31 MAY 2019

LOUISE FARRENC - FRANCE

BORN 31 MAY

Louise Farrenc was a celebrated composer in her time, she was the student of Muzio Clementi and Anton Reicha. She had tremendous support of her family, which led to an extensive touring career, an appointment of Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatory (where she taught for an outstanding 30 years), and many publications in her lifetime. Among her works are many pieces for piano, three symphonies, two overtures, and several celebrated pieces for chamber ensembles. Her compositions were known during her lifetime, and received the praise of many critics – including Robert Schumann.

At first, during the 1820s and 1830s, she composed exclusively for the piano. In the 1830s, she tried her hand at larger compositions for both chamber ensemble and orchestra. It was during the 1840s that much of her chamber music was written. While the great bulk of Farrenc’s compositions were for the piano alone, her chamber music is generally regarded as her best work. The claim can be made that Farrenc’s chamber music works are on a par with most of her well-known male contemporaries.

Throughout her life, chamber music remained of great interest. She wrote works for various combinations of winds and or strings and piano. These include two piano quintets Opp.30 & 31, a sextet for piano and winds Op. 40, which later appeared in an arrangement for piano quintet, two piano trios Opp.33 & 34, the nonet for winds and strings Op. 38, a trio for clarinet (or violin), cello and piano Op. 44, a trio for flute (or violin), cello and piano Op. 45, and several instrumental sonatas (a string quartet sometimes attributed to her is regarded by specialists as the work of another composer, not yet identified).

In addition to chamber music and works for solo piano, she wrote two overtures and three symphonies. She heard her third symphony Op. 36 performed at the Société des concerts du Conservatoire in 1849. The one area which is conspicuously missing from her output is opera, an important lacuna as opera was at the time the central musical form in France. Several sources, however, indicate that she was also ambitious in that field, but did not succeed in being given a libretto to set to music by the Théâtre de l'Opéra or the Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique, for reasons still to be discovered.

Symphony N.3 - Adagio - Allegro by Louise Farrenc

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VIVIENNE OLIVE - UK 
BORN 31 MAY

Vivienne Olive was born on 31st May 1950 in London, where she studied Piano, Organ, Harpsichord and Music Theory. 1968 A.Mus.T.C.L. diploma from Trinity College London.

From 1968 to 1971 she studied for her B.A. degree in music at the University of York. She then went on to postgraduate studies in composition, studying with Bernard Rands (York 1971-72),
Franco Donatoni (Milan 1972-74), Roman Haubenstock-Ramati (Vienna 1974-75) and Klaus Huber (Freiburg 1975-78). She received her Ph. D. in composition from the University of York in 1975.

Vivienne Olive`s Oeuvre comprises more than 60 works that reach from compositions for recorder to operas. The impulse for her opera „Das hässliche Entlein“ was an International Composer´s Competition initiated by Hochschule für Musik Cologne in cooperation with the Cologne Opera in 2004. The fairytale opera with a libretto written by the director and author Doris Dörrie will be first performed in cooperation with Hochschule für Musik Nuremberg at „Theater Mummpitz“ in Nuremberg on 6th march 2010.

From 1976 to 1978 she also continued her studies in harpsichord with Stanislav Heller at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg which lead to a diploma in 1978. She has been awarded composition scholarships from the Department of Education and Science (1971-74) and the German Academic Exchange Service (1975-78).

She has been recipient of various prizes and distinctions: from the Gedok - Leni Neuenschwander Prize 1998- for "Gleichsam einem Garten", from the Bach Academy in Stuttgart for "Stabat Mater", from the town of Hamlyn (Hameln/ Germany) for "An English Suite", and the Stuttgart Composition Prize for "Tomba di Bruno". Many of her works have been commissions from soloists, chamber ensembles and radio stations, mainly in Germany, Great Britain and Australia. Various publications in the field of music theory (analyses, theory of harmony, editing). Member of the board of directors of the "Internationaler Arbeitskreis Frau und Musik" (Women in Music Germany) since 1995.

Since 1979 she has been lecturer for Music Theory and Composition at the Hochschule fuer Musik, Nuremberg-Augsburg (formerly Meistersingerkonservatorium), Germany. Between 1993 and 1995 she was on leave of absence in Australia at the University of Ballarat and the James Cook University, Townsville, where she headed the University's Music Academy and also staged the music festival, "Contempofest 94".

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Toccata e Fuga per Uta by Vivienne Olive 

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30 MAY 2019

LYDIA AUSTER - KAZAKHSTAN

BORN 30 MAY

Lydia Auster studied piano in Omsk Music School in 1927–1931 with L. Shcherbakova and composition with M. Nevitov. In 1931–1934, she studied composition in Leningrad Conservatoire with Mikhail Judin. In 1938, she graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire with a degree in composition with Vissarion Shebalin, and continued postgraduate studies in 1938–1941 and 1944–1945.

Lydia Auster has worked as a pianist with Omsk Radio Sinfonietta and as a cinema pianist. In 1941–1943, she was working as a composer with Ashgabat Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1943 to 1944, Auster was the chief editor of music broadcasts in Turkmenistan Radio, in 1948–1984, she was the music director of Estonian SSR Television and Radio Committee. Between 1950 and 1989, Auster was the chairman of USSR Music Foundation's Estonian Republic Department. Lydia Auster has been a board member of Estonian Composers' Union as well as Estonian Department of USSR – Czechoslovakia Friendship Society. In 1957, Auster received the honorary title of Estonian SSR Merited Art Worker and in 1984, the title of People’s Artist of the Estonian SSR.

Lydia Auster's oeuvre is versatile in genre, she has written orchestral and stage works, including 4 ballets and a short opera, as well as solo songs and instrumental chamber music. Her music has poetic expression and a strong connection with folk music.

Her ballet Tiina (1955) has been staged in theatre Estonia in Tallinn and theatre Vanemuine in Tartu, also in Vilnius and Olomouc, Czech Republic. Her ballet Northen Dream (1960) has been staged in theatre Estonia and in Vilnius, Lithuania. Her orchestral works have been conducted by such conductors as Rostislav Merkulov, Kirill Raudsepp, Roman Matsov, Vallo Järvi, Erich Järvi, Aleksander Rjabov, Neeme Järvi and Eri Klas. Her music for winds has been often played by Jaan Tamm Wind Quintet.

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Piano Concerto Op. 18 by Lydia Auster 

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PAULINE OLIVEROS  - USA
BORN 30 MAY

Pauline Oliveros' life as a composer, performer and humanitarian was about opening her own and others' sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Her career spanned fifty years of boundary dissolving music making. In the '50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. In the 1960's she influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. 

She was the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates and among her many recent awards were the William Schuman Award for Lifetime Achievement, Columbia University, New York, NY,The Giga-Hertz-Award for Lifetime Achievement in Electronic Music from ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany and The John Cage award from from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts.

Oliveros was Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College. She founded "Deep Listening ®," which came from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics. She described Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. 

'Deep Listening is my life practice," Oliveros explained, simply. Oliveros founded Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation, now the Center For Deep Listening at Rensselaer, Troy, NY. Her creative work is currently disseminated through The Pauline Oliveros Trust and the Ministry of Maåt, Inc.

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Buffalo Jam by Pauline Oliveros

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29 MAY 2019

TANSY DAVIES - UK 

BORN 29 MAY

Tansy Davies writes music that is sleek, hot, earthy, physical. Her instruments glint and sigh and thrust. Her textures are lean and gleaming. Her rhythms are all punch and sinew. As a composer she is immensely herself: a woman of fearsome drive and rigour and self-knowledge, a woman who connects with body, spirituality and political convictions – and who conveys all that without without filter or apology. That’s what makes her music so immediately and intoxicatingly her own. To hear it is beguiling, bracing, provocative, a rush of blood to the head, a soft breath to the skin, a reboot to the system.

There is no fleshiness here. A Tansy Davies score never sags. The music is taught as a drum, alert as a raptor, quick-reflexed and tactile as a cat. It’s uncompromising and it’s proud, cutting razor-sharp forms through a concert hall. But it’s never austere because there’s deep sensuality, too, the kind of brazen sensuality that meets you with a clear gaze and quickens the breath and stirs parts of you that hardly ever stir where contemporary classical music is concerned.

Tansy Davies grew up playing in rock bands; she knows what it means to feel music in the body. And she always had an instinct to stretch and deepen and throw off-kilter. She absorbed the big beats of funk, the spangly pizzaz of disco, the jagged elbows of bebop, the outer wilds of alt-pop, the sculpted curves and sudden lushness of polyphony, the clean craft of post-war modernism. She played French horn and guitar, testing herself with long prog-rock solos and the limits of form, harmony and timbre without ever losing the groove. She discovered she could tread a line between sensual and cerebral better than anyone, so she kept treading that line.

Take a work like neon (2004): the music struts, poses, trips up, gets up. salt box (2005) is a wild ride and a sweet embrace. In the tiny song Greenhouses (2010), oily bass and nervy percussion twitch and swagger while a woman’s voice intones an implacable plainchant with low alto flute as confidante. In the mighty concerto for four horns, Forest (2016), the orchestral writing grows in tendrils and tall thickets to make dappled light and dark spaces. It’s music of glistening shadows and deep mysteries, music that speaks with an urgent voice about the solace and the vulnerability of nature.

There is a recurring shaman afoot – a conduit who flits between all aspects of Tansy’s musical philosophy. He’s there as mercurial solo saxophone in Iris (2004); he’s there in Tansy’s courageous first opera, Between Worlds (2014); he’s there in her urgent and haunting second opera, Cave (2018). Maybe this shaman is simply an embodiment of what Tansy has been doing all along. Exploring the elemental mechanisms of the natural world, exploring the psychological devastation of global events, exploring the most intimate aspects of body and heart and head. Tansy’s music lets us feel what it is to be multiform and nimble, intense and enlivened, confrontational and beautiful. 

Kate Molleson, 2018

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Re-greening by Tansy Davies

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PHYLLIS TATE - UK
DIED 29 MAY

Phyllis Tate was one of the most prominent British composers of the second half of the twentieth century. Her music was widely performed during her lifetime and received great critical acclaim. Her musical output was extensive and varied, ranging from music for schools to her opera The Lodger. Her fascination with musical textures led her to explore the potential of unusual instruments and combinations which tended not to be readily accepted or easily available for performance. These instruments included the saxophone, the celeste, the bass clarinet, the accordion, the lute and the harmonica, and the parts were often written for a virtuoso of the specific instrument. Such instruments were often used with her other lifelong musical passion, the human voice, in settings of poems from which she gained much inspiration.

Phyllis Tate was highly respected by contemporary musical peers for her idiosyncratic musical imagination, her unique sensitivity to musical colour and her fastidious craftsmanship. All these qualities are exemplified in two of her best-known works: the Sonata for Clarinet and Cello, and the Nocturne for Four Voices, her setting of a poem by Sidney Keyes, who perished in World War II. Many critics commented on her originality and refusal to go along with fashionable trends of writing music for the musical elite of her time. In fact much of her music has a robustly popular appeal, notable examples being her orchestral suite London Fields, her setting of Charles Causley’s poem Saint Martha and the Dragon and her Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Strings.

She was modest and intuitive, and not given to theorizing about her own compositions or contemporary music in general. She refused an offer of a professorship at the Royal Academy of Music, as she firmly believed that musical creativity could not be taught. We, as her descendants, feel that her musical legacy has been unjustly ignored and hope that this website will promote greater awareness of her unique contribution to twentieth-century music.

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Sonata for Clarinet and Cello by Phillys Tate

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28 MAY 2019

SARAH NEMTSOV - GERMANY

BORN 28 MAY

Sarah Nemtsov (née Reuter) was born in Oldenburg, Germany in 1980. She is the recipient of several prizes and scholarships, such as the German Music Authors Prize (Deutsche Musikautorenpreis GEMA) in 2012, the Busoni Composition Prize (Academy of the Arts Berlin) in 2013, 2016 she won the international RicordiLAB composition competition, in 2018 she was awarded the Oldenburg Composition Prize for Contemporary Music. She got fellowships from various foundations, such as the German National Merit Foundation, Aribert Reimann Foundation, Berlin Senate, or Foundation Zurueckgeben, as well as a residence at Villa Serpentara (Italy) in 2011. 2014/2015 Sarah Nemtsov was composer in residence for Philharmonic Orchestra Erfurt (GMD Joana Mallwitz) and her orchestra pieces were featured in three symphonic concerts. In 2014 she was teaching (composition/music theatre) at the Musikhochschule Cologne. In 2018 (spring semester) she was teaching composition as a DAAD guest lecturer at the University of Haifa, Israel.

Nemtsov’s music is played by renowned ensembles – such as Adapter, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, ensemble modern, ensemble recherche, ensemble mosaik, Ensemble InterContemporain, HR Symphony Orchestra, Basel Sinfonietta, Solistenstenensemble Kaleidoskop, Ensemblekollektiv Berlin, ensemble Lux:NM, Accroche Note, Trio accanto, Ensemble Garage, Ascolta, Vortex ensemble, PHACE, Sonar Quartet, Asasello Quartet, MIVOS Quartet, Nomos Quartet, SCENATET, Phace, Trio Arbós, Neopercusión, Black page orchestra, Oh-Ton-Ensemble, or the Finnish Baroque Orchestra. She has worked with conductors such as Joana Mallwitz, Baldur Brönnimann, Michael Wendeberg, Jonathan Stockhammer, Franck Ollu, Evan Christ, Manuel Nawri or Ilan Volkov.

Her compositions are featured in various international festivals – for example at the Donaueschingen Music Days (2011 and 2018), Darmstadt Summer Course (2014 and 2018), Munich biennale (2012), ICSM World New Music Festival, Musica in Strasbourg, ECLAT Stuttgart, Bregenzer Festspiele, Holland Festival, Festival Ultraschall, MaerzMusik and Klangwerkstatt in Berlin, SPOR or Klang (Denmark), Musica Nova (Finland), Wien modern, Acht Brücken Cologne, Israel Festival or Klangspuren Schwaz. Several of her works are being published at Peer Music Classical Hamburg and since 2016 at Ricordi Publishing house. Several of her compositions are released on CD, amongst others two portrait CDs („A LONG WAY AWAY“ 2012, Edition zeitgenössische Musik/Wergo and „amplified imagination“ 2018, Wergo).

In 2015 Sarah Nemtsov founded a gallery and concert venue in Berlin together with her husband Jascha Nemtsov – „Raum für Kunst und Diskurs“. Also she initiated (as artistic director and composer) the project „Mekomot“ 2015-2016 – a concert tour with contemporary music and old jewish liturgical chants through abandoned synagogues in Germany and Poland.

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Sacrifice by Sarah Nemtsov 

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CATHERINE LIKHUTA - AUSTRALIAN
BORN 28 MAY

Catherine Likhuta is an Australian-based composer, pianist and recording artist. Her music exhibits high emotional charge, programmatic nature and rhythmic complexity. Catherine's works have been played throughout the United States, Europe and Australia, as well as in Canada, Mexico and Brazil. Her music has enjoyed performances by many prominent soloists (such as Peter Luff, Andrew Pelletier, Denise Tryon, Adam Unsworth, Paul Dean, Griffin Campbell, Ronald Caravan and Trish O'Brien), chamber ensembles (such as PLEXUS, Atlantic Brass Quintet, Western Brass Quintet, Queensland Symphony Orchestra Horns, U.S. Army Field Band Horns, HD Duo and Collusion) and large ensembles (such as Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, The Australian Voices, University of Georgia Hodgson Singers, University of Georgia Hodgson Wind Ensemble, Queensland Conservatorium Wind Orchestra and Orchestra of the National Radio of Ukraine). Catherine’s pieces have been played at several international events, including four International Horn Symposiums and two World Saxophone Congresses. Her recent residencies include the University of Connecticut, the University of Georgia and North Carolina NewMusic Initiative. She was the winner of the International Horn Society Composition Contest (virtuoso division) and the recipient of several awards, including two grants from the Australia Council for the Arts. Her music can be heard on Cala, Albany and Equilibrium Records. 

Catherine holds a Bachelor's degree in jazz piano from Kyiv Glière Music College and a five-year post-graduate degree in composition from the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine (Kyiv Conservatory). She is currently pursuing a PhD in composition at the University of Queensland. She has delivered presentations on her work at a number of institutions, including Arizona State University, Bowling Green State University, Butler University, Cornell University, Ithaca College, Queensland Conservatorium, Syracuse University and the Union of Composers of Ukraine. 

Catherine is an active performer, often playing her own music. She was the soloist on the premiere and the CD recording of Out Loud, her piano concerto commissioned by the Cornell University Wind Ensemble, and the pianist on Adam Unsworth’s CD Snapshots. Together with her collaborators, she has given numerous recitals, including ones at the 18th World Saxophone Congress (Zagreb, Croatia), 50th International Horn Symposium (Muncie, IN, USA), Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University and University of Michigan.

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Me Disagrees by Catherine Likhuta

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27 MAY 2019

CALLIOPE TSOUPAKI - GREECE 

BORN 27 MAY

Calliope Tsoupaki makes music that has a mood of timelessness. Her objective is expressing the essence as simply and clearly as possible. In her compositions she uses elements of early and contemporary music as well as the music of Greece and the Middle East. Combining these aspects, she skillfully creates a completely personal style.

Her music is praised for its melodic character, warm sound and emotional quality. To date her oeuvre consists of more than 100 works for diverse instrumentation and instruments from different cultures (qanun, ney, kemençe, hurdy gurdy, vielle, viola da gamba, pan flute), from solo to orchestral works, choral music, dance, theatre, opera and multi-sensory projects.

She has developed into one of the most defining composers of Dutch musical life, collaborating with, among others, Pierre Audi, Markus Stenz, Paul Koek, Jordi Savall, Kees Boeke, Frances-Marie Uitti, and ensembles including the Metropole Orchestra, Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Bach Society, Ensemble Tetraktys, Neue Vocalisten Stuttgart, Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, Nieuw Amsterdams Peil, Ergon Ensemble and Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble.

Overwhelming successes include her opera Mariken in the Garden of Delights (nomination Matthijs Vermeulen Prize 2017), St. Luke Passion, song cycle Face of Love for singer Nena Venetsanou, oratorio Oidipous (nomination Matthijs Vermeulen Prize 2014), Narcissus(a play for music and scent), Maria for the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, the chamber operas Dark(about Joan of Arc, libretto Edzard Mik), Vita Nova (based on Dante’s book of the same title) and her three works for string quartet under the title Triptychon recorded on CD by the Doelen String Quartet (honorary mention from the Union of Greek Theatre and Music Critics in cooperation with the Foundation of Culture, Sport and Youth of the City of Athens). Click here to read more about her major works.

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Passion by Calliope Tsoupaki 

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THEA MUSGRAVE - SCOTLAND
BORN 27 MAY

Rich and powerful musical language and a strong sense of drama have made Scottish-American composer Thea Musgrave one of the most respected and exciting contemporary composers in the Western world. Her works are performed in major concert halls, festivals, and radio stations on both sides of the Atlantic. 

In honour of her distinguished and varied catalogue and career over 60 years, the BBC presented Total Immersion: Thea Musgrave with three concerts of her chamber, choral, and symphonic works performed and recorded at the Barbican in a single day -- February 15, 2014. 

Known for the clarity of her invention, the skill of her orchestrations, and the power of her musical communication, Musgrave has consistently explored new means of projecting essentially dramatic situations in her music, frequently altering and extending the conventional boundaries of instrumental performance by physicalizing their musical and dramatic impact: both without programmatic content (such as the Clarinet Concerto, the Horn Concerto, the Viola Concerto, and Space Play), and others with specific programmatic ideas (such as the paintings in The Seasons and Turbulent Landscapes, the poems in Ring Out Wild Bells, Journey through a Japanese Landscape, and Autumn Sonata, and the famous Greek legends in Orfeo, Narcissus, Helios, and Voices from the Ancient World); -- all extensions of concerto principles. In some of these, to enhance the dramatic effect, the sonic possibilities of spatial acoustics have been incorporated: in the Clarinet Concerto the soloist moves around the different sections of the orchestra, and in the Horn Concerto the orchestral horns are stationed around the concert hall. Thus the players are not only the conversants in an abstract musical dialogue, but also very much the living (and frequently peripatetic) embodiment of its dramatis personae. 

Her 10 large-scale and several chamber operas of the past 40 years beginning with The Voice of Ariadne (1972) and followed by Mary, Queen of Scots (1977), A Christmas Carol (1979), Harriet, The Woman Called Moses (1984), Simón Bolívar (1992), Pontalba (2003) are in every sense the true successors to these instrumental concertos.

Musgrave has been the recipient of many notable awards including two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Ivors Classical Music Award 2018, and The Queen's Medal for Music. She was awarded a CBE on the Queen's New Year's Honour List in 2002.

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'A Suite O Bairnsangs' by Thea Musgrave

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26 MAY 2019

DOROTHÉE HAHNE - GERMANY

BORN 26 MAY

Dorothée Hahne is a German composer. She studied the trumpet at the Music Academies in Cologne and Düsseldorf. In 1988 she founded the Renitent-Quartet, with whom she performed her own compositions at art exhibitions and festivals. Together with the artists MAF Räderscheidt Martin Kätelhön (light projections) she composed pieces for wind instruments (including trumpet, alphorn, didgeridoo) and live electronics. Alongside numerous performances and concerts in museums, galleries and art associations, she has also composed several instrumental and electronic pieces, film music, and settings of poems, has worked on audiobook projects and composed commissioned pieces.

One feature of her compositions in the use of electronic means is the renunciation of any form of sound synthesis. The electronics serve exclusively to create repetition of, and variations on naturally produced sounds. The composer also devotes herself passionately to providing sound for church interiors with concert projects specially designed to take account of the particular acoustics.

As for content, her later compositions centrally reflect a confrontation with German history (for example Die Hoffnungsfalle [The Hope Trap] – a Performance on German Re-unification, Ode to Anne for 7 Trumpets), European history (for example Theophanu – a concert project on the life of the eponymous empress) and the theme of women and spirituality (for example commentari – a suite for recorders, didgeridoo & live electronics, based on the legend of the virgin St Ursula).

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RestZeit by Dorothée Hahne 

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ANITA HEWITT-JONES - UK 
DIED 26 MAY

Anita Hewitt-Jones was a British composer and musician.

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Cello Fascination by Anita Hewitt-Jones 

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25 MAY 2019

ALEXANDRA BARKOVASKAYA - BELARUS

BORN 25 MAY

Alexandra Barkovskaya is a Belarusian composer, musician and multi-instrumentalist based in Berlin.

Education:

​Film University Babelsberg "Konrad Wolf" (Film music, 2009-2013)

University of the Arts, Berlin (Piano, 2005-2008)

Belarusian State Academy of Music, Minsk (Piano, Composition, Music theory, 1998-2003).

PROJECTS (selection)

- Dust (Feature Film, 2019) - D.: Udita Bhargava (Unafilm, Maze Pictures, Film University “Konrad Wolf") - world premiere at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival

- Berlinale Talent at the Berlinale Talents 2019

- Polizeiruf 110 'Der Preis der Freiheit' (TV Film, 2016) - D.: Stephan Rick (rbb, Real Film, ARD)

- Out There (Feature Documentary, 2016) - D.: Takehiro Ito (Eyes Films Production Tokyo, Taipei Film Commission) - Festival international de cinéma de Marseille (2016 / Sélection officielle)

- Iris Butterfly (Oper/Arrangement, 2016) - Arrangement for Neuköllner Oper. In collaboration with Derik Listemann

- Imraan, c/o Carrom Club (Documentary/Short, 2014) - D.: Udita Bhargava - 3sat-Förderpreis

- Personality Shop (Short, 2011) - D.: Pauls Kesteris

- Bodies in Motion (Video-installation, 2010) - D.: Katharina Klewinghaus (HKW, Berlin)​

- Live-Performances at the Babelsberger Media Awards 2009, 2010 (multi-instrumentalist and composer)

- Concerts as a solo-pianist, ensemble player, performances with Minsk Philharmonic Orchestra, Saint-Petersburg Radio and TV Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra Potsdam (Chaplin Complete Festival, Berlin) - 1998-2014

- CD-Production for NAXOS 'Russische Romantik' 2006 as a member of "Aurora Quartett" Berlin.

- Chamber oper 'Faust' 2003, Minsk (for 5 Soloists, Choir and Orchestra)

♫ LISTEN 

Trexno by Alexandra Barkovaskaya 

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JEANNE SHAFFER - USA
BORN 25 MAY

Jeanne Ellison Shaffer was an American composer and musician.

Shaffer was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. She was interested in music from a young age, singing on radio beginning at age four. When she was 11 she began touring with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. She also appeared in Girl of the Golden West as Jeannette MacDonald. Shaffer studied at Samford University, Birmingham Southern College, and Vanderbilt University.

Shaffer's compositions have been published by 12 companies and in at least three languages. They include three musicals, orchestral pieces, chamber music, a chamber opera, a ballet, organ music, cantatas, and song cycles. Her Three Faces of Woman was recorded in orchestral arrangement by Richard Stoltzman and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. She has earned grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Aspen Music Festival. She has also served as a choir director, organist, and teacher, and hosted a radio program called Eine Kleine Frauenmusik about female composers.

In 1944, she married Loran O. Shaffer (1921–1969). She married secondly Swiss native Robert S. Barmettler (1924–2013) in 1989 while at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Joan Tower.

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"Partita on Schmücke dich" by Jeanne Shaffer

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