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Roger Ames Biography 2009 Roger Ames, composer, author and artist mentor, has written operas and musicals for numerous American opera companies, Off-Broadway, London Fringe, and the Hartford Stage, (Martin Guerre, Laura Harrington, librettist). He has been commissioned by the Long Island Masterworks Chorus and Orchestra, (In Memoriam: Warsaw 1943 with Bernard Kaplan, librettist); the Greensboro Choral Society, Broadway Cares / Equity Fights Aids (Shadows, with Jeffrey Gilden, librettist). Recently, his Requiem for Our Time, set to the poetry of Anne Sexton, received a triumphant New England premiere by Boston Chorus Pro Musica, with Ilana Davidson, soprano, David Murray, Baritone, and Jeffrey Rink, conducting. It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2008. Commissioned by Central City Opera, En Mis Palabras, with Jeffrey Gilden, librettist, is being toured throughout Colorado and the west, and was recently produced for the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver. He is currently working on a commission entitled Take Joy / Anything But A Silent Night, (a musical collage), for the Strathmore Performing Arts Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, scheduled for December 20 and 21, 2009. He has just completed a commission by the Long Island Masterworks Chorus entitled Ancient Songs Of The Universe, a rhapsody for piano and large chorus in three movements, to be premiered November 1, 2009. His collaborative work with the Colorado Springs Conservatory Opera Intensive summer 2008 resulted in an opera, All The World’s A Stage, written with the young members of that ensemble, who then performed it at Central City Opera to audience and critical acclaim. He is currently director of vocal activities and composer in residence at Great Neck North High School and on the board of advisers of Pantomonium, a ‘way-off-Broadway’ theatre company that volunteers its time to create and produce annual off Broadway Christmas Pantomime musicals written partially by and for underprivileged children in New York City. He has collaborated with many children to help write the music for four of those productions. He is also a resident artist at New Dramatists Playwrights collective in New York City. As an author, Ames has written for Opera America’s textbook series Music! Words! Opera! a multi-level curriculum that provides structures for teachers who want to write operas with their children, and/or study opera at a deep level. He has also written for GIA’s High School Choral Program textbook, and is currently working on a biographical novel: Get Off My Property, a collection of essays based on his childhood growing up in an upstate New York farming village in the 50’s. He has studied composition with Samual Barber, John Kander, Lukas Foss, Robert Washburn and others, and has degrees from the Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam, and the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College. Ames is published by GIA Music, where one can see a more complete biography. He also has publications at Hinshaw Music, inc, Belwin Mills, and Vista Music. He is on commercial recordings by Thomas Hampson, (Old Songs Re-sung), on the EMI label, and also by Anam Cara, (Innisfree), James Jordan, conductor, and has scored movies and documentaries for French and German Television. He can be contacted at rogerwames@yahoo.com or via his website: RogerAmes.net