Connecticut Composition Project

Ken Steen

Ken Steen is a composer, sound artist and educator living in Glastonbury, CT. His music sits squarely on the frontier between the acoustic and electronic domains of musical expression; often combining traditional orchestra, chamber ensemble or soloist with electronic instruments or processed sound and noise. He has received numerous awards for composition including an ISCM Boston Composition Award, an American Symphony Orchestra League New Music Project with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin, grants from The Connecticut Commission on the Arts, The New England Foundation for the Arts, Meet the Composer, The Roberts Foundation, The American Composers Forum Continental Harmony Encore Project, The Margaret Fairbanks Jory Copying Assistance Program of the American Music Center as well as fellowships to The Millay Colony for the Arts, the Artists’ Enclave at I-Park and The MacDowell Colony.

In addition to composing concert music in many forms, Steen has composed a wide variety of works both acoustic and electronic for sound installation, dance, theater and web-distribution. His music and soundworks have been featured on concert and radio programs throughout the U.S.A., Canada, Italy, Belgium, Romania, Australia, Cuba and Japan among others. His work has recently been part of: the Sonic Residues 02 Festival, Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music: Spring in Havana, the Currents in Electro-acoustic Music Festival and the 60X60 International Project. Recent premiere performances and sound installations in such diverse locations as Xi'an, China, Fortaleza-Ceará, Brazil, Spring in Havana Festival, Havana, Cuba, Merkin Concert Hall in NYC and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Australia, confirm that his work is steadily attaining international recognition.

Steen's music can be found on the Capstone, Vienna Modern Masters, Auralit and CRI CD labels, as well as at www.kensteen.com, and is published by University of Arizona Publications, Harrock Hall Music as well as American Composers Edition.

Some of his soundworks can be found at www.noisefarm.org.

Steen is currently Associate Professor of Composition and Theory and director of Studio D at the Hartt School, University of Hartford.

Erik Nielsen

Erik Nielsen has been composing for 30 years and his catalog includes works for chorus, orchestra, wind ensemble, solo instruments, chamber music of many configurations and electronic music. His works have been performed in Canada, Europe and Australia as well as many locations in the United States and have been performed by ensembles including the Amabile, Emerson and Ying String Quartets; the National Symphony Orchestra; the Killington and Manchester Chamber Players; Bread and Puppet Theater; the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble; Vermont Symphony; Vermont Youth Orchestra and Village and Northern Harmony. He has won awards from ASCAP, the Vermont Arts Council, and in 1991 was chosen Vermont Composer of the Year by the Vermont Music Teachers Association. In 2004 he was awarded a Creation Grant by the Vermont Arts Council to compose a companion piece to Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat. The work, The Crane Maiden, will be toured by the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble during the 2006-07 season. In 2002 he received the National Symphony Orchestra's composition prize for Vermont. The resulting commissioned work, Mr. Nielsen's Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, was premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. on March 20, 2004. He has also recently received commissions from the Vermont All-State Music Festival, Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph, the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble and the Vermont Youth Orchestra. He was a 1994-95 recipient of a Vermont Council on the Arts Fellowship in music. In 1995 his piano quintet was performed at Carnegie Hall by the Manchester Chamber Players. In October, 2000, his opera, A FLEETING ANIMAL: An Opera from Judevine, a collaboration with poet/playwright David Budbill, was premiered to great acclaim in several locations in Vermont. In addition, Mr. Nielsen is the former Director of the Consortium of Vermont Composers, a position he held for three years. He is Composer-in Residence at Bloomfield, East Hartford, Simsbury and Wethersfield High Schools in Connecticut, BFA-St. Albans, Randolph and Spaulding high schools in Vermont, as well as composition mentor with the Vermont Midi Project and the Vermont Teen Voices Project. He also teaches music theory and composition with the Vermont Youth Orchestra. Mr. Nielsen lives in Brookfield, Vermont.