RED HEN PRESS: POETRY THROUGH VOICE SUN / DEC 10 / 4:00 PM / THE EDYE Kate Gale, Managing Editor, Red Hen Press Mark E. Cull, Publisher, Red Hen Press Hila Plitmann, vocalist Eric Whitacre, composer Dana Gioia, poet/writer Douglas Manuel, poet/writer Elise Paschen, poet/writer Mark Abel, composer Julia Adolphe, composer Philip White, composer From left to right: Elise Paschen, Dana Gioia, Doug Manuel, Eric Whitacre and Hila Plitmann Tonight’s program will be announced from the stage. There will be one 15-minute intermission. 4 DEC 2017 BIOS Music, Eric was recently appointed Artist in Residence with the Los Angeles Master HILA PLITMANN, vocalist, is a GRAMMY® Chorale having completed a five-year Award-winning soprano and a glittering term as Composer in Residence at Sidney jewel on the international music scene, Sussex College, Cambridge University, UK. known worldwide for her astonishing A sought after guest conductor, musicianship, light and beautiful voice Eric has conducted choral and and the ability to perform challenging instrumental concerts around the globe, new works. She regularly premieres including sold-out concerts with the works by today’s leading composers while London Symphony Orchestra, Royal maintaining a vibrant and extraordinarily Philharmonic Orchestra and the Minnesota diverse professional life in film music, Orchestra. In addition to several musical theatre and songwriting. collaborations with legendary Hollywood In constant demand as a singer of new composer Hans Zimmer, he has worked and contemporary music, Hila has been with British pop icons Laura Mvula, involved in a great many world premieres, Imogen Heap and Annie Lennox. including: Paul Revere’s Ride with the Atlanta Symphony, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s DANA GIOIA, poet/writer, is an Wing on Wing with the Los Angeles internationally acclaimed and award- Philharmonic under the baton of the winning poet. Former Chairman of the composer; Mr. Tambourine Man with National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia is the Minnesota Orchestra; Two Awakenings a native Californian of Italian and Mexican and a Double Lullaby, a song cycle descent. He received a B.A. and M.B.A. written for her by Pulitzer Prize winner from Stanford University and an M.A. in Aaron Jay Kernis and many, many more. Comparative Literature from Harvard Born and raised in Jerusalem, Hila University. Gioia currently serves as the received both her Bachelor’s and Master’s Poet Laureate of California. Gioia has of Music degrees, with high honors, from published five full-length collections the Juilliard School of Music, and has been of poetry, most recently 99 Poems: awarded the coveted Sony ES Prize for New & Selected. His poetry collection, her outstanding contribution to the vocal Interrogations at Noon, won the 2002 arts. She currently lives in London with American Book Award. An influential critic her husband, composer Eric Whitacre, as well, Gioia’s 1991 volume Can Poetry and their son. Matter?, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, ERIC WHITACRE, composer, is a is credited with helping to revive the role GRAMMY® Award-winning composer and of poetry in American public culture. In conductor and one of the most popular 2014 he won the Aiken-Taylor Award for musicians of our time. His concert music lifetime achievement in American poetry. has been performed throughout the world by millions of amateur and professional DOUGLAS MANUEL, poet/writer, was musicians alike, while his ground-breaking born in Anderson, Indiana. He received a Virtual Choirs have united singers from B.A. in Creative Writing from Arizona State over 110 different countries. A graduate University and an M.F.A. from of the prestigious Juilliard School of Butler University, where he was the DEC 2017 VISIT THEBROADSTAGE.ORG 5 Managing Editor of Booth: A Journal. Baby Boomer who was entranced by He is currently a Middleton and Dornslife classical music and modern jazz at a young Fellow at the University of Southern age. Deeply affected by the tumult of California, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. the 1960s, Abel dropped out of college in Literature and Creative Writing. at 20. He spent a dozen years on the He was a recipient of the Chris McCarthy treadmill of New York City’s rock-and-roll Scholarship for the Napa Valley Writers’ scene before rediscovering classical and Conference and has been the Poetry changing his musical direction during a Editor for Gold Line Press as well as was long period of working as a journalist in one of the Managing Editors of Ricochet San Francisco. A maverick figure, Abel Editions. His poems have appeared or are has over time developed an unusual, forthcoming in Rhino, North American sturdily constructed hybrid of classical, Review, The Chattahoochee Review, rock and jazz, constantly working toward New Orleans Review, Crab Creek Review, new and more refined expressions of that Many Mountains Moving and elsewhere. synthesis. His debut poetry collection, Testify (Red The Palm Trees Are Restless is a Hen Press, 2017) is now available for collaboration with Los Angeles poet Kate purchase. Gale, known for her vivid and sometimes ELISE PASCHEN, poet/writer, is the startling imagery. The cycle, marked by author of The Nightlife, Bestiary, a strong sense of line and skillful use of Infidelities (winner of the Nicholas Roerich tension and release, straddles the divide Poetry Prize) and Houses: Coasts. As an between lush and edgy. undergraduate at Harvard, she received Gramophone wrote of Hila Plitmann’s the Garrison Medal for poetry. recording for Delos: “Plitmann manages She holds M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees every leap and switch of emotional gears from Oxford University. Her poems have with fearless commitment.” Opera News been published in and The New Yorker called Palm Trees “an empathetic musical , among other magazines, and in Poetry illumination of Gale’s personal, expressive numerous anthologies. She is the editor of poetry.” The New York Times best-selling anthology, Poetry Speaks to Children, and co-editor Those Who Loved Medusa, receiving its of Poetry Speaks and Poetry in Motion, premiere tonight, is also a Gale setting. among other anthologies. She is a member Her stark and powerful recasting of of the Osage Nation. Former Executive the Medusa story, closely matched by Director of the Poetry Society of America, Abel’s multi-hued palette of musical she is a co-founder of Poetry in Motion, textures, seems to resonate uncannily a nationwide program which places poetry with the spate of contemporary news posters in subway cars and buses. Paschen stories exposing the persistence of sexual teaches in the M.F.A. Writing Program at harassment. The piece’s journey also the School of the Art Institute and lives in dovetails with this Abel credo: “I’m trying Chicago with her husband and their two to write interesting music, but it must children. express emotion. Without that, it doesn’t mean much to me.” The personal and artistic trek of MARK ABEL (b. 1948) is that of a restless 6 DEC 2017 JULIA ADOLPHE’S music has been PHILIP WHITE composes music for described as “alive with invention” film, television, interactive media and (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), “colorful, the concert stage. He most recently mercurial, deftly orchestrated” (Anthony composed the score to Tyler Perry’s Boo Tommasini, The New York Times) displaying 2! A Madea Halloween for Lionsgate. His “a remarkable gift for sustaining a other major film credits include additional compelling musical narrative” (Thomas music for Smurfs: The Lost Village, May, Musical America). Adolphe’s works Baywatch, The War With Grandpa, Kevin are performed across the U.S. and abroad Hart: What Now?, Identity Thief, HOP, by renowned orchestras and ensembles Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, such as the New York Philharmonic, Disaster Movie, the French thriller La Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, North Horde and the Smurfs holiday specials A Carolina Symphony, James Conlon and the Christmas Carol and The Legend of Smurfy Cincinnati May Festival Chorus, soprano Hollow. He also produced the scores Hila Plitmann, pianist Gloria Cheng and to Ride Along, Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, among Marmaduke, Adam and Thanks for Sharing. others. Current commissions include Philip’s major television credits include an orchestral work for the Los Angeles additional music for Lost in Space (Netflix), Philharmonic’s centennial season, choral Ray Donovan (Showtime), Agent Carter works for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (ABC), Supernatural (CW), Revolution and Peninsula Women’s Chorus and a (NBC), Bates Motel (AMC) and Dallas (TNT), comic opera entitled , A Barrel of Laughs as well as music for the video games , based on the novel by A Vale of Tears Space Miner Wars (Venan), James Bond: Jules Feiffer with a libretto by Stephanie Quantum of Solace (Activision), Starhawk Fleischmann. Adolphe’s 2017 orchestral (Sony) and The SIMS 3: Pets Expansion work, , premiered by the White Stone Pack (EA). He also produced the scores New York Philharmonic, follows on the to The Simpsons Game, The Godfather 2, heels of the New York Philharmonic’s Red Alert 3, SimsAnimals: Africa (EA) and 2016 premiere of , Unearth, Release Warkhawk (Sony). Adolphe’s viola concerto composed for Cynthia Phelps and Dark Sand, Sifting Born and raised in Madrid, Spain, Philip Light, featured during the 2014 New began studying music by way of classical York Philharmonic Biennial. Adolphe has and Flamenco guitar. He graduated with received numerous awards including a dual degrees in Drama and Composition 2017 ASCAP Young Composer Award, 2016 from Tufts University and the New England Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, Conservatory of Music, and later received a 2016 OPERA America Discovery Grant his graduate degree from the USC and a 2015 Charles Ives Scholarship from Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television the Academy of Arts and Letters.