Master Class: Telling a Story with Music

Be sure to join us for our next Master Class, “Telling a Story with Music!” Grammy-nominated Nadia Shpachenko will play Jack Van Zandt’s new piece, “Si an Bhru” for Piano and electronics that just premiered at Piano Spheres. Jeannie Gayle Pool will talk about several of her symphonic pieces, and share with you her experience re-constructing and re-orchestrating another composer’s opera. Raymond Torres-Santos, from California State University, Long Beach, will share symphonic music and ballet music inspired by Traditions/Events, Spirituality, Nature, and Literature. And Marlene Hajdu will share visual music with words and the inspiration behind it.

JACK VAN ZANDT is a Los Angeles-based composer of music for concerts, public spaces, and gallery installations, as well as TV, film and advertising. He is the president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Composers Forum. Van Zandt studied composition with Alexander Goehr, Peter Maxwell Davies, Peter Racine Fricker and Thea Musgrave. His concert music has been performed in the USA and in Europe, where he lived and worked for 20 years. His commercial music, composed in partnership with Joel Wachbrit, appears frequently on national broadcast and cable television. His newest work, “Sí an Bhrú” for piano and electronics, commissioned by and dedicated to Grammy-nominated pianist Nadia Shpachenko, was premiered in Los Angeles on May 20, and his recent work for two pianos, “Regular Division of the Plane,” was premiered by Nadia Shpachenko and Kathy Supové at Chapman University on February 20, 2016. A new piece for microtuned piano, “…the rest is silence…,” will receive its first performance by Grammy-nominated pianist Aron Kallay during Microfest on June 28 at Monk Space, and TRANS for piano trio will receive its premiere at the Hear Now Festival in Paris on December 3. Other pieces to receive their premieres in 2016 are “Stirrings Still: In Memory of Peter Maxwell Davies,” for Brightwork New Music, and a song cycle for soprano and piano, “Apples and Time Crack in October,” with poems by Jill Freeman. He is currently at work on “A Thousand Ships,” an opera about Helen of Troy with a libretto by Jill Freeman, and “The Painted Veil,” settings of poems by Percy Shelley for soprano and ensemble.

JEANNIE GAYLE POOL, Ph.D is a composer, musicologist, and producer. Her music has been heard in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Ohio, Belgrade, Toronto, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Beijing. Dr. Pool received a Ph.D. in Music at the Claremont Graduate University in May, 2002, with a dissertation on the Black Creek Indian composer Zenobia Powell Perry. She worked as a music consultant and archivist at Paramount Pictures (until 2012) and was the Executive Director of the Society for the Preservation of Film Music from 1990 to 2002. She lectures frequently on women in music and film music history/preservation, mostly in Europe and the United States. She is the author of four published books: Peggy Gilbert and Her All-Girl Band (2008) American Composer Zenobia Powell Perry: Race and Gender in the 20th Century (2009); The Passions of Musical Women: The Story of the International Congress on Women in Music (2009); A Research Guide to Film and Television Music in the United States (co-authored with H. Stephen Wright, 2011). She is currently writing a biography of Babe Egan who had an all-girl band on vaudeville called The Hollywood Redheads. Her documentary film, Peggy Gilbert and Her All-Girl Band (2007), narrated by Lily Tomlin, is shown regularly as film festivals, colleges and universities and senior centers. In 2014, Dr. Pool re-constructed and re-orchestrated Zenobia Powell Perry’s opera, Tawawa House for performances by the Townsend Opera Company in Modesto, California. She produces LP, CD, and cassette recordings for Cambria Records, an independent label in California which specializes in contemporary American music.

RAYMOND TORRES-SANTOS is a composer, conductor and pianist as well as a composition professor at California State University, Long Beach. His works include orchestral, electronic and vocal music for the concert hall, film, theater, ballet, television and radio. Dr. Torres-Santos’ music has been performed and/or commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, North Massachusetts Philharmonic, the symphony orchestras of Reading, Queens and Washington-D.C. Opera; the Bronx Arts Ensemble, Continuum, New Jersey Chamber Music Society, West Point Woodwind Quintet, North Jersey Philharmonic Glee Club, North/South Consonance, Quintet of the Americas, Gabrieli Quintet and Voix-Touche in the USA; the symphonies of Vancouver and Toronto as well as the Canadian Opera Orchestra in Canada; the Vienna Symphony, Prague Radio Symphony, Georgia Symphony, Soria Symphony, and Warsaw Conservatory of Music Chorus and Orchestra in Europe; the National Chinese Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony, Seoul Symphony, Kaohsiung Philharmonic and Taipei Philharmonic Orchestras in Asia; the Buenos Aires, Chile, Colombia and Mexico City Symphony Orchestras in Latin America; and Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras in the Caribbean. Featured at the Casals Festival, World Fair in Seville, Venice Biennale and Op Sail 2000, his music has been used for television and radio programs and choreographed by dance companies. His compositions and arrangements have been recorded for Sony Music, OSPR and SJP record labels; published by ANCO and RTS Music; and distributed by commercial retailers. He is the recipient of awards given by BMI, Meet the Composer, American Composers Forum, American Music Center, ASCAP, California State University and City University of New York. His music for film earned him a Henry Mancini Award, while his jazz composition earned him the Frank Sinatra Award, both given in Los Angeles. As an arranger, he has worked with classical and pop performers, such as: Plácido Domingo, Andrea Bocelli, Deborah Voigt, Angela Gheorghiu, Ana María Martínez, Anita Rachvilishvili, Rafael Dávila and Juan Luis Guerra. He has also served as an orchestrator for film composers in Hollywood, such as: Ralph Burns and Ry Cooder. As a jazz pianist, he worked with Maynard Ferguson, Freddie Hubbard, Buddy Collette, Bobby Shew, and Tito Puente; and as a studio musician, he has been featured in soundtracks for movies. As a conductor, he has led the London Session Orchestra, Taipei Philharmonic, Cosmopolitan Symphony Orchestra, Puerto Rico Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras, Dominican Republic National Orchestra, Queens Symphony Orchestra, Adelphi Chamber Orchestra, Bronx Arts Ensemble Orchestra, and Hollywood studio orchestras in concerts and recordings. In addition, he has served as music director for pop and jazz singers Vikki Carr and Dianne Schuur, respectively.

MARLENE HAJDU has been part of the theater, dance and film community in Hollywood. She won a clio award, choreographed (MTV), and worked in the art department before working in music. Her music for Theater includes One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Artichoke, and The Hostage, (4 Los Angeles Ovation Theater Award Nominations). She scored Marion’s Triumph, a Library Review Board Documentary winner, Monkey Love, which was an official selection of the Seattle Film Festival among other indie projects. She worked as an orchestrator, choir supervisor, conductor and music prep at Fox Music Library and worked with Conrad Pope and Stewart Copeland. She produced several CD’s on her own label including Nightwalk, impressionistic chamber music. She has been heard on Sundays at 4:00 and her chamber music has been performed at UCLA, Occidental, Pasadena CC and many other universities.