Joyce Hope Suskind began her musical studies
as a pianist. She attended the High School of Music and Art in New York
City and was first oboist with the American Youth Orchestra under Dean
Dixon. Entering the Juilliard School on an oboe scholarship, she later
transferred her major to voice and went on to become a specialist in
20th Century music. As a pianist, she played for the Martha Graham School
and the Jose Limon wing at Juilliard. It was in this capacity that she
discovered her talent for composing. She composed a score for a Balinese
dance using gamelans and other instruments, commissioned by Lehman College;
a revue presented in Oxford, England; and a musical based on Moliere's
"The Doctor in Spite of Himself." Suskind has dedicated most
of her composing life to setting poems of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939),
with two scored for orchestra. In addition to Yeats, she has set Aiken,
Stevenson, Auden, Hopkins and others. Ms. Suskind resides in New York
City, where she teaches singing and the Alexander Technique.
Ruth Schonthal (1924-2006), composer and
pianist, taught at New York University and the Westchester Conservatory
of Music. She was a finalist in the Kennedy Center Friedheim competition
and the New York City Opera competition. A German biography by Dr. Martina
Helmig, Ruth Schonthal, "Ein Werdegang im Exil" will be published
in English. Furore Verlag in Kassel, Germany, is publishing her complete
output and will act as distributor for her works published by seven
other publishers.
"The song cycle Frühe Lieder (Early Songs)
was written between 1940-1944. I wrote the first one when I was fifteen
while living in Stockholm, where I took private composition lessons
from Ingemar Liljefors in addition to my studies at the Royal Academy
of Music. The other songs were written in Mexico, where our family settled
in 1941 and where I studied with the eminent composer Manuel M. Ponce.
The Rilke poems were among the few German books our family could save
during our flight from the Nazis and subsequent travels from our erstwhile
Berlin home. I composed the piano part and the melodic setting of the
poems simultaneously, playing and singing, hearing the vocal line and
the piano part as an entity. The text inspired me and gave the settings
their form and emotional content.
The Early Songs received many performances
by some of the most prominent singers in Mexico. In the Spring of 1946,
wanting desperately to come to the U.S., I showed the songs, together
with my first Piano Concerto, which had just been premiered with myself
as soloist, to Paul Hindemith, who was then on a conducting tour in
Mexico. Hindemith opined that these songs were very beautiful, 'but
one does not write like this anymore.' He obtained a full scholarship
for me to study with him at Yale, however. I regarded the songs as a
'youthful sin,' and they lay dormant in the my closet for over 40 years
until some inquiries and requests made me pull them out of oblivion."
Elisenda Fábregas, composer, pianist
and teacher, was born in Terrasa, Barcelona. She earned a doctor of
musical arts degree from the Barcelona Conservatory and has been living
in the U.S. since 1978, when a postdoctoral Fulbright grant brought
her to the Juilliard School. She earned another doctorate in music at
Columbia University, and began composing in 1985, working with several
dance companies and choreographers in New York City, including Jerome
Robbins, Hector Zaraspe, Janet Soares, Anna Sokolow and the Maria the
Benitez Spanish Dance Company.
Her works have been commissioned and performed by numerous groups and
soloists, including the Dale Warland Singers, Orchestra of Santa Fe
and the Texas Music Teachers Association. Fábregas received the
Shepherd distinguished Composer of the Year Award for 2001 from the
Music Teachers National Association in Washington, D.C. Her music has
been heard throughout the U.S. and in Mexico, Canada, Spain, Germany,
The Czech Republic, Taiwan, Japan and China.
Elizabeth R. Austin received her early
musical training at the Peabody Conservatory Preparatory Department
in Baltimore. She was an undergraduate music student when Nadia Boulanger
visited Goucher College and awarded her a scholarship to study at the
Conservatoire Americaine in Fontainebleau, France. Elizabeth Austin
has taught composition and theory at various music institutions in Hartford,
Connecticut. Her association with the Hartt School of Music, where she
earned a Master's in Music while on the faculty, included the establishment
of a faculty/student exchange with the Staatliche Hochschule für
Musik Heidelberg-Mannheim. While studying for her Ph.D. at the University
of Connecticut, she won First Prize in the David Lipscomb Electronic
Music Competition.
Other awards include a Rockfeller Foundation grant for a month-long
residency in Italy, a Connecticut Commission on the Arts grant, selection
by GEDOK (Society of Women Artists in German-speaking countries) to
represent the Mannheim-Ludwigshafen region in the 70th-year anniversary
exhibition, and First Prize in the International Alliance for Women
in Music's 1998 Miriam Gideon Competition. Austin's music has been performed
in Prague, Rome, Finland, Germany, the Caribbean and America. She divides
her time between Germany and the U.S., promoting an exchange of people
and ideas through internationally sponsored projects, including composer
exchanges. She is President of Connecticut Composers, Inc. and is a
church organist.