Getting Their Story Right: What Composers Want You to Know About Interpreting Their Music
Clinic Synopsis:
The purpose of the clinic is to empower ensemble directors to interpret courageously. The session will begin with an overview of score study and interpretation strategies. Next, Robert Ambrose will provide practical interpretation tips, and Julie Giroux, Omar Thomas, and Frank Ticheli will offer specific suggestions for interpreting their music that can be universally applied to the interpretation of all scores. The session will conclude with the composers answering interpretation questions.
Robert Ambrose
- Biographical Information
Conductor Robert J. Ambrose enjoys a highly successful and diverse career as a dynamic and engaging musician. His musical interests cross many genres and can be seen in the wide range of professional activities he pursues. Dr. Ambrose studied formally at Boston College, Boston University and Northwestern University, where he received the Doctor of Music degree in conducting. Dr. Ambrose currently serves as Director of Bands and Professor of Music at Georgia State University a research institution of over 53,000 students located in Atlanta.
Dr. Ambrose is in constant demand as a guest conductor and has performed on four continents. Recent engagements include performances in Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan as well as across the United States. Ambrose is Founder and Music Director of the National Chamber Winds, the Atlanta Chamber Winds and Ensemble ATL,.
Dr. Ambrose has strong ties to the Finnish music community. He is frequently engaged in that country as a guest conductor, teacher, master clinician, and lecturer. Ambrose is a prolific arranger with nearly two dozen publications to his credit. His transcriptions and editions are published by Presser Music, Murphy Music Press, C. Alan Publications, Fennica Gehrman (Finland), and Edition Tilli (Finland). His transcriptions appear on several state lists and have been performed around the world.
Frank Ticheli - Biographical Information
Frank Ticheli is an American composer and conductor. Ticheli joined the faculty of the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music in 1991, where he served as Professor of Composition until 2023. From 1991 to 1998, Ticheli was Composer in Residence of the Pacific Symphony, and he still enjoys a close working relationship with that orchestra and their music director, Carl St. Clair.
Ticheli is well known for his works for concert band, many of which have become standards in the repertoire. In addition to composing, he has appeared as guest conductor of his music at Carnegie Hall, at many American universities and music festivals, and in cities throughout the world, including Schladming, Austria, at the Mid-Europe Music Festival; London and Manchester, England, with the Meadows Wind Ensemble; Singapore, with the Singapore Armed Forces Central Band; and numerous cities in Japan, with the Bands of America National Honor Band.
Frank Ticheli is the winner of the 2006 NBA/William D. Revelli Memorial Band Composition Contest for his Symphony No. 2. Other awards for his music include the Charles Ives and the Goddard Lieberson Awards, both from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize, and First Prize awards in the Texas Sesquicentennial Orchestral Composition Competition, Britten-on-the-Bay Choral Composition Contest, and Virginia CBDNA Symposium for New Band Music.
Julie Giroux - Biographical Information
Julie Ann Giroux was born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts in 1961. She graduated from Louisiana State University, in 1984. She started playing piano at 3 years of age and began composing at the age of 8. Her first published work for concert band was composed at the age of 13.
Julie began composing commercially in 1984. With over 100 film, television and video game credits, Giroux collaborated with dozens of film composers, producers, and celebrities including Samuel Goldwyn, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Celine Dion, Paula Abdul, Michael Jackson, Harry Connick Jr. and many others. Projects she has worked on have been nominated for Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Golden Globe awards. She has won individual Emmy Awards in the field of “Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music Direction”. She was the first woman and the youngest person to ever win that award. She has won it three times.
Giroux has also published a large number of classical works with emphasis on original compositions for Wind Band. Her music has been recorded and reviewed internationally receiving top reviews and her music has been performed at major music festivals the world over.
Giroux has been a true force in a male dominated field and has accrued many previously male only awards. She is a member of ASCAP, The Film Musicians Fund, Kappa Kappa PSI, Tau Beta Sigma and a member of the American Bandmasters Association. She is a recipient of the Distinguished Service to Music Medal Award, Emmy Awards and was the first female composer inducted into the American Bandmasters Association in 2009.
Omar Thomas - Biographical Information
Hailed by Herbie Hancock as showing “great promise as a new voice in the further development of jazz in the future,” educator, arranger, and award-winning composer Omar Thomas has created music extensively in the contemporary jazz ensemble idiom. Currently on the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, Omar previously taught at the Berklee College of Music and The Peabody Institute. He has thrice been awarded the Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from Harvard University, where he served as a Teaching Fellow. He was awarded the Boston Music Award’s “Jazz Artist of the Year” in 2012. In 2019 was the chosen recipient of the prestigious National Bandmasters Association/Revelli Award, honoring excellence in wind band composition.
Omar’s music has been performed in concert halls and on stages across the country and internationally. His work is featured on Dianne Reeves’s Grammy Award-winning album, “Beautiful Life.” His big band, the 18-piece Omar Thomas Large Ensemble was formed in 2008. The group’s first album, “I Am,” debuted at #1 on the iTunes Jazz Charts and peaked at #13 on the Billboard Traditional Jazz Albums Chart. Their second release, “We Will Know: An LGBT Civil Rights Piece In Four Movements,” has been hailed by Grammy Award-winning drummer, composer, and producer Terri Lyne Carrington as being a “thought provoking, multi-layered masterpiece” which has “put him in the esteemed category of great artists.” Says Terri Lyne: “Omar Thomas will prove to be one of the more important composer/arrangers of his time.”
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