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Composers BureauSondra ClarkBiography Dr. Sondra Clark is a graduate of The Juilliard School in New York City; San Jose State University, where she received a Master's Degree and an Outstanding Music Student Award; and Stanford University, where she completed her Ph.D. on an Ella Moore Shiels Fellowship for Academic Excellence. Further studies have included courses at Queens College in New York City and the Academy of Music in Vienna, Austria, University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California. Her composition teachers have included Vincent Persichetti, Norman Lloyd, Hall Overton, Leland Smith, Leonard Ratner, and George Perle. She has participated in master classes and seminars with Darius Milhaud, Lou Harrison, Dane Rudhyar, Aaron Copland, John Cage, and Gyorgy Ligeti. Dr. Clark was a member of the San Jose State University Music Faculty for twelve years, during which her teaching assignments including music theory, music history, advanced piano, and keyboard harmony. For eight years, she served in the Graduate Department as a Master's Thesis Advisor, teaching graduate music history, bibliography, musicology, and thesis writing. She has also had guest lectureships at several California colleges, The Juilliard School, and Stanford University. A private music teacher for forty years, Clark composed and published "Piano Pleasure," an accelerated method which is used in schools and other teaching studios. She also has numerous prize-winning pupils in piano and composition to her credit. A frequently requested clinician and lecturer, Clark was chosen to lecture on composing at the 1994 State Convention of the California Music Teachers, where her guide for beginning composers, "The Joy of Creating Music," was a featured work. Her newest prize-winning work will be published by the Neil A. Kjos Co. and premiered in April, 1998, at the Music Teachers National Convention in Nashville, TN, by the famed piano duo, Weekley and Arganbright. Sondra Clark is an internationally recognized specialist on the music of Charles Ives, and she has produced and performed in many concerts featuring her own works as well as those of other twentieth-century American composers. A long-time music critic for San Francisco Bay Area newspapers, her syndicated by-lines have appeared throughout Northern California, and her writing posts have included music editor of the Oakland Tribune and contributor to the San Francisco Examiner, American Heritage, Clavier, and The Musical Quarterly. During 1973 and 1974, she was annotator for the San Jose Symphony in San Jose, CA. She has written six books, a screenplay, and a software manual. Since retiring a few years ago from university teaching and music criticism, Sondra Clark has devoted herself to composing full time, and since 1990, nine of her compositions have won awards. For five years she has won First Prize in the California State Composers Today Competition. She is now an active member of the National Association for Composers and ASCAP. Her works are performed internationally and have received unanimously enthusiastic response: Phillip George (reviewer for Twentieth Century Music) described Clark's "Three AmericanScenes" as "neo-Copland" and "toe-tapping, rousing, and very catchy." Richard Freed (reviewer for Stereo Review) called "Seasons of Love" for piano trio and soprano "powerful, effective stuff -- so beautifully judged in its proportions, without a single, superfluous gesture, and no hint of excess in the handling of emotion." Clark's critically acclaimed "Requiem for Lost Children," written for the Kevin Collins Foundation for Missing Children, was premiered in November, 1996, in San Jose, CA and in Los Altos, CA by the San Jose Symphonic Choir and Orchestra. Scored for three soloists, mixedchoir, children's choir, and orchestra, the work was described by Paul Hertelendy (reviewer for San Jose Mercury News) as "a deeply stirring ... powerful amalgam of the old and the new, as revolutionary in its approach as the requierns of Johannes Brahms and Benjamin Britten were in their days." In October, 1996, Foothill College in Mountain View, CA produced a television video on Clark and her music, to air on public television stations. She is currently working with multiple grants on her next extended project, an opera for television that will incorporate musical elements from her Native American heritage. Of California Mission Indian descent, Sondra Clark grew up on government Indian Schools in the Dakotas. After a move to Wisconsin in her early teens, her musical talent was recognized, and she began winning awards for her piano performances and playing in concerts and on television throughout the Midwest. At the age of fourteen, she was producing and performing her own weekly radio show. As a high school freshman, she published her first article and won a state essay contest. Based on her 10 scores and overall academic achievement, her high school faculty recommended allowing her to skip a grade and graduate early. Sondra Clark lives in Los Altos, CA with her husband of thirty-seven years, Gordon Clark, a retired computer specialist. Her brother is Fritz Scholder, a noted Indian artist. Further Information
Contact Information 497 Lassen Street |
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Last updated 5/6/04 |
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