Contributing Directors
Ann Callaway’s music ranges from a sumptuously scored tone poem for soprano and orchestra inspired by the structure of crystals to an intimate setting of poems by Rilke for bass and chamber ensemble. Her works have been premiered by the Seattle and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras, the New York New Music Ensemble, and organist Thomas Murray, among many others. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Leighton Artist Colony in Banff. Her music is published by Subito Music Corp. Her chamber opera Vladimir in Butterfly Country will be given its staged premiere Nov. 16, 2012 at Old First Church, San Francisco.
Peter Josheff, composer and clarinetist, is a founding member of Sonic Harvest and Earplay. Also a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Empyrean Ensemble, Eco Ensemble, and Paul Dresher Ensemble, he has performed as clarinetist with Melody of China and sfSound and on many concert series and festivals here and abroad. His compositions have been performed by Earplay, Empyrean Ensemble, Bernal Hill Players, Laurel Ensemble, San Francisco Cabaret Opera and other groups. He is currently planning a new work commissioned by Earplay. Peter has worked with young composers privately and through the American Composers Forum’s Composer in the Schools Program. His workshop “Clarinet for Composers” has been presented in San Francisco by the American Composers Forum and at the U.C. Davis Clarinet Festival.
Writer Jaime Robles (on leave) is currently working on a series of poems based on the Hoxne and Staffordshire hoards that have been uncovered in the U.K. in the last few decades. Her book of poetry Anime, Animus, Anima was published by Shearsman Books in 2010. Her poems and reviews have been published in numerous magazines, among them Agenda, Conjunctions, Jacket, New American Writing, Shadowtrain and Volt! She produces many of her texts as artist books, and her book works are in several special collections, including the Bancroft Library at U.C., the Beinecke Library at Yale University, and the Oulipo Archive in Paris. A native of the Bay Area, she now lives part time in Exeter, England.
Composer Allen Shearer has been honored with the Aaron Copland Award, the Rome Prize Fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship, residencies at the MacDowell Colony, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, including one for the creation of his first opera The Goddess, based on Satyajit Ray’s screenplay Devi. Most recently his Three Lyrics won the Sylvia Goldstein Award, which promotes works written at the Copland House. His chamber opera The Dawn Makers, on a libretto by Claudia Stevens, was premiered at Herbst Theatre, San Francisco by Composers, Inc., of which he is one of the artistic directors. Also a baritone, he performs vocal music old and new, including his own.
Pianist, performance artist and playwright Claudia Stevens has created some fifteen solo plays for her own performance as musician/monologue artist, which she has performed at the national level for over twenty years. She is the recipient of numerous grants and artist residencies. The newest phase of her career is as the librettist of four chamber operas in collaboration with Allen Shearer. Her performance engagements in 2012 include the University of Arizona, Penn State at Harrisburg, U.C., San Diego, Duke University, Oklahoma State, Sonoma State, and several other California venues.