Michael Cooke, Alto Saxophone

Alexander Lu, Piano

Enzo Garcia, Accordion and Saw

Mark Alburger is an eclectic and prolific American composer of postminimal, postpopular, and postcomedic sensibilities. He is Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music Monthly Journal (availble now online at 21st-centurymusic.com), a multiple-award-winning ASCAP musician, oboist, pianist, vocalist, recording artist, musicologist, author, and music critic. Alburger began playing the oboe and composing with Dorothy and James Freeman, George Crumb, and Richard Wernick. He studied with Karl Kohn at Pomona College, Joan Panetti and Gerald Levinson at Swarthmore College (B.A.), Jules Langert at Dominican University (M.A.), Roland Jackson at Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D.), and Terry Riley. His complete recordings are being issued by New Music (Op. 1-44 available on 8 discs; Op. 45-151 to be issued over the next 9 years), with other works available from North/South Consonance and I Kill Me Music. Alburger's music is heard on regular rotation at kdvc.org and myspace.com/markalburger, the latter featuring a blog which chronicles his daily activity as a composer and student of life.

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. The composer’s second opera, Law Offices, premiered in San Francisco in 1996 and was performed again in 1998 on the steps of the San Mateo County Courthouse. Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra was premiered in January 2001 by Paul Dresher, electric guitar. Mr. Beeman has attended the Ernest Bloch Composers’ Symposium, the Bard Composer-Conductor program, the Oxford Summer Institutes, and the Oregon Bach Festival and has received awards through Meet the Composer, the American Music Center and ASCAP. Compositions have been performed by Ensemble Sorelle, the Mission Chamber Orchestra, the Ives Quartet, Fireworks Ensemble, the Oregon Repertory Singers and Schola Cantorum of San Francisco.

David A. Graves initially studied electronic music composition at the University of Nebraska. He has composed music for multiple genres, including "neoclassical," 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 and 2005, he was a resident composer at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program where he was awarded the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Fellowship. His large-scale ambient piece, tree/sigh, was installed in a redwood canyon during Djerassi's 2003 Open House. Deciduous, his most recent electronic work, was a large-scale multimedia performance, part of last July's SURROUND>SOUND series. In the past four years, in addition to progressive rock works with Science NV, he has been scoring a lot of chamber music, especially in conjunction with the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His latest work for the SFCCO, Life Is Like That, will be performed on September 15, 2007. He has studied composition with Alexis Alrich at the Conservatory (2004-7) and Gerald Mueller at the City College of San Francisco (2002-3).

Loren Jones is a native of San Francisco, and began experimenting with composition as a child. He spent his early years dividing his time between film-making and music, and some of his film work was periodically broadcast on local television. Eventually choosing to pursue music instead of film, Loren formed and was part of several local bands performing and creating different genres of original music. To this point largely self-taught, in the 1980’s Loren returned to serious study to acquire greater depth musical education in order be able to create the kind of music that he had always been the most passionate about. Loren studied with Tom Constantine, Herb Bielawa, Alexis Alrich and is currently working with David Conte at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he is also a member of the chorus. His music has been performed by his own chamber group, by the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, and by students and teachers from around the Bay Area. He has produced several recordings, worked in radio and film, including creating the sound track for an animated short which won a special Academy Award. His 2006 release, Woodward’s Gardens, features guitars, piano, flute, oboe, harp, and cello. His newest project, Dancing on the Brink of the World, a fourteen movement piece on the history of San Francisco, has been an ongoing part of the repertoire of the past two seasons of SFCCO concerts.

Beeri Moalem is a violist, violinist, composer, teacher, writer. In addition to SFCCO, he plays with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Monterey Symphony, and Fresno Symphony. He teaches orchestra at Terman School in Palo Alto, and is a critic for the San Francisco Classical Voice. His other interests include mountain biking, travel, green technology, and computer games.

Lisa Scola Prosek was raised in Rome, Italy, and began studying piano at the age of 4. Moving to the United States at the age of 11, Lisa graduated from Princeton University, where she studied with Edward Cone and Milton Babbitt, and privately with Lukas Foss in New York. During this time, Lisa developed a great love for the voice, and studied singing with Margherita Kalil of the Met. After Princeton, Lisa returned to Italy, where she attended the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini, and studied with composer Gaetano Giani-Luporini. To date Lisa has composed two oratorios, and 5 operas, in Italian and English, including “Satyricon”, reviewed by the San Francisco Observer as a “Tour de Force” and featured on KRON TV; and “Leonardo’s Notebooks”, in Italian, which premiered to capacity audiences in May 2006, and was featured on NPR’s West Coast Live. The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly writes:” This composer’s work is steeped in the Mediterranean world of gestures, writ both big and small. Her vocal writing references bel canto and the madrigal, and the instrumental writing, with it’s shadowy inner voices, has character and point. Intricate and highly expressive music.” Sequenza 21. Lisa Scola Prosek is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including from the Argosy Foundation, for “Belfagor”, and from the LEF Foundation for her latest opera Trap Door, commissioned by The Lab, which will premiere in June 2008 in San Francisco.

Erling Wold is a composer based in San Francisco specializing in large-scale works. He recently completed a Mass after Blessed Notker the Stammerer for the Dom Cathedral in St Gallen, Switzerland. He is currently writing an opera for John Duykers and a fantasy autobiographical opera with James Bisso. The last few years have seen a number of performances of orchestral works, the premiere of his dance theater work Blinde Liebe in Nürnberg, Amsterdam and in San Francisco, and the premiere in the US and Austria of his opera Sub Pontio Pilato, an abstract historical fantasy on the death and remembrance of Pontius Pilate. He was artist in residence at ODC theater in San Francisco, where he presented a trilogy of chamber operas, including one based on William Burroughs' early autobiographical novel Queer, with the support of the Burroughs estate. His critically acclaimed work A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil, based on the Max Ernst collage novel, has had a number of independent productions in the US and Europe, including one by the Paul Dresher Ensemble and one by the city of Brühl, Max Ernst’s birthplace.