Joshua Fishbein, composer of the 2010 Youth Inspiring Youth winning composition Unseen Secrets, recently added to his long list of awards the 2011 – 2012 Guild of Temple Musicians Young Composers Award.  His composition, Two Prayers for the Sabbath Evening: V’shamru and Oseh Shalom, is scored for cantor, four-part chorus, and piano. He’s also the recipient of the 2011 American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Raymond W. Brock Memorial Student Composition Contest. Oseh Shalom was premiered at the Western ACDA conference in Reno on March 1, 2012. The entire work will premiere this June at the American Conference of Cantors/Guild of Temple Musicians Annual Convention in Portland, Oregon.

Josh pulls inspiration from a variety of musical traditions, including Jewish music, American spirituals, folk music, and Renaissance motets. “This helps to create new repertoire that builds upon preexisting musical lineages.” He also likes to “combine seemingly different musical traditions into a single work.” Martin Benvenuto, Artistic Director of WomenSing, says of Josh, “I have enjoyed following the development of Josh’s style in his choral works. It is well-rooted in his choral experience, so he honors vocal counterpoint as well as provides an interesting palette of harmonic colors that interprets text in subtle ways.”

Josh began college at Carnegie Mellon University as a psychology major with a minor in music composition, intending to become a music psychologist. The required music classes for the music minor left him hungry for more, so in the end he graduated with degrees in both subjects. Along the way he decided he preferred writing music and hearing it performed to doing research and writing journal articles, a lucky decision for those of us privileged to sing his music.

Also a singer, Josh was employed while still a high school student to sing with Cantor Avi Albrecht in the Men’s Choir at Beth Tfiloh Congregation of Baltimore. He has since sung baritone with professional choral ensembles Volti, the Artists’ Vocal Ensemble, and the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys. Asked whether singing or composing is his first love, he says, “Definitely singing! But composing is a close second.” A love of music starts early, but Josh says “the music from my childhood is a bit fuzzy in my memory. I remember singing in my synagogue choir and I remember hearing my father improvise on the piano while I fell asleep.” His father didn’t get far in piano lessons, so he usually only played the white notes.

Josh earned his Master of Music Degree in Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, he now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Marina, while working on a PhD in Music Composition at UCLA. He’s also setting excerpts from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience for the Hollywood Master Chorale as part of their “Voices of LA” project, a new two-year commissioning program funded by the LA County Arts Commission. In his rare spare time, Josh enjoys movies, walks near the water in Santa Monica, and serving as sous-chef to Marina, whose specialty is Russian food.

WomenSing is proud to include Unseen Secrets on its next CD, Songs of the New and Old World, to be released in the late fall of 2012.

2011-2012 GUILD OF TEMPLE MUSICIANS YOUNG COMPOSER’S AWARD

http://www.joshuafishbeinmusic.com/

Oakland’s historic landmark, the Chapel of the Chimes, is the site for “A Sparkling Jewel,” an artistic collaboration to benefit the East-Bay award-winning choir, WomenSing, and its programs. The event, which takes place at 4:00 p.m. on St Patrick’s Day — Saturday, March 17 — will begin with a chamber music concert inside the acoustically brilliant Chapel of the Chimes, located at 4499 Piedmont Avenue. Following the concert, guests will be treated to a tour of the Chapel and grounds, which were designed by Julia Morgan in 1926. Steven Kubitschek, a member of the board for WomenSing and local architect, will also lead a discussion about Julia Morgan and her influence upon architecture. Guests will later relax at a cocktail reception, with a nod to St. Patrick’s Day, and a silent auction.

The concert will feature WomenSing, performing A Precious Pearl, written by Lauren McLaren as part of WomenSing’s Youth Inspiring Youth project, and Eric Whitacre’s Five Hebrew Love Songs, a set of troubadour songs for piano, violin and women’s chorus written in honor of his wife and poet Hila Plitmann. Artistic Director, Martín Benvenuto, will sing two German lieder with different outlooks on love, one by Franz Schubert and the other by Hugo Wolf. Pianist Paul Caccamo will be joined by violinist Andrew Davies in performing the first movement from Johannes Brahms’ violin and piano Sonata No. 1 in G Major. Finally, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, WomenSing will offer its rendition of the traditional Irish tune, Danny Boy.

So join WomenSing for “A Sparkling Jewel.” Ticket donation is $75 and can be obtained from the WomenSing website. For further information visit the Sparkling Jewel event page on our website, email info@womensing.org or call 925-974-9169.

Rehearsals are underway for the 2012 Youth Inspiring Youth (YIY) compositions from this year’s competition winners, Dale Trumbore and Anastasia Pahos. In a twist on the usual YIY program, both composers have created choral pieces using the same poem, Reflections, by River of Words award winner, Lindsay Ryder. Well-known American composer Libby Larsen along with Australian composer Sandra Milliken have mentored the young women during the creative process of the last few months. As a women’s chorus, WomenSing can’t help but enjoy this remarkable ensemble of “girl power.”

Reflections

Sometimes,
when the mountains
reflect on rivers,
you can find out things
you never knew before.
There are flowers up there,
rocks like clouds,
a little snow becomes a creek
and grows into a river.

— Lindsay Ryder

The foundation of this year’s YIY project is Lindsay Ryder’s poem Reflections, which expresses her love for nature. According to Ryder, “Some people like the ocean, some like the desert, I am in love with the mountains — they take my breath away. I find peace and connect with God the strongest when I am surrounded by nature.” Considering that Ryder grew up in Bend, Oregon, it’s no surprise that she finds spiritual peace and inspiration in the mountains (see the photo above): ”I think it is a beautiful thing how the world takes care of itself — the snow on the mountains becomes the rivers and streams that support our lives.”

In light of Ryder’s comments, it’s perhaps no coincidence that Dale Trumbore’s SSA composition, Reflections, places a clear emphasis on the last two lines of the poem: “A little snow becomes a creek and grows into a river.” During the creative process, Trumbore and WomenSing’s director Martín Benvento had an interesting email exchange regarding the music at the end of the piece. Benvenuto writes: “[I] wonder if being anticlimactic here would work dramatically, i.e. resist the more obvious “grows into a river” image, and let it all gradually trickle down, reflecting more the organic flow of things that the poem describes.“ In response Trumbore writes: “I’d been debating what to do with the ending…; I very much like your suggestion … which will likely serve the piece better than a big, climactic chord at that moment.” In the end, Trumbore followed her instinct and concluded the piece with a beautiful, but understated piano solo.

While Anastasia Pahos uses the text of the poem Reflections throughout her piece, she renamed the composition Isle of the Bless’d. This name distinguishes her composition from Trumbore’s and piques our curiosity about the decision. When asked about the new title, Pahos mentions “heavenly souls/celestial beings which dwell in (or haunt) a beautiful valley,” perhaps encouraging a more mythological interpretation of the poem. Written for four treble voices (SSAA) as well as two soloists, the piece often divides further into six voices for the chorus, resulting in a texture that Benvenuto described to singers as “highly imaginative” and “tricky, but cool.” Pahos herself describes the piece as a “cross between Gregorian chant, requiem, cultural dance and film.” During the first rehearsals singers also noticed an interesting technique Pahos uses with the lyrics, giving one voice the first syllable of a word to sing and a different voice the second syllable.

Throughout the rehearsal process, the singers are sure to develop a better understanding and appreciation for the different musical and artistic choices Trumbore and Pahos made. Will there be a favorite? Will one piece more clearly reflect the original inspiration of the poem? Will this choice be completely dependent on the musical taste of the listener or the singer? Decide for yourself by attending the composer workshop on April 28 with Libby Larsen and Sandra Milliken and the spring concert, Full Circle, on June 3 and 6 where WomenSing will present the world premieres of both pieces.