Annual American Composers Update

Stephen L. Yarbrough is a resident of Vermillion, SD, where he heads the University of South Dakota Music Theory and Composition department. On Apr. 10-12, 1999, he attended the Ellen Taaffe Zwillich Young Composers' Workshop at Carnegie Hall, in New York, NY. For the fourth consecutive year, he received an ASCAP Standard Award for original music composition.

The South Dakota Symphony, under Henry Charles Smith, commissioned and premiered With the Voice of Joy and Praise, Sept. 26, 1998, and For Christmas: An Alleluia for Orchestra, Dec. 12, 1999, in Sioux Falls. Also in Sioux Falls, the Augustana Coll. Women's Choir, led by Cheryl Koch, presented In Quiet Harmony, a cycle of Celtic prayers for women's choir and harp. Saxophonist Steven Mauk toured the United States with the first performances of Sonata for Saxophone and Piano, fall 1999 and spring 2000. The Yankton (SD) Children's Choir, directed by Lea Ann Schramm, introduced Christ as a Light on its fall 1999 and spring 2000 concert tour.

Heard at the University of South Dakota in 1998 were The Weight of Green, with the University Concert Choir, directed by Teresa S. Coffman, Apr. 19; Dachsie Dance for Two Pianos, with Susan Keith Gray and Jason Dobney, Nov. 2; and Five Children's Prayers, with singer Tahne Kristin Aarnes, Feb. 20. In 1998, Kenneth Carroll, soprano saxophone, and Gray, piano, played Sonata for Saxophone and Piano at the University of South Dakota, Feb. 28, and at the North American Saxophone Alliance 1998 National Biennial Conference, held at Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL, Mar. 26. Love Unbidden was performed every Sunday in 1999 as the communion anthem at The Cathedral, Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota, Sandy DeSaix, conductor, in Sioux Falls.

For Christmas: An Alleluia for Orchestra, Dec. 1999; With the Voice of Joy and Praise, Sept. 1998; both with the South Dakota Symphony, Smith, conductor.

• SAI's Composers Bureau Online.
• SAI's Music for Young People section.