Annual American Composers Update

SAI National Arts Associate Jack Gallagher lives in Wooster, OH. On June 28, 1997, Chicago radio station WNIB-FM honored his 50th birthday with a 90-minute program of his compositions, featuring Vienna Modern Masters CD recordings of Symphony in One Movement: Threnody, The Persistence of Memory, (In Memoriam: Brian Israel), and Berceuse; the Musical Heritage Society CD recording of Toccata for Brass Quintet; and the Cornell University Wind Ensemble LP recordings of Mist-Covered Mountain and Diversions: Triptych for Symphonic Band. In 1997 broadcasts on Syracuse, NY's WCNY-FM included The Persistence of Memory, (In Memoriam: Brian Israel) (May 11) and the U.S. Air Force CD recording of Proteus Rising From the Sea (Oct. 19). Gallagher has accepted commissions from the Fairmont Kettering (OH) High School Band Parents Association for a work commemorating former director Charles Craig, and from the Wayne Center for the Arts Children's Chorus, Marilyn Rossiter, director. In progress is a CD of Robert Sullivan, Assistant Principal Trumpet of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and Kenneth De Carlo in Capriccio for Two Trumpets.

Thomas Wood, violin and Brian Dykstra, piano premiered parts I and II of Exotic Dances, commissioned by the Ohio Music Teachers Association, at its 1996 convention, in Columbus, Oct. 5, 1996; and then gave the work's first complete performance at The College of Wooster, Feb. 22, 1997.

At the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Donald Portnoy conducted the Charleston (SC) Symphony Orchestra in The Persistence of Memory (in Memoriam: Brian Israel), May 29, 1997. In 1997 Capriccio for Two Trumpets was heard with Sullivan and De Carlo at The Manhattan School of Music, New York, NY (Feb. 23); and with the U. S. Air Force Chamber Players, at the Cincinnati Museum at Anderson House, Washington, DC (Jan. 9). At a Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Terrace Theatre program, in Washington, DC, the Wooster Symphony Chamber Orchestra, under Jeffrey Lindberg, presented Berceuse, Jan. 19, 1997. Diversions: Triptych for Symphonic Band (I) was played by the Ohio Private College Instrumental Conductors Association (OPCICA) Honors Band, Nancy Ditmer, conductor, at the Ohio Music Educators Association conference, in Toledo; and at the OPCICA Conference, at Capital University, in Columbus, Jan. 19, 1997. On Nov. 24, 1996, Malcolm W. Rowell led the University of Massachusetts Wind Ensemble in Proteus Rising from the Sea at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.