*SAI Member
Biography
Born in Baltimore in 1938, Elizabeth Austin received her early musical training at the Peabody Conservatory Preparatory Department. When Nadia Boulanger visited Goucher College (Towson, MD), where Elizabeth Austin was a liberal arts music student, she awarded the composer a scholarship to study at the Conservatoire Americaine in Fontainebleau, France.
Elizabeth 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 a Master's in Music while on the faculty, continues on an unofficial basis through a faculty/student exchange with the Staatliche Hochschule far Musik Heidelberg-Mannheim, which she helped to initiate in 1990.
While studying for her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut, Elizabeth Austin won First Prize in the David Lipscomb Electronic Music Competition for her Klavier Double for piano and tape (1983). In 1996, she received a Connecticut Commission on the Arts award to write a ballet-oratorio. International recognition has included her selection by GEDOK (Society of Women Artists in German-speaking countries) to represent the Mannheim-Ludwigshafen region in the national seventieth-year anniversary exhibition (Spring, 1996) in Lubeck. Mannheim is her home for three months of every year, where she enjoys critical acclaim. In June, 1998, GEDOK sponsored a retrospective concert of Austin chamber music in Mannheim to critical acclaim. Other performances in 1998 occur in Finland, Italy, Germany, as well as in Virginia, Nebraska, and Connecticut.
Additionally, Dr. Austin has received recent recognition, firstly, through the selection of her cello octet, Water Music I. Beside still waters... to be performed in Fiuggi, Italy (9/98), as part of the international Donna in Musica Festival, then through a First Prize in the 1998 IAWM's Miriam Gideon Composition Competition for her latest chamber work, A Hommage for Hildegard (von Bingen).
Being called upon to translate books and scholarly papers and to act as interpreter for Germanspeaking composers has brought her into contact with preeminent musicians both here and abroad. She and her husband, Gerhard Austin, bring German and American culture together; for instance, in 1997, there was a mutual international exchange between Connecticut Composers, Inc. and Brandenburg composers, supported by the Musikakademie Rheinsberg (Germany). When she is in Connecticut, Dr. Austin is organist at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Windham Center.
Published by Arsis Press and Peter Tonger Verlag and recorded on the Capstone label, Elizabeth Austin is also represented on the 1994 Society of Composers CD and Journal. Her scores are also available through the American Composers Alliance.
Contact Information
Elizabeth R. Austin, Ph.D.
President, Connecticut Composers, Inc.
American Composers Alliance
9 Eastwood Rd.
Storrs, Connecticut 06268-2401
Telephone & Fax: (860) 429-1279
E-mail: ginkgi@msn.com
Website:
www.elizabethaustinmusic.com
Annual Updates
2010
PREMIERES
Pianist Ulrich Urban presented Puzzle Preludes, which included the premiere of a new prelude, February 1, 2009, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Brainstorm for concert double bass and piano, was introduced by Allan Von Schenkel and Kristin Williams, March 21, Women Composers Festival, Hartford, CT; the same performers presented the work again on May 18 for the North/South Consonance and New York Women Composers, New York, NY.
PUBLICATIONS
I Heard a Funeral in My Brain for carillon (inspired by Emily Dickinson), by The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA).
2009
Elizabeth Austin, a member of the American Composers Alliance, serves as the President of Connecticut Composers, Inc.
PERFORMANCES
In January 2008, Lisa Stepanova performed Puzzle Preludes in Steinway Hall, New York (NY), while Leipzig pianist Ulrich Urban presented the same work in concerts during April and May at the University of Connecticut, Salisbury, and in Birmingham (AL). Also in January, Marcel Worms of Amsterdam performed Waitin’ and Wailin’ Blues on a tour that included stops in Washington (DC), Schenectady (NY), Vermillion (SD), Ithaca (NY), and Montevallo (AL). Frauenliebe und-Leben was performed in March at the Alton (IL) Community College by Eun-Jung Auh and Teresa Crane; in April, on the occasion of the composer’s 70th birthday, Renate Kaschmieder and Florian Kaplick fashioned a concert program around Frauenliebe und-Leben in Frankfurt, Germany. Other performances in March included Maria Loos (Salzburg), performing the Sonata for Solo Recorder for Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Festival of Women Composers, as well as a performance of the choral work A Song of Simeon- ‘Nunc Dimittis’ presented for the Hartford Women Composers Festival.
2008
Premieres
Pianist Jerome Reed (who commissioned the work) presented Celebration Concerto for piano, child soprano, and wind ensemble, on June 17, 2007, with soprano Jocelyn Fisher and the Nashville Wind Ensemble, conducted by Stephen Rhodes, Murfreesboro, TN.
Performances
Pianist Teresa Crane included several Austin works for soprano and piano on her DMA Recital on March 11, 2007, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Frauenliebe und Leben, A Birthday Bouquet, and Sonnets From The Portuguese. On March 20, Karl Kramer-Johansen and Ieva Jokubaviciute performed Prague Sonata for horn and piano in Glassboro, NJ. Pianist Ulrich Urban performed Puzzle Preludes July 4-5, in Leipzig, Germany, which was included in an MDR (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, the regional public broadcasting service) production. Jerome Reed performed Rose Sonata on September 9 in South Windsor, CT.
Publications
Selected Music of Elizabeth R. Austin: DMA Dissertation by Teresa Ann Crane; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Recordings
Music for Orchestra by Connecticut Composers, Inc: includes Symphony No. 2: Lighthouse; Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, Joel Suben, conductor; Spectra/Capstone CPS-8779.