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Elizabeth R. Austin
InfoCompositionsDiscography
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(also under the name Scheidel-Austin)
Born in Baltimore in 1938, Elizabeth R. Austin (BMI) received her early musical training at The Peabody Conservatory. Grace N. Cushman (Junior Conservatory, Peabody) provided the thorough grounding in Musicianship, which marks Dr. Austin’s musical life. When Nadia Boulanger visited Goucher College (Towson, MD), she awarded the student composer a scholarship to study at the Conservatoire Americaine in Fontainebleau, France, after hearing Austin’s Drei Rilke Lieder.
Elizabeth R. Austin has taught composition and theory at various music institutions in Hartford, Connecticut. Her association with the Hartt School (University of Hartford), where she earned an M.M. while on the faculty, included the establishment of a faculty/student exchange with the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Heidelberg-Mannheim. While studying for her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut, Elizabeth Austin won First Prize in the Lipscomb Electronic Music Competition (Nashville) for her Klavier Double for piano and tape. As a result of this, her ongoing collaboration with pianist Jerome Reed, Nashville, has engendered many recordings and commissions.
Other awards have included a Connecticut Commission on the Arts grant, selection by GEDOK (Society of Women Artists in German-speaking countries) to represent the Mannheim-Ludwigshafen region in the national seventieth-year anniversary exhibition in Lübeck, and First Prize in the IAWM’s 1998 Miriam Gideon Competition (for Homage for Hildegard [von Bingen]. The Rockefeller Foundation awarded her a month-long residency at Bellagio, Italy in 2001.
Performed in major cities in Europe, Scandinavia, South Africa, as well as in The United States and The Caribbean, Elizabeth Austin’s music has been received with distinction and critical acclaim This music was the subject of an interview with Bruce Duffie, New Music Connoisseur, Spring, 2003. She has had her music featured on the ACA website, as well as its being broadcast worldwide. In particular, Germany’s Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, has promoted her music, with the Leipzig pianist Ulrich Urban, both over the air as well as in the Gewandhaus.
Dr. Austin and her husband, Prof. Gerhard Austin have promoted many transatlantic cultural exchanges. One such project involved an exchange of composers between Rheinsberg and Connecticut; similar exchanges took place between Weimar, Zepernick (Berlin) and Connecticut.
At present, Dr. Austin is organist/choir director at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Windham Center. She serves on the Alumni Board of The Walden School (for young composers), New Hampshire.
She is President of Connecticut Composers, Inc. and a member of The American Composers Alliance.
Published by Arsis Press and Tonger Musikverlag (Germany) and recorded on the Capstone and Leonarda labels, Elizabeth Austin is also represented on the 1994 Society of Composers CD and Journal (Vol. 20). Her scores are available through the American Composers Alliance and through her. In the IAWM Journal, Volume 7, 2001, her music is the subject of an interview/article. Her piano music is cited in the Internationales chronologisches Lexikon Klaviermusik (Hollfelder). Dr. Teresa Crane, U. Illinois, wrote a dissertation on her song cycles (2007), as Karianne Westfal-Larsen discussed her songs in her Master’s thesis (Norway, 2008). Scarecrow Press has released the book, WOMEN OF INFLUENCE IN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC: NINE AMERICAN COMPOSERS, edited by Michael K. Slayton, who wrote the chapter on Austin’s life and music.
The online journal SCOPE (Jan., 2011)has an article, "Composer-in-Waiting", also on Austin's music.
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Wilderness symphony
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Orchestra
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00:19:00
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Klavier double
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Keyboard
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00:10:35
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Gathering threads
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Solo instrument, non-keyboard
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1990
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00:00:00
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Birthday bouquet, A
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Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble
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1990
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00:09:15
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Sonnets from the Portuguese
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Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble
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1988
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00:00:00
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Nunc dimittis
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Chorus, with or without Solo Voices
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1983
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00:03:25
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Cantata beatitudines
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Chorus, with or without Solo Voices
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1982
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00:13:00
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Christmas, The Reason
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Chorus, with or without Solo Voices
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1981
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00:04:00
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Drei Rilke Lieder for middle voice & piano
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Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble
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1958
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00:09:00
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Christ being raised
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Chorus, with or without Solo Voices
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1958
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00:03:00
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Spectra: A Concert of Music for Orchestra by Connecticut Composers, Inc.
Capstone CPS-8779
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Release Year:2007
Performers:Moravian Philharmonic, Joel Suben, conductor
Notes:Symphony No. 2, "Lighthouse" (1993)
Duration: 22:20
..from Fanfare (July/August 2008): "..the CD showcases two composers of special merit, Carl and Austin..Austin's Symphony manages the remarkable feat of being strikingly original at the same time tha
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PurchaseLink:www.capstonerecords.org
WebSite:
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Composition feminine, Works for Guitar
Querdtand LC 03722
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Release Year:2004
Performers:Chris Bilobram, guitar, Reinhard Wolschina, piano
Notes:A Falcon Fantasy for guitar & piano (2004)
Duration: 5:50
1. The falcon
2. The feathers
3. Flying
..from IAWM Journal: .."beautifully and caarefully crafted and deftly performed..the result is enchanting..
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PurchaseLink:
WebSite:
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Spectra: A Concert of Music for Piano by Connecticut Composers, Inc.
Capstone CPS-8732
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Release Year:2004
Performers:Ulrich Urban, Margaret Mills, Genevieve Chinn, Angela Pistilli
Notes:An American Triptych (2001)
Duration: 8:35
1. An Urban Rog/Quodlibet
2. The Bellagio Blues
3. Hoedown
..from American Record Guide: .."Austin weaves the genres of blues, rags, and hoedowns into a pleasing polychordal, polytonal fabric..
Puzzle
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PurchaseLink:www.capstonerecords.org
WebSite:
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Spectra: A Concert of Music for Voices by Connecticut Composers, Inc.
Capstone CPS-8710
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Release Year:2002
Performers:The Kent Singers, Marguerite Mullee, director
Notes:The Master's Hands for SATB chorus & piano (1994) Duration: 4:02
This telling image of a field with slaves and the larger ‘field’ of human suffering comes from the poet laureate of Connecticut, Marilyn Nelson. The play on words, “the Master’s hands” was
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PurchaseLink:www.capstonerecords.org
WebSite:
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Songs By Women
Leonarda Records LE #352
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Release Year:1999
Performers:Susan Gonzalez, soprano, Marcia Eckert, piano
Notes:"A Birthday Bouquet" (1990)
Duration: 8:24
1. for your birthday
2. A Birthday
3. Remember
4. He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven
..from New Music Box, AMC: "..the collection ends with Elizabeth R. Austin's vibrant A Birthday Bouquet."
..from
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PurchaseLink:www.leonardarecords.com
WebSite:
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Time Marches On..More Modern American Songs
Capstone CPS 8646
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Release Year:1997
Performers:Gregory Wiest, tenor, Oresta Cybriwsky, piano
Notes:(see also "Songs By Women")
A Birthday Bouquet
The title song in this cycle is joyful, spontaneous, and rapturous. Different ostinato patterns link this with the second song. The clear, unambiguous melodic line, almost folklike in nature, contrast w
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PurchaseLink:www.capstonerecords.org
WebSite:
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"..and the eagle flies..." new American orchestral music
Capstone CPS-8634
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Release Year:1997
Performers:Cracow Radio & TV Symphony Orchestra, Symon Kawalla, conductor, Melinda Liebermann & Anthony King, reciters
Notes:'Wilderness' Symphony (#1) for 2 reciters & orchestra (1987)
Duration: 19:00
from "New Music Connoisseur": "..strong, assertive..Austin's human concerns are deep and they infiltrate her musical ideas..
from "Hartford Courant": .."the work is a vibrant,
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PurchaseLink:www.capstonerecords.org
WebSite:
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Elizabeth Austin...reflected light
Capstone CPS-8625
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Release Year:1995
Performers:The Consitution Brass, Jerome Reed, Markus Lucke, Mary Lou Rylands & Jeananne Albee, Ursula Trede-Boettcher, Choir of Staatliche Hochschule fuer Musik Heidelberg-Mannheim, Gerald Kegelmann conducting
Notes:..selected chamber works, including:
To Begin (brass qunitet)
Klavier Double (piano & tape)
Circling ('cello & piano)
Lighthouse I (harpsichord)
Gathering Thread (clarinet in Bb)
Zodiac Suite (piano)
An Die Nachgeborenen (For Those Born Later)
(SA
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PurchaseLink:www.capstonerecords.org
WebSite:
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Society of Composers, Inc. "Songfest"
Capstone CPS-8618
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Release Year:1994
Performers:Melinda Liebermann, soprano, Cornelius Witthoeft, piano
Notes:Five Sonnets From The Portuguese (1988)
Duration: 11:00
These songs are reflections of wonderment in the face of tumultuous emotion, just as in the life of the poetess, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They are overlaid with radiance and joy at the discovery
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PurchaseLink:www.capstonerecords.org
WebSite:
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Blaeserkammermusik der Staatliche Hochschule fuer Musik Heidelberg-Mannheim
Staatliche Hochschule fuer Musik Heidelberg-Mannheim
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Release Year:1993
Performers:Stefanie Grundmann
Notes:Sonata for Soprano Recorder (1991)
Duration: 14:44
1. A caged bird
2. "Alma redemptoris mater"
3. A singing bird
The political upheavals of the past half-century may well have exerted a subconscious influence on this image of the first movement:
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PurchaseLink:from the composer
WebSite:
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| Artist: Ben Johnston |
| Title: Suite for Microtonal Piano |
| Album: Micotonal Piano |
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