlie Griffin, Jamie Wehr, Erik Branch, and Alex Burtzos.
There are two performances of this program, one at 7 PM and one at 8:30 PM.
Phase Variations is a five-movement set of variations for solo piano that uses as its theme Steve Reich’s classic and seminal 1967 minimalist masterpiece for two pianos, Piano Phase. This was Reich’s experiment with replicating a bug/feature of tape recorders whereby slight differences in the play speed mechanisms between two machines would incrementally create phasing between them over time. The germinal material of Reich’s Piano Phase is a stark twelve-note motive that, in the original, is played in unison rhythm by two pianists that are then asked to phase apart just like two tape recorders would do. This is “process” music at its finest.
In Phase Variations, the Reich theme emerges by the end of the first variation. Each subsequent variation dresses the theme in different ways, as variations do, and ends with a process-derived variation of my own. The finale, which follows the fourth variation without break, is a toccata whose rhythmic patterning is based on the famous Fibonacci sequence. This is a growth pattern seen in nature based on a series in which each number is the sum of the previous two numbers.
The international musicians of the Fernwood String Quartet perform a program of world-premieres by acclaimed composers working in Central Florida. The program promises to be a buffet of styles and moods from some of the best known composers living and working in the Orlando area. Alex Burtzos’s OMAHA (all the things you could be you are you were) is a piece about memories – their creation, retention, and ultimate dissolution. Troy Gifford’s Lumina is a lyrical and gorgeous serenade. Charlie Griffin’s Billing’s Portrait pays tribute to the father of the American choral tradition in a set that reimagines three of William Billings’ best known pieces, including the fiery Let Tyrants Shake. These and other new and refreshing works will be brought to perfect life in a way that only the masterful Fernwood Quartet can.
Personnel:
Julia Gessinger, violin Andreas Volmer, violin Daniel Cortes, viola Hanrich Claassen, cello
Program:
Five Miniatures, Austin Ashe OMAHA, Alex Burtzos Gigue, Stan Cording Shock of Waking, Jim Croson Lumina, Troy Gifford Minimalist Madness, Joseph Gray Billings Portrait, Charlie Griffin Unfortunately Not A Samba, Jamie Wehr
There will be two performances on that day: One at 7pm, and one at 9pm.
The concerts will take place at the Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater. Designed to seat 300, the Pugh will be rearranged with just 82 seats in a cabaret-style setup, with tables in the front and additional seating in the back. This socially distanced seating and the rest of the Dr. Phillips Center’s extensive COVID protocol offer you the safest indoor arts experience possible.
The James Madison University School of Music presents the JMU Percussion Ensemble (Casey Cangelosi, director) on Friday, February 7, 2020 at 8 pm at The Forbes Center for the Performing Arts.
Program: Chain by Kazunori Miyake; Away Without Leave by Bob Becker; Inventions on a Motive by Michael Colgrass; Departures by Emmanuel Séjourné; The Persistence of Past Chemistries by Charles Griffin; Ogoun Badagris by Christopher Rouse; Earth and The Great Weather by John Luther Adams; and Beneath by Caleb Pickering.
Wednesday, January 29. The Abbey – 100 S. Eola Drive, Suite 100, Orlando FL Show starts at 7:30pm, doors open at 7:00pm $15 in advance, $20 at the door
What happens when six composers from the Central Florida Composers Forum collaborate with six storytellers from the Orlando Weekly “Best of 2019” Orlando Story Club on a predetermined theme? The result is “Joyland,” a one-of-a-kind and first-of-its kind event in Central Florida, produced by the Downtown Arts District. Storytellers will perform compelling personal experiences accompanied by original scores by local composers. The stories and styles are as diverse as our city.
The pairs are as follows: Bobby Wesley with Mark Piszczek; Jesse James with Charlie Griffin; Logan Anderson with Erik Branch; Madeline Potts with Paul Austin Sanders; Daniele Ziss with Alex Burtzos; and Aquanza Cadogan with Holly Cordero.
The storytellers will perform with live music by players drawn from the local Alterity Chamber Orchestra, a group known for its dedication to performing contemporary music at the highest levels: Tina Edelstein, flute; Beatriz Ramirez, oboe; Jessica Speak, clarinet; Kathy Thomas, horn; and Christian Eberle, bassoon.
Steve Siegel will perform my Between Islands at Western State Colorado University on November 3 at 2pm. During the performance, students from the Art Department will create a collaborative painting to the music.
Between Islands – for trumpet and electronic score is an expression of the experience of separation from loved ones long gone. According to Griffin, “The experience of losing a truly loved person is profoundly sad at the beginning and for a long time. But the quality of that loss gradually transforms. It becomes part of who we are. And with that realization comes a sense of serenity because the people we loved and lost are clearly residing within us.”
Venus & the Radio Thursday, August 8 at the Timucua White House 2000 South Summerlin, Orlando, FL 32806. Doors: 7pm. Concert: 7:30. Tickets are $10.
While Orlando has begun to gain recognition for its arts community, not much has been said about the lines and boundaries drawn between artistic disciplines. When it comes to music and literature, The Central Florida Composers Forum, in collaboration with local literary publisher Burrow Press, aim to blur those boundaries and inspire future collaborations with their upcoming event, “Venus & the Radio.”
This one-of-a-kind event will feature two prominent Florida authors reading excerpts from their newest books (published by Burrow Press) in collaboration with four Orlando-based members of the Central Florida Composers Forum.
Orlando Poet Laureate Susan Lilley will perform Florida-inspired work from her collection Venus in Retrograde with accompaniment from composers Mark Piszczek and Timothy Stulman. Piszczek’s interactive approach will incorporate Lilley reading live with Piszczek on soprano saxophone and pre-recorded audio electronically manipulated by sound artist Jared Silvia. Stulman will do real-time audio processing of Lilley’s performance, combined with a pre-recorded audioscape.
Shane Hinton will perform excerpts from Radio Dark, a surreal post-apocalyptic novel set in Florida. Composers Holly Cordero and Charlie Griffin will provide an underscore in the manner of classic radio plays.
“This event is a great opportunity to not only illustrate the variety of talent in Orlando,” says Burrow Press publisher Ryan Rivas, “but also to acknowledge that art isn’t created in a vacuum. And especially to show how one art form can and does inspire others.”
A Q&A and book signing will follow the performance.
On June 12 & 13, at 6:30pm, at the Melbourne Auditorium (625 E Hibiscus Blvd, Melbourne, FL), the Melbourne Community Orchestra will perform my Frontispiece on J.S. Bach’s Prelude in G major, a 4+-minute work that features as part of it J.S. Bach’s solo cello Prelude in G major. The work was commissioned by the Orlando Philharmonic in 2018. The piece presents the prelude in its entirety at the center of it and is fully orchestrated, with countermelodies, and an introduction and closing based on the main Bach motive. The orchestra is the exact same instrumentation as Brahms’s Symphony #1: double winds, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings, with the added solo cello. The Bach Prelude exhibits that special magic that he’s so famous for amongst composers, particularly the outlining of chord structures and polyphonic lines within the solo cello part. He also, once G major is established, takes a kaleidoscopic detour away from the home key before returning to the spectacularly sunny opening motive. I tried to capture the various tonal worlds and motives that Bach crafts in the original and amplify them with my orchestration.
The Duo Gastesi-Bezerra will perform my From the Faraway Nearby, scored for piano-4-hands at Connecticut’s New Britain Museum of American Art on May 26, 2019, at 3pm. With over a decade of experience playing together, the American Record Guide bills them as “a strong combination, playing very well together . . . often indistinguishable.” Gastesi, a native of Basque Country, has performed throughout Europe and the United States, and Bezerra, a native of Brazil, is a distinguished Fulbright Scholar.
Internationally noted classical guitarist Robert Phillips will be giving a concert of new music at the Timucua Arts Foundation White House on May 17 at 7:30 PM. The centerpiece of the concert will be a set of six dances written for Robert by Central Florida based composers. Those composers include Jorge Morel, Benoit Glazer, Charles Griffin, Troy Gifford, Howard Buss, and Rex Willis. In addition, Phillips will play a set of Nocturnes composed for him by British composer John W. Powell.
Phillips recently recorded the pieces that comprise this program. The works are in dance rhythms ranging from waltzes to rumbas and incorporating elements of Afro-Cuban music, Flamenco, and Brazilian dance rhythms. They are to be performed as a set along with a prelude by Robert under the title of The Orange Blossom Dances. These important new works will be released by MSR Classics.
Robert has brought his brilliant interpretations to a diverse range of venues – from traditional concert halls including New York’s prestigious Town Hall, and Lincoln Center to jazz nightclubs. His performance at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall was sold out. In addition to the standard repertory, Robert performs his own compositions, and has premiered works by three-time Pulitzer nominee, Frank Brazinski, Eric Ross, Alfred Giusto, and Meyer Kupferman, as well as a concerto written for him by three-time Grammy winner, Michael Colina. The works by Kupferman and Colina were written for him.
Robert’s recordings include Guitarre Nouveau on TPL records and Lo Mestre, the Music of Miguel Llobet on Centaur records, as well as his self-re-released two volume set, Great Themes and Variations for Classic Guitar (originally released by Mel Bay as a companion to his anthology.) Robert also recently recorded several Spanish songs with Chinese coloratura soprano Shudong Braamse on her Global Music Awards Gold Medal winning album, Sueños De España (Navona Records).
Robert spent the summer of 2017 in Spain participating as a teacher, ensemble coach, and performer in the Chamber Art Madrid music festival. Phillips performed some of the newly commissioned works at this festival. He will be at the festival again in the summer of 2019. The Timucua Arts Foundation is located at 2000 S Summerlin Ave. Orlando, Florida 32806. The concert begins at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased online here.
The Central Florida Composers Forum will present “Waterfalls, Forests, Coastlines, and other Musical Dreams,” a showcase concert of selected works scored for Pierrot Ensemble by Full Sail University composer and Central Florida Composers Forum founder and Executive Director Charlie Griffin, University of Central Florida’s recent transplant Alex Burtzos, Orlando-based composers Erik Branch, Damien Simon, and film composer and Cocoa Beach resident Joe Gray.
The term Pierrot Ensemble refers to a specific instrumentation used by Austrian (and later Austrian-American) composer Arnold Schoenberg for his seminal and most famous work, Pierrot Lunaire. Composed in 1912 for voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, this combination was subsequently taken up by many later composers such as Milton Babbitt, John Cage, and Peter Maxwell Davies.
The musicians featured in this concert will be Julie Bateman (voice), Katie Mess (flute), Erik Cole (clarinet), Pepina Dell’Ollio (violin), Abigail Collins (cello), Ammon Perry Bratt (piano), and Justin Steger (percussion).
A diverse collection of works on the program include Charlie Griffin’s Shifting Coastlines, a trio of songs whose lyrics are taken from an anthology of poetry called Verse and Universe. These songs all draw upon science and math to explore the human experience. One example from the set is “Love’s Discrete Non-linearity,” a poem set like a Gypsy tango that uses the language of Chaos Theory to understand a romantic relationship. Selections from two works by Alex Burtzos will be on the program: The Birth of Dangun, a ballet based on the Korean myth of creation, and The Impossible Object, a multi-movement work inspired by works of M.C. Escher. Four vignettes by Erik Branch will include a premiere of his Brises Dansantes. The concert will be rounded out by Joe Gray’s The Black Forest, and Damien Simon’s Change.
The concert will take place on March 31 at the Timucua White House, 2000 South Summerlin, Orlando, FL 32806. Doors open at 7pm. Concert at 7:30. Tickets are by donation.
The Central Florida Composers Forum presents a piano solo and 4-hands concert that includes my Vernacular Dances. The featured performers are the award-winning pianist Rose Grace and resident pianist for the Alterity Chamber Orchestra, Will Daniels.
The concert will take place on October 21, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. The venue is the Timucua Arts Foundation, 2000 Summerlin, Orlando, Florida. Suggested donation is $10-$20
With Elisabeth Ellis, piano; David Nichols, organ; Gunnar Folsom & Rob Tucker, percussion
What does it mean to be an American? Do you know someone who is patriotic? Who are your American heroes?
Opus 7 explores these questions in the opening concert of our 27th season as we celebrate the American spirit exemplified in these words from Lloyd Pfautsch’s Litany for America: “Dream of a land where all people can think as they please, or say what they think; see an America where no one is another’s master, where no one’s mind is dark with fear—to see an America at peace with the world.”
This thought-provoking and celebratory concert will feature works of musical Americana by some of our country’s most beloved composers, including selections from Randall Thompson’s The Peaceable Kingdom, Stephen Paulus’s Hymn for America, Aaron Copland’s “The Promise of Living” from his opera The Tender Land, and Lloyd Pfautsch’s A Litany for America.
American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday will be celebrated with a performance of his iconic look at immigration in “America” from West Side Story, while Charles Griffin’s Don’t Treat Me as a Stranger, for choir and percussion, poses the question “who is my brother, my sister?
The concert will also feature a mix of historical and patriotic songs including arrangements of God Bless America, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, The Star-Spangled Banner, Irving Berlin’s Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, and Walter Robinson’s Harriet Tubman.
Two major American choral works form the centerpiece of the concert: Charles Ives’s Psalm 90 (Lord, Thou has been our Dwelling Place) for choir, organ, and percussion, and the West Coast premiere of John Muehleisen’s setting of Walt Whitman’s epic poem Salut Au Monde (“Greetings to the World”)—the American poet’s timely, border-blurring homage to the universal bond between all humanity.
Saturday, October 20th, 2018 @ 8:00 pm University Congregational United Church of Christ 4515 16th Ave Ne, Seattle, WA 98105 general seating $20 in advance, $24 at the door; preferred seating $40 in advance
Pianists James Longford and Robert Hunter will perform my From the Faraway Nearby, scored for piano-4-hands at the Finchley Arts Depot in North London on September 29. My work will be paired with a 4-hands version of Gustav Holst’s The Planets.
En una de sus cartas, el filósofo Friedrich Nietzsche escribió a su confesor, Peter Gast, que “la vida sin música es sencillamente un error, una fatiga, un exilio”. Y eso mismo podría decirse de una fiesta. ¿Puede alguien imaginarse una fiesta sin música?
Por eso, para cerrar con broche de oro los festejos por sus 60 años de historia , el ITESO, Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara, ha preparado un festejo musical que tendrá como escenario el Auditorio Pedro Arrupe, SJ, y como protagonistas al cantante Juan Pablo Villa ya los grupos Muna Zul y Tambuco .
Ricardo Gallardo, director del ensamble de percusiones Tambuco, explica que su relación con el ITESO se remonta años atrás, ya que han ofrecido conciertos en la universidad en diferentes momentos.
Esto, dice Gallardo, “nos ha permitido mostrar a la comunidad universitaria diversos lenguajes de la música para percusiones. Nos alegra saber que el ITESO tiene un área de difusión cultural y artística muy importante y dinámica, lo que nos ha permitido desarrollar una relación artística muy saludable”.
El director del ensamble señala que la celebración va por partida doble, ya que el ITESO celebra 60 años de vida y Tambuco 25. Por esta razón, detalla, el ensamble “ha decidido hacer conciertos con repertorio importante que nos ha acompañado durante estos años, además de las obras de reciente estreno”.
Entre las piezas que se podrán escuchar durante la participación de Tambuco se encuentran “The Persistence of Past Chemistries” (1998), “El devenir de la noche” (2012), “Stone Song, Stone Dance” (2000) y “Third Construction” (1941), entre otras.
El gusto por participar en los festejos de la universidad es compartido por Juan Pablo Villa, artista vocal, compositor e intérprete mexicano que centra su obra en la improvisación vocal, la música tradicional mexicana, la canción de autor y la música de cámara.
En su caso, refiere que es “una alegría” poder sumarse a la celebración del ITESO porque “ha sido una institución que en repetidas veces ha apoyado mis proyectos”.
Al explicar la participación que tendrá en el concierto de cierre, comenta que presentará lo que describe como “parte de mi universo sonoro a través de la voz, donde confluyen improvisaciones con técnicas extendidas y un repertorio de música tradicional cardenche, pirecuas y piezas de mi autoría”.
El repertorio de Villa para esa noche incluirá piezas como “Ya se van las golondrinas”, “Mi niña lítica”, “Malva Rosura” y “Yembaguá”.
Además de estas piezas, Juan Pablo Villa también presentará unas más junto con otro ensamble que ya es conocido por la comunidad universitaria del ITESO: Muna Zul, que se describe como “tres sorprendentes mujeres que con sus voces abren las puertas de la música y, con ella, los corazones de quienes las escuchan”.
Dora Juárez Kiczkovsky explica que a ellas les encanta “celebrar cantando. Cantar y bailar es la mejor celebración siempre, para cualquier ocasión, así que estamos muy honradas de que nos inviten a su gran fiesta”.
Para esta celebración, Muna Zul presentará un repertorio de música mexicana, por lo que prepararon piezas como “Llorona”, “Serenata huasteca” y “Deja que salga la luna”, entre otras.
Además, junto con Juan Pablo Villa presentarán “Los horizontes” y “Al pie de un árbol”. Sobre esta colaboración, Juárez Kiczkovsky explica que el trabajo se dio de manera muy natural, ya que han colaborado juntos en diversas ocasiones. En la misma línea se expresa el cantante, quien señala que “el trabajo ha sido arduo y generoso, sobre todo de mucho aprendizaje”.
El concierto de clausura de los festejos por los 60 años del ITESO, a cargo de Tambuco, Muna Zul y Juan Pablo Villa, tendrá lugar el próximo 21 de septiembre, a las 19:30 horas, en el Auditorio Pedro Arrupe, SJ. La entrada es libre.
(From https://timucua.com/) The Fernwood String Quartet has been formed by players of Timucua’s own orchestra in residence, the Alterity Chamber Orchestra. The quartet focuses both on contemporary composers and on the repertoire from Joseph Haydn to the 20th century. All players – Caitlin Pequignot, Andreas Volmer, Daniel Cortes, and Hanrich Claassen – also regularly play with other orchestras across Central Florida including the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra and the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra.
The quartet will open with one of Haydn’s most popular string quartets, “The Lark,” followed by Maurice Ravel’s string quartet in F Major. Finally, the quartet will perform Charles Griffin’s quartet “Set Fire to Have Light,” an exuberant work that is influenced by Arabic melodies and rhythms. Griffin lives in Orlando, and orchestral works of his have been performed by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra.
$10-$20 suggested donation. Please bring food or wine to share.
The Berkeley Women’s Community Chorus, directed by Debra Golata will perform my El Paso de la Siguiriya, a flamenco-inflected setting for women’s voices of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca. Flamenco dancer Holly Shaw will be featured in this performance. The concert will take place Sunday, April 15 at 4pm at Montclair Presbyterian Church in Oakland, California.
BACKGROUND OF THE WOMEN’S CHORUS: In response to the overwhelming interest in Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, which has a full membership, a new women’s chorus was developed, directed by Debra Golata. We hold to the high standards of BCCO–singing in 2 to 4 part harmony, in a variety of languages with development of vocal and musical skills.
DIRECTOR DEBRA GOLATA received a bachelor’s degree in music education from Michigan State University and a master’s degree in choral conducting from San Jose State University. She has studied modern and flamenco dance, acting, and classical voice in San Francisco, New York City and Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Her vocal performance experience includes solo recitals, opera, musicals, and professional choral singing. She sang with the acclaimed Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra Chorale for 15 years, and she has concertized throughout the United States and Mexico with classical guitarist Jon Harris. For Oakland’s Rockridge Chorale she performed as vocal soloist in India and England and has served as accompanist, assistant conductor and vocal coach for the San Francisco Lyric Chorus. She is organist and music director at Northbrae Community Church in Berkeley and teaches private voice and piano lessons, as well as general music classes for schools in the Bay Area.
On Saturday, April 7, 8pm, at the Bob Carr Theater (401 W Livingston Street, Orlando), the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra will premiere my Frontispiece on J.S. Bach’s Prelude in G major, a 4+-minute work that features as part of it J.S. Bach’s solo cello Prelude in G major. Music director Eric Jacobsen will play the featured cello part himself. The piece presents the prelude in its entirety at the center of it and is fully orchestrated, with countermelodies, and an introduction and closing based on the main Bach motive. The orchestra is the exact same instrumentation as Brahms’s Symphony #1: double winds, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings, with the added solo cello. The Bach Prelude exhibits that special magic that he’s so famous for amongst composers, particularly the outlining of chord structures and polyphonic lines within the solo cello part. He also, once G major is established, takes a kaleidoscopic detour away from the home key before returning to the spectacularly sunny opening motive. I tried to capture the various tonal worlds and motives that Bach crafts in the original and amplify them with my orchestration.
The Missouri State University Percussion Ensemble will perform my The Persistence of Past Chemistries on Friday, December 1, 2017 at 7:30 PM CST at Wehr Band Hall on the MSU campus. The program also includes: Nordic Peace- Tobias Broström Africa Hocket- Lane Harder Hemispheres- Kevin Bobo
The Berkeley Women’s Community Chorus, directed by Debra Golata will perform my El Paso de la Siguiriya, a flamenco-inflected setting for women’s voices of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca. Antoinette Catalla will be the soloist. The concert will take place at Northbrae Community Church in Berkeley, California on Sunday, November 19 at 4pm. Other works on the concert include Jubilant Song by Norman Dello Joio, Dixit Dominus by Baldassare Galuppi, Oiseaux Si Tous by Mozart, Wir eilen by JS Bach, and Tundra by Ola Gjeilo.
The Queens-based ensemble, Percussia will present Hammers & Keys: music for piano & percussion, on Thursday, June 15, 2017 at 7:30 PM.
This program will feature several works by composers with Queens connections, including my Latin-influenced Cambiando Paisajes, (Shifting Landscapes) for piano and two percussionists, as well as the hauntingly shimmering Not the Light, But the Fire That Burns by Gilbert Galindo. Rounding out the program are the post-minimalist groove Tight Sweater by Mark Mellits, the ritualistic Invocations to Vahakn by the Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness, and Prisoners of the Image Factory, a trio for keyboard percussion and piano by Bob Becker.
Church-in-the-Gardens 50 Ascan Ave. Forest Hills Queens, NY 11375
“Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’m an atheist. I’m an atheist who grew up half-heartedly Catholic, and during CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) classes, around age eleven or twelve, I worked drawings and commentary about my hamster into our assigned journals on Jesus and God’s presence in our lives at every opportunity. The fantastic stories in Greek and Roman mythology I was learning around the same time did not seem too different in tone or likelihood from Bible stories. The only difference, as far as I could tell, was that I was being told only some were true. I chose Thomas as my confirmation name because it was the closest I could get to expressing my doubts at that age. John the Baptist’s head on silver platter. With fries. Art by Miles Griffin Yet, I went on to become a paid church singer during and after college for seven years at a Catholic church in Queens and an Episcopalian church on Long Island. This gave me long and regular exposure to Bible readings, sermons, and sacred music. I developed a love for the pageantry and drama surrounding the narrative arc of Jesus’ story, and a fondness for the sense of community that a church can provide. As a composer, I have written many choral pieces for church and synagogue use, and don’t feel hypocritical about it, because I map my personal beliefs about my place in the universe and the beauty I find in science and nature onto the monotheistic beliefs of the faithful.
I am raising two amazing sons without religion. They are good, loving, respectful, flexible, curious, and every other favorable thing I could possibly imagine. And they have very little knowledge of Bible stories. So it made for a fascinating conversation one day about a year ago, as we drove past the Holy Land Experience, off I-4, with its elaborate mural. We’d passed this building many times, but my older son noticed it for the first time and asked about it. As a ten-year-old, his special curiosity about the image of the boat and the animals was unsurprising.
I proceeded to tell my sons the story of Noah and the Ark as neutrally as I could. Their questions were as much revelatory to me about their own sense of right and wrong as they were about the disturbing questions the Bible doesn’t address directly. God was unhappy with everyone? Everyone? Even the kids? Why did the animals have to die?
Joe Llorens. Photo by Charlie Griffin I began to think a lot about that story. What happened during those 40 days of rain? How did people react to it? Did anybody run for higher ground? What about babies born after the rain started? Did anybody get on or build boats of their own? How would I feel and what would I do if I knew that the world was truly ending? What would I tell my sons then? These thoughts led to alternately humorous and deeply dark places.
I began telling people about my conversation with my sons and my subsequent musings and imaginings, and one of them made the comment that it “would make a great show for the Fringe Festival.” As I’ve written about it in recent months, improv comedy is something that has become important to me, but I’d not considered the possibility of creating a show of my own. I looked into it and learned that the Orlando Fringe has a lottery process for its shows. That’s it. A lottery and nothing else. No curation. You sink or swim if you get in.
I recalled the year I’d ran my first marathon in New York City. I’d caught a flu that knocked me out of commission for a few weeks. I had been training in jiu-jitsu at the time, and when I went back into the dojo and it came time for grappling, I felt like I got tossed around like a rag doll by guys I was tossing around myself a few weeks earlier. I was distraught about it and decided to add one- to three-mile runs into my weekly routine to recover and improve my conditioning. Ludicrously, at some point I decided I would enter the lottery process for getting into the marathon. I had never run much before, and had been at it for only about a month or so. I got in. Flyer for the show, by Lynde Schmidt.I took it as a sign to train for it, with the internal understanding that I could stop running and drop out at any time. But as the race drew nearer, I knew I had to go for it. I don’t regret it. Running a marathon (I ran twice in New York City and once in Chicago) was a powerful, memorable experience, and the first one especially felt like a trauma and a triumph at the same time. Much like going to church, there is pageantry and drama, and a strong sense of community amongst marathoners.
What drove me to enter the lottery for the NYC Marathon was the thought that I would benefit from being in over my head. I didn’t know if I could do it, but wanted to prove to myself that I could. Entering the Fringe lottery felt the same way and had the same result. I got in. I took it as a sign. I’m preparing for it. I’m stretching in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I’m writing sketches. I’m writing lyrics. I found other performers whom I have to direct.
The cast includes Joe Llorens, one of my trusted buddies with whom I went through some of Sak Comedy Lab’s improv and stand-up classes; Lynde Schmidt, a great young actor that I met in Art Sake Studio’s Film I/Meisner acting class; and Christie Johnson, an acting and dancing talent I discovered through Fringe’s Unified audition process.
Two months ago in this column, I wrote about one of improv’s time-honored principles, namely the concept of “yes, and.” “Yes, and” demands that an improviser treat whatever their scene partner does or says as an offering that must be accepted as part of the reality of the scene. The improviser then builds upon the offer with their own contribution, and so on. Biblical Fan Fiction is essentially an extended “yes, and” to selected Bible stories. What that means is that we accept selected stories as true, namely Elisha and the Bears, John the Baptist, and Noah and the Ark. Using sketch comedy, improv, video, children’s art, and music, we tell the stories, embrace anachronisms, fill in some blanks along the way, and answer some questions the Bible doesn’t, like: Is God bald? Where do babies come from? How good does a dance have to be to get someone’s head chopped off? Was Noah the only guy with a boat? Why are there no unicorns? Salome dancing at Herod’s Birthday party. Drawing by Miles Griffin. When it’s done well, improv doesn’t always necessarily result in laughter. Sometimes a scene unfolds from a “yes, and” and leads to an unexpected place. While imagining an interview between Noah and an animal candidate for admission to the Ark will naturally lend itself to humor, imagining a parent building a boat to save his children from certain death might lead to something more profound. The lyrics for a song I’m working on for the show try to grapple with some of these questions I would certainly be dealing with as a father
Our world is ending soon my child. For all my sins and heresy, All the years that I ran wild, The ground is giving way beneath us. I’m sorry.
The cost is far too high, my son, And I can’t let you pay it When I’m the guilty one. The tides are rising all around us. I’m sorry.
Hush my little angel, don’t you cry. I know what you are thinking, but this doesn’t mean goodbye. I’ll do anything for you, Anything, for you. My very last breath, I’d give that to you too. I’ll build you a boat Watch as you float Away, away, away.
Imagine all this falling rain Isn’t the flood it seems to be; But a love so overwhelming That it rocks the world and swells the seas.
My love is stronger than this pain. Please go on and thrive for me. Grow up and be a good man. Live in love and harmony.
Long, long after I’ve left this place, Even the memory of me will remember your face. That’s how much I love you. That’s how much I love you. That’s how much I love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.
One of the primary differences between producing Biblical Fan Fiction and running a marathon is that I absolutely could not be doing this alone. I’m grateful to my cast and the people who have encouraged me along the way. I love being a part of the arts community in Orlando, and I hope you’ll come out like non-runners do for a race to encourage us and cheer us on. Give us the equivalent of orange slices or banana halves. I’m still scared, but facing the fear is part of improv, part of performing. Richard Bach said, “When you have come to the edge of all the light you have, and step into the darkness of the unknown, believe that one of two will happen to you: either you’ll find something solid to stand on or you’ll be taught how to fly!”
Performances of Biblical Fan Fiction at the Orlando Fringe Festival will take place in the Purple Venue on Wednesday, May 17 at 6:15pm; Saturday, May 20 at 1:30pm; Monday, May 22 at 8:45pm; Friday, May 26 at 7:00pm; and Saturday, May 27 at 11:15am. Tickets are $10.
I collaborated on the score with composer Stephen Cox for Deanna Morse’s short film, Clear (see below). The film was the result of Morse’s residency at the Art & History Museum of Maitland, FL. The film was premiered at their Culture Pop event, part of their month-long celebration called Art31.
More than an exhibition opening, Culture Pop! engages guests with art and the artists. Be the first to see the Art31: Borrowed Light exhibition, in A&H’s Maitland Art Center, featuring Stephen Knapp, Deanna Morse and Ryan Buyssens. Join as we kick off the most experimental and collaborative art festival in Florida:
• 10 Questions with the artists & A&H’s Chief Curator • Nathan Selikoff’s Audiograph — interactive art projection • C.R. Barnett’s immersive Art31 Talking Room • Short films from the Enzian Theater • Live music by The Pauses & James Dreffen • Literary readings, moderated by A&H’s Writer-in-Residence • Pop-up exhibition by Artist-in-Action Suzanne Oberholtzer • Try the Earthtones: the Ixchel Song Garden instruments • Meet A&H’s Artists-in-Action & Art School instructors • Light bites & cash bar
Admission: $5; FREE for A&H members Culture Pop! is presented by Maitland Vision Center and Orlando Weekly with special thanks to community partner Performing Arts of Maitland. Art31 is produced by Art & History Museums – Maitland and funded in part by Orange County Government through the Arts and Cultural Affairs Program.
“Form, Structure and Interactions” will be performed at the Timucua White House on Sunday, October 2, 2016 with free admission (donations accepted, refreshments encouraged). Trumpet player, Mark Sunderland, will perform six works by Central Florida Composers Thad Anderson, Charlie Griffin, Chan Ji Kim and Steve Kornicki. In addition, Mark will perform Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Aries from “Sirius.”
Mark Sunderland is a highly skilled, multi-instrumentalist with a true passion and gift for playing the trumpet. Equally at home with classical trumpet and jazz improvisation, his ability to create memorable phrasings and craft intricate, high- energy, improvisational solos is remarkable. Sunderland studied music education at Stetson University from 2002-2006 and worked as a public school music teacher from 2007-2010. He is music director at Calvary Chapel in Melbourne, FL.
Thad Anderson’s kaleidoscopic Re-Cite is from his series called Lines. It is a solo work intended for any single line instrument. The piece utilizes live processing and draws inspiration and structure from a 1951 minimalist painting by Ellsworth Kelly titled Cité. Sunderland will perform this piece on trumpet.
Charlie Griffin’s Between Islands – for trumpet and electronic score is an expression of the experience of separation from loved ones long gone. According to Griffin, “The experience of losing a truly loved person is profoundly sad at the beginning and for a long time. But the quality of that loss gradually transforms. It becomes part of who we are. And with that realization comes a sense of serenity because the people we loved and lost are clearly residing within us.”
Chan Ji Kim’s colorful and evocative work for trumpet and fixed media is entitled Go-sa-mok which means a withered elm tree in Korean. “The audio samples recorded for the piece included sounds of nature around Haeiknsa Temple in Korea, where I found this withered elm tree, a UNESCO World Heritage site,” says Kim.
There will be three works by Steve Kornicki: Instructions for Harmonic Permutations in Temporal Placements combines a collage of electronically altered trumpet sounds (recorded by Sunderland) with the solo trumpet; A Fanfare of Displaced Tones in Pulsing Groups of Sevens is an ensemble work for trumpet and pre-recorded instruments (three trumpets and flugelhorn by Sunderland and two Fender bass guitars by Kornicki); and Mixed Signals (Video Symphony) is a 15-minute audio-visual exploration in the deconstruction of sampled orchestral sounds and improvisational interaction with Sunderland on trumpet/flugelhorn and the composer on piano. This work will be accompanied by Kornicki’s video art created by filming images on an analog TV screen through textured and stained glass.
Karlheinz Stockhausen, one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, aleatory (controlled chance) in serial composition, and musical spatialization. Sunderland will perform his Aries, a 15-minute tour de force for trumpet and electronic music from his extended work, “Sirius,” which has been described as “a modern mystery play, clothed as a science fiction story.” While not described by the composer as an opera, it is nevertheless a musical drama, in which four emissaries from a planet orbiting the star Sirius bring a message to earth.
The Hippocrene Saxophone Ensemble will perform new music by Central Florida Composers Forum members and others at the Gallery at Avalon Island (37 S Magnolia Ave, Orlando, Florida) at 7:00PM. The concert includes a performance of my Panta Rei for saxophone quartet, originally premiered by the Amherst Saxophone Quartet. The Hippocrene Saxophone Ensemble will reprise the concert on March 1 at 8PM in the UCF Rehearsal Hall.
The entire program is:
– David MacDonald: *Linear Geometry* – William Albright: *Doo-Dah* – Steven Danyew: Saxophone Quartet No. 2: *Chant* – Charles B. Griffin: *Panta Rei* – Benoit Glazer: *Petite Fete de Sax* – Daniel Saylor: *Waves to Oceans (Organic Suite Composition #1)* – David MacDonald: *Ungroup*
On October 15 at 5PM in the Salón del Consejo Universitario in the principal building of the University of Guanajuato, pianist Ana Cervantes will perform a program titled Exposición/ReExposición (in English, Exposition/Recapitulation): a kind of retrospective consisting of pieces she’s interpreted over the course of her 15 years studying, working and living in Mexico. This program is a Recapitulation –necessarily brief— of some of the music which she has commissioned or premiered, including music of Georgina Derbez, Gabriela Ortiz, Jack Fortner, Alex Shapiro, Mario Lavista, Stephen McNeff, and Tomás Marco, among others. My contribution to the program will be a solo piano work entitled Murmuring in Comala, originally commissioned by Ana as part of a multi-composer project to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Pedro Paramo, an important proto-magical-realist novel by Mexican author Juan Rulfo. She premiered at the 34th Festival Internacional Cervantino in October 2006 and subsequestly recorded the work on compact disc.
Rulfo’s striking sonic palette (groaning wheels, rattling windows, falling rain and murmuring ghosts), echoes the complex narrative unfolding, where we rarely know whose voice we are hearing initially. Just as sounds imply someone making them, we recognize the voices peripherally, like registering a ghost image. We discover whose voice it was rather than whose voice it is. We must resist the temptation to steamroll through these difficult passages because these veiled voices are so crucial to our understanding. Equally striking is the novel’s non-linear conception of time. It flowers slowly in multiple directions. This is a lovely analog to music, which is surprisingly multidirectional: we listen ahead and backward simultaneously, constantly reinterpreting each new musical gesture by placing it in its previous context and anticipating its direction.
The new documentary film about one of the most unique venues in Orlando will receive its local premiere screening at the Global Peace Film Festival on October 1 and 3 in Orlando.
Benoit Glazer and his wife built a concert hall in their Orlando home to share unique experiences of music and art with everyone. Montréal-born Benoit Glazer has been making music professionally since 1981. He is a trumpet player, arranger and a conductor for Cirque du Soleil, La Nouba in Orlando, Florida. His love for music runs deep, so deep, in 2007 he and his wife built a concert hall in their house. Just about every Sunday night strangers (who become friends) gather in their living room to share a unique experience of music and art. Admission is a dish, snacks or a bottle of wine. They’ve hosted over 400 concerts, musicians from 24 countries along with 300 artists. The Timucua white house is quickly becoming a cultural icon in Orlando.
Director, Screenwriter, Cinematographer and Editor Steve Radley graduated in communications from the University of Wisconsin. He has produced and directed short video web vignettes for various companies.
The documentary opens and closes with excerpts from my string quartet, Set Fire to Have Light, which was performed at the White House during the time the documentary was being filmed in May 2013.
The Mexico-based percussion ensemble Tambuco will give the French premiere of my The Persistence of Past Chemistries as part of Radio France’s multi-week Présences 2015 Festival at the Maison de la radio – Studio 104 in Paris on February 18 at 8pm. Information in French follows below:
Qu’y a-t-il de commun entre les musiques contemporaines et traditionnelles ? Réponse durant ce concert tissé par les membres de TM+ et les quatre percussionnistes de l’ensemble mexicain Tambuco. Les deux pièces où fusionnent les deux ensembles sont signées de deux compositeurs qui ont réussi à traduire leurs généalogies musicales dans un véritable langage de création. Autrement dit, rien à voir avec la soupe froide d’un mauvais compromis.
Le Mexicain Javier Alvarez est un féru de nouvelles technologies dont l’univers poudroie d’inventions, d’atmosphères étranges, d’influences latines et caraïbes. Alexandros Markeas lui ressemble : passionné de multimédia et d’improvisation, il sait également user des matériaux sonores de sa Grèce natale. Une autre Amérique du Sud se fait jour avec le compositeur Januibe Tejera qui puise dans les rythmes des dialectes ancestraux des indiens brésiliens pour inventer un langage musical d’aujourd’hui. Tandis que le New Yorkais Charles Griffin aborde la rémanence des alchimies passées qui résonnent dans les percussions, toutes de bois, de Tambuco.
Alexandros Markeas Conlon’s Dream pour 2 ensembles
Charles B. Griffin The Persistence of Past Chemistries pour ensemble de percussions
Januibe Tejera Flashforward II pour flûte, clarinette, trompette, cor, percussions, violon, violoncelle et électronique (CM-CRF)
Javier Alvarez Metal de corazones pour 2 ensembles
Ensembles TM+ et Tambuco Laurent Cuniot direction
Ce concert est à écouter pendant un mois sur France Musique Gratuit le soir du concert pour les moins de 28 ans, sur présentation d’une carte d’identité et selon les places disponibles. Tarif unique : 5 € (placement libre)
Local composers present world premieres and recently composed music for a variety of sacred faith traditions. Featuring the Cathedral Choir and Orlando Deanery Boychoir and Girls Choir of the Cathedral Church of St Luke – Orlando, FL. Featuring organist Ben Lane, trumpeter Benoit Glazer and other musical guests. A collaboration between St. Luke’s and the Central Florida Composers Forum, composers include Ben Lane, Charlie Griffin, Stan Cording, Keith Lay, Carl MaultsBy, Glenn Osbourne and Benoit Glazer.
The Central Florida Composers Forum and the Cathedral Church of St. Luke proudly announce Sacred Sounds, a collaborative concert of contemporary spiritual music. Under the direction of Benjamin Lane, spiritual and sacred music will be performed by the adult choirs of the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, along with their Orlando Deanery Boychoir, Girls’ Choir. Guest instrumentalists include cellist Shona McFadyen-Mungall and the Orlando Brass Quintet (Rick Ingoglia and Ken Cutler, trumpets; Michael Barr, French horn; Ben Kon trombone; and William Miller, Tuba). Admission is free.
This will be a fascinating, diverse, and emotionally moving program. Carl MaultsBy’s “I Hear Music in the Air” for children’s choir and organ is based upon and evokes the rich history of U.S. slave spirituals, while Keith Lay’s “Wonderous Love” is a 20th century arrangement of the 19th century Southern folk hymn that expresses awe at the love of God.
Benjamin Lane’s epic and joyful “Te Deum” for choir, organ and brass quintet, Michael Miller and Benjamin Lane’s collaborative “Let the People Praise You” for choir, organ, and brass quintet, and Stan Cording’s celebratory “Praise Ye the Lord” for choir and organ all evoke the celebratory and triumphal side of much sacred music while Glenn Osbourne’s chromatic “God, Your Golden Doorway Beckons” for children’s choir and piano highlights a more reflective side of the sacred.
I have two works on this program, a setting of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Pieta” for solo mezzo soprano, cello and organ, and “Out of nothingness,” for choir, organ and percussion, which weaves together fragments of poetic texts by various Sufi mystics and evokes non-Western spiritual dance traditions that rely on trance states.
Benoit Glazer’s “Into the Light (Prelude and Fugue in C minor)” for trumpet and organ was written specifically for this concert and marries elements of the improvisatory spirit of Jazz with the rigor of baroque counterpoint as found in the work of the Baroque master of church music, J.S. Bach.
Always Park Free. You can now park anytime 24/7 in the Regions Tower Garage. Entering the up-ramp on Washington, receive an Entrance ticket. At the Cathedral, pick up an Exit ticket from an usher. Using the two tickets, exit the garage free of charge. And street meters are still free all day on Sundays.
The University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble (Joseph Gramley and Jonathan Ovalle, directors), will perform my The Persistence of Past Chemistries at the University of Michigan Hill Auditorium on January 20, 2015 at 8PM. Other works on the program include Germaine Taillefere’s two-piano/four percussion Hommage a Rameau, Pierre Boulez’s Improvisation sur Mallarme I & II, and Zivkovic’s Trio Per Uno.
Pianist Ana Cervantes will give the New York premiere of my …like water dashed from flowers…, a piece that borrows elements from the folkloric song La Zandunga and Nahuatl poetry translated into Spanish. The piece is somewhat demanding and includes aspects of ritual and song, where the pianist is asked at times to recite text, sing, play a rattle, stomp her foot (wearing ankle bells), or utilize other extended techniques, often while playing the piano at the same time.
The piece was composed as part of a multi-composer commissioning project and CD recording entitled Song of the Monarch: Women in Mexico. Nearly 20 composers from around the world were commissioned to respond to the theme, which conflates the varied historical roles played by women in Mexican history and the annual autumn migration of Monarch butterflies into Mexico.
Ana premiered the piece at the Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato, Mexico in 2010. The details of the current performance are:
Americas Society 680 Park Avenue New York, NY November 17, 2014 7:00 p.m.
Admission: FREE for AS Members; $20 for non-members. No additional fees will be charged when purchasing online. $10 student tickets will be available for purchase at the door with ID.
Repertoire
Silvia Berg (Brazil) El sueño … el vuelo (2010) Joelle Wallach (USA) Lágrimas y locuras, mapping the mind of a madwoman (2011) Alba Potes (Colombia/US) Desde el aire: seais instantes (2010) Paul Barker (UK) La Malinche (2010) Charles B. Griffin (USA) …like water dashed from flowers… (2010) Horacio Uribe (Mexico) El viaje nocturno de Quetzalpapálotl (2010) Jack Fortner (USA) Retrato de Malintzin (2010) Georgina Derbez (Mexico) Un vuelo para Ana (2011) Anne LeBaron (USA) Creación de las Aves (2011) Gabriela Ortiz (Mexico) Preludio y Estudio (2011)
My Die Freudenkrone: Ehrerbietung zu J.S. Bach for Choir, Organ and Timpani will be performed August 29 at the Riga’s Dome Cathedral by the choir Intis (directed by Ilze Valce), percussionist Normunds Everts and organist Lotars Džeriņš as part of a larger, 7-concert series in the three Latvian cities of Riga, Liepaja and Jurmala devoted to the music of JS Bach and music inspired by him. Commissioned by the City of Liepāja for organist Lotars Džeriņš to premiere at the VI International Organ Music Festival in Liepāja, Latvia in 2007, the title of this work translates to The Crown of Joy: Homage to J.S. Bach. The title derives from the text from the chorale movement (verse six) of Bach’s Cantata BMV 103. For this piece, I used that chorale melody (with my own harmonization), along with fragments taken from his toccata and fugue in D dorian (BMV 538). The program for the entire concert series (in Latvian) was uploaded here:
The new documentary film about one of the most unique venues in Orlando will receive it’s premiere screening at the Montreal World Film Festival on August 23rd and 24th.
About Benoit Glazer and his wife built a concert hall in their Orlando home to share unique experiences of music and art with everyone. Description Montréal-born Benoit Glazer has been making music professionally since 1981. He is a trumpet player, arranger and a conductor for Cirque du Soleil, La Nouba in Orlando, Florida. His love for music runs deep, so deep, in 2007 he and his wife built a concert hall in their house. Just about every Sunday night strangers (who become friends) gather in their living room to share a unique experience of music and art. Admission is a dish, snacks or a bottle of wine. They’ve hosted over 400 concerts, musicians from 24 countries along with 300 artists. The Timucua white house is quickly becoming a cultural icon in Orlando. Production Team Director : Steve Radley Screenwriter : Steve Radley Cinematographer : Steve Radley Editor : Steve Radley Film production and Sales : Prod.: Steve Radley, Restless Realm Films, 1135 Summerlin Ave. Orlando, Floride (États-Unis), tél.: 407-758-0268, sradley@me.com Director Steve Radley graduated in communications from the University of Wisconsin. He has produced and directed short video web vignettes for various companies. Projections Saturday August 23, 2014 – 12:40 PM – CINÉMA QUARTIER LATIN 15 Saturday August 23, 2014 – 07:30 PM – CINÉMA QUARTIER LATIN 15 Sunday August 24, 2014 – 04:40 PM – CINÉMA QUARTIER LATIN 15
The documentary opens and closes with excerpts from my string quartet, Set Fire to Have Light, which was performed at the White House during the time the documentary was being filmed in May 2013.
As part of her tour to promote an upcoming CD release, pianist Ana Cervantes will give the Columbia premiere of my …like water dashed from flowers…, a piece that borrows elements from the folkloric song La Zandunga and Nahuatl poetry translated into Spanish. The piece is somewhat demanding and includes aspects of ritual and song, where the pianist is asked at times to recite text, sing, play a rattle, stomp her foot (wearing ankle bells), or utilize other extended techniques, often while playing the piano at the same time. Other composers on the program include Anne LeBaron (USA), Georgina Derbez, Gabriela Ortiz, and Mario Lavista (México), Alba Potes (Colombia), Silvia Cabrera Berg (Brazil), Horacio Uribe (México) and Tomás Marco (Spain).
Ana premiered the piece at the Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato, Mexico last year. This performance will take place at El Teatro Mayor on November 30 at 8PM in Bogotá, Colombia.
The Berkeley Women’s Community Chorus, directed by Debra Golata will perform my 
On Saturday, April 7, 8pm, at the Bob Carr Theater (401 W Livingston Street, Orlando), the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra will premiere my Frontispiece on J.S. Bach’s Prelude in G major, a 4+-minute work that features as part of it J.S. Bach’s solo cello Prelude in G major. Music director Eric Jacobsen will play the featured cello part himself. The piece presents the prelude in its entirety at the center of it and is fully orchestrated, with countermelodies, and an introduction and closing based on the main Bach motive. The orchestra is the exact same instrumentation as Brahms’s Symphony #1: double winds, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings, with the added solo cello. The Bach Prelude exhibits that special magic that he’s so famous for amongst composers, particularly the outlining of chord structures and polyphonic lines within the solo cello part. He also, once G major is established, takes a kaleidoscopic detour away from the home key before returning to the spectacularly sunny opening motive. I tried to capture the various tonal worlds and motives that Bach crafts in the original and amplify them with my orchestration.
The Missouri State University Percussion Ensemble will perform my 
The Berkeley Women’s Community Chorus, directed by Debra Golata will perform my 
The Queens-based ensemble, 
John the Baptist’s head on silver platter. With fries. Art by Miles Griffin
Joe Llorens. Photo by Charlie Griffin
Flyer for the show, by Lynde Schmidt.
Two months ago in this column, I wrote about one of improv’s time-honored principles, namely the concept of “yes, and.” “Yes, and” demands that an improviser treat whatever their scene partner does or says as an offering that must be accepted as part of the reality of the scene. The improviser then builds upon the offer with their own contribution, and so on. Biblical Fan Fiction is essentially an extended “yes, and” to selected Bible stories. What that means is that we accept selected stories as true, namely Elisha and the Bears, John the Baptist, and Noah and the Ark. Using sketch comedy, improv, video, children’s art, and music, we tell the stories, embrace anachronisms, fill in some blanks along the way, and answer some questions the Bible doesn’t, like: Is God bald? Where do babies come from? How good does a dance have to be to get someone’s head chopped off? Was Noah the only guy with a boat? Why are there no unicorns?
Salome dancing at Herod’s Birthday party. Drawing by Miles Griffin.
“Form, Structure and Interactions” will be performed at the Timucua White House on Sunday, October 2, 2016 with free admission (donations accepted, refreshments encouraged). Trumpet player, Mark Sunderland, will perform six works by Central Florida Composers Thad Anderson, Charlie Griffin, Chan Ji Kim and Steve Kornicki. In addition, Mark will perform Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Aries from “Sirius.”
On October 15 at 5PM in the Salón del Consejo Universitario in the principal building of the University of Guanajuato, pianist 
The new documentary film about one of the most unique venues in Orlando will receive its local premiere screening at the 
Local composers present world premieres and recently composed music for a variety of sacred faith traditions. Featuring the Cathedral Choir and Orlando Deanery Boychoir and Girls Choir of the Cathedral Church of St Luke – Orlando, FL. Featuring organist Ben Lane, trumpeter Benoit Glazer and other musical guests. A collaboration between St. Luke’s and the 
Pianist 
My 
The new documentary film about one of the most unique venues in Orlando will receive it’s premiere screening at the Montreal World Film Festival on August 23rd and 24th.
As part of her tour to promote an upcoming CD release, pianist