Past Composition Grant Recipients
Roger Ames
2008-2009 Grant Recipient
Roger Ames is currently Director of Vocal Activities and Composer-in-residence at Great Neck North High School. He is Music Director of a theatre company that creates and produces off-Broadway Christmas musicals for children. “Pantomonium” company members volunteer their time to collaborate with underprivileged children in New York City, helping them write material for these annual shows and then performing for them and their families for free. It is often the only exposure they get as children to the magic of live professional theater.
He is also a resident artist at New Dramatists Playwrights collective in New York City, where he works with professional playwrights and composers to help them learn productive collaborative tools in workshop and long-term mentoring projects.
As a composer, he has written operas and musicals for numerous American opera companies, Off-Broadway, London Fringe, and the Hartford Stage (Martin Guerre, Laura Harrington, librettist). He has been commissioned by the Long Island Masterworks Chorus and Orchestra (In Memoriam: Warsaw 1943 with Bernard Kaplan, librettist); the Greensboro Choral Society, Broadway Cares / Equity Fights Aids (Shadows, with Jeffrey Gilden, librettist). Last November, Boston Chorus Pro Musica’s premiere of his "Requiem for Our Time", set to the poetry of Anne Sexton, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
"En Mis Palabras", an opera commissioned by Central City Opera, is being toured throughout Colorado and the West, and was produced for the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver this past June. He is currently working on a commission for singers, actors, dancers and orchestra: "Take Joy / Anything But A Silent Night" (a musical collage), for the Strathmore Performing Arts Center in Maryland, scheduled for December 2009.
Ames is published by GIA Music, where one can see a more complete biography. He also has publications at Hinshaw Music, Inc., Belwin Mills, and Vista Music. He is on commercial recordings by Thomas Hampson, (Old Songs Re-sung), on the EMI label, and also by Anam Cara (Innisfree), James Jordan, conductor, and has scored movies and documentaries for French and German Television. He can be contacted at rogerwames@yahoo.com or via his website: RogerAmes.net.
Dick Thompson
2008-2009 Grant Recipient
Dick Thompson began his professional career as a pianist in the big bands at age 16, but soon after that was interrupted by the Marines during World War II, and the Korean War. Later, he toured all the Southern States as a jazz and show pianist, but finally settled down in Kentucky to marry a wonderful southern girl, teach school, and raise a family. Here, at the University of Louisville, he graduated with a degree in composition. After moving to New Jersey in 1956, he studied with Wallingford Riegger and later Leonard Marker, a pupil of Alban Berg, at Columbia University. While teaching in 1976, he was chosen the ”Most Innovative Music Teacher” in the Tri-State area. This was followed by the release of the Dick Thompson Choral System with the Silver Burdett Company. He finally got down to the serious business of being a composer at age 65, after spending many years as an arranger for Warner Bros., Chappell, and Frank Music. His first performance of an original composition, Suite Sustenance, was given by the Gregg Smith Singers in 1994. In the last few years, he has been published by E.C. Schirmer, Heritage, Coronet, and the Alliance Music companies.
Jacob Groff
2007-2008 Grant Recipient
Jacob Groff was born in 1975 in Hartford, Connecticut. He received his Bachelor of Music degree in music composition from the University of Oregon and his Master's degree in music composition from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ. He has studied with composers Robert Kyr, Jack Boss, and Joel Phillips. Mr. Groff is sought after for his choral, vocal and chamber music. His works have been performed across the country in both private and public venues. In 2007, he was commissioned to write two pieces for the professional choir Voce based in Hartford, CT. Other commissions include solo works for flutist Lisa Plasse and soprano Annette Stowe. As a singer, Mr. Groff has performed with the University of Oregon's ACCA award- winning On The Rocks, Sing We Enchanted in Westchester NY, and Westminster Williamson Voices conducted by James Jordan. In 2005, he was a backup singer for the Andrea Bocelli Royal Christmas Tour. Mr. Groff is published by Santa Barbara Music. His new CD "Evolve" is available through CDbaby.com. Mr. Groff currently resides in Mahwah, NJ where he maintains a private teaching studio.
Neal Kirkwood
2007-2008 Grant Recipient
Neal Kirkwood is a composer and pianist, bandleader and arranger for the Neal Kirkwood Octet, the Chromatic Persuaders, and the Discovery Orchestra. Mr. Kirkwood’s works include compositions for jazz orchestra, jazz octet, symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, and voice. He has been awarded numerous commissions, including the New York State Music Fund for “Village Songs” for Children’s Chorus and Jazz Ensemble, a New York State Council on the Arts Commission for “the Future of Futurism” for jazz orchestra, and has composed many scores for theater and dance productions. He holds a master’s degree in composition from Mannes College of Music, where he studied with Charles Jones.
He has performed and recorded with Pony Poindexter, Lindsey Horner, Mike Clark, Bobby Previte, Mark Feldman, and Michel Hermon. In the theater he has worked Jim Neu, Ralph Lee, Joseph Chaikin, Anne Bogart, the Talking Band, Otrabanda Company, and Louise Smith.
Robert Cohen
2006-2007 Grant Recipient
Robert S. Cohen has written music for chorus, orchestra, chamber ensemble, dance and theatre and has been the recipient of numerous awards and commissions including a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship. His setting of the poems of Hyam Plutzik, Of Eternity Considered as a Closed System for chorus & orchestra was recently premiered at Carnegie Hall. Other works include: Edison Invents for Baritone and Orchestra; Tiktaalik, a ballet for percussion; Genesis Part I: Creation and Three Spirituals set to lyrics by Maria V.S. Seigenthaler; Sprig of lilac and Ode to a Toad. Bob co-authored the book and composed the score for the 2000 Richard Rodgers Award winning Off-Broadway musical Suburb and is the author of the novel George (My life as a Cat). Bob graduated from Brown University and lives in Montclair, NJ with his wife Maryann and his cats Fred & Ginger. His website is www.robertscohen.com.
Ellen Gilson Voth
2006-2007 Grant Recipient
Ellen Gilson Voth is an adjunct faculty member at the Hartt School, Univ. of Hartford in CT and at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. Previously she has served on the music education faculty at the Ithaca College School of Music in Ithaca, NY as well as the choral director at Perkiomen Valley High School in Collegeville, PA. Voth has also served on the faculty of the Masterworks Festival in Winona Lake, IN and the Csehy Summer School of Music in Langhorne, PA. In addition to her conducting at The Hartt School, she has served as Assistant Conductor of the New Haven Chorale and as conductor of the Cambiata choir with the Connecticut Children’s Chorus which has performed locally and abroad. She has been active as a guest conductor for choral festivals and as an adjudicator in the region, and currently serves on the executive board of CT-ACDA. As a composer, Voth’s works have been published by Colla Voce, ECS Publishing and Oxford University Press. In past years she has been commissioned by the Central Bucks West High School in Doylestown, PA and the New Haven Chorale in New Haven, CT. This year she has been a composer/artist-in-residence with the Greater Middletown Chorale in Middletown, CT. She also remains active as a pianist, organist and collaborative artist. Voth received her bachelor’s degree (BME) from Wheaton College Conservatory of Music (IL), her master’s degree (MM) from Westminster Choir College of Rider University (NJ), and her doctoral degree (DMA) in music education with a choral conducting emphasis at The Hartt School, Univ. of Hartford (CT). This fall, she will join the full-time faculty at Gordon College and serve as Artistic Director of the Farmington Valley Chorale.Ellen Gilson Voth is an adjunct faculty member at the Hartt School, Univ. of Hartford in CT and at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. Previously she has served on the music education faculty at the Ithaca College School of Music in Ithaca, NY as well as the choral director at Perkiomen Valley High School in Collegeville, PA. Voth has also served on the faculty of the Masterworks Festival in Winona Lake, IN and the Csehy Summer School of Music in Langhorne, PA. In addition to her conducting at The Hartt School, she has served as Assistant Conductor of the New Haven Chorale and as conductor of the Cambiata choir with the Connecticut Children’s Chorus which has performed locally and abroad. She has been active as a guest conductor for choral festivals and as an adjudicator in the region, and currently serves on the executive board of CT-ACDA. As a composer, Voth’s works have been published by Colla Voce, ECS Publishing and Oxford University Press. In past years she has been commissioned by the Central Bucks West High School in Doylestown, PA and the New Haven Chorale in New Haven, CT. This year she has been a composer/artist-in-residence with the Greater Middletown Chorale in Middletown, CT. She also remains active as a pianist, organist and collaborative artist. Voth received her bachelor’s degree (BME) from Wheaton College Conservatory of Music (IL), her master’s degree (MM) from Westminster Choir College of Rider University (NJ), and her doctoral degree (DMA) in music education with a choral conducting emphasis at The Hartt School, Univ. of Hartford (CT). This fall, she will join the full-time faculty at Gordon College and serve as Artistic Director of the Farmington Valley Chorale.
Gerald Cohen
2005-2006 Grant Recipient
Gerald Cohen has earned distinction as a composer, cantor and performer. Cohen's music has been commissioned by choruses including the New York Virtuoso Singers, The Canticum Novum Singers, The Syracuse Children's Chorus, St. Bartholomew's Church (New York, N.Y.), the Zamir Chorale of Boston and the Usdan Center Chorus. He has written for chamber ensembles including the Franciscan String Quartet, the Degas String Quartet (with trombonist Haim Avitsur), the Wave Hill Trio, the Lambros/Kannen/Stroke Trio, the Bronx Arts Ensemble, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Brass Quintet. His music has also been performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony, the Westchester Philharmonic, the Riverside Symphony, the Plymouth Music Series Orchestra, the New York Concert Singers, and many other ensembles and soloists.
Recent awards include the Westchester Prize for New Work, the American Composers Forum Faith Partners residency, and the Cantors Assembly's Max Wohlberg Award for distinguished achievement in the field of Jewish composition. Cohen has received commissioning grants from Meet the Composer and the New York State Council on the Arts, and has had residencies at The MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Yaddo.
Cohen is currently completing his first opera, Sarah and Hagar, based on the story from the book of Genesis, with a libretto by Charles Kondek. The first act of the opera was performed in concert version in May 2005. His compositions are published by Oxford University Press and Transcontinental Music Publications; a CD of his compositions, entitled Generations, is on the Composers Recordings, Inc. label.
Cohen was born in New York City in 1960. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Yale University and a Doctor of Musical Arts from Columbia University. He is Cantor at Shaarei Tikvah Congregation in Scarsdale, N.Y., and is on the faculty of the H.L. Miller Cantorial School of The Jewish Theological Seminary.
Mary Feinsinger
2005-2006 Grant Recipient
Born in New York City, MARY FEINSINGER (maryfeinsinger.com) is a graduate of Barnard College, and has a Master's Degree in voice from The Juilliard School. A member of the Extension Division voice faculty of the Mannes College of Music in New York, She was also for many years on the piano-accompanying staff at Juilliard.
She has been music director for numerous musical organizations, including the Depot Theatre, the Folksbiene Theatre, Theatreworks U.S.A. and the Irish Repertory Theatre. This summer, she directed the "Broadway at the (92nd Street) Y" Summer sing-ins. where she also recently starred in the Folkbiene production of The Pirates of Penzance-in Yiddish.
Currently active as a composer/lyricist in the BMI/Lehman Engel Music Theatre Advanced Workshop, her family musical Understood Betsy was recently produced at Innovative Stages in Westchester. She wrote music and lyrics for the Off-Broadway revue Hot Klezmer, and produced, arranged, and music-directed several CD's, including Kol Dodi, the definitive collection of music for the Jewish wedding ceremony.
She has won many awards for her compositions, most recently at the first Out-of-the-Bachs competition for choral music held in Fort Worth, the Diana Barnhart/Ned Rorem American Song Competition, and the Shalshelet Competition in Washington, D.C. Selections from her song cycle Ting Twusters- described in the Journal of Singing as "jazzy, inventive and clever gems"-are often played by Jonathan Schwartz on his WNYC radio program, and have been featured at BMI.
Jay Anthony Gach
2004-2005 Composition Grant Recipient
Jay Anthony Gach has had his original concert music performed, recorded and broadcast throughout the USA, Canada, Europe and Russia by ensembles including the St. Paul Chamber Orch./Enrique Diemecke, Brooklyn Philharmonic/Lukas Foss, American Composers Orchestra/Paul Dunkel, National Italian Youth Orchestra/Vinko Globokar, City of London Sinfonia, Haydn Chamber Orchestra of London, the Britten Sinfonia Soloists, Vox Juventus Poland, the Gregg Smith Singers, Renaissance Voices and by solo artists including British pianist Ronan Magill, American clarinettist Richard Stoltzman, and the soprano and tenor duo Grace Hart & Enzo Citarelli. As of this writing he has received awards and citations in over twenty five national and international competitions.
As a composer/conductor/pianist, he has written original music and arrangements for the commercial media, including children’s musicals “The Selfish Giant”; films “Legends from Bodmin Moor”; advertisements British Rail “Mind the Doors”; animation “The Hurlers” and educational music media.Jay has been the recipient of many international and regional fellowships, including: Dartington, England International Summer School 1991; the American Academy in Rome, Italy Composition Fellowship 1983-4; and a Research Assistantship at the University Tubingen, Germany 1980-1; Wellesley, New Hampshire, Johnson College & Bennington College Composers Conferences 2001/1989/82/81; New York Foundation for the Arts 1990; MacDowell Colony 1982; Tanglewood Music Center (Bruno Maderna Fellowship) 1979.Jay received his Ph.D from the State University of New York at Stony Brook 1982, and his FLCM Fellow from the London College of Music 1993.
Peter Eldridge
Peter Eldridge, recipient of CAS Composition Grant 2003-2004, combines all facets of his musical talents into an eclectic mix of performing, recording, composing, producing and teaching.
He recently released two solo recordings - the sophisticated pop of 'Fool No More', a collection of his original music produced by Peter and the multitalented Ben Wittman (Patty Larkin, The Story, Lucy Kaplansky), as well as the bittersweet standards found in "Stranger in Town", produced by Peter and Jean Charles Lignel, featuring an all-star cast of jazz luminaries such as Michael Brecker, Lewis Nash, Claudio Roditi and Romero Lubambo. Both CDs were recorded for the independent label, Rosebud Music.
This comes after years of dynamic recordings with the Grammy award-winning vocal group New York Voices, which Peter co-founded with Darmon Meader. The group has been touring the world since 1989 and has six recordings (and numerous guest appearances) to its credit, the latest being the critically acclaimed Concord album 'Sing Sing Sing', a swinging big band tribute produced by another Grammy winner, Elliot Scheiner. New York Voices was just awarded favorite vocal group by JazzTimes magazine and will be touring with Paquito D'Rivera this summer, as well as the Boston Pops. Peter also has a deep love of the art of teaching. He has been on the voice faculty in the jazz department of the Manhattan School of Music since 1993. One of his many talented students is Jane Monheit.
Peter recently had the pleasure of performing with Jane on a live DVD entitled 'Live at the Rainbow Room', where the two vocalists sang 'Around Us', an original composition of Peter's based on a quote by James Thurber. He is regularly in demand for master classes and workshops around the world and teaches privately at his home in NYC when time allows.
Derek Healey
Derek Healey, recipient of CAS Composition Grant 2003-2004, was born in Wargrave, England, in 1936 and studied with Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music, London and with Boris Porena and Gofredo Petrassi in Italy.
He has won prizes in the UK, Italy and the USA and has taught Theory, Composition and Ethnic Music at the Universities of Victoria, Toronto, Guelph and Oregon, finally becoming Academic Professor of Music at the RAF School of Music in Uxbridge, England.
He has written works in most genres, having had some forty works published in the UK, Canada and the USA.
His earlier neo-classic style gave way to atonal and aleatoric influences in the 1960's, and from Healey's arrival in North America in 1969, ethnic music became increasingly important.
Works for large ensembles have been played by many orchestras and wind ensembles, and the opera Seabird Island was the first contemporary opera to be taken on a cross-Canada tour. T
he works most often performed include the suite for orchestra: Arctic Images, and In Flanders' Fields and two sets of Canadian folk songs for choir.
Healey is now retired from teaching and spends his time with composition and research, living in the Cobble Hill district of Brooklyn, New York.
Philip Orr
Philip Orr, recipient of CAS Composition Grant 2002-2003, (b. 1956) lives a more-than-full life musically as composer, arranger, keyboardist, and teacher.
The recipient of a Year 2000 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts, Mr. Orr's compositions in various genres integrate his eclectic past in works for chorus, symphonic band, saxophone quartet, and solo organ.
Exposure in earliest childhood to recordings of common practice and Romantic era repertory, Harry Belafonte, big band jazz, and Victor Borge led to formal study in piano, theory, oboe, and ensemble performance at The Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, CT. Further study followed in trumpet with Dick Fortino and in jazz piano and theory with noted pianist and educator John Mehegan.
While in high school, Mr. Orr led his own big jazz band, at the same time gaining experience performing, composing and recording with the University of Bridgeport (CT) Jazz Ensemble under Neil Slater. He studied composition briefly at the Manhattan School of Music, principally with Giampaolo Bracali, from 1975-1976. Between 1976 and 1978 he worked as accompanist and sometime arranger for singers Vic Damone and Sandler & Young. Since then, Mr. Orr has performed as a keyboardist and pianist in jazz, pop, rock, gospel, musical theater and art music repertoire in solo and partner roles between Philadelphia and New York, besides serving as organist/choir director at churches in four states.
He earned the Bachelor of Music degree summa cum lauda in Sacred Music from Westminster Choir College of Rider University (principal studies with Donald McDonald and Eugene Roan) and the Master of Music degree with distinction in composition from Westminster (principal studies with Stefan Young).
Mr. Orr is presently Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theory at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ.
Robert Convery
Robert Convery, recipient of CAS Composition Grant 2002-2003. Read Bio.
Randall Bauer
Randall Bauer, recipient of the CAS Composition Grant for 2001-2002, studied composition at Princeton University and at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University.
He divides his time between various improvisatory contexts, particularly jazz. His compositions have received many awards and have been performed internationally, with composing chamber and orchestral music and performing as a pianist in premieres in Berlin, St. Petersburg, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, by such groups as the Nash Ensemble of London, Brentano String Quartet, New Jersey Symphony, New Millennium Ensemble, Chicago Ensemble, and the Talujon Percussion Quartet.