LUCAS RICHMAN


Now in his seventh season as Music Director of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, conductor LUCAS RICHMAN is best known for his command of core repertoire, coupled with his finesse in presenting new and contemporary works.

His extensive work with the KSO, and expanding reach into other American orchestras continue to illustrate Mr. Richman as a source of musical expertise and artistic excellence. Writing about last season’s finale, the Knoxville News-Sentinel exclaimed, “But to those who…went home at intermission, they missed what may well be one of the most stellar performances the KSO has ever played in its simply magnificent presentation of Gustav Mahler's "Symphony No. 5 in C Sharp Minor." If playing like this is what maestro Lucas Richman and the KSO have spent this season developing, then the upcoming 75th anniversary season will be something definitely not to miss.”
Mr. Richman has appeared as guest conductor with numerous orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, Delaware Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra, the SWR Radio Orchestra of Kaiserslautern (Germany), the Tiroler Kammerorchester InnStrumenti (Austria) and the Zagreb Philharmonic (Croatia). M° Richman served as Assistant and Resident Conductor for Mariss Jansons and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra between 1998-2004 and, from 1988 to 1991, he was the Assistant Conductor for the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. In recent years, he has collaborated with notable soloists such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Garrick Ohlsson, Lang Lang, Frank Peter Zimmerman, Gil Shaham, Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Mark O’Connor, Andre Watts and Radu Lupu.

Mr. Richman received a Master of Music in orchestral conducting from the University of Southern California, where he was a student of Daniel Lewis. He studied privately with Fritz Zweig and Victor Yampolsky, and was also selected as a conducting fellow in master classes with Pierre Boulez, André Previn, Herbert Blomstedt and Kurt Sanderling. Earlier in his musical journey, he toured with West Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Orchestra, for which he was one of four conductors from around the world selected by Leonard Bernstein to share the maestro’s podium for concerts presented in London and Moscow. Over the past decade, Mr. Richman collaborated with numerous film composers as their conductor, recording scores for such films as the Academy Award-nominated The Village (with violinist, Hilary Hahn), As Good As It Gets, Face/Off, Se7en, Breakdown, The Manchurian Candidate and Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.

Mr. Richman is a respected leader in the field of planning and conducting concerts for young people, having done so for nearly twenty years with various orchestras across the United States. An accomplished composer, Mr. Richman has had his music performed by over two hundred orchestras in the last ten years and his works written specifically for children have been featured in young people’s concerts presented by orchestras such as the Atlanta Symphony, the San Diego Symphony and the San Antonio Symphony. Taking children’s concert programming and musical education to new heights for the next generation, Mr. Richman is responsible for the creation of an animated guide to classical music, which is featured in full symphonic concerts. The character, Picardy Penguin, is entering its fourth year of performances with orchestras, both at home in Knoxville and around the US.

Commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony, his Concerto for Oboe was premiered in February 2006 (Cynthia DeAlmeida, oboe; Sir Andrew Davis, conductor), while the Knoxville Symphony presented his Concerto for Percussion in March 2006 (Timothy Adams, percussion). Mr. Richman’s choral work, Arise Triumphant, O Blessed Muse!, was premiered in January, 2005, with Frederica von Stade as the soloist. Recent recordings of M° Richman’s music include those made by Giora Feidman (Variations for Clarinet and Cello) and the Tiroler Kammerorchester InnStrumenti of Innsbruck (The Seven Circles of Life) while the KSO’s recording of his song for breast-cancer awareness (“We Share A Bond”) is available for download at www.komenknoxville. A hit with new families, his compact disc, DAY IS DONE, features original and traditional lullabies composed and arranged by Mr. Richman as an aid for parents wishing to introduce their children to the joys of music. The CD, a companion children’s book and a listing of Mr. Richman’s compositions can be found through LeDor Group, Inc. at www.ledorgroup.com

Mr. Richman and the Knoxville Symphony, were the recipients of the 2006 Bank of America Award for Excellence in Orchestra Education. The KSO “Music and Wellness Program” was recognized for its partnership with community organizations to extend the healing power of music. In addition, Broadcast Music Inc., in recognition of the workshop he has run for ten years on conducting for film, presented him with their Classic Contribution Award at the annual BMI Film and Television Awards Gala in 2007.

OFFICIAL BIO FOR THE 2009-2010 SEASON. LAST UPDATED JULY 2009.
PLEASE DESTROY ALL PREVIOUSLY DATED MATERIALS.
For additional materials contact lrichman@ledorgroup.com.


FERDE GROFÉ (1892-1972)

Ferde Grofé was among the first in a long list of modern Ameri-can orchestral composers who chose to exploit their talents primarily in the field of "popular" music, rather than "classical" music. Born in Brooklyn, he studied in Leipzig, then returned to America as a violist for the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. The turning point in his career came when Paul Whiteman lured him into pop music, hiring him in 1920 as arranger and occasional pianist for his band. Grofé's arrangements were partly responsible for Whiteman's pre-eminence in "symphonic jazz", the forerunner of the "big band" movement which dominated American popular music in the 30's and 40's. It was here that Grofé encountered George Gershwin, who was at that time composer/pianist for Whiteman.

Grofé's masterpiece in this "popular symphonic" idiom might be his orchestration of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (some feel that the orchestral color of the Rhapsody is as much responsible for its success as Gershwin's inventive rhythmic and melodic inspirations). But if not the Gershwin orchestration, Grofé's greatest success surely was the Grand Canyon Suite. Grofé published about two dozen orchestral works, mostly in the 30's, all of which fused elements of jazz or pop styles with the rhythmic and formal complexity of symphonic music. The Grand Canyon Suite is the only one to have made it into the standard concert repertoire of American symphony orchestras.

JEFFREY BIEGEL

Jeffrey Biegel is one of today's most revered artists having created a multi-faceted career as a pianist, composer and arranger. His electrifying technique and mesmerizing touch has received critical acclaim and garners praise worldwide. In addition to Mr. Biegel's latest recording for Naxos featuring Leroy Anderson's 'Concerto in C', conducted by Leonard Slatkin with the BBC Concert Orchestra for January 2008, Koch International Classics also releases 'Classical Carols' in 2007. Mr. Biegel is currently assembling a global consortium project for William Bolcom's 'Choral Fantasy for Piano, Orchestra and Chorus' for the 2010-11 season.

Until the age of 3, Mr. Biegel was unable to hear nor speak, until corrected by surgery. The 'reverse Beethoven' phenomenon can explain Mr. Biegel's life in music, having heard only vibrations in his formative years. Born a second-generation American, Mr. Biegel's roots are of Russian and Austrian heritage. A Russian cousin, pianist Herman Kosoff, emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century, and had studied with the great Leopold Godowsky in Austria.

Mr. Biegel has transcribed Balakirev's 'Islamey Fantasy' for piano and orchestra, premiered with the American Symphony Orchestra in 2001. Charles Strouse composed a new work titled 'Concerto America' for Mr. Biegel, premiered with the Boston Pops in 2002. He further arranged the piano part for Billy Joel's 'Symphonic Fantasies' in 2006, with performances at the Eastern Music Festival, the Boris Brott Festival and with the Indianapolis, Harrisburg, and other US orchestras. His new editions for Schirmer's Performance Editions include Schumann's 'Scenes from Childhood' and a new 'Sonatina Album' with accompanying audio CDs. Mr. Biegel, with his son, Craig, composed 'The World In Our Hands', published by the Hal Leonard Corporation. Also published through Hal Leonard are 'Christmas In A Minute', a choral setting of Chopin's 'Minute Waltz', and an arrangement of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'. Carl Fischer publishes 'Ho Ho Hanukah! Ho Ho Christmas!' and 'Different Kind of Hero' in 2008. Earthsongs includes Mr. Biegel's 'Elegy of Anne Boleyn' in their catalogue. Mr. Biegel is also an exclusive recording artist for PianoDisc (www.pianodisc.com)

Mr. Biegel is currently on the piano faculty at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, a City University of New York (CUNY), and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). he resides outside New York City with his wife, Sharon, his sons, Craig and Evan.

ROBERT STRASSBURG (1915-2003)

For many decades Robert Strassburg figured prominently in the general musical life and in Jewish cultural circles in the Los Angeles area. Born in New York, he studied and worked with Igor Stravinsky, Walter Piston, and Paul Hindemithwith whom he studied at Tanglewood on a Boston Symphony scholarship. After bachelor studies at the New England Conservatory, he received his masters degree from Harvard, where he was the recipient of a fellowship in composition. Later, he earned a doctor of fine arts degree at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

Strassburg was always dedicated to teaching. He was chairman of the composition and theory department at the Philadelphia Music Settlement School (194347), he lectured at Brooklyn College (194750), and he was on the inaugural faculty of the Brandeis Camp, directing the music program at its branch in Hendersonville, North Carolina, in 1950. He was also an artist-in-residence and taught at the Brandeis Arts Institute, a subsidiary program of the Brandeis Camp, for five summers (195155) in Santa Susana, California, where the director of musical activities was the conductor and composer Max Helfman (190163), one of the seminal personalities in Jewish musical creativity in America. That institute brought together collegeage students and well-established Jewish and Israeli composers and other artists in an effort to broaden the horizons of young American artists and to introduce them to new possibilities inherent in modern Jewish cultural consciousness and artistic developments in the young State of Israel.

In 1960 Strassburg moved to Los Angeles. He served as assistant dean of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Judaism until 1966, when he became a professor of music at California State University (Los Angeles). There, he also established and directed the Roy Harris Archives and published a catalogue of Harriss works. Strassburg composed in nearly all classical media, and his own substantial catalogue includes many Judaically related works, secular as well as sacred. During his tenures as music director at various synagoguesfirst in Florida and then in Los Angeleshe developed a particular interest in liturgical music, and he composed numerous prayer settings. Among the best known of these are two Torah services, many individual prayers for Sabbath and High Holy Days, various Psalms, and liturgically related solo songs. Liturgical as well as Jewish historical themes also informed a number of his instrumental pieces, including Festival of Lights Symphony for string orchestra; a Torah Sonata for piano (with a version for string quartet, Tropal Suite); Terecentenary Suite for viola and piano; Patriarchs, four biblical portraits for string orchestra; and A gilgul fun a nign (Migrations of a Melody), on a text by Yehuda Leib Peretz, for baritone, narrator, and chamber orchestra.

Apart from Judaic subjects, Strassburgs lifelong passion for the poetry of Walt Whitman found its expression in many of his secular works. He was cochairman of the Walt Whitman Centennial events, held at California State University. He also composed more than forty documentary film scores and wrote incidental music for such theatrical productions as King Lear, The Rose Tattoo, Anne of a Thousand Days, and The House I Live In. He was an active poet, and he published nearly twenty books of his own poetry during his lifetime.

TERRY SILVER-ALFORD

Terry Silver-Alford has spent most of his compositional career devoted to writing music for the theatre. He has created the scores for two original full length musicals (The Temptations of Mann, and Medium Grace), and two children’s musicals (Stone Soup and Tales from Chelm) as well as creating a score for Brecht’s Mother Courage. He has also created songs and incidental music for productions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale, Sheridan’s The Rivals, Moliere’s The Miser  and most recently Breacht’s Galileo among many others. He has written songs for Cabaret performances as well. His theatre music has been performed at The University of Wisconsin, The University of Tennessee(Clarence Brown Theatre), The Madison Repertory, The Nebraska Theatre Caravan/ Omaha Playhouse, The University of Tulsa, The August Barn Theatre and the California Theatre Center to name a few. Mr. Silver-Alford has also created a number of chamber pieces, songs cycles, piano solos, and dance pieces.

He most recently received a commission from the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association to write a song for choir and orchestra entitled “Music is the Language” which has enjoyed performances by the Oak Ridge Symphony, the Kingsport symphony and by Sound Company (show choir). Terry holds an MFA in Directing from The University of Tennessee, and a MM in piano and composition from Western Michigan University. Mr. Silver-Alford is currently a member of the Theatre faculty of the University of Tennessee where he teaches musical theatre performance, acting, and directing. He is a member of the Clarence Brown Theatre Company and directs and musically directs plays and musical for their professional and student productions.

 

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