Daniel Abraham
Associate Professor, Department Co-chair, Director of Choral Activities
PHONE: 202.885.3427               E-MAIL: dabraham@american.edu

Daniel Abraham, conductor, is assistant professor of music and director of choral activities at American University. He has received consistent praise for his artistry for performances that exhibit “uncommon precision and exuberant vitality,” are “bright, energetic, and lovingly shaped,” and show “keen insight and coherence.” (The Washington Post) The late Joseph McLellan once remarked that as a conductor and musicologist “Abraham blends those skills marvelously in programs that combine learning with enjoyment in ideal proportions.” A frequent clinician, adjudicator, and festival jurist, Abraham is also music & artistic director of The Bach Sinfonia. He completed conducting studies with Paul Traver and was a conducting fellow at the 1997 Oregon Bach Festival under the renown Bach interpreter Helmuth Rilling. As a scholar, Abraham has worked for The Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Edition (Oxford UP) and has edited music for Cambridge UP. An article regarding issues of performance practice in J. S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor will appear in the January issue of Choral Journal. During the spring of 2005 he was Visiting Distinguished Professor of the Arts in Cairo, Egypt where he rehearsed and conducted the performance of a festival chamber chorus and provided various lectures and clinics, including Egypt’s first master class in Baroque performance practice held at the Cairo Conservatoire. Recent notable engagements include the first modern performance of the 1776 opera Fleur d’Epine by Marie Emmanuelle Bayon–Louis, the area premiere of George Frideric Handel’s rediscovered Gloria, choral preparation for the Kennedy Center Honors Gala (PBS) and TNT’s Christmas in Washington, broadcasts on NPR’s Performance Today, performances before two national meetings of the American Musicological Society, and a performance with the American University Chamber Singers for the Inaugural (2007) Washington, D.C. Choral Festival at the Kennedy Center. His 2006 recording on dorian Records with The Bach Sinfonia and Handel Choir of Baltimore of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast and J. S. Bach’s aria Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn’ ihn, BWV 1127 is the first commercial recording of either work by an American conductor. Abraham will make his Carnegie Hall debut in November 2008 as a guest conductor of the New England Symphony and a festival choir of two hundred singers from throughout the United States and Canada. Before coming to American University in 1999, he directed ensembles as a faculty member at The George Washington University and was the choral/vocal director of the University of Maryland’s Collegium Musicum.

Fernando Benadon
Assistant Professor
PHONE: 202.885.3452               E-MAIL: fernando@american.edu

Composer and scholar Fernando Benadon joined the AU faculty in 2004. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including Tanglewood’s Fromm Commission, Copland House’s Aaron Copland Award, UC-Berkeley’s Ladd Prize, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Aspen Advanced Master Class, Fondation Royaumont, and the Wellesley Composers Conference. The New York Times recently praised his music as “a perfect curtainraiser” of “eargrabbing invention.” His score for the film Arimpara premiered at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival and was featured at many other festivals worldwide. Fernando has published articles in Computer Music Journal and Ethnomusicology, and has presented research on jazz theory and rhythm perception at professional conferences. An article on John Lee Hooker’s boogie is forthcoming in the journal Popular Music. Fernando is currently writing Time Warps in Early Jazz, a paper that examines rhythmic elasticity in 1920s jazz. He holds a BM from Berklee College of Music and a PhD from UC-Berkeley.

Jesus Manuel Berard
Assistant Professor, Director of Orchestral Activities
PHONE: 202.885.3431               E-MAIL: jmberard@american.edu

Conductor Jesus Manuel Berard was born in Havana, Cuba during the revolution and was raised in New York City. He studied composition, theory and analysis with Donald Martino and Robert Cogan at the New England Conservatory of Music (BM, MM), and with Patricia Carpenter, Jonathan Kramer and Fred Lerdahl at Columbia University (MA, MPhil, PhD-ABD), for which he recently finished his doctoral dissertation on the music of Gustav Mahler. At New England Conservatory, Mr. Berard studied conducting with Piero Bellugi, Frank Battisti, as well as with David Epstein (MIT) and Carl St. Clair (Boston Symphony Orchestra). During that time, he commuted regularly to Yale University to work under Maestro Otto-Werner Mueller, his principal teacher, with whom he also studied privately. At the Conductors Institute, he worked intensively under Maestro Harold Farberman and in master classes with Larry Rachleff.

A committed educator as well, Mr. Berard has taught and conducted at New England Conservatory, Connecticut College, and Columbia and Hofstra Universities, among other institutions. He has been music director and conductor of the Columbia University Chamber Orchestra, the Connecticut College Orchestra, the faculty Chamber Players at Connecticut College, and the Hofstra University Symphony Orchestra. As a guest conductor, he has worked with many ensembles and organizations, including the Bulgarian State Philharmonic Orchestra and Opera Society, the Georgetown University Symphony Orchestra, Ridotto in New York, and most recently at the New Music Festival hosted by UNC East Carolina University School of Music. Mr. Berard is currently music director and conductor of the 48-year old DC Youth Orchestra, performing regularly at the Kennedy Center; he is artistic director and conductor of the Peconic Chamber Orchestra in New York; and he is a full-time faculty member of American University, where he serves as director of orchestral activities and conductor of the American University Symphony Orchestra. Recent media appearances include interviews in The Washington Post, and on WTOP Radio and WETA Classical Radio in Washington, DC. .

Ann Teresa Kang
Assistant Professor
PHONE: 202.885.3859           E-MAIL: akang@american.edu

Ann Teresa Kang joined the faculty of American University in 2007. Honors include the Presser Music Award from the Presser Foundation and a top prize in the Yale Gordon piano Competition. She has been described as a pianist of “admirable polish and sensitivity” by the Baltimore Sun. Currently, she is in her third year as director of the Conservatory Avant-Garde Ensemble (CAGE), a contemporary music ensemble she founded at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Ann received her doctorate in piano performance and a second master’s degree in music theory pedagogy at the Peabody Institute. She has served on the faculties of the Peabody Institute and as well as the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University. She holds a BA in English from UC Berkeley.

Haig Mardirosian
Professor
PHONE: 202.885.3880               E-MAIL: haig@american.edu

Concert organist Haig Mardirosian is an American artist of international repute. In 1977 he was the first American chosen to play in the International Organ Week in Bonn, West Germany. In June 1989, Mardirosian was one of two Americans to perform in the First Soviet American Organ Festival. He has a dozen recordings to his credit on various labels including Centaur, Gothic, ORGANO PHON, MITRA, Musical Heritage Society, Westminster and Monitor. Mardirosian is often heard in broadcast both here and abroad, including ABC-TV, radio and TV stations in Germany and Belgium, and a series of live concerts from Harvard University's Busch-Reisinger Museum. As a composer in a variety of styles and media, Mardirosian's music has been performed at the Berlin Festival and the University of San Francisco and heard on ABC-TV, the Voice of America, PBS, and BBC.

Jerzy Sapieyevski
Professor
PHONE: 202.885.3434               E-MAIL: jsapiey@american.edu

Jerzy Sapieyevski, award-winning composer, pianist, and conceptualist, and NewCenturyMusic founder and artistic director, brings innovative ideas to the concert stage and music education. Early on, he recognized the potential of technology and was one of the first musicians to integrate it in traditional concerts.

Acknowledged in The Oxford Dictionary of Music, he is especially interested in creating interactive works that bring together various disciplines in live events. His “Painted Music” is a project devoted to the development of a new generation of multimedia events. Sapieyevski’s commissions and performances include works for the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall, and numerous radio and television programs. He also created and directed a special event for the John Paul II Foundation. His score for the Shakespeare Theatre's production of Richard III was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award, and he is a recipient of several ASCAP Awards.

In 2005 Jerzy Sapieyevski was decorated with the Knight Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.
 

Linda Allison
Musician in Residence, Voice
PHONE: 202-363-3253             E-MAIL: lallison@american.edu

Linda Allison, mezzo-soprano is the Musician in Residence for Voice at American University. This past summer she was the head of Vocal Studies for the US Performing Arts Camp held at American University in conjunction with the Kennedy Center. Ms. Allison’s students perform a wide range of vocal styles from classical and contemporary Art Song, Concert Repertoire, Opera and Musical Theatre and Contemporary Commercial Music.

Linda Allison has appeared in concert and opera at Carnegie Hall in New York City, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in its Concert Hall and Terrace Theater, as a frequent soloist with the IN-SERIES, with he Masterworks Chorus, The Alexandria Choral Society, the Northern Virginia Opera, the Fairfax Choral Society, and on numerous occasions with the American University Chorus and Orchestra. In Europe she has appeared in the Holland Festival throughout the Netherlands, at the Klein Zaal of the Concertgebouw in Amersterdam, at the RAI in Rotterdam, on Dutch Radio from Hilversum, the Netherlands and in Jena, formerly in East Germany.

This season Linda Allison will perform as a member of the Vocal Chamber Soloists of Washington, an eight member vocal ensemble which specializes in music written specifically for varying combinations of solo voices.

Dr. Allison received her undergraduate degree in vocal performance from the Indiana University School of Music and has since bee granted the degree Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) from the University of Maryland, College Park. Professor Allison has taught at American University for thirteen years and is a participating member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). In addition to studio voice, Dr. Allison teaches Diction for Singers (PERF-356) and Class Voice (MUS-101).

Jonathan Baumgarten
Musician in Residence, Flute/Chamber Music
PHONE: 703.979.6111               E-MAIL: jonathan.baumgarten@american.edu

Jonathan Baumgarten, flutist, holds a M.M. from Juilliard where he was a scholarship student of Samuel Baron. He studied with Thomas Nyfenger on a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and in Paris with Michel Debost. Mr. Baumgarten has been principal flutist of the Mexico City Philharmonic, and has made recordings for NPR and the Discovery Channel. He performs with the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra and other ensembles in the Washington DC area. He spends summers performing with the Bear Valley Music Festival in the High Sierra of California.

Yuliya Gorenman
Musician in Residence, Piano/Chamber Music
PHONE: 301.754.2263               E-MAIL: ygorenman@aol.com

Russian-born American pianist, Yuliya Gorenman has achieved international attention as prizewinner in the Queen Elisabeth Competition of Belgium. She began to shape her performance career while attending the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Since leaving the former Soviet Union, Gorenman has earned a steady procession of awards and honors, including four American piano competitions, numerous television and radio broadcasts throughout Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Canada and the United States. Gorenman has performed extensively in the USA, Argentina, France, Belgium, Switzerland in performances with the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, Hugo Wolf String Quartet, St. Louis Philharmonic, Annapolis Symphony, Savannah Symphony, National Chamber Orchestra. For the past four years she has been invited to perform at the L'ete musical dans la vallee du Lot festival in France. In 2001-2002 Ms. Gorenman recorded all Beethoven Piano Concerti with the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie and conductor Philip Greenberg.

Osman Kivrak
Musician in Residence, Viola/Chamber Music
PHONE: 301.292.3951              E-MAIL: kivrak@yahoo.com

Osman Kivrak performs with the Sunrise Quartet, the Richmond Chamber Players and with Currents. He is also Artistic Director of Concerts at the Beach in Delaware and of the Davies Concert Series. He received a Master of Music and Doctorate of Music degree from the Catholic University of America. Before coming to the United States, he received his Bachelor of Music from Gazi University in Turkey and studied at the Guildhall School of Music in London. He has recorded chamber music for the Klavier, Amerimusic, Arizona University Recordings, and Living Music labels. He has also performed at the Spoleto Festival in the USA and Italy and he has toured Europe a number of times as a chamber music player. His works have been performed in Washington DC at the Kennedy Center, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Library of Congress.

Alicia Kopfstein-Penk
PHONE: 202.885.3427               E-MAIL: akp@american.edu

Alicia Kopfstein-Penk has received a BM and MA in music history from American University. Kopfstein-Penk is a teacher, award-winning musicologist, published author, classical guitarist, folk singer, and classical singer. This broad range of experience provides her with an unusually varied perspective. Her book Beginning Sight Singing is the only book available that is specifically geared to adult singers with little or no knowledge of music. As a scholar and author, her articles have appeared in Guitar Review, Soundboard, Journal of the American String Teachers Association, and Classical Guitar. She has created an innovative system for sizing the guitar to the performer's body, described in her booklet on ergonomics for the guitarist titled The Healthy Guitar. She has performed in a variety of productions from liturgical dramas, Renaissance consort concerts, oratorios, operas, chamber music performances, and solo recitals at such halls as the Kennedy Center, the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, the Metropolitan Opera, as well as throughout the Washington, D.C. area.

Teri Lazar
Musician in Residence, Violin/Chamber Music
PHONE: 301.292.3951               E-MAIL: kivrak@yahoo.com

Teri Lazar performs with the Sunrise Quartet, the Richmond Chamber Players and Currents and she is Concertmaster of the Virginia Chamber Orchestra. She has recorded chamber music for the Albany, Klavier, North/South Recordings, Living Music, Plucked String and Centaur labels and has been heard on National Public Radio's Performance Today program. She received a Doctorate of Music degree from the Catholic University of America where she studied with Robert Gerle. She was a winner of the National Association of Music Clubs Competition, the Alexandria Symphony Soloists Competition, the Brevard Concerto Competition, the Montpelier Arts Center Recital Competition and the Baltimore Chamber Music Awards and was a finalist in several international competitions. She has performed at the Spoleto festival in the USA and in Italy and she toured Europe twice with the New York group, Amor Artis.

Nancy Jo Snider
Music Program Director, Musician in Residence, Cello/Chamber Music, Applied Music Coordinator
PHONE: 202.885.3872               E-MAIL: nsnider@american.edu

Cellist Nancy Jo Snider is an active performer and teacher in the Washington, DC area. She is a member of the Baltimore Opera Orchestra and performs regularly in a variety of chamber and period instrument ensembles. Ms. Snider was appointed to the faculty of George Washington University in 1997 and also serves on the faculties of the Washington Conservatory, the Patricia M. Sitar Center for the Arts and American University where she holds the position of "Musician in Residence". Ms. Snider received the Outstanding Teacher of the Year in an Adjunct Appointment Award from American University in 2005.

Ms. Snider can be heard with Opera Lafayette on the critically acclaimed recording of Gluck's "Orphée et Euridice" which was released last year. Upcoming recordings with Opera Lafayette include Sacchini's "Oedipe à Colone" and Rameau "Airs and Dances" with the renowned haute-contre Jean-Paul Forchécourt.

Ms. Snider's teaching philosophy is grounded in the premise that if good basic habits are in place her students will have a solid and reliable foundation upon which to build and to bring them to the next step, whatever that may be.

Matthew Van Hoose
Accompanist in Residence
E-MAIL: mvanhoos@comcast.net

Pianist Matthew Van Hoose will serve as coach/accompanist at American University in the 2005-2006 school year. Mr. Van Hoose is also currently on the piano faculty at the Levine School of Music and is choral accompanist at Sidwell Friends School. During the summers, he is pianist for the University of Maryland’s Clarinet Connection.

Mr. Van Hoose has performed in solo and chamber recitals in the U.S. and Canada, and has been featured as soloist with the Virginia Symphony. He was a Finalist with Honorable Mention in the 2002 Bartok-Kabalevsky-Prokofiev International Piano Competition. Additionally, he performs throughout the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan region, having performed with members of the Baltimore Symphony in the Candlelight Concert Series, the Post-Classical Ensemble, and on recital series at American University, the Lyceum, and Church of the Epiphany. Mr. Van Hoose was also invited to perform with soloists at the International Clarinet Association in 2004, and the 2005 Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair sponsored by the Flute Society of Washington.

Mr. Van Hoose a B.A. in Economics and a B.M. in Piano Performance while at Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, and a Master of Music degree at Indiana University. While at Oberlin, Mr. Van Hoose received the Rudolf Serkin and John Elvin prizes in piano. He is currently finishing a D.M.A. in Piano Performance from Indiana University. His principal teachers include Gyorgy Sebok, Lydia Frumkin, and Walter Noona, and Mr. Van Hoose has also studied with John Perry, Robert McDonald, Paul Schenly, and Rebecca Penneys at summer music festivals. Mr. Van Hoose has performed at summer festival such as Chautauqua, Sarasota, Kent-Blossom, and PianoFest.

Dr. Noah Getz
Saxophone Instructor/Chamber Music
PHONE: 202.244.2525               E-MAIL: getz@american.edu

Dr. Noah Getz made his Carnegie Hall debut as the recipient of the National Alliance for Excellence Grand Prize. He has presented solo recitals for the Dame Myra Hess Series, World Saxophone Congress XIII, the Stella Adler School Concert Series in New York , Copland School of Music Recital Series, Johns Hopkins University , St. Peter's Musical Arts Concert Series, and the Church of the Epiphany Concert Series in Washington , DC .   Dr. Getz received a first-round nomination for a Grammy Award in 2002 for his contribution with the New Hudson Saxophone Quartet to America 's Millennium Tribute to Adolphe Sax, Vol. V , and has also been featured on albums including The American Muse, and Leo Kraft: Chamber Symphony 2.   In 2006, he performed the debut of Fernando Benadon's Hidden Charges with the Empyrean Ensemble in CA. During 2007, Dr. Getz will release an album of contemporary classical music for the saxophone on the Albany Records label.

Dr. Getz has performed with numerous orchestras, including the New World Symphony, the Harrisburg Symphony, and the Juilliard Orchestra.   After an extensive audition process, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Henry Brant selected Dr. Getz to perform his Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra for the first time in 50 years.

In addition to performing classical repertoire, Dr. Getz maintains an active schedule performing jazz.   He is the alto saxophonist in the Levine School Jazz Combo, an Artist-In-Residence ensemble at The Levine School of Music. This combo has performed at Blues Alley and played a pre-concert performance for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's Symphony with a Twist concert in 2007. Dedicated to education, this ensemble has re-created the legendary Jazz at Massey Hall concert that featured bebop greats Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as part of the Encore Concert Series at Lang Recital Hall in Washington , DC and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet featured at THEARC's Spring Into Modernism festival. Dr. Getz has also played with the Baltimore-based Dave Tucker New Big Band and performed at the 2005 Presidential Inauguration Ball and at Middlebury College with jazz vocalist John Signorelli.

Dr. Getz is the Saxophone Musician-In Residence at American University where he instructs private students, coaches saxophone chamber music and leads the American University Jazz Workshop. In addition, he is the Jazz Saxophone Instructor at the Levine School of Music in Washington, DC.  Recently, American University's Jazz Workshop was featured at Twins Jazz and the Saxophone Quartet performed a tribute concert to Marcel Mule at the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, DC. In March 2005, Dr. Getz organized and presented the first Saxophone Symposium at American University in collaboration with the Levine School of Music, which featured lectures, demonstrations and concerts by saxophone and composition professors from around the country.   The event highlighted the relationship between composer and performer in creating new works for the instrument, and Dr. Getz performed a tribute concert to Brian Minor as the culminating performance.

Dr. Getz has published articles on a variety of topics in the Saxophone Symposium, Saxophone Journal and the Saxophone Aspect.   He has presented lectures and recitals at North American Saxophone Alliance National Conventions in Chicago and Austin, and in 2005 presented a lecture at The United States Navy Band Saxophone Symposium in Washington, DC.

Dr. Getz obtained his undergraduate degree in Saxophone Performance from Oberlin Conservatory, and a Masters degree from The Manhattan School of Music.   He was awarded the Doctorate of Music in Saxophone Performance from The Florida State University.   Dr. Getz has studied with David Bilger, Paul Cohen, Patrick Meighan, and Chris Vadala.