GABRIELA LENA FRANK - USA
BORN 26 SEPTEMBER
Gabriela Lena Frank (born Berkeley, California, United States, September 1972) is an American pianist and composer of contemporary classical music.
Frank's work often draws on her multicultural background, especially her mother's Peruvian heritage. In many of her compositions, she elicits the sounds of Latin American instruments such as Peruvian pan flute or charango guitar, although the works are typically scored for Western classical instruments and ensembles such as the symphony orchestra or string quartet. She has said, "I think the music can be seen as a by-product of my always trying to figure out how Latina I am and how gringa I am." In recent years, compositional/philosophical links have been made to composers such as Béla Bartók, Benjamin Britten, and Chou Wen-chung.
Winner of a Latin Grammy and nominated for Grammys as both composer and pianist, Gabriela also holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship given each year to fifty of the country’s finest artists. Her work has been described as “crafted with unself-conscious mastery” (Washington Post), “brilliantly effective” (New York Times), “a knockout” (Chicago Tribune) and “glorious” (Los Angeles Times). Gabriela Lena Frank is regularly commissioned by luminaries such as cellist Yo Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, the King’s Singers, and the Kronos Quartet, as well as by the talents of the next generation such as conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin of the New York Metropolitan Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra. She has received orchestral commissions and performances from leading American orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony. In 2017, she completed her four-year tenure as composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony under maestro Leonard Slatkin, composing Walkabout: Concerto for Orchestra, as well as a second residency with the Houston Symphony under Andrés Orozco-Estrada for whom she composed the Conquest Requiem, a large-scale choral/orchestral work in Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Frank’s most recent premiere is Apu: Tone Poem for Orchestra commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered by the National Youth Orchestra of the United States under the baton of conductor Marin Alsop. In the season of 2019-20, Fort Worth Opera will premiere Frank’s first opera, The Last Dream of Frida (with a subsequent performance by co-commissioner San Diego Opera) utilizing words by her frequent collaborator Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz.
Frank is a freelance composer who left her native San Francisco Bay Area in the fall of 2015 to start a farm with her husband in the town of Boonville, California in Mendocino County. In 2017, she founded her own school, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music for emerging composers to work with renowned performers. She travels frequently throughout North and South America. She is also often a guest artist at universities and conservatories, giving performances, lectures, and lessons.
♫ LISTEN
Suenos de Chambi by Gabriela Lena Frank
RUTH LOMON - CANADA
BORN 26 SEPTEMBER
A native of Montreal, Canada, Ruth Lomon was born in Montreal on 7 November 1930, and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 26 September 2017. She attended le Conservatoire de Quebec and McGill University. She continued her studies with Francis Judd Cooke at the New England Conservatory of Music and later with Witold Lutosławski at Dartington College in England.
From 1998 Ms. Lomon was Composer/Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University. Among the works completed during her tenure is the oratorio, “Testimony of Witnesses,” setting poetry of the Holocaust, for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra. She composed this work for Boston Secession, a vocal arts ensemble (directed by Jane Ring Frank), who performed and recorded sections of it. She received a grant from the Hadassah International Research Center for completion of this work.
During 1995-96 Ms. Lomon was a fellow of the Bunting Institute, Radcliffe/Harvard where she composed Songs of Remembrance, a song cycle on poems of the Holocaust. This hour length work was premiered at the John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, Harvard University, and has since had numerous performances including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. in April ’98, and the IAWM Congress in London, England, in July ’99 where she received the Miriam Gideon Composition award for this work. “Songs of Remembrance” was recorded on the CRI label.
For many years Ruth and her husband Earle lived part of the year in New Mexico, where she became interested in the music and culture of Native Americans, and had the opportunity to attend a number of ceremonials. That experience is reflected in many of her works.
Source: Ruth Lomon's Official Website and Wikipedia
BORN 26 SEPTEMBER
A native of Montreal, Canada, Ruth Lomon was born in Montreal on 7 November 1930, and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 26 September 2017. She attended le Conservatoire de Quebec and McGill University. She continued her studies with Francis Judd Cooke at the New England Conservatory of Music and later with Witold Lutosławski at Dartington College in England.
From 1998 Ms. Lomon was Composer/Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University. Among the works completed during her tenure is the oratorio, “Testimony of Witnesses,” setting poetry of the Holocaust, for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra. She composed this work for Boston Secession, a vocal arts ensemble (directed by Jane Ring Frank), who performed and recorded sections of it. She received a grant from the Hadassah International Research Center for completion of this work.
During 1995-96 Ms. Lomon was a fellow of the Bunting Institute, Radcliffe/Harvard where she composed Songs of Remembrance, a song cycle on poems of the Holocaust. This hour length work was premiered at the John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, Harvard University, and has since had numerous performances including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. in April ’98, and the IAWM Congress in London, England, in July ’99 where she received the Miriam Gideon Composition award for this work. “Songs of Remembrance” was recorded on the CRI label.
For many years Ruth and her husband Earle lived part of the year in New Mexico, where she became interested in the music and culture of Native Americans, and had the opportunity to attend a number of ceremonials. That experience is reflected in many of her works.
Source: Ruth Lomon's Official Website and Wikipedia
♫ LISTEN
Spirits by Ruth Lomon
Spirits by Ruth Lomon
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