Composers
Sunbursts
Solo piano works by 7 American women
Ruth Schonthal (1924-2006), composer
and pianist, was on the faculty of New York University and the Westchester
Conservatory of Music. She began composing at age five, becoming the
youngest student ever accepted at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin.
As the family had to leave Germany, she continued music studies at the
Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, where at the age of 13 she had
her first Sonatina published. From there, the family moved to Mexico
City where Schonthal studied with Manuel Ponce and premiered her own
Piano Concerto at the Palacia de Bellas Artes. At that time she met
Paul Hindemith, who obtained a scholarship for her to study with him
at Yale.
Schonthal was a finalist in the Kennedy Center Friedheim Competition
with the work heard here, and she was a finalist in the New York City
Opera competition with her opera Camilla. In 1994 she received the International
Heidelberger Künstlerinnen Prize. A German biography by Dr. Martina
Helmig, Ruth Schonthal, ein Werdegang im Exil (The Development of
a Composer in Exile) will be published in English. FURORE Verlag
in Kassel, Germany, is in the process of publishing her complete output
and will act as distributor for her works published by seven other publishers.
Schonthal's compositions display a unique blend of her deeply rooted
European tradition, depth of feeling, and mastery of contemporary techniques.
Sheila Silver (b. 1946) is a versatile composer
on the faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She
studied in Germany with Erhard Karkoschka and Gyorgy Ligeti after graduation
from the University of California at Berkeley, and received her doctorate
from Brandeis University. She is a Rome Prize winner (1979) and has
had numerous prizes and awards including the American Institute and
Academy of Arts and Letters Composer Award, and NEA, Cary Foundation,
and Barlow Foundation grants. Silver has written a large body of chamber,
solo, and choral music as well as an opera and feature film music. Silver's
compositions have commissioned and performed by numerous groups throughout
the USA and Europe, among them the Los Angeles Philharmonic, RAI Orchestra
of Rome, American Composers Orchestra, Richmond Symphony, the Gregg
Smith Singers, the Muir Quartet, and Ying Quartet.
Diane Thome (b.1942) is Professor and Chair
of the Composition Program at the University of Washington's School
of Music. Composer of a wide variety of works that span solo, chamber,
choral, orchestral, and electronic media, Thome is the first woman to
write computer-synthesized music. Her compositions have been presented
in Europe, China, Australia, Israel, Canada, and throughout the USA.
She has been a guest of the Ecole Nationale Claude Debussy and
featured on French radio, and composer-in-residence at the University
of Sussex, Bennington Chamber Music Conference and Composers Forum of
the East. Recent awards include 1994 Washington Composer of the Year,
1995-96 Solomon Katz Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, and
a 1998 International Computer Music Conference Commission. Thome holds
a Ph.D. and M.F.A. in Composition from Princeton and a M.A. in Theory
and Composition from the University of Pennsylvania.
Stefania de Kenessey (b.1961) writes music
that moves beyond the postmodern categories of our age (such as minimalism,
mysticism, neo-romanticism, eclecticism, and so forth) by celebrating
both beauty and craft as universal values. Tuneful and sophisticated,
her idiom fuses tradition with innovation, Eastern modes with Western
forms. De Kenessey is the founder and artistic director of The Derriere
Guard, an alliance of traditionalist contemporary artists, architects,
poets, and composers. She is active as a composer in all instrumental
and vocal genres. Her work, honored repeatedly by ASCAP, can be heard
regularly in recitals and on radio. A native of Budapest, de Kenessey
was educated at Yale and Princeton Universities, receiving her doctorate
under the tutelage of Milton Babbitt. She is a professor of music at
the New School's Eugene Lang College in New York City.
Vivian Adelberg Rudow (b.1936), a Baltimore-based
composer, conductor, concert producer, and pianist, received a Master
of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music of Johns Hopkins
University. She was the first Maryland composer to receive an orchestral
performance in Baltimore's Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore Symphony,
1982). Rudow's awards include First Prize in the 1986 14th International
Electroacoustic Music Competition, program division (Bourges, France),
two Baltimore CityArts Awards; the Maryland State Arts Council Fellowship;
and ASCAP awards each year since 1987. Rudow's music has been performed
in Asia, Cuba, Europe, Eastern Europe, Puerto Rico and the United States.
Writing in genres ranging from electronic, solo instrument, and chamber,
to full orchestra, Rudow is a "Sound Portrait Painter," creating
sound canvases of life. She uses music to express lives and feelings
of people using musical language they can understand.
Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee (b.1938), a first
generation Armenian-American, began early piano studies in Boston and
continued her education at the Juilliard School and the Mozarteum in
Salzburg, Austria. At age 40, she began composing more seriously, and
has since produced a large body of works for solo piano, orchestra,
ensemble, percussion, voice, and various instrumental concerti. Her
music has been performed internationally to critical acclaim. Dianne
Goolkasian Rahbee's music reflects her background in its mixture of
ethnic influences and formal Western musical training. Her pianistic
writing follows a style of the traditional keyboard repertoire using
an idiom akin to Prokofieff, Scriabin, and Khachaturian. Her neo-tonal
musical language is wed to a strong sense of rhythmic drive, creating
highly communicative and effective concert pieces.
Emma Lou Diemer (b.1927), composer and keyboard
performer, is a native of Kansas City, Missouri. She received her composition
degrees from Yale and Eastman, with further study on a Fulbright Scholarship
in Belgium and at Tanglewood. Diemer is Professor Emerita of the University
of California, Santa Barbara, where she taught composition from 1971
to 1991. She was composer-in-residence with the Santa Barbara Symphony
from 1990-92. Awards have included a 1992 Kennedy Center Friedheim Award
for her piano concerto, an NEA fellowship in electronic music, and ASCAP
awards received annually since 1962. She was the American Guild of Organists
1995 Composer of the Year.