The Ensemble
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Daniel Andor started playing piano at four and studied composition and piano at The Purcell School of Music, London. His compositions won a number of awards and have been performed internationally, and he was featured by the Society for the Promotion of New Music during 2000–2002. As he felt drawn to making music with others, he took up trombone and conducting. Orchestral conducting kept him busy during his years at the University of Cambridge, where he lingered vigorously until he received his PhD in physics in 2005. Daniel now finds himself in New York, contemplating the receiving end of music: researching hearing and its neuro-physiology.
Christopher Baum received his BA in Classical Guitar from San Jose State University and his MM in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Denver. In addition to conducting, singing and occasionally writing pieces for C4, Chris is also active as freelance conductor and classical guitarist. In April 2009 he became the conductor of the Manhattan Wind Ensemble. In May, he performed with the F.R.E.D. Chamber Players in a program featuring music for guitar and voice by Tippett, Henze and Britten.
James Bilodeau grew up in the Adirondacks. He spent his youth singing in church choirs, school choruses and several musicals. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Production and Technology from the Hartt School of Music in West Hartford, CT. At Hartt he also studied choral arts and conducting with Dr. Edward Bolkovac and voice with Janine Hawley and Janet Alcorn. Since moving to New York, James has sung with the Empire City Men's Chorus under Dr. Jonathan Babcock and with C4. Professionally, he works as a Talk Radio Imaging Producer for Sirius XM Radio.
Timothy Brown completed his BA at the University of North Texas and has been a choral professional for over 20 years, directing and singing with high school, community, and chamber choirs. As a composer, Tim focused for a time on music for the theatre. His Curious George toured nationally for over ten years and his songs were showcased at the West Bank Theatre, the BMI Workshop, and in the Donnell Library 'Songbook' . Tim later studied at the Manhattan School of Music with Nils Vigeland. His Incidental Dance Suite was premiered at Merkin Concert Hall, and Epitaph (Songs on Poems of Dorothy Parker) was recorded by Metropolitan Opera mezzo, Theadora Hanslowe. Tim's church music includes Christ Our Passover, and Eloi, Lama Sabbachtani, both commissioned and premiered through The Church of the Heavenly Rest, New York.
Phillip Cheah is a member of the professional choir at the Church of St Luke in the Fields, the Bach Choir of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, and the medieval music consort of voices, Guildsingers. He has sung under the batons of Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, Kurt Masur, and Esa-Pekka Salonen with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and American Symphony Orchestra. A tireless champion of contemporary music, he has performed and premièred works by Ralph Shapey, Joe Manieri, John Eaton, and David Lang, including the US premières of Paul McCartney's Ecce Cor Meum and John Tavener's monumental all-night vigil The Veil of the Temple. Phillip has conducted the Handel Society of Dartmouth, Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, the Indiana University Opera Theatre, and the Amato Opera, where he was also a répétiteur. He has given recitals with pianist Trudy Chan in unique programmes showcasing his unusually large vocal range of almost three-and-a-half octaves, most recently as a featured artist on the 21st century Schizoid Music Series at Cornelia Street Café. As an accompanist, he has given recitals with the Aguavã New Music Studio, the Millennium Wagner Opera Company, and the Opera Collective of New York. He has recorded on the Pro Organo and Tzadik labels. A guest lecturer at the Manhattan School of Music and Barnard College, Phillip has held teaching appointments at the Putney School and Cathedral High School where he was the Director of Music. He has worked for the Music Department at Oxford University Press and has also been the personal assistant to the composer/satirist Peter Schickele. He holds both B.M. and M.M. degrees from Indiana University where he studied piano, conducting, and opera coaching with Jan Harrington, Thomas Dunn, John Poole, Carmen Téllez, Christopher Harding, and Reiko Shigeoka-Neriki.
Composer Jonathan David has been described as “an important emerging musical voice” in the worlds of choral music, music-theatre, and art song. He has served as Composer-in-Residence for The Greenwich Village Singers and Music Director for the Morningside Heights-based chorus, Howl! Recent premieres include Titania’s Garage Sale by C4,Flocks Feed by Darkness, a commission from Glass Menagerie, and Hopkins Songs, a cycle for soprano Amy Bartram. Upcoming commissions include Even in Darknessfrom the Packer Collegiate Concert Chorus, and a work for baritone Daniel Neer and harp. Past commissions have come from the New York Treble Singers and the Thanks-Giving Foundation. David’s choral music has also been performed by the Princeton Singers, the Glen Ellyn Children's Chorus, and Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, among many others. Current projects include a large-scale song cycle, Winter Birds, for sopranist Phillip Cheah, to texts by poet David Brendan Hopes. Stage works include Bronx Express, which ran to critical acclaim at the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival. His music has received awards from ASCAP, the Americas Vocal Ensemble, and the Global Network of Conservatories. A graduate of Wesleyan University, he studied with John Bavicchi and Don McDonnell at the Berklee College of Music. He is published by Oxford University Press. (May, 2010)
June Severino Feldman is a native New Yorker. She’s been an instrumental musician since childhood and currently plays piano, clarinet and guitar. She is the alto section leader of the Riverdale Presbyterian Church Chancel Choir and has sung with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic under the batons of William Steinberg and Michael Tilson Thomas. She recently completed 3 seasons singing with Polyhymnia, an early music ensemble conducted by John Bradley, and is currently an alto with both C4 and Canticum Novum. June studies voice with Marcia Young and lives in Manhattan with her beloved family and her new Plott Hound named Delta.
A native of the New York City area, Sally Fenley graduated from Barnard College with Honors in Music. She continued her musical studies with Nadia Boulanger and Annette Dieudonne in Paris, and returned to New York and got her Master's Degree in Music Composition from N.Y.U. She has taught music for over 25 years, at the Wooster School, Abington Friends School, Nyack High School, Bloomingdale School of Music, and the Collegiate School. She is also a church musician, having served for many years as organist-choir director at Cresskill Congregational Church in New Jersey, and in the professional choir of St. Ignatius of Antioch in New York City. She is currently musical director of the vocal jazz ensemble, the Uptown Sound.
Franny Geller is a boy soprano in a dress and an aspiring ornithologist. A choral addict since childhood, Franny has passed through such New York City ensembles as Trinity Wall Street Choir, St. Bartholomew's Choir, the Pharos Music Project, Canticum Novum Singers, and Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, with whom she appears on two recent releases: Lisa Bielawa's A Handful of World and Yumiko Matsuoka's To Every Thing There is a Season. She is currently a member of the Bach Vespers Choir at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, and Guildsingers, a quartet devoted to Medieval music. Franny has also pulled a couple of musical all-nighters, once for the New York premiere of John Tavener's Veil of the Temple, and again to close the 2008 Bang On a Can Summer Marathon with Karlheinz Stockhausen's Stimmung, as a member of Toby Twining Music.
David Harris David Harris (b. 1974), BSE, MM, DMA is a freelance musician living in Manhattan. He is the director for the Columbia Glee Club, a member of C4 the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective, assistant director for Canticum Novum and teaches for the Opus 118 Harlem School of Music. In addition to conducting and teaching, David composes a variety of music and is currently working on several projects, among them a musical, a ballet and some choral pieces. This year he released three CDs: I Want To Be Ready, a live recording of Jubilate in Carnegie Hall, Old Time Religion, gospel favorites and St. Bartholomew and The Frail Stag, a live recording in Denver of the premiere of three of his multi-movement works. Each is available on iTunes and CDBaby.
He moved to New York from Colorado where he began and directed Jubilate, a 55-voice a cappella choir, for 8 years. Prior to that, he lived in Birmingham and taught high school in addition to working with the Birmingham Boys Choir. David often serves as a clinician and fulfills composition commissions throughout the year. He is a current member of the American Composers Forum and the American Music Center. David co-authored the book In The Good Old Summer Time with Thomas Riis in 2006. He holds degrees from the Universities of Alabama, Oklahoma, and Colorado. He received the Marinus Smith Recognition Award for Teaching Excellence in 2003 from the University of Colorado Parents Association for his work with the CU Collegiate Chorale.
Jamie Klenetsky is a composer, singer and web designer residing in Morristown, NJ. Jamie was the second-place winner of the San Fransisco Choral Artists’ 2007 “New Voices” competition, and a finalist in the Karen Sokolof Javitch 2008 “Emerging Jewish Composer” competition. Her electronic piece Space Music was featured by New Music Hartford at their September concert. C4 premiered her latest piece, An Ever-Fixed Mark, in its February concent. Currently, Jamie sings professionally with the Seton Hall Chapel Choir and will attend the Vermont Composition Workshop this summer. Professionally, Jamie the web designer of the government of Morris County, NJ.
www.jamieklenetsky.com
Elizabeth Marker is an accomplished musician who has devoted the major portion of her career to the advancement of choral music. She holds a Master of Music in Voice Performance from Boston University where she studied with Mary Davenport and coached with Alan Rodgers. In New York she studies with Maria Farnworth. She has sung with many notable choral groups including Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the Russian Chamber Chorus and Cantori New York. In 1987, Elizabeth was invited to sing with the Oregon Repertory Singers representing the United States at the 26th Choral Singing Festival in Kärnten, Austria where the group won both the Folk and Classical Repertoire competitions. Elizabeth performed in many Robert Shaw Choral Workshops at Carnegie Hall and was a member of the Robert Shaw Festival Singers. She has served as section leader at The Church of the Good Shepherd (Episcopal) and been a member of the professional choir at St. Ignatius of Antioch (Episcopal). As a soloist, Elizabeth can be heard on two recordings: My Heart is Ready, music of Yuri Yukechev (Russian Chamber Chorus), and, as the Mother of Iseut, in Le vin herbé by Frank Martin (I Cantori di New York).
In addition to his work with C4, David Rentz directs Guildsingers, an early music ensemble. He also directs the choruses at the Brearley School and served as assistant conductor of the New Amsterdam singers from 2005 to 2009. He has earned graduate degrees in choral conducting from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and, most recently, Yale University, where he was co-director of the University Chapel Choir. David is also an active composer whose works have been performed by, among others, the Madison (WI) Youth Choirs, the Washington University Chamber Chorus, the Milwaukee Young Artists Festival Ensemble, and the Yale Camerata.
Joseph N. Rubinstein sings tenor with C4. He is a passionate supporter of contemporary music and has been involved in many premieres of pieces by young and emerging composers. A composer himself, his works have been featured at festivals such as the Bowdoin International Music Festival and the Yale Summer Festival at Norfolk, and by groups including the Columbia University Bach Society, the International Vocal Arts Workshop, C4, the Young New Yorker's Chorus, the Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble, and WorldMuse. Recent awards include Second Place in the 2009 SACRA / PROFANA Composer Competition and Region II finalist status in the 2008 SCI / ASCAP Student Commission Competition. Joe studied composition at Columbia University with Joseph Dubiel, Sebastian Currier, and Fred Lerdahl, and currently works on composer and new music promotion for a major music publisher.
Karen Siegel grew up harmonizing doo-wop tunes with her family, and went on to study voice, piano, cello, and eventually composition. She holds a Master's degree in Composition from NYU, where she studied with Marc Antonio Consoli, and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Yale. Additional studies include coursework with Conrad Cummings at the Juilliard Evening Division and vocal instruction with Lavinia Bertotti and Claudine Ansermet at the Fondazione Italiana di Musica Antica in Urbino, Italy. Her works have been commissioned by the Manhattan Choral Ensemble, Trio Eos, and the Matrix Music Collaborators, and performed by the new music ensemble Cygnus. Currently, Karen is a PhD candidate in composition at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she studies with Tania León. She is also Adjunct Lecturer in Music at City College.
www.KarenSiegel.com
Martha Sullivan's music has been praised as "vibrant" and "a singer's favorite". She has been commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers, the Gregg Smith Singers, the Esoterics (Seattle, WA), and numerous others, in cities as far-flung as Tokyo, Reno, Dallas, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, and Zurich ... She has received several Meet the Composer grants for her work with Gregg Smith and recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts for her work with the Esoterics. She was a medalist in the Sorel Medallion competition in 2009, in which Voices of Ascension premiered her music at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, and she won the Dale Warland Singers' Choral Ventures competition in its final year (2003).
She has never studied composition formally, so she is currently trying to work up the chutzpah to apply to grad school as a composer.
She has, however, studied voice with such notable divas as Phyllis Curtin and Lili Chookasian, at Boston University and Yale. She has sung and recorded premieres by such innovators as Toby Twining and John Zorn, so she's been heard on WNYC's "New Sounds" a number of times; she has also appeared on New York City Opera's VOX program of new operas twice, in Gordon Beeferman's "The Rat Land". She has sung with numerous ensembles in New York and elsewhere, under conductors such as Sarah Caldwell, Robert Shaw, and James Levine. Singing with C4, however, is unique, in that its members' interests and experience are at least as eclectic as her own.