PERFORMER’S BIOGRAPHY

Joan Heller's longstanding advocacy of twentieth-century and American music is reflected in her numerous recordings and performances; the latter, both here and abroad, have included the world premieres of more than forty compositions, many written specifically for her. In 1994, she was the recipient of an individual artist grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her solo compact disk, To the Verge (Neuma records), featuring compositions by Luciano Berio, Charles Fussell, Robert Cogan, Milton Babbitt, and Thomas Stumpf. In 1999, a Meadows Development Grant supported the production of a solo CD (works by Marc Blitzstein, George Crumb, Kurt Weill, and Lawrence Kramer) which accompanies the book Walt Whitman and Modern Music, published by Garland Press, Spring 2000.

Ms. Heller has given vocal master classes in the US, UK, and former USSR and served on the music faculties of Yale University, Boston University, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Currently, she is Head of the Voice Department, in the Music Division, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University.

Joan Heller's appearance is made possible by a generous grant from the Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts.

COMPOSERS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Pozzi Escot (b. 1933) is co-author of the acclaimed books Sonic Design: The Nature of Sound and Music and Sonic Design: Practice and Problems (co-authored with Robert Cogan; first published by Prentice-Hall), Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Sonus (founded in 1980 and recently reviewed as the best music journal published in the USA), President of the International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies, and the Director of Tufts University Talloires International Composers’ Conference-France. A graduate of the Juilliard School and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg, Escot is a Professor at the New England Conservatory of Music (Theoretical Studies/Composition).

Of Escot, the foremost American critic Virgil Thomson wrote, “To me the most interesting and original woman composer now functioning.” Chosen in 1975 (together with Lili Boulanger, Ruth Crawford, Grazyna Bacewics) as one of the five remarkable women composers of the twentieth century, that same year the New York Philharmonic premiered her fifth symphony, Sands (1965). Many critics around the world have praised her compositions. Her works are recorded on the Delos, Neuma, Spectrum, Leo and Music & Arts Programs of America labels.

Escot is recognized as the principal exponent of the relationship between music and mathematics. She recently completed two new books, The Poetics of Simple Mathematics in Music and Oh How Wondrous — Hildegard con Bingen, Ten Essays. She is the recipient of prestigious honors (Radcliffe Institute Fellowships, Rockefeller Bellagio Residency, Marshall Plan Fellowships DADD, Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow).  For a 2000 premiere, she was recently selected by the O.T.I.O. (The Gathering Unification of the Native American Nations) to be awarded a most extraordinary commission for her sixth symphony.

Robert Cogan (b. 1930) has pursued a triple career as composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is noted as an explorer of challenging new domains of composition and music theory.

He studied at the University of Michigan (Phi Beta Kappa; B.M., 1951; M.M., 1952); Princeton University (M.F.A, 1956); Royal Conservatory of Bruxelles; Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood; and Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, Hamburg. His principal teachers include Nadia Boulanger, Aaron Copland, Ross Lee Finney, Philipp Jarnach, and Roger Sessions.

For more than three decades, Cogan has served as Chair of Graduate Theoretical Studies and Professor of Composition at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He has also been Visiting Professor at the Berkshire Music Center, at State University of New York, Purchase; at the Central Conservatory, Beijing, and Shanghai Conservatory; and Distinguished Visiting Professor at IBM Research.

His books include Sonic Design: the Nature of Sound and Music and Sonic Design: Practice and Problems (co-authored with Pozzi Escot; originally published by Prentice-Hall.) His later book, New Images of Musical Sound (Harvard University Press), won the Society for Music Theory’s Distinguished Publication Award in 1987. His most recent books are Music Seen, Music Heard and The Sounds of Song, both published by Publication Contact International (1998-1999). He has also published in the journals College Music Symposium, Interface, Journal of Music Theory, Musical Quarterly, Perspectives of New Music, and Sonus.

Cogan has spoken and his works have been programmed throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. He has been awarded grants from the Ford, Guggenheim, Kosciuszko, Reemtsma, Rockefeller, and Rothschild Foundations; from the Massachusetts Endowment for the Arts; from the American Philosophical Society; and the Chopin and Fulbright Fellowships.

American composer and pianist Simon Sargon was born in 1938 in Bombay, India of Sephardic-Indian and Ashkenazic-Russian descent, and brought to the United States as an infant. He took private piano lessons with Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and studied music theory at Brandeis University, where he graduated Magna cum Laude. He went on to study composition at the Juilliard School under Vincent Persichetti, and at the Aspen School of Music under Darius Milhaud. Sargon taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1965-1968, and served as Head of the Voice Department of the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem from 1971-1974. In 1974 he was appointed Director of Music at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, and in 1984 joined the music faculty of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, where he currently serves as Professor of Composition.

Among Sargon's major works are Symphony No. 1: Holocaust (1985); the oratorio Psalms of Qumran (1990); several operas; Divertimento for Piano and Orchestra (1994); In Time of AIDS, for Chorus and Organ (1995); Implosions for Two Pianos (1996); and MoodSwings, 24 Preludes for Piano Solo (1998) as well as many song cycles and choral compositions. In July of 1998, the noted musicologist Dr. Karl Haas devoted an entire hour’s segment of his internationally syndicated program “Adventures in Good Music” to a presentation of Sargon's music. Sargon's orchestra work Tapestries, was premiered by the Dallas Symphony under the direction of Andrew Litton in December, 1998. The Night of the Headless Horseman, a computer animated Halloween special, with a score by Sargon was telecast nationally by the Fox network in October, 1999. Sargon's latest commissions include an oratorio, The Search Unending, commissioned by Susquehanna University, and Psalm 8, commissioned by Yale University in honor of its 300th Anniversary.

Sargon's works are published by Boosey and Hawkes, Southern Music, Transcontinental Music, and Lawson-Gould. He is listed in Baker's Biography, and the International Who's Who in Music (Eleventh Edition). His work as both composer and pianist may be heard on the New World, Crystal, Ongaku and Gasparo labels. Three compact discs devoted entirely to his compositions have been issued by Gasparo: Shema (GSCD 318); A Clear Midnight (GSCD 333); and Flame of the Lord (GSCD 347).

Thomas Pasatieri first received national acclaim in his early twenties. His operas and hundreds of songs have been performed by such prominent artists as Janet Baker, Elizabeth Söderström, Frederica von Stade, Shirley Verrett, Catherine Malfitano, Evelyn Lear, Thomas Stewart, and the late Jennie Tourel.

Born in New York City, Pasatieri had a Juilliard scholarship in composition at the age of 16, studying with Vittorio Giannini and Vincent Persichetti. He received the first doctorate ever given by Juilliard. He also studied with Darius Milhaud at Aspen where, at 19, his chamber opera, The Women, won the Aspen Festival Prize. Other honors include the Richard Rodgers Scholarship, the Marion Freschl Prize, the Irving Berlin Fellowship, and an Emmy Award.

His interest in Native American voices has been seen in Pasatieri’s work with young singers. His concern with the operatic education of children led him to write The Goose Girl, a 35-minute opera for young audiences (for which he wrote his own libretto).

For five years Pasatieri was the Artistic Director of the Atlanta Opera. At present he divides his time between composing, conducting and the presidency of his film production company, Topaz Productions.

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