News

Guitarist Robert Phillips commissioned, recorded, and now presents 3 CF2 composers on May 17, 2019

Internationally noted classical guitarist Robert Phillips will be giving a concert of new music at the Timucua Arts Foundation White House on May 17 at 7:30 PM. The centerpiece of the concert will be a set of six dances written for Robert by Central Florida based composers. Those composers include Jorge Morel, CF2 members Benoit Glazer, Charles Griffin, and Troy Gifford, as well as Howard Buss, and Rex Willis. In addition, Phillips will play a set of Nocturnes composed for him by British composer John W. Powell.

Phillips recently recorded the pieces that comprise this program. The works are in dance rhythms ranging from waltzes to rumbas and incorporating elements of Afro-Cuban music, Flamenco, and Brazilian dance rhythms. They are to be performed as a set along with a prelude by Robert under the title of The Orange Blossom Dances. These important new works will be released by MSR Classics.

Robert has brought his brilliant interpretations to a diverse range of venues – from traditional concert halls including New York’s prestigious Town Hall, and Lincoln Center to jazz nightclubs. His performance at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall was sold out. In addition to the standard repertory, Robert performs his own compositions, and has premiered works by three-time Pulitzer nominee, Frank Brazinski, Eric Ross, Alfred Giusto, and Meyer Kupferman, as well as a concerto written for him by three-time Grammy winner, Michael Colina. The works by Kupferman and Colina were written for him.

Robert’s recordings include Guitarre Nouveau on TPL records and Lo Mestre, the Music of Miguel Llobet on Centaur records, as well as his self-re-released two volume set, Great Themes and Variations for Classic Guitar (originally released by Mel Bay as a companion to his anthology.) Robert also recently recorded several Spanish songs with Chinese coloratura soprano Shudong Braamse on her Global Music Awards Gold Medal winning album, Sueños De España (Navona Records).

Robert spent the summer of 2017 in Spain participating as a teacher, ensemble coach, and performer in the Chamber Art Madrid music festival. Phillips performed some of the newly commissioned works at this festival. He will be at the festival again in the summer of 2019.
The Timucua Arts Foundation is located at 2000 S Summerlin Ave. Orlando, Florida 32806. The concert begins at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased online here.

Waterfalls, Forests, Coastlines, and other Musical Dreams on March 31 @ 7:30 pm

Central Florida Composers Forum presents “Waterfalls, Forests, Coastlines, and other Musical Dreams,” a concert of works by local composers at Timucua White House, March 31.

Winter Park, Florida – The Central Florida Composers Forum will present “Waterfalls, Forests, Coastlines, and other Musical Dreams,” a showcase concert of selected works scored for Pierrot Ensemble by Full Sail University composer and Central Florida Composers Forum founder and Executive Director Charlie Griffin, University of Central Florida’s recent transplant Alex Burtzos, Orlando-based composers Erik Branch, Damien Simon, and film composer and Cocoa Beach resident Joe Gray.

The term Pierrot Ensemble refers to a specific instrumentation used by Austrian (and later Austrian-American) composer Arnold Schoenberg for his seminal and most famous work, Pierrot Lunaire. Composed in 1912 for voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, this combination was subsequently taken up by many later composers such as Milton Babbitt, John Cage, and Peter Maxwell Davies.

The musicians featured in this concert will be Julie Bateman (voice), Katie Mess (flute), Erik Cole (clarinet), Pepina Dell’Ollio (violin), Abigail Collins (cello), Ammon Perry Bratt (piano), and Justin Steger (percussion).

A diverse collection of works on the program include Charlie Griffin’s Shifting Coastlines, a trio of songs whose lyrics are taken from an anthology of poetry called Verse and Universe. These songs all draw upon science and math to explore the human experience. One example from the set is “Love’s Discrete Non-linearity,” a poem set like a Gypsy tango that uses the language of Chaos Theory to understand a romantic relationship. Selections from two works by Alex Burtzos will be on the program: The Birth of Dangun, a ballet based on the Korean myth of creation, and The Impossible Object, a multi-movement work inspired by works of M.C. Escher. Four vignettes by Erik Branch will include a premiere of his Brises Dansantes. The concert will be rounded out by Joe Gray’s The Black Forest, and Damien Simon’s Change.

The concert will take place on March 31 at the Timucua White House, 2000 South Summerlin, Orlando, FL 32806. Doors open at 7pm. Concert at 7:30. Tickets are by donation.

There’s a reason you don’t see many violinists outside of the classical sphere, because it’s a hard instrument to master and apply to other genres at will. And that’s why it’s beautiful, when you pick up an amazon violin, especially for the first time, it fights back. You form a deep, unique connection with an instrument like that.

Central Florida Composers Forum Piano Concert at Timucua Arts October 21, 2018 – Performance Videos

Thank you to everyone who joined us in person and online for our PIano concert!  Above are videos of each piece on the program. If you like these pieces, let us know in the comments. Or better yet, tell your friends! Check back soon for information about future performances!

 

The Central Florida Composers Forum Presents a Piano Concert at Timucua!

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. 

 

 

 

2018 Composer’s Salon – Sunday September 9th at 7:30pm

The Central Florida Composer’s Forum is proud to present their 6th annual Composer’s Salon Concert on Sunday, September 9th 2018, 7:30 pm at the Timucua white house (2000 S. Summerlin Ave. Orlando 32806). Five local Central Florida composers: Stan Cording, Troy Gifford, Sharon Omens, Paul Austin Sanders, and Damien Simon will feature original compositions including local and world premieres in a diverse array of musical stylings. Instrumentation includes, piano, violin, clarinet, string quartet, and electronic music.

Salon concerts originated with princes and other royalty holding music concerts in their great rooms or “salons” in their palaces. This rich cultural tradition continues in modern day Orlando with benefactors Benoit Glazer and Élaine Corriveau graciously hosting the 6th Annual Composer’s Salon at their home, the Timucua white house. The concert is free and donations are welcome. You’re also encouraged to bring a bottle of wine or a snack to share. For more information, please visit cfcomposers.org.

About the Composers 

Stan Cording

A native of Orlando, Florida, Stan Cording began studying piano at the age of 8 and eventually majored in music at Rollins College. While he has worked as a professional accompanist and pianist with various local ensembles, his avocation has always been music composition. At the beginning of his career, he pushed against the prevailing trend toward atonal and minimalist music, championing what has come to be known as New Lyricism—a re-engagement with tonality and melody. Cording has always strived to achieve an immediacy and clarity of expression that results in music that audiences love to hear and musicians find gratifying to perform. His album of Christmas music for strings, Christmas Carols Old and New can be found on iTunes and Amazon, featuring both arrangements and original compositions.

Troy Gifford

Dr. Troy Gifford is an award winning guitarist and composer whose music synthesizes elements of Latin, classical, jazz, and rock styles.   His compositions have been performed by acclaimed artists on multiple continents, including at festivals and concerts in North America, South America, Europe and Asia.  He has written music in a variety of settings, including pieces for guitar, voice, piano, orchestra, choir, band, and various chamber ensembles.  He has also written for both the stage and film.

He has won a number of awards for his music, including first prize in composition competitions sponsored by the Guitar Foundation of America, Fingerstyle Guitar Magazine, and the University of Miami.  He has released two CDs of all original material: Delineations (on Flatfoot Records) and Olvidando.  His music has been published by Doberman Yppan and Mel Bay, and he currently serves as a regular columnist for the digital guitar magazine Fingerstyle Guitar Journal.

Dr. Gifford has taught at several colleges and universities and currently lives in Orlando, FL, where he serves as the chair of the music department at Valencia College.

Text for Night Voices (from the poem by Arthur Conan Doyle):

Father, father, who's whispering?

Who is it who whispers in the wood?

You say it is the breeze

As it sighs among the trees,

But there's someone who whispers in the wood.


Father, father, who's murmuring?

Who is it who murmurs in the night?

You say it is the roar

Of the wave upon the shore,

But there's someone who murmurs in the night.


Father, father, who laughs at us?

Who is it who chuckles in the glen?

Oh, father, let us go,

For the light is burning low,

And there's someone laughing in the glen.

 

Father, father, tell me what you're waiting for,

Tell me why your eyes are on the door.

It is dark and it is late,

But you sit so still and straight,

Ever staring, ever smiling, at the door.

Sharon Omens

Sharon Omens is currently the acting President of the Composers Forum. She is a prolific 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 six albums with her original compositions. Sharon regularly showcases her original music at the Timucua White House, The Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts and Christ Church Unity Orlando.

Paul Austin Sanders

..from the Innersanctum Creative Flow Chamber , Paul Austin Sanders Bids you welcome..he studied music At Western Washington University as a vocal performance major with added studies in composition and opera workshop ( at one point found the door to the theatre dept and did some minor studies in Actors workshop)..before that at Skagit Valley College he studied Jazz bass on top of his vocal music studies…since then work with various opera companies, music ensembles, theatre groups, film productions, and music compositional and artistic creative flow…it is always on the go…..Tubularus Ethereality…soundscape for plastic tube effected layered voices. singing through a tube does a number on the vocal sound…a haunting foggy night…mystery lurking out there…… Fluid Motion in the Evening Air… Glass Bottles and layered Voices…the harmonic structure was created by the multi tracked glass bottles..then the vocal cells were layered in creating the tapestry of sound… a meditative moment in time … Perpetuatum…layered keyboards and voices…started with three innerweaving keyboard tracks ,then the vocals were layered in ..sharing the melodic theme cells between the keys and voices..may it take you to another realm all together…

Damien Simon

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.

#71  violin

“ Chicken “ , is a solo Clarinet solo dedicated to the life of Craig Norwood

Meet the Composers for Celebrating Women Who Compose 2018

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.

Celebrating Women Who Compose 2018

The Central Florida Composer’s Forum is proud to present our 2nd annual “Celebrating Women Who Compose” during Women’s History Month this coming March. We are so proud of the women—past and present—who find inspiration and turn it into music! We’d like to highlight some pieces by our local female composers as well as feature classic and modern music created by women. Please join us for a beautiful night of music!

Tuesday, 6 March 2018
8pm
Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts

Tickets are $10.

For more information, please visit cfcomposers.org or email: <octavemaker@gmail.com>.

Video: January 2018 Salon

Thank you to everyone who joined us in person and online for our Salon concert, especially for your patience as we rescheduled from last September due to the hurricane! Below are videos of each piece on the program. If you like these pieces, let us know in the comments. Or better yet, tell your friends! Check back soon for information about future performances!

David James Nielsen: Welcome to Nantucket and Annabelle Hooper Finale

Members of the Orlando Youth Orchestra

Nicole Gutman: A Capella Arias

Nicole Gutman, soprano

Sharon Omens: Landscapes

Sharon Omens and Eric Brook, piano

Brandon Martin: Devotion and L’Éternité

Brandon Martin, baritone and Sharon Omens, piano

Damien Simon: Bailey’s Nails and False Narratives

Miguel Cardenas, guitar and Daniel Cortes, viola

Seunghee Lee: Flying Kite

EunMi Ko, piano