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 | Michael Angell has written works in a great variety of genres, including orchestral, solo, chamber works, electro-acoustic compositions, and music for plays and multimedia installations. His works have been performed throughout the United States and Europe, including Society of Composers, SEAMUS, BAMA, and College Music Society concerts. He is the recipient of awards from the International Trumpet Guild, ASCAP, and the Hultgren Cello Biennial; and is the recipient of a fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Angell is a co-founder; and initial and current president of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. He has also served on the board of directors of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, and the Birmingham Artburst series (president, 1999-2000). Having received his training at the Oberlin Conservatory and University of Michigan, Angell joined the music faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1994; where he has taught courses in composition, theory, aural skills, and computer music; and was founder and director of the UAB Computer Music Ensemble. He has recently relocated to the Washington, DC area, where he continues his creative and organizational activity. |
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Pianist Adam Bowles is a dedicated performer of newly composed art music who also remains an active and passionate interpreter of established solo piano, chamber music, and vocal repertoire from the Twentieth Century and earlier. Dr. Bowles frequently performs throughout the country with the Luna Nova ensemble – of which he is a founding member. Through Luna Nova, Dr. Bowles regularly participates in formal concerts, master classes, and a variety of educational outreach activities. Dr. Bowles is also an active member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, having served as Treasurer and Vice President of Membership. He also serves as grant-writer for the Alabama Music Teachers Association. Recently, Dr. Bowles has served as adjudicator for competitions such as the Lois Pickard Piano Competition and the NFMC Young Artists Competition and gave a presentation on NFMC Solo Festival Repertoire for the Birmingham Music Teachers Association in the fall of 2010. He holds degrees from Eastman School of Music (BM) and New England Conservatory (MM), and received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Teachers have included Milton Stern, Barry Snyder, Jacob Maxin, and Eugene and Elizabeth Pridonoff. Dr. Bowles is currently on the faculties of the Birmingham-Southern College and Conservatory, where he has taught piano, keyboard harmony, theory, and accompanying. Students of Dr. Bowles have won prizes at competitions hosted by such organizations as the Alabama Music Teachers Association and others. At the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Dr. Bowles accompanies the vocal and instrumental students for lessons and recitals. He is recorded on the Living Artists label and was recently featured on a CD of music by Argentinian composer Valdo Sciammerella, “Rosas de Pulpa Rosas de Cal.” |
 | Michael Coleman received his doctorate from the University of Maryland and the M.M. and B.M. degrees from the University of New Orleans and the University of South Alabama. His principle composition teachers were Lawrence Moss, Jerry Sieg, and Carl Alette. He has participated as composer and/or pianist in numerous new music programs and festivals in the U.S., France & Russia, including the Astrakhan Contemporary Chamber Music Festival, Birmingham Art Music Alliance, Birmingham New Arts Stage, Capital Composers Alliance, Charles Ives Center, College Music Society, Delius Association of Florida, Louisiana Composers Guild, Moscow Autumn, New Music Chicago, Society of Composers, Inc., Southeastern Composers' League,and various festivals in Kolomna, Kostroma, Moscow, and Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Coleman received the Artist Fellowship grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 1994 and a Meet-the-Composer grant through the Southern Arts Federation in 1995. Other awards include first prize in both the 1991 and 1992 NFMC National Composer's Competitions and first prize in the 1989 Res Musica Baltimore Competition. Recent awards include Certificate of Excellence for Best Short Composition and First & Second Prize in the Keyboard Category of the 2001 Composer's Guild Competition held in Farmington, Utah. He is currently teaching at Pensacola Junior College and the University of West Florida. |
 | Raphael Crystal is Director of Musical Theatre for the University of Alabama Department of Theatre and Dance. He is active professionally as a theater composer, musical director, and pianist. His composing credits include musicals (he received a New York Outer Critics Circle award for Best Off- Broadway Musical for the show Kuni-Leml), ballets, incidental music, videos, cabaret material, and concert music. Recently the Jean Cocteau Repertory in New York premiered his musical version of Moliere's The Bourgeois Gentleman, and next season Birmingham Childrens Theatre will premiere his new musical MegaHeroes. He is a member of BAMA, ASCAP, and the Dramatists Guild, and an alumnus of the BMI- Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. |
 Photo by Peter Gannushkindowntownmusic.net |
Andrew Raffo Dewar (b.1975 Rosario, Argentina) is a composer, soprano saxophonist, educator and ethnomusicologist. A former student of Steve Lacy, Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon and Milo Fine, he performs his work internationally with his own ensembles, in collaborative groups, and as a member of the Anthony Braxton 12+1tet. Recordings of Dewar's work can be found on the Porter Records, Striking Mechanism and Rastascan Records labels. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama. For more info: www.freemovementarts.com |
 | Kathryn Fouse serves on the faculty of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama where she is the Coordinator of Piano Pedagogy and Class Piano. In addition to her commitment to education, she continues to maintain an active career as a virtuoso pianist and a professional accompanist. Having developed a strong interest in contemporary music, Dr. Fouse frequently presents lecture-recitals in an effort to bring greater understanding of this music to audiences. In 1992 Kathryn was the national recipient of the Merle Montgomery Doctoral Grant awarded by Mu Phi Epsilon for her research into the Surrealist movement and its influence on American composers. Her special interest in the study and performance of American piano music of the Twentieth Century has resulted in invitations to present her research in lecture- recitals at such prestigious institutions as the University of Illinois, Baylor University, the Dallas Art Museum, Gothenburg University (Sweden) and the Norwegian State Academy of Music (Oslo). |
 | Monroe Golden is a freelance composer, computer programmer, and itinerant forest gardener. His compositions often explore microtonal systems, and have been broadcast on adventurous radio and performed in concerts throughout the world. Critics have called his music "delightfully disorienting" and "lovely, sumptuous, yet arcane."Awards include an artist fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and commissions from solo performers, ensembles, and the Alabama Music Teachers Association. Beyond his artistry, Golden has actively encouraged and promoted the innovative arts in his resident community. He is a founding member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, serving as President from 2003-2005. He has also headed the Birmingham Art Association and the ARTBURST Performance Series at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham. He produced the 1998 Birmingham International Improvisation Festival, and founded the New Arts Stage of Birmingham's City Stages, directing the stage from 1999-2004. He graduated from the University of Montevallo and earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois, studying composition with James A. Jensen, Ed Robertson, Ben Johnston, Aurel Stroé, and Herbert Brün. A CD of his music A Still Subtler Spirit, is available from CD Baby and other online and independent music stores. His latest CD Alabama Places was released in August 2007 by innova Recordings. |
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Aurelia Lavette Gooden (b.1983) is a freelance pianist and chamber music composer from Detroit, Michigan. During her time at Jacksonville State University, where she studied piano for several years as well as percussion and composition, she received several academic scholarships and music scholarships. During her formative years, Ms. Gooden participated in violin studies. She is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Jacksonville State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree with Special Honors in Music and a Master of Arts degree in Music. Additionally, she was also the valedictorian of Northern Senior High School in Detroit, Michigan and has studied music as well as science at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She has been a member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance since 2010. She enjoys studying and performing piano music from the Romantic Era and cites her compositional style as Neo-Romantic. She has been instructed in various areas of music and her mentors have included Dr. Wendy Faughn, Dr. Kenneth Bodiford, Mr. Tracy Tyler, Dr. Gail Steward, Dr. Legare McIntosh, Dr. W. Jerryl Davis, Dr. Michael D’Ambrosio, Dr. Yakov Kasman, and Professor Douglas Bianchi. Ms. Gooden is extremely interested in the relationship between neuroscience and musical aptitude. As a synesthete and a person who experiences cross-modal perception, she dedicates her free time to exploring topics of this nature. In addition, music theory and Late-Romantic theoretical analysis are also among her avid interests. Ms. Gooden is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Pi Kappa Lambda, Omicron Delta Kappa, the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Golden Key International Honor Society. Recently, Ms. Gooden has completed the Master of Science degree in Manufacturing Systems Technology (Industrial Engineering) at Jacksonville State University and has achieved certification in Lean Manufacturing as well as a Six Sigma Green Belt at Purdue University. She is currently working as an engineer at Honda Manufacturing of Alabama. |
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Holland Hopson is a composer, improviser, and electronic artist. As an instrumentalist he performs on soprano saxophone, clawhammer banjo and electronics. Holland often augments his instruments with custom-designed sensor interfaces and performs with his own highly responsive, interactive computer programs. Holland has held recent residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida, where he worked with interactive electronics pioneer David Behrman; at LEMURPlex, Brooklyn, where he composed music for and performed with robotic instruments; and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts, New York, where he developed a sound installation based on Marcel Duchamp’s sculpture, With Hidden Noise. Holland’s film sound and scoring work recently took him to Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, “home of the world’s worst weather,” where he somehow managed not to get blown off the mountain while recording location sound for Jacqueline Goss’s The Observers. Holland’s recently released companion soundtrack to the film is titled Wind Whistling in Overhead Wires. An avid phonographer, Holland has recorded sounds on five continents and in over a dozen countries. Holland’s most recent solo recording is Post and Beam, a collection of original and traditional appalachian songs arranged for banjo and live electronics. The Albany Times- Union called Post & Beam “a haunting, often mesmerizing album of old songs and new sounds.” |
 | For several decades, cellist Craig Hultgren has been a fixture on the scenes for new music, the newly creative arts, and the avant-garde. In recent years, he has performed solo concerts and chamber music in Rome, New York, Boston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Miami, Atlanta, Orlando, Denver, Nashville, Memphis and San Antonio. A recipient of two Artist Fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, he was a member for many years of Thámyris, a contemporary chamber music ensemble in Atlanta. A cellist in the Alabama Symphony, he also plays in Luna Nova, a new music ensemble with a large repertoire of performances available as podcast downloads on iTunes. Hultgren is featured in three solo CD recordings including The Electro-Acoustic Cello Book on Living Artist Recordings. For ten years, he produced the Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, an international competition that highlighted the best new compositions for the instrument. He teaches at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Alabama School of Fine Arts and Birmingham-Southern College where he directed the BSC New Music Ensemble. He is a founding member and current President of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance and is on the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Youth Orchestras of Birmingham. Hultgren recently completed a CAMA artist residency (Collaborating Artists Manifesting Adventure) with the St. Louis New Music Circle where he presented programs for the last three seasons. Next year, he will be performing a 15 Minutes of Fame concert titled Occupy Cello in New York for Vox Novus and the Composer's Voice. The program will feature 15 one-minute solo compositions that challenge the traditional boundaries of the instrument. |
 | James A. Jensen is Professor of Music and Chair of Theory/Composition atSamford University, where he also teaches clarinet. He obtained theBM and MM Degrees from Pittsburg State University, and the D. Mus. Degreefrom Florida State University. His composition teachers have includedJohn Boda, Carlisle Floyd, and David Cope. He has written many musicalcompositions in a variety of genres. His music has been performedthroughout the southeast and at both regional and national conferencesof SCI. He is a member of the International Clarinet Association,International Association of Jazz Educators, Board Member and pastPresident of the Birmingham Chamber Music Society, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia,American Federation of Musicians, Reserve Officers Association, Societyof Composers, Inc., a founding member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance-aconsortium of local composers, and currently serves as Commander of the313th United States Army Band. |
 | Joseph Landers was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1965. He studied with FredericGoossen at the University of Alabama, Lothar Klein at the University ofToronto, and Alexander Goehr at Cambridge. Landers has been awarded fellowshipsby the Fulbright Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, the American Music Center, and the MacDowell Colony, where he was selected as the MargaretLee Crofts Fellow in Composition for 1995-96. His orchestral work Karanganwas selected as a finalist for the 1999 Alexander Zemlinsky InternationalPrize for Composition. In 2000 he was awarded the Thor Johnson MemorialCommission for his Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano. The works of JosephLanders have been featured on concerts series and festivals across theU. S. and abroad including the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the AD*Evantgard Festival in Munich, the Huddersfield Contemporary MusicFestival (U.K.), and the Gaudeamus Music Week (Holland), where his orchestralwork Nine forty-eight was selected as a finalist for the 1997 prize incomposition. His compositions for orchestra have been performed bythe Alabama Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Orchestra,the Omaha Symphony, the Tuscaloosa Symphony, and the Lincoln Symphony,and various other orchestras under conductors including Christopher Confessore,Jahja Ling, Ransom Wilson, Bruce Hangen, Adrian Gnam, and Jac Van Steen.His music has also been performed by internationally acclaimed musiciansincluding Lucy Shelton, Richard Killmer, Mariko Anraku, and Marcel Worms. |
| Cynthia Miller's music is performed throughout the United States and has been praised in the theNew York Times for its skill and lucidity She has a doctoratefrom the City University of New York and has taught at several collegesand universities, including Minnesota State University, Ball State University,and Brooklyn College. She is the secretary of the Birmingham Art MusicAlliance, a composers consortium that specializes in performing the worksof Alabama composers. She is also a founder of the New York-basedcomposers consortium Friends & Enemies of New Music. Dr. Miller hasbeen composer-in residence at the Bennington College Chamber Music Conference,Clarion University, and Brooklyn College, and has received commissionsfrom numerous soloists and groups, including the New York ensembles WestPark Chamber Society, Infusion Chamber Ensemble, and the Metropolitan Trio. | |
 | Aubrey Mills is soon to receive his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in music technology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Aubrey has been a musician his entire life; He began playing piano and violin at a young age before moving to saxophone and then finally to guitar. Aubrey is now a classical guitarist who has studied with great teachers such as Jeremy Grall, Yaniv Attar, and Lily Afshar. As a composer, Aubrey began writing short pieces of music around the age of 12. Although he considers himself mostly an autodidact in music composition, his studies with Dr. William Price at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in theory and composition have proved to be an integral part of his development as a composer and a musician. Aubrey has taught guitar and music theory privately and has also worked with Dr. Henry Panion III's music camp for kids. |
 | Brian C. Moon received his Master of Music in Composition from Birmingham-Southern College and his Bachelor of Arts in Music Technology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His composition instructors include Ron Clemmons, Jan Vicar, Traci Mendel, Charles Mason and Dorothy Hindman. For many years, Brian has been an active composer and member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, as well as an adjunct music instructor at Birmingham-Southern and UAB, where he has taught Ear Training, Music Technology, Computer Music, and Multimedia Productions. Brian also served as Director of the Computer Music Ensemble for the Fall 2003 semester. As for the local Birmingham band scene, Brian is singer/songwriter for the Maisleys and bassist for The Delicate Cutters. Brian currently serves as VP of Membership for the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. |
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Composer Bryan Page received a double Bachelor of Music in Composition & Trumpet Performance from the University of Montevallo and a Master of Sacred Music from Westminster Choir College of Rider University. He currently studies composition with Dr. Bryan Clark of Vanderbilt University, formerly with Drs. Ed Robertson, Ron Hemmel & Joel Phillips. He has participated in master classes with George Crumb, David Cutler & Joseph Schwantner.
In 2006 his realization of Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda was performed by Metropolis Ensemble of New York City. His chamber work Portraits & Madrigals has been performed in Princeton, New Jersey; Birmingham, Alabama; & in 2008 in Los Angeles, California for the inaugural concert of Contempo Flux, UCLA’s newly established contemporary music ensemble. Also in 2008 the Brass Band of Huntsville (Alabama) performed Kick the Duck – Rondo for Brass Band. In 2009 the Huntsville Master Chorale commissioned & premiered Songs of Love & Loss, an 11-movement work for choir, semi-chorus and chamber ensemble. Also in 2009 Misogyny Songs for amplified singer & rock trio was performed in Birmingham, Alabama by the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. In 2010 he received commissions from the U.S. Army Trumpet Ensemble (Slow & Fast) & Access Contemporary Music in Chicago (Blackout in Eden, voice & piano). In 2011 his chamber work √25 Poems was premiered in Boston. Bryan has set to music the poetry of E. E. Cummings, D. H. Lawrence, William Blake, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, George Herbert, Hans Magnus Enzenberger, contemporary poets E. Louise Beach & Austin Kleon, as well as Biblical and traditional texts. Bryan is Music Director at Covenant Presbyterian Church and Trumpet Instructor at the Hawthorne Conservatory, both in Huntsville, Alabama. He lives with his wife, Suzanne, their two children, Jack & Sarah Frances, and their two dogs, Iverson & Potter. |
 | Matthew Scott Phillips is a Graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (B.A.) and of Birmingham Southern College (M.M.) where he is currently an adjunct professor of music. He is the winner of the 2011 Alabama Music Teachers Association Composition Commission, and his music has been played from Brazil, to the United States, to Germany, and the Czech Republic. In addition to composition, Matthew has twice been a judge of the National Young Composers Competition, has given lectures on the music of Smetana, Chopin and Rachmaninoff, and taught classes in music fundamentals, musicology, theory, and composition. He was also among thirteen other American composers chosen in the summer of 2006, to study and compose music in the city of Prague under the tutelage of Ladislav Kubik. Matthew lives in Birmingham Alabama, in the United States. |
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William Price, B.M.E. – University of North Alabama, M.M. and D.M.A – Louisiana State University, is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He teaches courses in music theory, aural skills, and serves as Coordinator of Composition for the Alabama Music Teachers Association.
Price’s music has been performed in Europe, South America, Asia, and throughout the United States. His works have been featured prominently at such venues and events as the International Clarinet Association International Conference, the World Saxophone Congress, the National SEAMUS Conference, the National Society of Composers Conference, the Music Teachers National Association Conference, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Chamber Music Festival in Singapore, the NoiseFloor Festival in Stafford, England, the Florida State University Festival of New Music, the Bowling Green State University New Music and Art Festival, the Midwest Regional Tuba and Euphonium Conference, the Nebraska American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Conference, and the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival. Price’s music has received awards and commissions from numerous organizations, including ASCAP, the Percussive Arts Society, NACUSA, and the Southeastern Composers League, and in 2008 he was named the Music Teachers National Association Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year. As a theorist, Dr. Price has presented guest lectures and papers at several national and international conferences, including the 2010 Beyond the Centres Conference in Thessaloniki, Greece, the 2011 Society of American Music and International Association for the Study of Popular Music National Conference, and the 2011 College Music Society International Conference in Seoul. His research interests include Postmodern American music, temporal and textual dissonance, and the music of Frank Zappa and John Zorn. |
 | Ed Robertson is Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Montevallo, where he was Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Theory and Composition. He earned his Doctor of Music at Florida State University, where he was a student of John Boda. He has also studied with Thea Musgrave, David Davis, and Jack Jarrett. Prior to his graduate work at Florida State University, he served as Director of Choral Activities at the University of Richmond.His works have been performed on five continents and in venues such as the Metropolitan Opera House, Carnegie Hall, and Symphony Hall in Atlanta. Robertson's compositions have received positive reviews in Fanfare magazine, the Oxford American, and numerous other publications. His instrumental, vocal, and choral compositions are available on compact disc, and he has been the recipient of a number of commissions.His music has been published by Carl Fischer, Hinshaw, Willis, Belwin-Mills, Shawnee, and others.A winner of multiple ASCAP awards, he has been recognized by the University of Richmond for "outstanding achievement in the arts". Dr. Robertson was three times been named Distinguished Teacher of the Year in the University of Montevallo College of Fine Arts. Also at UM he was twice been selected as University Scholar, and the UM Alumni Association granted him its Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award. He was the Carnegie Foundation/Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Alabama Professor of the Year in 2004. |
 | LaDonna Smith, a native of Birmingham, is an artist of many dimensions, and an active practitioner in both the visual and the musical arts. A pioneer of free improvisation in America, as performer and educator, she has toured the world from USA to Europe to China, Japan and Siberia. As a visual artist in ceramic sculpture and linear drawing, her work has been represented in galleries in the South as well as Chicago, Milwaukee, Paris, France and Stockholm, Sweden--and is documented in a number of international Surrealist publications. She is the editor of The Improvisor, the international journal of free improvisation, a publication which now lives on the web at www.the-improvisor.com. She loves toning, ceramic sculpture and practicing yoga--and believes the mind, body, spirit connection is the basis of her work. |
 | Prof. PhDr. Jan Vicar, CSc. (born on 5 May 1949 in Olomouc, Czech Republic) studied music education and Czech in Olomouc and composition in Brno and Prague. He was editor-in-chief of the leading Czech music journal Hudebni rozhledy [Music Review] from 1986 to 1989, and head of the Department of Musicology of Palacky University in Olomouc (1990-1998; 2000-2003). As a Fulbright/CIES scholar-in-residence, he lectured in 1998-1999 at eight U. S. universities, including St. Cloud State University, the University of Iowa, Florida State University, Wake Forest University, American University, and the University of New Mexico. As a visiting professor, he taught composition and music theory at Birmingham-Southern College, Alabama, USA (2005). He was a member of the Steering Committee of the European Science Foundation Humanities Program Musical Life in Europe, 1600-1900. He has published five books: Accordion (1981), Vaclav Trojan (1989), Music Criticism and the Popularization of Music (1997), Musical Aesthetics (1998; co-author R. Dykast), and Imprints: Essays on Czech Music and Aesthetics (2005; in English). He is a prolific composer whose compositions are performed and recorded by leading Czech soloists, orchestras and choirs, and released on CDs, Vivat Universitas!, We Sing and Fortissimo. He is a professor at the Faculty of Music of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, and at the Department of Musicology of Palacky University in Olomouc. He became a member of Birmingham Art Music Alliance, Alabama in 2006. |