Concert Announcement

Venus & the Radio
Thursday, August 8 at the Timucua White House
2000 South Summerlin, Orlando, FL 32806.
Doors: 7pm. Concert: 7:30.
Tickets are $10.

While Orlando has begun to gain recognition for its arts community, not much has been said about the lines and boundaries drawn between artistic disciplines. When it comes to music and literature, The Central Florida Composers Forum, in collaboration with local literary publisher Burrow Press, aim to blur those boundaries and inspire future collaborations with their upcoming event, “Venus & the Radio.”

This one-of-a-kind event will feature two prominent Florida authors reading excerpts from their newest books (published by Burrow Press) in collaboration with four Orlando-based members of the Central Florida Composers Forum.

Orlando Poet Laureate Susan Lilley will perform Florida-inspired work from her collection Venus in Retrograde with accompaniment from composers Mark Piszczek and Timothy Stulman. Piszczek’s interactive approach will incorporate Lilley reading live with Piszczek on soprano saxophone and pre-recorded audio electronically manipulated by sound artist Jared Silvia. Stulman will do real-time audio processing of Lilley’s performance, combined with a pre-recorded audioscape.

Shane Hinton will perform excerpts from Radio Dark, a surreal post-apocalyptic novel set in Florida. Composers Holly Cordero and Charlie Griffin will provide an underscore in the manner of classic radio plays.

“This event is a great opportunity to not only illustrate the variety of talent in Orlando,” says Burrow Press publisher Ryan Rivas, “but also to acknowledge that art isn’t created in a vacuum. And especially to show how one art form can and does inspire others.”

A Q&A and book signing will follow the performance.  

We are very proud to present a concert of piano works by the very talented members of the Central Florida Composers Forum.   We will showcase selected works for piano solo and piano-four-hands.  The featured performers are the award-winning pianist Rose Grace and resident pianist for the Alterity Chamber Orchestra, Will Daniels.

The concert will take place on October 21, 2018  at 7:30 p.m. The venue is the Timucua Arts Foundation, 2000 Summerlin, Orlando, Florida.  Suggested donation is $10-$20

Please join us for a beautiful night of music!

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS AND THEIR COMPOSITIONS

Eric Brook is a classically trained pianist who has degrees in music composition from Oberlin Conservatory (B.M) and the University of Minnesota (M.A).  He composes music in many genres including art music, popular music, and electronic dance music. Currently, he is Course Director of Musical Structure and Analysis at Full Sail University in the Music Production department. Eric also serves as Music Director at Unity on the Space Coast in Titusville, FL.

Diginary is a minimalist composition explores the combination of the harmonic overtone series merged with the mathematics of the binary number system. Compositional strategies of additive rhythmic patterns and indeterminacy are also interwoven throughout the texture.

Alex Burtzos is an American composer and conductor based in New York City and Orlando, FL.  His works, which bristle with “biting contemporary edge” (Berkshire Eagle) have been performed across four continents.  Alex has collaborated with some of the world’s foremost contemporary musicians and ensembles, including JACK Quartet, Yarn/Wire, Contemporaneous, ETHEL, loadbang, Jenny Lin, RighteousGIRLS, and many others.  He is the founder and artistic director of ICEBERG New Music, a New York-based composers’ collective, and the conductor of the hip-hop/classical chamber orchestra ShoutHouse. Alex holds a DMA from Manhattan School of Music, where his primary teachers were Reiko Fueting and Mark Stambaugh.  He serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Central Florida.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was a British poet. He composed almost all of his poems while serving in the army during World War I, and his writing directly addresses the ground-level experience of an infantry soldier during a brutal, horrific conflict. Owens’ poems are raw, visceral, and occasionally shocking, even to someone reading more than a century after their creation. In Wilfred Owen at the Gates,  I’ve taken six of these works as a starting point, marrying them to a structure based on Dante’s Inferno. Wilfred Owen was killed in battle in November, 1918, just one week before the armistice. He was 26 years old.

A composer, writer, and voice actor, Charlie Griffin was born and raised in New York. He teaches in Full Sail University’s Bachelor of Science in Music Production degree program. His original music has been performed in 20 countries in venues like Washington DC’s Kennedy Center, New York’s Merkin and Weill recital halls, the American Cathedral in Paris, festivals such as Aspen, SpoletoUSA, and Mexico’s International Cervantino, and conferences such as the WPPC (World Piano Pedagogy Conference), PASIC (Percussive Arts Society), ACDA (American Choral Directors Association) and NFA (National Flute Association). Recent commissions include works for the Orlando Philharmonic and for guitarist Robert Phillips. He is the founder and first president of the Central Florida Composers Forum, and has been a large budget panelist for United Arts of Central Florida, a radio show host on WPRK 91.5fm, and the music columnist for Artborne Magazine. Griffin embraces creativity in many forms:  improv comedy, standup comedy, and acting. In May of 2017, his one hour sketch-prov comedy show, enjoyed a 5-show run at the Orlando Fringe Festival. Shortly thereafter, he embarked on a second degree: a BFA in Creative Writing for Entertainment on faculty scholarship at Full Sail University.

A composer can only express their perception of the world through the filter of their own experience, and since my earliest musical experiences revolved around singing and drumming, I often incorporate in my writing elements of popular and/or world music that are most compelling to me, within the context of continuing a concert music tradition.  Vernacular Dances is a three-movement work that comes from this impulse.  The first movement blends jazz and latinesque motor rhythms with melodic material loosely derived from Webern’s Variations for Piano, Op. 27, Mvt. 2.  The second movement is gentle and arioso, orchestrally conceived.  The third contrasts blues rhythms with some I picked up listening to Latin Jazz.  The piece was premiered by Perry Townsend at Steinway Hall in New York, and has since been recorded by Tomoko Deguchi for Capstone Records and by Theresa McCollough for Innova Records.

Sharon Omens is a prolific composer who is the current acting president of the Central Florida Composers Forum.  She has produced six albums with her original compositions and regularly showcases her original music at the Timucua White House.   Ms. Omens is also a spiritual performer of both piano and voice and a music educator/therapist who has devoted 40 years to training young musicians and using music as a source of healing with those in need. Sharon holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music (piano performance) and a Certificate of Music Therapy.

Visions is a solo piano composition which has a central jazz theme that is revisited diatonically, atonally and rhythmically throughout the piece. Since Ms. Omens is a pianist herself and also studied and played jazz extensively throughout her youth, she enjoys using jazz harmonies and experimenting with them to create contrasting moods and emotions.  Visions moves through many temperaments including lazy, playful, energetic, gentle, determined, passionate, turbulent and resolute. Counterpoint, parallel thirds and varied rhythms and tempos are also utilized in some sections in order to create added intensity, texture and color.

Damien Simon is an internationally known composer for ballet/contemporary dance companies, orchestras/ensembles, tv/film companies. As a graduate of the Purchase Conservatory (NY) and the University College of Dublin (Ireland), Damien relocated to Orlando from Buffalo, NY. In addition to writing scores; Damien is a private music teacher in multiple instruments and composition. Damien has written dozens of scores from contemporary ballets in Holland, to ensembles in Austria, to independent films in Australia. Many of his scores become internationally touring pieces, touring all over Europe, Russia and the US.

Sick People, Leroy, and Happiness are three solo piano scores written at different times. As a composer for multiple genres and mediums (dance, film, theater); I keep a prolific catalogue, ever expanding in developing my maturity as a composer. Much of my scores have been written just for the sake of writing, not for specific projects. Exploring different genres, mediums and other cultures musics’ excites my hunger for seeing, hearing, and experiencing new sounds and cultures with their music. 

This year on 6 March 2018, Central Florida Composers Forum will be presenting a concert showcasing some of the talented women in our organization and beyond. The show starts at 8pm on Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts. Tickets are only $10 and can be purchased here. Read on to learn about the composers and works on the program.

Bethany Borden is a composer and music educator living in Central Florida and teaching elementary music in Osceola County. She is a UCF alum and taught for a decade in Orange County before diving into a new hobby composing music for video games,Virtual Reality experiences, YouTube channels, and podcasts. The hobby turned into a true passion, and Bethany has enjoyed using technology to bring creative ideas to life.

Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep (Text by Mary Elizabeth Frye) was inspired during the summer of 2016 by a local female singing group Helena, which included a few friends of Ms. Borden’s from college. She thought, how cool would it be to write a piece of music for 6 separate female parts that could be sung by 6 strong singers? Ms. Borden decided to look up a poem for text and found Mary Elizabeth Frye’s beautiful and visual poem. She spent two years working on this piece on and off, and is proud to be premiering it at this event and having it performed by strong, talented women!

Nicole Gutman has worked with leading ensembles including Ensemble New SRQ, Yarn/Wire, SŌ Percussion and the JACK Quartet. Nicole holds a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and studied with Lewis Nielson and Josh Levine.

Ms. Gutman’s four premiered songs are part of a collection of songs meant to be performed a cappella  any time, any place, with no need for an accompanist.

The Thing About Cats is a setting of a poem by John L’Heureux, suspecting that cats have some unknown ulterior motive. Witness was inspired by the first page of the comic Watchmen by Allen Moore and David Gibbons, showing a dire situation that could have been stopped if the people did something about it.  Mowing is a setting from a Robert Frost poem describing the soft swishing sound from a winging scythe cutting grass. Talk is a setting of a poem by D. H. Lawrence about the agonies of society’s expectations to socialize with everyone you sit next to.

Jessica Klee holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the UCF.  She is currently a public school music teacher and private instructor of voice, piano, acting and dance and has been teaching for over 15 years.  Aside from performing, producing and writing children’s books, Jessica has composed a few holiday songs, arias, and her most recent composition is a 25 minute Contemporary Ballet titled Carolina.

Good Morning was inspired by a poem written by a dear friend as a teen.  A sad soul living in a difficult world, he was desperately trying to find the positive and good within his surroundings.

Penka Kouneva is a leading composer for film and video games based in Los Angeles. Born and raised in Bulgaria before her immigration to U.S. at age 23, Penka has been fascinated by minimalism since her student years. Penka was trained as a pianist and a chamber musician since early childhood. Her most favorite instruments are the cello and violin, so she relishes any chance she has to compose chamber music. Penka’s Hollywood studio credits include composing for the video games Prince of Persia, Transformers, The Mummy VR game, a permanent NASA exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center (Orlando, FL) about the American astronauts, and many independent drama and genre features, television films and mobile games. Her two orchestral albums, “The Woman Astronaut” and “Rebirth of Id” were released by the top soundtrack label, Varese Sarabande / Universal Music to 5-star press and universal acclaim. Check them out!

“Cassandra’s Rockaby” is fusing minimalism (particularly by the Bang on a Can aesthetics of the early 90’s) with gypsy influences of her native Bulgaria.

Sharon Omens is a composer, performer and music educator who has a deep passion for music. After receiving her Bachelors of Music and Certificate of Music Therapy, she devoted more than 30 years training young musicians and using music as a source of healing with those in need. She has been a spiritual performer of both piano and voice and has produced 6 albums with her original compositions. Currently, she is a member of the Central Florida Composers Forum and has featured her original compositions at the Timucua White House, The Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts and Christ Church Unity Orlando.

Landscapes has several sections with contrasting moods. You will often hear the use of chromatics, triplets against straight time and the interval of a fourth occurring frequently throughout the piece.  To me, Landscapes has a jazz feel to it.

Passages is a musical composition written for woodwinds. Its musical structure is similar to a Theme and Variations since there is a recurring melody that journeys through various melodic, harmonic and rhythmic environments and creates contrasting moods; from happy and peaceful to comical to sad and troubled and perhaps other moods that the listener might have.  I called this music “Passages” because the melody symbolically weaves into a tapestry of sound.

While writing Dance of the Angels, Ms. Omens wanted to create a lovely scene of beauty, hope and joy and pictured many angels dancing and rejoicing in the heavens. This composition has 3 sections with an A B A for and the melody is written primarily using  dorian and lydian modes.

Hailing from the city of “Brotherly Love,” Kathy Sakson received her classical undergraduate music education at Temple University in Philadelphia, and studied jazz piano with Jimmy Amadie after graduating. Upon transplanting to Central Florida, she earned her Master’sDegree from the University of Central Florida, and studied jazz piano, arranging and composing with Per Danielsson. She is currently the Course Director for the Musicianship Course at Full Sail University, teaching within the Music Production degree program.

Fergie and Buzz were spiders…extremely small, dust-speck-like spiders requiring magnification to confirm their arachnid identity. Their short life cycle, reflective of many settings presented by Mother Nature, displayed periods of minimal activity alternating with bursts of charged, and seemingly erratic movement. In this easy-going Latin piece, the composer reflects these cycles of peaceful repose and high activity seen in the natural world – to which we, too, can surely relate.

Margaret Allison Bonds (March 3, 1913 –April 26, 1972) was an American composer and pianist. One of the first black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States.

Juliette Nadia Boulanger September 16, 1887 –October 22, 1979) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. She is notable for having taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century.

Anne Marie Cotter David is an American composer of multiple piano scores for religious presses including Augsburg Fortress Publishers and Abingdon Press of Berklee College of Music.

Pauline Viardot (18 July 1821 – 18 May 1910) was a leading nineteenth-century French mezzo-soprano, pedagogue, and composer of Spanish descent.