Upcoming Events

Beyond Work For Hire

Valerie Leslie will host a forum about being a paid concert/stage composer, having works published, commissions and other methods to have your work played or even recorded. Many local composers make their money from music in media - film, commercials, TV, etc. The goal here is to have composers leave with a deeper understanding of how to incorporate this line of work as part of their business and having their own music count for something. Panelists include Daniel Barry, John Muehleisen, Hummie Mann, and Greg Bartholomew

Daniel Barry

Daniel Barry is a composer, arranger, conductor, music educator, publisher and trumpet player currently living in Seattle. Although Daniel's work as a composer falls primarily into the jazz category, his music contains elements garnered from advanced classical music studies along with residencies and festival performances throughout the world, in particular the Caribbean, Central America, Peru, Brazil and Southeast Asia.

Recently he has served as guest Composer/Performer in Residence for the Banda Amazonas in Manaus, Brazil, the Conservatoire de Tatui in Sao Paulo Brazil, and as a featured composer at the 2007 Lima Jazz Festival in Peru.

He is the owner/operator of Marina Music Service and Daniel Barry Publications, and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

John Muehleisen

Northwest composer John Muehleisen specializes in composing works for choir and solo voice. Since 1996, he has served as Composer-in-Residence and Artistic Advisor for Seattle-based Opus 7 Vocal Ensemble, directed by Loren Pontén and has written more than a dozen works for the group. His works have been performed and recorded by numerous ensembles in the US, Canada, and Europe, including the Dale Warland Singers, Opus 7 Vocal Ensemble, The Esoterics, Seattle Pro Musica, Choral Arts (Seattle), Northwest Girlchoir, Conspirare, Choral Arts Ensemble (Rochester, MN), The Richard Zielinski Singers, Vocal Arts Ensemble (Cincinnati), Musa Horti (Belgium), Seattle Girls Choir, Bellevue Chamber Chorus, and the Louisville Orchestra. Nearly half of his 30+ choral works have been commercially recorded.

In 2002, his epitaph for choir and trumpet, entitled Snow. The King's Trumpeter, was featured by the Dale Warland Singers on the closing concert of the Sixth World Choral Symposium in Minneapolis. John subsequently served as composer-in-residence for the Dale Warland Singers for their final season (2003-2004). In 2006, John was commissioned by Conspirare to write a massed choir work for 600 voices for the closing concert of their NEA-sponsored American Masterpieces Choral Festival in Austin, Texas. The work was based on Walt Whitman's Salut au Monde! and was premiered by Craig Hella Johnson and the Massed Festival Choirs in January 2007.

Past commissions include This Night and Prairie Waters by Night for the Dale Warland Singers; River Moons for Choral Arts Ensemble (Rochester, MN), Veni, Sancte Spiritus for Seattle Pro Musica; and Perplexed Music & The Soul's Expression for The Esoterics. Recent commissions include Alma Redemptoris Mater for Choral Arts (Seattle), Da Pacem for Seattle Pro Musica, and Glory!, commissioned by the Northwest Girlchoir in honor of their 35th Anniversary. In March of 2009 Seattle's Mirenesse Women's Choir performed Joy, a setting of two Sara Teasdale poems (originally written for Opus 7), at the 2009 ACDA National Convention in Oklahoma City. John's most recent work, When All Is Done for choir and trumpet, was commissioned by University of Wyoming in memory of the 10th Anniversary of the murder of Matthew Shepard, and was premiered at the Shepard Symposium on Social Justice on April 2, 2009. The Northwest premiere of the work was presented by The Esoterics, conducted by Eric Banks, in late April 2009.

Hummie Mann

Two-time Emmy-award winning composer Hummie Mann has scored over 50 feature and television films. His scores have included Mel Brooks' "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It", the animated IMAX film "Cyberworld 3D", the popular children's film "Thomas and the Magic Railroad" and the Peter Fonda/Kris Kristofferson starrer "Wooly Boys". In television he has worked with many legendary Hollywood directors including Jonathan Kaplan "In Cold Blood" (miniseries), Joe Dante ("The 2nd Civil War"), Peter Bogdanovich ("The Rescuers: Tales of Courage - Two Women"), Norman Jewison ("Picture Windows - Soir Bleu"), Simon Wincer "P.T. Barnum" (miniseries), and Jim Abrahams ("...first Do No Harm"), starring Meryl Streep.

He has also conducted the scores to many films including "Drag Me To Hell", "Ghost Rider", "The Grudge", "The Grudge 2", "The Girl Next Door", "City Slickers" and "The Addams Family". Long considered one of Hollywood's top orchestrators, his orchestration work can be heard on numerous films including "Mad Money", "Georgia Rules", "A Walk to Remember", "Prince of Tides", "Sleepless in Seattle", and "A Few Good Men".

Besides his busy composing career, Mann devotes time to teaching the art and craft of Film Scoring and created the internationally recognized Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program. He regularly guest lectures in Edinburgh and Copenhagen and has twice visited China as a guest of the government meeting with student composers and filmmakers.

Starting next Fall he will be joining the faculty of Columbia College Chicago's "Music Composition for the Screen" master's program as a Professor of Film Composition.

Greg Bartholomew

Greg Bartholomew's music is frequently performed across the United States and in Canada, Australia and Europe. Of his choral setting of Whitman's To a Locomotive in Winter, National Public Radio classical music reviewer Tom Manoff wrote:

Greg Bartholomew, a fine composer not afraid of accessibility, set Walt Whitman's To a Locomotive in Winter in a sturdy, lyrical style. Tuneful and diatonic, the music seemed appropriately Whitman-esque.

Five commercial recordings of his works are available, including the String Trio for George Crumb recorded by the Langroise Trio , a choral setting of excerpts from Kofi Annan's Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, The 21st Century (A Girl Born in Afghanistan), and the Ars Brunensis Chorus recording of From the Odes of Solomon, as well as two works on the Masterworks of the New Era CD series.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1957, Bartholomew earned degrees from the College of William & Mary and the University of Washington. His music is published by SOUND OF ART MUSIC, ARS NOVA PRESS, ORPHEUS MUSIC and BURKE & BAGLEY.

For further information visit www.gregbartholomew.com.

When:	Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
Time:	7:30pm - 9:30pm
Where:	Soundbridge. Soundbridge at Benaroya Hall (at the corner of Union Street and 2nd Avenue in Downtown Seattle). There are parking garages across both streets from Soundbridge which usually cost ~$5-6.

Seattle Composer's Alliance Annual Picnic

We will be holding our annual summer picnic this year at Madrona Park on Sept. 12, 2009.

When:	Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009
Time:	TBD
Where:	Madrona Park