NANCY VAN DE VATE - USA
BORN 30 DECEMBER
Nancy Van de Vate is an American-born composer living in Austria.
Van de Vate was born in Plainfield, New Jersey. She studied piano at Eastman School of Music and music theory at Wellesley College and completed graduated degrees in music composition at the University of Mississippi and Florida State University. She later pursued further studies in electronic music at Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire and is known worldwide for her music in the large forms. Her first professional performance (1958) was of the Adagio for orchestra. During the early part of her career she taught at various North American universities and worked as a violist and pianist.
In 1975, Van de Vate founded the League of Women Composers (later renamed the International League of Women Composers, now part of the International Alliance for Women in Music).
Van de Vate now lives permanently in Vienna, Austria and teaches composition at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna. In 2010 the IES named her Composer-in-Residence.
Her 26 orchestral works include the well-known Chernobyl, which has been performed in Vienna, Hamburg, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and in the United States at the Chautauqua Festival and by the Portland (Maine) Symphony Orchestra. A special performance on February 25, 2006 by the Yale Symphony Orchestra, Toshiyuki Shimada, conductor, marked the 20th anniversary of the world's most famous nuclear accident.
The composer has also created a large body of solo and chamber music for a wide variety of instruments and ensembles.
♫ LISTEN
Songs for the Four Parties at the Night by Nancy Van de Vate
Songs for the Four Parties at the Night by Nancy Van de Vate
TINA DAVIDSON - SWEDEN
BORN 30 DECEMBER
Tina Davidson is a composer composer. She lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Davidson was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1952, and was raised in Oneonta, New York and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She received her BA in piano and composition from Bennington College in 1976 where she studied with Henry Brant, Louis Calabro, Vivian Fine and Lionel Nowak. She founded the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Composers Forum and served as its director from 1999-2001. She was president of the New Music Alliance, a national organization, which has been responsible for the New Music America Festivals. She organized a nationwide festival entitled "New Music Across America," which ran in 18 cities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. In 1992 she wrote a widely circulated article on women in music for Ms Magazine. She was a South Central PaARTners' Arts in Education Fellow.
Over her forty-year career, Davidson has been commissioned by well-known ensembles such as National Symphony Orchestra, OperaDelaware, Roanoke Symphony, Orchestra Society of Philadelphia, VocalEssence, Kronos Quartet, Mendelssohn String Quartet, Cassatt Quartet, and public television (WHYY-TV). Her music has been widely performed by many orchestras and ensembles, including The Philadelphia Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Musicopia String Orchestra, and Orchestra 2001. She was commissioned in 2011 by violinist, Hilary Hahn, who recorded her work on Deutsche Grammophon. The compact disc won a GRAMMY in 2015.
She has been acclaimed for her authentic voice, her “vivid ear for harmony and colors” (New York Times) and her works of “transfigured beauty” (OperaNews). She writes “real music, with structure, mood, novelty and harmonic sophistication – with haunting melodies that grow out of complex, repetitive rhythms” (Philadelphia Inquirer) that is both “intellectually rigorous and deeply moving” (Star-Tribune).
♫ LISTEN
Blue Curve of the Earth by Tina Davidson
Blue Curve of the Earth by Tina Davidson
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