Members


Board of Directors:

Monroe Golden (chair)
Michael Angell
Kathryn Fouse
Dorothy Hindman
Charles N. Mason
Ed Robertson


Officers:

President:
Holland Hopson

VP of Membership:
Jody Landers

Treasurer:
Kenneth Kuhn

Secretary:
Kyle McGucken


Member Directory:

Lori F. Ardovino
Adam Bowles
Michael Coleman
Raphael Crystal
Joel Scott Davis
Andrew Dewar
Kathryn Fouse
Monroe Golden
Alan Goldspiel
Michael Hacker
Holland Hopson
Craig Hultgren
Wesley Johnson
Kenneth A. Kuhn
Mark Lackey
Joseph Landers
Weston McCurry
Cynthia Miller
Eric Mobley
Brian C. Moon
Matthew Scott Phillips
William Price
Tom Reiner
Edwin Robertson
Geni Skendo
Ladonna Smith
Zhiheng Song
Chris Steele
Ron Wray

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Lori F. Ardovino is Professor of Clarinet and Saxophone at the University of Montevallo. She is clarinetist with the Magnolia Trio, the Meallo Trio, the Lebaron Trio, and alto saxophonist with the Cahaba Saxophone Quartet. Dr. Ardovino is an active performer in the Birmingham area and is called upon to with the Alabama and Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestras and tenor saxophone with the Joe Giattina Big Band. She is an active woodwind doubler and has played for numerous performances in the Birmingham area. She is an active clinician, adjudicator, and writes CD reviews for the Clarinet, official journal of the International Clarinet Association.

Dr. Ardovino has been a guest recitalist at a number of colleges and universities including the University of Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium, the International Clarinetfest, the International Alliance for Women in Music Congress, NACWPI Conference and the Alabama Music Educators Conference. She was recently chosen as the University of Montevallo University Scholar for 2013. She was the 2011 recipient of the Escape to Create residency in Seaside, FL.  Locally, Dr. Ardovino has performed as a soloist with the Red Mountain Chamber Orchestra, the Pelham High School band and the University of Montevallo Wind Ensemble. She is an active composer and has had her works performed across the United States, Japan, and Canada. She is an advocate for new music and is currently a composer/performer member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. Her recent CD, “From A Crack In The Wall”, Clarinet Music by Alabama Composers, was released in January 2013. Her music is published by Potenza Music.
Dr. Ardovino received the Doctorate of Music degree in clarinet performance from the Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, where she studied and was Graduate Assistant to Ronald de Kant. She studied with the renowned Elsa Ludwig Verdehr at Michigan State University where she received the Masters degree in Clarinet Performance/Woodwind Specialist and holds degrees in Music Education and Clarinet Performance from Minnesota State University, Moorhead, where she studied with Keith Lemmons and Arthur Nix. Her saxophone study has been with Rick VanMatre, CCM, James Forger and Rhonda Buckley, MSU and Keith Lemmons, MSUM. Her composition teachers include Frank Bianchi, CCM, Jere Hutchinson, Charles H. Ruggiero, MUS, and HenryGwiazda, MSU. Dr. Ardovino is an Artist/Clinician for the Conn-Selmer Company.

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Pianist Adam Bowles is a dedicated performer of newly composed art music who also remains an active and passionate interpreter of established solo piano, chamber music, and vocal repertoire from the Twentieth Century and earlier. Dr. Bowles frequently performs throughout the country with the Luna Nova ensemble – of which he is a founding member. Through Luna Nova, Dr. Bowles regularly participates in formal concerts, master classes, and a variety of educational outreach activities. Dr. Bowles is also an active member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, having served as Treasurer and Vice President of Membership. He also serves as grant-writer for the Alabama Music Teachers Association. Recently, Dr. Bowles has served as an adjudicator for competitions such as the Lois Pickard Piano Competition and the NFMC Young Artists Competition and gave a presentation on NFMC Solo Festival Repertoire for the Birmingham Music Teachers Association in the fall of 2010.He holds degrees from Eastman School of Music (BM) and New England Conservatory (MM), and received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Teachers have included Milton Stern, Barry Snyder, Jacob Maxin, and Eugene and Elizabeth Pridonoff.Dr. Bowles is currently on the faculties of the Birmingham-Southern College and Conservatory, where he has taught piano, keyboard harmony, theory, and accompanying. Students of Dr. Bowles have won prizes at competitions hosted by such organizations as the Alabama Music Teachers Association and others. At the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Dr. Bowles accompanies the vocal and instrumental students for lessons and recitals. He is recorded on the Living Artists label and was recently featured on a CD of music by Argentinian composer Valdo Sciammerella, “Rosas de Pulpa Rosas de Cal.”


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Michael Coleman received his doctorate from the University of Maryland and the M.M. and B.M. degrees from the University of New Orleans and the University of South Alabama. His principle composition teachers were Lawrence Moss, Jerry Sieg, and Carl Alette. He has participated as composer and/or pianist in numerous new music programs and festivals in the U.S., France & Russia, including the Astrakhan Contemporary Chamber Music Festival, Birmingham Art Music Alliance, Birmingham New Arts Stage, Capital Composers Alliance, Charles Ives Center, College Music Society, Delius Association of Florida, Louisiana Composers Guild, Moscow Autumn, New Music Chicago, Society of Composers, Inc., Southeastern Composers’ League,and various festivals in Kolomna, Kostroma, Moscow, and Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Coleman received the Artist Fellowship grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 1994 and a Meet-the-Composer grant through the Southern Arts Federation in 1995. Other awards include first prize in both the 1991 and 1992 NFMC National Composer’s Competitions and first prize in the 1989 Res Musica Baltimore Competition. Recent awards include Certificate of Excellence for Best Short Composition and First & Second Prize in the Keyboard Category of the 2001 Composer’s Guild Competition held in Farmington, Utah. He is currently teaching at Pensacola Junior College and the University of West Florida. 

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Raphael Crystal is Director of Musical Theatre for the University of Alabama Department of Theatre and Dance. He is active professionally as a theater composer, musical director, and pianist. His composing credits include musicals (he received a New York Outer Critics Circle award for Best Off- Broadway Musical for the show Kuni-Leml), ballets, incidental music, videos, cabaret material, and concert music. Recently the Jean Cocteau Repertory in New York premiered his musical version of Moliere’s The Bourgeois Gentleman, and next season Birmingham Children’s Theatre will premiere his new musical MegaHeroes. He is a member of BAMA, ASCAP, and the Dramatists Guild, and an alumnus of the BMI- Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. 


Photo by Peter Gannushkin, downtownmusic.net

Andrew Raffo Dewar (b.1975 Rosario, Argentina) is a composer, soprano saxophonist, educator and ethnomusicologist. A former student of Steve Lacy, Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon and Milo Fine, he performs his work internationally with his own ensembles, in collaborative groups, and as a member of the Anthony Braxton 12+1tet. Recordings of Dewar’s work can be found on the Porter Records, Striking Mechanism and Rastascan Records labels. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama. For more info: www.freemovementarts.com

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Kathryn Fouse serves on the faculty of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama where she is the Coordinator of Piano Pedagogy and Class Piano. In addition to her commitment to education, she continues to maintain an active career as a virtuoso pianist and a professional accompanist. Having developed a strong interest in contemporary music, Dr. Fouse frequently presents lecture-recitals in an effort to bring greater understanding of this music to audiences. In 1992 Kathryn was the national recipient of the Merle Montgomery Doctoral Grant awarded by Mu Phi Epsilon for her research into the Surrealist movement and its influence on American composers. Her special interest in the study and performance of American piano music of the Twentieth Century has resulted in invitations to present her research in lecture-recitals at such prestigious institutions as the University of Illinois, Baylor University, the Dallas Art Museum, Gothenburg University (Sweden) and the Norwegian State Academy of Music (Oslo).

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Monroe Golden is a freelance composer, computer programmer, and itinerant forest gardener. His compositions often explore microtonal systems, and have been broadcast on adventurous radio and performed in concerts throughout the world. Critics have called his music “delightfully disorienting” and “lovely, sumptuous, yet arcane.”Awards include an artist fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and commissions from solo performers, ensembles, and the Alabama Music Teachers Association. Beyond his artistry, Golden has actively encouraged and promoted the innovative arts in his resident community. He is a founding member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, serving as President from 2003-2005. He has also headed the Birmingham Art Association and the ARTBURST Performance Series at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham. He produced the 1998 Birmingham International Improvisation Festival, and founded the New Arts Stage of Birmingham’s City Stages, directing the stage from 1999-2004. He graduated from the University of Montevallo and earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois, studying composition with James A. Jensen, Ed Robertson, Ben Johnston, Aurel Stroé, and Herbert Brün. A CD of his music A Still Subtler Spirit, is available from CD Baby and other online and independent music stores. His latest CD Alabama Places was released in August 2007 by innova Recordingsemail | website


An International solo/chamber music performer, guitarist Alan Goldspiel has performed world premieres at NY’s Carnegie and CAMI Halls, been featured on NPR radio stations from coast to coast, and performed in the critically acclaimed Goldspiel/Provost Duo. Dr. Goldspiel was the only guitarist to be honored with the Marshall Dodge Award from the Performing Artists Associates of New England. He has been an Artist-in-Residence for North Carolina’s Visiting Artist Program and a Composer-in-Residence with Escape to Create. At Louisiana Tech University, he received numerous awards for excellence in teaching, research, and service including the State Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award for artistic excellence. He taught at the International Guitar Festival held at the The Hartt School, where he remains the only guitarist to be designated University Scholar for his research on the music of Villa-lobos. Currently, he is Professor of Music and Chair, Department of Music at the University of Montevallo. email | website


Holland Hopson is a composer, improviser, and electronic artist. As an instrumentalist he performs on soprano saxophone, clawhammer banjo and electronics. Holland often augments his instruments with custom-designed sensor interfaces and performs with his own highly responsive, interactive computer programs.Holland has held recent residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida, where he worked with interactive electronics pioneer David Behrman; at LEMURPlex, Brooklyn, where he composed music for and performed with robotic instruments; and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts, New York, where he developed a sound installation based on Marcel Duchamp’s sculpture, With Hidden Noise.Holland’s film sound and scoring work recently took him to Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, “home of the world’s worst weather,” where he somehow managed not to get blown off the mountain while recording location sound for Jacqueline Goss’s The Observers. Holland’s recently released companion soundtrack to the film is titled Wind Whistling in Overhead Wires.An avid phonographer, Holland has recorded sounds on five continents and in over a dozen countries.Holland’s most recent solo recording is Post and Beam, a collection of original and traditional appalachian songs arranged for banjo and live electronics. The Albany Times- Union called Post & Beam “a haunting, often mesmerizing album of old songs and new sounds.” email | website


Cellist Craig Hultgren has been active in new music for decades. He now resides outside of Decorah, Iowa as the farmer-cellist. The New York Classical Review commented that he, “…played with impressive poise and sensitivity…” for Dorothy Hindman’s 2016 chamber music retrospective at Carnegie Hall. A recipient of two Artist Fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, he was a member for many years of Thámyris, a contemporary chamber music ensemble in Atlanta. He is a founding member of Luna Nova, a new music ensemble with a large repertoire of performances available on iTunes. Hultgren is featured in four solo CD recordings including UK composer Craig Vear’s hyper-media concerto Black Cats and Blues on Métier Recordings. Recently, Hultgren entered the realm of digital online releases with four works Songs for Cello and Piano by Ben Hippen available on Spotify. For ten years, he produced the Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, an international competition that highlighted the best new compositions for the instrument. He is a founding member and former President of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance and was on the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Youth Orchestras of Birmingham and their Scrollworks program. Currently, he is Vice President of the Oneota Valley Community Orchestra Board of Directors in Decorah and recently served three years as Chair for the Iowa Composers Forum. email | MP3:Fragments by Michael Coleman


Kenneth A. Kuhn (Ken) is an electrical engineer who had the privilege of growing up with a great appreciation of Classical music. His favorite composers include Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler. Over the years Classical music enhanced mental skills valuable for his engineering career. He began composing music in his youth in the 1960s and learned how to compose by carefully listening to the many Classical composers. He composes because, “There is music I want to hear but since no one has written it then I must write it myself.” His retirement plans are to work full time doing full orchestrations of his works which presently exist in draft form. Very listenable mp3 files of those drafts can be downloaded from his website. His compositions are of the Neo-Romantic genre where the music conveys grand concepts that transcend spoken language through rich melody and texture. The orchestral draft of his epic tone poem, The Revelation of Nature, was composed over a thirty year period. This work is comprised of an overture and four half-hour movements representing the seasons detailing a year long journey through Nature by an individual seeking true understanding as man-made religions have failed him. Throughout the journey the music portrays what he observes and learns about Nature from an ever present but unseen guide. The guide is revealed near the conclusion of the fourth movement to be God himself – thus the title of the work. Other compositions include a set of marches, a set of piano preludes, and various movements of three symphonies to be completed in his retirement years. Mr. Kuhn has also been teaching evening engineering courses at UAB for over twenty-five years as an adjunct professor. He lives in the Vestavia Hills area and shares his house with a number of mischievous but lovable cats who otherwise would not have homes. email | website


Photo by Lauren Ustad

Mark Lackey composes new music that is “buoyant, at times playful” with “a classical, yet unrestrained lyricism” (ArtsBham).

As a composer of vocal, instrumental, and electronic music, Mark Lackey has garnered premieres from gifted artists including Orquestra Sinfônica do Teatro Nacional Claudio Santoro (Brazil), Rhymes With Opera, Eastman Wind Orchestra, Definiens Ensemble, cellist Craig Hultgren, Miolina NYC, and violinist Courtney Orlando. He has served as president and treasurer of Birmingham Art Music Alliance (BAMA). His recordings are available on the Potenza Music, MSR Classics, Composers Concordance, and Centaur Records labels. Honors include finalist status in the American Composer Competition of the Columbia (MD) Orchestra, selection as Alabama Orchestra Association’s 2020 Composer in Residence, and a public reading by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.

Mark Lackey is also an energetic educator, serving as Associate Professor of music composition and theory at Samford University. He earned the degrees Doctor of Musical Arts in composition, Master of Music in theory pedagogy, and Master of Music in composition from The Peabody Conservatory where his teachers included Bruno Amato, Nicholas Maw, and Christopher Theofanidis. Prior to this he earned the Bachelor of Science degree with majors in piano performance and clinical psychology from David Lipscomb College.

Mark Lackey and his wonderful wife and daughter currently make their home in Birmingham, Alabama.

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Joseph Landers was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1965. He studied with FredericGoossen at the University of Alabama, Lothar Klein at the University ofToronto, and Alexander Goehr at Cambridge. Landers has been awarded fellowshipsby the Fulbright Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, the American Music Center, and the MacDowell Colony, where he was selected as the MargaretLee Crofts Fellow in Composition for 1995-96. His orchestral work Karanganwas selected as a finalist for the 1999 Alexander Zemlinsky InternationalPrize for Composition. In 2000 he was awarded the Thor Johnson MemorialCommission for his Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano. The works of JosephLanders have been featured on concerts series and festivals across theU. S. and abroad including the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the AD*Evantgard Festival in Munich, the Huddersfield Contemporary MusicFestival (U.K.), and the Gaudeamus Music Week (Holland), where his orchestralwork Nine forty-eight was selected as a finalist for the 1997 prize incomposition.  His compositions for orchestra have been performed bythe Alabama Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Orchestra,the Omaha Symphony, the Tuscaloosa Symphony, and the Lincoln Symphony,and various other orchestras under conductors including Christopher Confessore,Jahja Ling, Ransom Wilson, Bruce Hangen, Adrian Gnam, and Jac Van Steen.His music has also been performed by internationally acclaimed musiciansincluding Lucy Shelton, Richard Killmer, Mariko Anraku, and Marcel Worms. email


Brian C. Moon received his Master of Music in Composition from Birmingham-Southern College and his Bachelor of Arts in Music Technology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His composition instructors include Ron Clemmons, Jan Vicar, Traci Mendel, Charles Mason and Dorothy Hindman. For over two decades, Brian has been an active composer and member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, as well as an adjunct music instructor at Birmingham-Southern and UAB, where he has taught Ear Training, Music Technology, Computer Music, Multimedia Productions, and the Computer Music Ensemble. Brian currently works full time at UAB as the Associate Director for the Center for Teaching and Learning. As for the local Birmingham band scene, Brian is singer/songwriter for the Maisleys and often plays in several local rock bands. email | website


Matthew Scott Phillips is a graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (B.A.) and of Birmingham Southern College (M.M.) and is currently a DMA student at the University of Georgia. He has written for orchestra, chamber groups, independent film, live theatre productions, and multimedia presentations, and his music has been played from Brazil, to the United States, to Germany and the Czech Republic. The content of Matthew’s compositions are centered around expressions of emotional states, the struggle to understand intellectual and philosophical concepts, the contrast between musical elements symbolic of individualism and those symbolic of social imperative, and of the conflicts between various aspects of the human psyche.Matthew is the winner of the 2011 Alabama Music Teachers’ Association Composition Commission Competition. He has studied with Jan Vicar, Dorothy Hindman, Charles Norman Mason, Ronald Clemmons, Michael Angell, and Traci Mendel, and was also among thirteen other American composers chosen in the summer of 2006, to study and compose music in the city of Prague under the tutelage of Ladislav Kubik. He has composed over 70 instrumental and vocal works including 3 string quartets, 5 symphonies, 3 piano trios, and a host of orchestral overtures, and smaller instrumental works for mixed ensembles. His repertoire includes music composed in serial, freely atonal, traditional, polytonal, pantonal, modal, and electroacoustic styles.In addition to composition, Matthew has twice been a judge of the National Young Composers Competition, has given lectures on the music of Smetana, Chopin and Rachmaninoff, and taught classes in music fundamentals, musicology, music theory, music technology, and composition. He is also an active member and former Vice President of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, an avid bass player in the Birmingham live music scene, and a qualified audio technician and occasional stage hand. Matthew lives in Birmingham Alabama, in the United States. email | website


William Price‘s music has been performed and exhibited at numerous international and national events, including the World Saxophone Congress, the International Trumpet Guild Conference, the International Clarinet Association Conference, the Mùsica Viva Festival in Portugal, the Musinfo Art & Science Days in France, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Chamber Music Festival in Singapore, the National Flute Association Conference (U.S.A.), the Bowling Green State University New Music Festival, and the Florida State University Festival of New Music. His music has received awards and commissions from numerous organizations, including ASCAP, the Percussive Arts Society, Southeastern Composers League, the National Association of Composers, U.S.A, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and in 2008, Price was named the Music Teachers National Association Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year. Price’s works are currently published by Honeyrock Publications, Triplo Press, Northeastern Music Publications, Cimarron Music Press, Conners Publications, and Imagine Music Publishing. Recordings of his work can be found on Summit Records, Innova Recordings, Ablaze Recordings, New Focus Recordings, and soon to be released on Mark Records. Dr. Price received his BMEd degree from the University of North Alabama, and his MM and DMA degrees from Louisiana State University, where he studied composition with Dinos Constantinides and electroacoustic composition with Stephen David Beck. Dr. Price currently serves as Associate Professor of Music at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), where he teaches courses in music theory and composition. email | website


Ed Robertson is Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Montevallo, where he was Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Theory and Composition. He earned his Doctor of Music at Florida State University, where he was a student of John Boda. He has also studied with Thea Musgrave, David Davis, and Jack Jarrett. Prior to his graduate work at Florida State University, he served as Director of Choral Activities at the University of Richmond.His works have been performed on five continents and in venues such as the Metropolitan Opera House, Carnegie Hall, and Symphony Hall in Atlanta. Robertson’s compositions have received positive reviews in Fanfare magazine, the Oxford American, and numerous other publications. His instrumental, vocal, and choral compositions are available on compact disc, and he has been the recipient of a number of commissions.His music has been published by Carl Fischer, Hinshaw, Willis, Belwin-Mills, Shawnee, and others.A winner of multiple ASCAP awards, he has been recognized by the University of Richmond for “outstanding achievement in the arts”. Dr. Robertson was three times been named Distinguished Teacher of the Year in the University of Montevallo College of Fine Arts. Also at UM he was twice been selected as University Scholar, and the UM Alumni Association granted him its Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award. He was the Carnegie Foundation/Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Alabama Professor of the Year in 2004. email


Chris Steele is Staff Pianist and Aural Skills Instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has held previous positions at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts as Staff Pianist, and at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as both Lecturer of Music Theory and Ear Training as well as Faculty Fellow for the UNCG Grogan College Music Learning Community. He received his Doctor of Musical Arts in Accompanying and Chamber Music from UNCG where he studied with Andrew Harley and James Douglass, and held assistantships in both accompanying and music theory/ear training. He received two Masters degrees from The Florida State University in Piano Performance and Music Theory where he studied with Carolyn Bridger.An active performer, Steele is a member of the UAB Chamber Trio, and has collaborated with members of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra. As a proponent of new music, he is a member of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, and has performed at the Society of Composers Region IV Conference and the Mid-South Chapter of the National Association of Composers Concert. He has also presented lecture-recitals on the late compositional style of Gabriel Fauré, including at UNCG’s biennial Focus on Piano Literature Symposium. email


Ron Wray is a Professor of Music at the University of Alabama in Huntsville where he serves as teacher of clarinet and music theory. Dr. Wray has been active as a composer, teacher, and performer in higher education since 1992. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Clarinet Performance from Louisiana State University. Prior to coming to UAHuntsville, Dr. Wray served as Associate Professor of Music at Dickinson State University, in North Dakota, and at Southern Arkansas University, in Magnolia, Arkansas. email