Description

Claude Baker attained his doctoral degree from the Eastman School of Music, where his principal composition teachers were Samuel Adler and Warren Benson. As a composer, Mr. Baker has received a number of professional honors, including two Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards; the Eastman-Leonard and George Eastman Prizes; a "Manuel de Falla" Prize (Madrid); BMI-SCA and ASCAP awards; residencies at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony; and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, the Kentucky Arts Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

His music has been performed by the orchestras of Saint Louis, San Francisco, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Louisville, as well as by the New York Philharmonic, the Orquesta Nacional de España, and the Orquesta Sinfonica de RTV Española. His works are published by MMB Music and Carl Fischer, Inc., and recorded on the ACA, Gasparo, and Louisville First Edition labels.

Mr. Baker has served on the faculties of the University of Georgia, the University of Louisville, and the Eastman School of Music. He has been a member of the composition faculty of Indiana University since 1988. At the beginning of the 1991-92 concert season, he was appointed Composer-in-Residence of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Jeffrey Hass has been a member of the composition faculty at Indiana University since 1987, serving as the Director of the Center for Electronic and Computer Music (CECM). He previously taught music theory and composition on the faculties of Rutgers University and the Interlochen Center for the Arts. His compositions have been premiered by the Louisville Orchestra and Concordia Chamber Orchestra, and have had performances at Lincoln Center and at national conferences of SCI, SEAMUS, and the College Music Society. His orchestral works have won several national competitions and are published by MMB Music Publishers, Saint Louis. A large work for ensemble and electronic tape, Lost in the Funhouse, won the 1994 National Band Association Competition. Mr. Hass studied composition with Frederick Fox, Donald Erb, and Robert Moevs, receiving a doctorate in composition from Indiana University in 1989.

Eugene O'Brien has been the recipient of the Music Award and Citation of the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome, and awards from BMI, ASCAP, and the League of Composers-ISCM. He has received Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts and other fellowships and has been commissioned by American and European performers and ensembles, by Meet the Composer/Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund, and by the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations. His music has been heard in concerts by the Cleveland Orchestra, the Italian Radio Orchestras of Rome and Turin, the Omaha Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony Discovery Series, the Louisville Orchestra New Music Series, and in numerous other orchestral and chamber concerts and festivals in this country and Europe. His music is published by MMB Music, Inc., G. Schirmer, and Boosey & Hawkes, and can be heard in recordings on the CRI, Golden Crest, Crystal, and Capstone labels.

Also active in the performance of new music, Mr. O'Brien was a co-founder of the Cleveland new music ensemble Reconnaissance in 1978 and was associated with the group until 1984. In 1985-87 he served on the production board of the Contemporary Music Forum in Washington, D.C. A member of the composition faculty at the Indiana University School of Music since 1987, Mr. O'Brien has also taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Catholic University of America in Washington, and is a graduate of the University of Nebraska and Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Institute of Music.

David Dzubay was born in Minneapolis and raised in Portland, Oregon. Attending Indiana University, he earned a B.S., an M.M. in Composition and Trumpet, and a D.M. in Composition (1991). His principal teachers have been Frederick Fox, Donald Erb, Eugene O'Brien, Lukas Foss, and Oliver Knussen. As winner of the 1995 Barlow International Competition, Mr. Dzubay will compose a work to be performed by the orchestras of Baltimore, Minnesota, and Saint Louis. The Meet the Composer/Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund is commissioning his first symphony, to be premiered by the Oregon Symphony and also performed by the Louisville Orchestra and the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Other commissions include works for the National Repertory Orchestra, Detroit Chamber Winds, New York Youth Symphony, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players. Honors include awards from the NEA, BMI, ASCAP, the American Music Center, Composers, Inc. and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. His works are published by MMB Music, Thompson Edition, Dorn, and Magnolia, and are recorded on the Louisville First Edition and Innova labels.

In the fall of 1992, after teaching at the University of North Texas where he was Director of the UNT New Music Ensemble, David Dzubay was appointed to the faculty of the Indiana University School of Music, where he teaches composition, is Director of the New Music Ensemble, and occasionally conducts an orchestra. Mr. Dzubay has also conducted groups at Tanglewood, Aspen, Disney World, the University of Puget Sound, and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and strings from the Louisville Orchestra at the Maple Mount Music Festival.

Don Freund has composed over 80 performed works, ranging from solo, chamber, and orchestral music to pieces involving live performance with electronic instruments, music for dance, and large theatre works. He is also active as a pianist, conductor, and lecturer. He has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (Cello Concerto, Passion with Tropes), commissions including the Tennessee Arts Commission with Opera Memphis (The Bishop's Ghost), and prizes including the 1979 Washington International String Quartet Composition Competition, the International Society for Contemporary Music/League of Composers 1976 International Piano Music Competition, the Hanson Prize, the McCurdy Award, the Aspen Prize, and 13 ASCAP Awards. In the summer of 1992 he served as a Macgeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Four of his compositions have been released on commercial CDs. His works are published by MMB Music, Boosey & Hawkes, Seesaw, and Vivace Press. He has been on Indiana University's composition faculty since 1992.

Don Freund was born in Pittsburgh; he studied at Duquesne University and earned his graduate degrees at the Eastman School of Music. His composition teachers were Joseph Willcox Jenkins, Darius Milhaud, Charles Jones, Wayne Barlow, Warren Benson, and Samuel Adler. As founder and coordinator of Memphis State University's Annual New Music Festival, he programmed close to a thousand new American works. He has been conductor or pianist in the performance of some 200 new pieces, usually in collaboration with the composer.

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