Seven World Premiers
Music by Seven Virginia Composers

February 25, 2000 -- On Friday, Feb. 25, at 8:15 p.m. Virginia Currents will perform in Old Cabell Hall at the University of Virginia. Tickets are $10 for General Admission, $5 for Students, 5ARTS$ for U.Va. students. This is an Arts Enhancement Event. Call 924-3984 for tickets or information.

Now in it's thirteenth year, Currents remains the only professional contemporary music ensemble in Virginia. Founded by Fred Cohen in 1986, Currents performs each year at a variety of locations in the Southeast. Currents made its New York debut at the Katherine Bache Miller Theater in 1993 and its debut on the Virginia Museum's Fast/Forward series during the 1994-95 season.

Recent performances include appearances at the 1999 International Trumpet Guild Convention, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Longwood College. Currents first CD was issued in December, 1995, on the Centaur Label (Centaur CRC 2248), and its second CD in March, 1997. Performances in the 1999-2000 season include performances of A Water Bird Talk by Dominick Argento (a chamber opera, with baritone Keith Jameson), the premiere of a new work by Andrew Waggonner, and H.K. Gruber's Frankenstein!!

Currents has commissioned works from a variety of American composers, including Thomas Albert, Richard Becker, Allan Blank, David Cope, Joel Feigin, Vivian Fine, Ben Johnston, Timothy Kloth, Jonathan Kramer, Walter Ross, and Rand Steiger. Currents has also presented the American premieres of works by a number of prominent contemporary Eastern European composers, including Edison Denisov, Sofia Gobaidulina, Gy–rgy Kurt·g, and Alfred Schnikke.

Currents has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Foundation, Downtown Presents, the Carpenter Foundation, Meet the Composer, Inc., the University of Richmond, local and regional art agencies, and private donors. The program consists of the following pieces "Homage" Terry Vosbein; "Siesta Moon" Dan Gutwein; "String Trio" Edgar Williams; "Garden Varieties" Stephan Prock; "up into the silence" Alicyn Warren; "Ash" Benjamin Broening; "Five for Olivia" Fred Cohen.

The performers are Christine Schadeberg soprano, Patricia Werrell flute, alto flute, piccolo, Charles West clarinet, bass clarinet, Matthew Harvell bassoon, Belinda Swanson violin, Eva Stern viola, Gretchen Geddes violoncello, Paul Hanson piano, Fred Cohen conductor New Orleans born composer, Terry Vosbein has received numerous commissions to write new works from such organizations as the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Museum of Art. He has composed works for orchestra, wind ensemble, various chamber ensembles and choir. Vosbein has received performances at music festivals throughout the United States and Canada. During 1998 and 1999 he was awarded summer residencies at La CitÈ Internationale des Arts in Paris, where he composed a concerto for violin and orchestra one year and a sonata for solo piano the next. Since January of 1996 Vosbein has been teaching music composition and jazz studies at Washington and Lee University. He received his Doctorate in composition from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he was a student of Donald Erb, and where he taught in the theory and composition departments.

In addition to his activities as a composer, Vosbein has been an active jazz bassist and arranger for the past twenty-five years, performing and arranging for a wide variety of ensembles, including the Glenn Miller, mOrchestra and the Atlanta Pops. He traveled "on the road" for many years, performing in a wide range of genres: country western twang, big band swing, disco fever, country club wallpaper, plus a never ending assortment of jazz combos and studio encounters. E. W. Williams Jr. conducts the William and Mary Symphony Orchestra and the York River Orchestra. He lives in Williamsburg. Alicyn Warren is a composer who also writes about electronic and film music. She is a graduate of Columbia University and Princeton University, where she earned a doctorate in composition. She has received grants and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Musicological Society, the Mellon Foundation, and the Bourges Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique. Her works have been performed and broadcast in the US, Canada, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Alicyn Warren has taught computer music, composition, and film music at Columbia University and at the University of Virginia, where she is Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the Virginia Center for Computer Music. A composer and conductor living in Richmond, Virginia, Fred Cohen received his doctorate in music composition from Cornell University and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Cohen has been the recipient of a number of composition awards, including the ASCAP Grant to Young Composer and First Place in the Virginia Music Teachers Association Commissioned Composer Contest (most recently in 1997). He has received composition grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, among others. His works have been commissioned and performed by such organizations as the Richmond Symphony (most recently the Concerto For Orchestra, premiered in 1998), the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, the El Cerrito Youth Orchestra, the Washington Singers (a professional chamber chorus directed by Paul Hill), the Richmond Symphony Chorus, the Twentieth Century Music Forum, the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Dance, and the Boston Woodwind Trio. His works have also been commissioned and performed by such artists as soprano Christine Schadeberg, soprano Mimmi Fulmer, flutist Leone Buyse, performance artist Claudia Stevens, and violinist Sonya Monosoff. His chamber and orchestral works have been performed throughout the United States, in South America, and in Europe. In addition to frequent appearances as the conductor of contemporary music in Virginia and New York, Cohen directs the University of Richmond Orchestra.. Cohen is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Music at the University of Richmond.

Contact: Marcy Day (804)924-6492

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: please contact the Office of University Relations at (804) 924-7116. Television reporters should contact the TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.
SOURCE: U.Va. News Services

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