ASCAP Composer Career Workshop:
Things They Don't Teach You in School

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage
1608 Walnut Street, 18th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103

Being a composer is one thing; creating a viable, income-producing career as one is quite another. On October 13, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) brought together three acclaimed composers for a practical workshop on building successful music composition careers.

Jennifer Higdon started late in music, teaching herself to play flute at the age of 15 and beginning formal musical studies at 18, with an even later start in composition at the age of 21. For the past 12 years, she has been able to make her living from commissions, completing five to ten pieces a year.

Higdon's list of commissioners is extensive and ranges from groups as varied as The Philadelphia Orchestra and The Chicago Symphony to the President's Marine Band; from the Tokyo String Quartet and eighth blackbird to the San Francisco Opera. This season will see the premiere of her piano concerto for Yuja Wang with the National Symphony, as well as a new concerto for eighth blackbird and orchestra, which will be performed at the League of American Orchestras National Conference in June.

She has been honored with awards and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the Pew Fellowship in the Arts. In the summer of 2003, she was the first woman to be a featured composer at the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival. Her piano work, "Secret & Glass Gardens," won the 2005 Van Cliburn Piano Competition's American Composers Invitational.

Higdon enjoys over two hundred performances a year of her works. Her orchestral work, "blue cathedral," is one of the most performed contemporary orchestral works in the United States.

Her pieces have been recorded on several dozen cds. "Higdon: Concerto for Orchestra/City Scape" won a Grammy in 2005. Releases from the past year include Naxos' "Higdon: Chamber Music," Cedille's "String Poetic," "Percussion Concerto" on the London Philharmonic Label, and Koch's collection of eight of her chamber works. Last month Telarc released "Dooryard Bloom" for baritone and orchestra on a text by Walt Whitman, and Naxos released her Sax Quartet cycle, "Short Stories." Upcoming recordings include her Violin Concerto with Hilary Hahn for Deutsche Grammophon and "The Singing Rooms" with Atlanta and Telarc.

She is self-published, and has managed to build her publishing company into a full-time operation. She holds the Rock Chair in Composition at The Curtis Institute of Music (and finds the Rock designation humorous, in light of her having grown up around so much rock music).

Stephen Paulus is a prolific composer with nearly 400 works to his credit including over 50 orchestral works, 10 operas, 150 choral works and numerous works for chamber ensemble, solo voice, piano, organ and guitar. He received his education from Macalester College and the University of Minnesota, where he obtained his Ph.D. In Music Theory and Composition. Paulus is a Co-Founder of the American Composers Forum and serves on the ASCAP Board of Directors as the Symphony and Concert Music Representative, a post he has held since 1990.

Paulus has received commissions from a variety of performers and organizations including Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, The Berkshire Opera Company, New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, vocalessence, The Dale Warland Singers, Robert Shaw Festival Singers, New York Choral Society, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and many others. He is a recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships and also received a 3rd Prize for his Violin Concerto, from the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards. Soloists who have championed his work range from Doc Severinsen and Leo Kottke to William Preucil, Bobbie mcduffie and Lynn Harrell. He has also written song cycles for Deborah Voigt, Thomas Hampson and Elizabeth Futral.

Paulus's works are published by Schott Music and also his own firm—Paulus Publications, LLC. His works are represented on numerous record labels including New World, Nonesuch and Innova.

Alex Shapiro studied at the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music where she was a composition student of Ursula Mamlok and John Corigliano, and spent the first fifteen years of her professional life scoring film and television music in Los Angeles. Deciding to shift her focus to concert music when she was 37, she composed many chamber works and used what she had learned in the commercial music world about copyright, publishing and promotion to build a new career from scratch. Ten years later, Alex's acoustic and electroacoustic works are performed and broadcast weekly across the U.S. and internationally, and can be found on over twenty commercially released recordings.

An enthusiastic leader in the new music community, Alex is a strong advocate for other artists through her frequent speaking appearances and her published articles. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Music Center, sits on ASCAP's Symphonic & Concert Music Committee, and is the recent President of the Board of Directors of the American Composers Forum of Los Angeles. Alex has also served as an officer on the boards of national music organizations including NACUSA, The College Music Society, and The Society of Composers & Lyricists, as well as having been Vice President of the Board of the ACLU of Southern California. Pursuing her hobby of marine biology, Alex was a longtime resident of Malibu, California and now lives on acreage closely supervised by the deer, foxes and Orca whales of Washington state's San Juan Island. She procrastinates on her next piece by updating her website, www.alexshapiro.org, and her nature-inspired blog, www.notesfromthekelp.com.