Barrie Cabena (b. 1933) has a rich musical background with nearly 500 compositions to his credit. In addition, he has written a sizable quantity of verse, some of which he has included in his compositions. His organ and choral works have been broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for more than 37 years. Recent commissions include an unaccompanied violin sonata by Jeunesse Musicale du Canada, which was performed by Jonathan Crow of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and broadcast on Radio Canada, and an organ work commissioned by William O’Meara, which was premiered at the Turin Organ Festival in Italy. His Requiem for the Victims of Terrorism, composed in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, was recently recorded for broadcast on CBC radio.

Dr. Cabena has been a church organist in London, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Guelph (Ontario, Canada), where his choirs gained a reputation for quality and skill. He has worked as an accompanist with Elmer Iseler, Jan Overduin, Noel Edison, and Howard Dyck. After 27 years on the Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University, Barrie took early retirement in 1996, but as Professor Emeritus of Wilfrid Laurier, he continues to maintain a keen interest in music education.

Dr. Cabena was born in Melbourne, Australia, where he studied with A.E.H. Nickson. After further studies in England at the Royal College of Music with John Dykes Bower, Herbert Howells and Eric Harrison, he made North America his home and the inspiration for his creative life. He now lives in Guelph with his wife Sheri and son Daniel. He is artistic adviser to the Guelph Spring Festival, which is celebrating its 38th season.

Stephen Chatman

Stephen Chatman, Professor and Head, Composition Division at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver since 1976, is the first Canadian ever short-listed in the BBC Masterprize international competition (2001, Tara’s Dream for orchestra).

Chatman, winner of the 2005 Western Canadian Music Awards "Outstanding Classical Composition" - Proud Music of the Storm, is recognized internationally as a composer of choral, orchestral, and piano music. His approximately sixty choral works, widely performed and published by Highgate Press (ECS Publishing, Boston), Boosey & Hawkes (New York) earthsongs (Corvallis, Oregon), Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario), and Gordon V. Thompson (Toronto), have sold more than 250,000 printed copies. Recorded works include two choral collections performed by the Vancouver Chamber Choir, Due North (Centrediscs) and Due West (CBC Records), a chamber music collection, Vancouver Visions (Centrediscs), an orchestral collection, Proud Music of the Storm (Centrediscs), and instrumental recordings on C.R.I., CBC Records, Globe, Crystal, Skylark, Arsis, and Frederick Harris Music Celebration Series. His orchestral works, commissioned by the Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton, Windsor, and Madison symphonies and the CBC Radio Orchestra, and published by Highgate Press (ECS Publishing) and Theodore Presser (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania), have been performed and recorded by the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Sydney, Seoul, San Francisco, St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas, New World, Quebec, Calgary, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, P.E.I., and New Foundland symphonies.

Numerous volumes of Chatman’s elementary through intermediate level piano music are published in the Stephen Chatman Library series, Frederick Harris Music Co., Mississauga, Ontario, and many piano pieces are included in the syllabus of Canada’s Royal Conservatory of Music.

In 1988-89, Chatman became British Columbia’s first ‘composer in residence’, composing several works for Vancouver’s Music in the Morning concert series, June Goldsmith, director. He was ‘composer in residence’ with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada in 2004. In 2003, Chatman was one of three Canadian composers to visit Beijing and Shanghai in the “First Exchange of Canadian and Chinese Composers”, sponsored by the Chinese Musicians’ Association (CMA) and the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Vancouver. In 2004, he was the first composer ever awarded the Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance and Development in the Visual and Creative Arts from the University of British Columbia.

Chatman has received many commissions through the Canada Council, the C.B.C., the B.C. Arts Council, and the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, including works for Vancouver New Music, Montreal’s S.M.C.Q., Winnipeg’s Music Inter Alia, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Michigan State University’s Verdehr Trio; Purcell (Vancouver), Accordes (Toronto) and Pro Arte (University of Wisconsin) string quartets; pianists Marc-Andre Hamelin and Jane Coop, contralto Maureen Forrester, violinists Andrew Dawes and Gwen Thompson, cellist Eric Wilson, clarinettists Gene Ramsbottom, Henri Bok, and Philip Rehfeldt, saxophonists Julia Nolan, David Branter, and Donald Sinta, the S.C. Eckhardt-Gramatte Competition, Vancouver’s Chamber Choir, Bach Choir, Cantata Singers, Phoenix Chamber Choir, and Chor Leoni, Calgary’s Kantorei, Toronto’s Elmer Iseler Singers, Oriana Singers, Maryland State Boychoir, and Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus; Association of Canadian Choral Conductors, Nova Scotia Music Educators’ Assoc., University of Michigan Chamber Choir, International Choral Festival Kathaumixw, and the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts.
The only North American to have won three consecutive BMI Awards to Student Composers, Inc. (New York) prizes (1974,’75,’76), Chatman has also received a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a M.B. Rockefeller Fund Grant, and a U.S. Fulbright Grant for study with Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne.

Crimson Dream (1983) for orchestra, commissioned by the Edmonton Symphony, was chosen from more than 100 submitted works, for a performance by the Detroit Symphony during the American Symphony Orchestra League’s 1986 annual conference. It has since been performed by dozens of orchestras. Tara’s Dream (1999) for orchestra, commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony, was one of 11 works short-listed from 1160 orchestral entries from 63 countries in the 2001 BBC Masterprize international competition. Chatman’s major work, Proud Music of the Storm (2001-02), for large chorus and orchestra, received a standing ovation after its 2002 world premiere performance by the Vancouver Bach Choir and the CBC Radio Orchestra.

Born in 1950 in Faribault, Minnesota, Chatman studied with Joseph Wood and Walter Aschaffenburg at the Oberlin Conservatory and with Ross Lee Finney, Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, and Eugene Kurtz at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He completed his D.M.A. degree in 1977.
Stylistically, many of Chatman’s pre-1982 works are complex, virtuosic, and atonal. His early chamber works, in particular, are highly concerned with colour, contrast, and tightly controlled motivic development. By the late 70’s, Chatman’s music suggests a more complete musical expression, encompassing a broad range of musical traditions, eclecticism, and post-modern aesthetics: collage techniques, simplified musical language, tonality, modality, minimalism, traditional forms, popular music influences, counterpoint of styles, veiled references, and theatrical elements.

Chatman has remarked, “It’s easy to enjoy all types of music-- I don’t want to be pigeon-holed. A composer must be true to himself.” (Stephen Chatman brochure, PROCAN, Toronto, May, 1989).
In 1982, Chatman began composing choral music influenced by various traditional musical styles. You Have Ravished My Heart for SATB (1982), a transitional work and the first of many “accessible” or “popular” choral works, signals Chatman’s gradual departure from modernism and a path toward post-modernism, spirituality, and a wider audience. These post-1982 secular and sacred choral works, in addition to many educational piano pieces, embrace a predominantly pan-diatonic tonal language, lyricism, melody, folk song, and more traditional musical gestures, forms, and compositional techniques.

As Professor of composition, orchestration, co-director of University of British Columbia Contemporary Players new music ensemble, and Head of the UBC School of Music composition division, Chatman has taught a generation of prominent Canadian composers. Among his former composition students are Canadian Music Centre Associate Composers, Mark Armanini, Howard Bashaw, Rolf Boon, Glenn Buhr, John Burge, Paul Cram, Neil Currie, Arne Eigenfeldt, John Estacio, Peter Hatch, Melissa Hui, John Korsrud, Jacqueline Leggatt, Brent Lee, Grace Lee, Ramona Luengen, Michael Maguire, Mark Mitchell, Jocelyn Morlock, Larry Nickel, John Oliver, Bob Pritchard, Laurie Radford, Douglas Schmidt, Paul Steenhuisen, Brian Tate, Peter Togni, Neil Weisensel, and Rui-shi Zhuo. Chatman, who has served on many Canada Council juries and national student composition contest juries, was Jury Chairman of the 2001 CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers.
Stephen Chatman is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, a past President of Vancouver New Music; and a member of the Canadian League of Composers, SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Inc., and the American Music Center.

For additional information, see the Stephen Chatman entry in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition, London, 2000; Stephen Chatman archival fonds, National Library of Canada, Manuscript Section, Music Division www.nlc-bnc.ca ; Canadian Music Centre ; www.musiccentre.ca ; The University of British Columbia School of Music www.music.ubc.ca ; The Frederick Harris Music Co., Limited www.frederickharrismusic.com ; ECS Publishing; CBC Records http://cbcrecords.ca ; Centrediscs www.centredisc.ca ; Vancouver Chamber Choir www.vancouverchamberchoir.com ; www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com ; and www.socan.ca .
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Grant Cochran (b. 1962) began his professional musical career at the age of eight as a soprano (and subsequently, a tenor) in the choir of Grace and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, one of Baltimore’s premier men and boys’ choirs. He later gained his first conducting and composing experience as director of his high school’s select singing-group, the Traveling Men of Gilman School.

After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in music and history from Trinity College (CT), Dr. Cochran attended the Yale University School of Music, where, as the valedictorian of his Master of Music class, he went on to earn the Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in choral conducting. While at Yale, Dr. Cochran studied conducting under Marguerite Brooks and Fenno Heath and has received further training from Robert Shaw, Sir David Willcocks, Helmuth Rilling, Stephen Cleobury, Fiora Contino, and Gustav Meier. His composition and arranging teachers were Maury Yeston, Gerald Moshell, Fenno Heath and Willie Ruff.

Dr. Cochran is currently the conductor of the 160-voice Anchorage Concert Chorus and its 40-voice ensemble, the Anchorage Concert Chorus Chorale. During his tenure, the Concert Chorus has collaborated with all of the major arts organization in Anchorage as well as with various orchestras from the “lower 48” and abroad, such as the National Symphony (USA), the Academy of Oxford Orchestra (England), the Moscow and St. Petersburg State Philharmonic Orchestras (Russia) and the Karlovy Vary Symphonic Orchestra (Czech Republic). The Concert Chorus also has had the privilege of sharing the stage with a range of acclaimed artists that have included Jerome Hines, Judy Collins, Ethos Percussion Group and the Chieftains.

Dr. Cochran has served on the faculties of the University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University as Director of Choral Activities. His teaching at the secondary level has encompassed public and private school positions in Alaska and Connecticut, most notably with Grace Christian School (AK) and The Canterbury School (CT). Throughout his varied career, he has enjoyed work as conductor, arranger, music director, accompanist, adjudicator, singer and actor for numerous opera, theatre, choral and church organizations throughout the United States.

An Alaskan since 1992, Dr. Cochran makes his home in Anchorage with his wife, Lorna, and their four children.

David Conte

David Conte, Professor of Composition since 1985 and Conductor of the Conservatory Chorus, has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the Dayton, Oakland and Stockton Symphonies, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera, and the Gerbode Foundation. Conte has composed songs for Barbara Bonney, Thomas Hampson, and Phyllis Brun-Julson. The composer of three operas: The Dreamers, The Gift of the Magi, and Firebird Motel, Conte has published over 40 works with E. C. Schirmer, and his work is represented on numerous recordings.

A Fulbright Scholar in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, a Ralph Vaughan Williams Fellow, and an Aspen Music Festival Conducting Fellow, he earned a B.M. from Bowling Green with Wallace DePue and Ruth Inglefield, and an M.F.A. and D.M.A. from Cornell with Karel Husa, Robert Palmer, Steven Stucky, and Thomas Sokol. In 1982 Conte worked with Aaron Copland preparing a study of the composer's sketches. He has taught at Cornell, Keuka College, Colgate University, and Interlochen. In collaboration with film composer Todd Boekelheide he wrote the score for the documentary Ballet Russes, shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.
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Robert Convery expresses his music in a distinctly personal voice of lyricism which is transparent, clean and unadorned in its rhythmic, harmonic and textural fields. He has composed works of every description including twenty-two cantatas, five operas, ten song cycles, motets, chamber works and orchestral works. He has received commissioning grants from many sources including colleges and universities, The Rockefeller Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, National Endowment for the Arts, and Opera America. He travels regularly for composer residencies at colleges and universities throughout the country.

His studies were at Westminster Choir College, The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School where he received his doctorate. His principle teachers have been David Diamond, Richard Hundley, Vincent Persichetti and Ned Rorem. Born in Wichita, Kansas in 1954, he was raised in California and now resides in New York.