Composers
Songs and Cycles
Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927, Kansas
City, Missouri), composer and keyboard performer, received degrees in
music composition from Yale (BM, MM) and the Eastman School of Music
(PhD.). Further studies took her to Brussels on a Fulbright Scholarship
and to Tanglewood. The recipient of numerous commissions from schools,
churches, and professional groups, she has received many performances
around the world. Her music includes works for orchestra, band, chamber
ensembles, solo instruments, voices and electronic pieces. Diemer is
Professor Emerita of the University of California, Santa Barbara, where
she taught composition from 1971 to 1991. She was Composer-in Residence
with the Santa Barbara Symphony from 1990-92. A biography of Diemer
by Ellen Grolman Schlegel is published by Greenwood Press: A Bio-Bibliography
Emma Lou Diemer.
Flicka Rahn (b. 1944, Corpus
Christi, Texas), an accomplished teacher of voice, is Associate Professor
of Music at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She has also served
on the faculties of Brandeis University, the Boston Conservatory of
Music, and University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. Ms. Rahn's
art songs have been published in the Southern Music Company series "Art
Songs by American Women Composers," and her choral works have been
performed throughout South Texas. Ms. Rahn's singing career includes
opera and oratorio as well as recitals. She has performed American art
songs and her own compositions throughout the U.S., Europe, South America
and Asia. Ms. Rahn holds degrees from Washington University in St. Louis
(BME), Texas State University (MM) and Texas A&M-Kingsville (MS
in Counseling).
Katherine Freiberger (b. 1927,
Mineral Wells, Texas) holds degrees in piano from SMU and English literature
from the University of Texas at Austin. She maintained a private piano
studio in Dallas, Texas for 25 years, where a number of her contest
pieces for ten piano teams of the Dallas Music Teachers Association
were chosen for the Federation of Music Clubs lists. Her compositions
include piano, vocal and choral works, often utilizing flute, oboe or
marimba. Ms. Freiberger received the Elizabeth Matthias Award for Professional
Achievement from Mu Phi Epsilon and won a First Prize in Mu Phi's International
Composition Contest for her setting of the The
Coffee-Pot Face poems by Colorado poet Aileen Fisher. Winter
Apples, set to poems by Charlie Langdon, another Colorado poet,
was premiered in 2004 at Trinity University in San Antonio, Ms. Freiberger
divides her time between Durango, CO and Dallas, TX.
Libby Larsen (b. 1950, Wilmington, Delaware)
is one of America's most performed living composers. She has created
a catalogue of over 400 works spanning virtually every genre, from intimate
vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral and choral scores. A Grammy
Award winner, Larsen is widely recorded—including 50 CDs of her
work—and is constantly sought after for commissions and premieres
by major artists, ensembles and orchestras around the world. As a vigorous,
articulate advocate for the music and musicians of our time, Larsen
co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers
Forum. Former holder of the Papamarkou Chair at John W. Kluge Center
of the Library of Congress, Larsen has also held residencies with the
Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony and the Colorado Symphony.
Elizabeth R. Austin (b. 1938, Baltimore,
Maryland) studied at Goucher College and the Conservatoire Americaine
in Fontainebleau, France. She went on to earn a Masters in Music from
the Hartt School of Music and a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut.
While at Hartt, she established a faculty/student exchange with the
Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, Heidelberg- Mannheim, and now
divides her time between Germany and the U.S. promoting an exchange
of people and ideas through internationally sponsored projects, including
composer exchanges. Dr. Austin's music has been performed in Prague,
Rome, Finland, Germany, the Caribbean and America. Her awards include
a Rockefeller Foundation grant for a month-long residency in Italy,
a Connecticut Commission on the Arts grant, and First Prize in the International
Alliance for Women in Music's 1998 Miriam Gideon Competition.