SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Presents "COMPOSERS PLAYGROUND" Concert at Old First Church
Friday December 2nd, 2005 at 8 pm
Old First Presbyterian Church
1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
 
SOLOISTS
  
 
 

Rachel Condry, clarinet/bass clarinet
Always looking for creative and exciting ways to convince audiences that new music is relevant and important to their lives, Rachel Condry, has been an advocate of new music for over a decade. Based in San Francisco, CA, she has commissioned and premiered multiple works for solo clarinet, clarinet with tape and clarinet and orchestra. In the spring of 2005 she made her Carnegie Hall debut in Zankel Hall as a member of The Matt Small Chamber Ensemble, a group that seamlessly blends jazz, improvised music and classical genres. As a performing member of the San Francisco Composer’s Chamber Orchestra Rachel premiered the Cello Concerto of Thomas Goss on Bass clarinet in 2003. She has independently produced several concerts comprised of recent and newly commissioned work for clarinet and bass clarinet by Bay Area composers such as Earl Zindars, Erling Wold, Andrew Shapiro, Lisa Prosek, Janis Mercer, Jono Kornfeld, Melissa Hui, Alexis Alrich and others. Rachel received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin Conservatory where she was a finalist of the Oberlin Concerto Competition and was a soloist with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble.

Micah Epps
Micah Epps earned his Bachelor of Music Degree at the University of Arizona. His experience ranges from opera to classical and sacred choral music. He has performed as soloist in such groups as the San Mateo Masterworks Chorale (European Tour soloist), San Francisco Symphony Chorus; and was Mozart Requiem soloist in Hermosillo, Mexico. His operatic roles include U.S. premieres with local composers such as David Conte in Firebird Motel and Erling Wold in Sub Pontio Pilato. In addition, he has created the roles of Eumolpus in Lisa Scola Prosek's opera Satyricon and Creon in Mark Alburger's Antigone.

 

 

 

  
 
COMPOSERS
  
 
 

John Beeman

  

John Beeman studied with Peter Fricker and William Bergsma at the University of Washington where he received his Master’s degree. His first opera, The Great American Dinner Table was produced on National Public Radio. Orchestral works have been performed by the Fremont-Newark Philharmonic, Santa Rosa Symphony, and the Peninsula Symphony. Mr. Beeman received ASCAP special awards from 1998 -2005, and also has attended the Ernest Bloch Composers’ Symposium, the Bard Composer-Conductor program, the Oregon Bach Festival, and the Oxford Summer Institutes. “Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra” was performed in January 2001 by Paul Dresher, electric guitar. In 2002 "Angel of Peace" (SATB chorus) premiered at the Oregon Bach Festival. 2003 had two major performances: The Answering Machine (opera) received its second production on July 25-27 as part of Fresh Voices IV ; and Four Retablos was performed by Ensemble Sorelle at the Seattle Art Museum. In 2004 Smoke and Mirrors was premiered by the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra funded by a Subito grant from the American Composers Forum. On April 23, 2005 Beeline: A Concert Overture was performed by the Mission Chamber Orchestra.
Michael Cooke

Michael Cooke is a composer and performer who plays flute, bass clarinet, soprano sax, alto sax, tenor sax, and bassoon. This Louis Armstrong Jazz award winner graduated from the University of North Texas, which he attended while on a competitive bassoon performance scholarship. Michael graduated cum laude with many different areas of study; jazz, ethnomusicology, music history, theory and of course composition. In 1991 Michael began his professional orchestral career performing in many north Texas area symphonies. He also has performed in jazz and free improvising ensembles. Michael has toured Europe, Mexico, and across the United States with various groups. Cimarron Music and Productions began published many of Michael’s compositions in 1994. In 1999, Michael started a jazz label called Black Hat Records and is currently on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. Michael has recorded several CDs, which receive international airplay, and has recently won a Sports Emmy for his work on “NASCAR on Fox”.
Philip Freihofner

Philip Freihofner began playing oboe in 7th grade, but quit in his senior year, due to chronic neck strains. During the layoff, he tried his hand at various musical endeavors, including sound design (He is particularly proud of some highly praised work at the Zellarbach Playhouse) and composing modern dance settings, culminating in a collaboration with Cheryl Koehler: "The Fish and the Fire" which played at the Julia Morgan and Cowell Theaters in 1993 and '94. While working on this project, he began playing oboe once again, and has mostly been writing music for oboe since. Phil composed an accompaniment for the 1920 silent German horror film, "The Golem," that is being toured by the ensemble "WiZARDS!" and he is now working on a commission for the 2006 SF Silent Film Festival: a Russian comedy titled "The Girl with the Hatbox."


Ruby Fulton

Ruby Fulton is a native of Northwest Iowa, she has studied composition at Boston University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Peabody Institute. Her music has been played in Boston, San Francisco, Cincinnati and London. Primary mentors include Elinor Armer, Dan Becker, Charles Fussell, Tom Benjamin and Chris Theofanidis. For more information on music, projects and compadres, check out www.rubyfulton.com.
David Graves

David A. Graves initially studied electronic music composition at the University of Nebraska. He has composed music for multiple genres, including ambient, jazz, and rock. He has also scored music for film and theatre, including A Period Piece, a play by Rachael Kerr, performed in San Francisco and New York (1995-1998) and ICON: The Photography of Gordon Parks (2003) a movie by PCTV. In 2003, he was the resident composer at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program where he was awarded the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Fellowship. In the past three years, he has focused on scoring music for "new classical" works; he is currently studying composition with Alexis Alrich at the SF Conservatory of Music. This is the second piece he has written for orchestra. Additional information is available at www.finevermin.com.

 
Beeri Moalem

Beeri Moalem is originally from Israel, and has lived in the San Francisco bay area for 9 years. In 2005 he graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, majoring in viola. Currently he plays in a variety of orchestras and ensembles, and teaches music, Hebrew, and Judaism in Palo Alto and San Francisco. He also writes about music and is a composer mostly of chamber music. In his spare time, he also enjoys bike treks, basketball, computers, and literature. Visit his website and blog at www.beeri.org.
Dr. Erling Wold

Dr. Erling Wold is a composer and engineer as well as an aesthete and bon vivant. He is currently working on commissions for a mass for a Swiss cathedral, a solo opera for John Duykers on gender integration for Other Minds, and a personal autobiographical theater piece detailing his corruption and death. He has written several operas and pieces for dance, film, orchestra and chamber ensembles. He holds a number of patents in music and audio engineering and was cofounder of Muscle Fish and a researcher at Yamaha. He holds a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. He is very generous and almost all of his scores and recordings and other documents are freely available online at erlingwold.com.