Annual American Composers Update

Lori Laitman

Lori Laitman, who lives and works in Potomac, MD, won a Maryland State Arts Council's 1997 Individual Artist Award in Music Composition. Funded by a 1997-98 Arts Council of Montgomery (MD) County grant, she will make a CD of her works, with performers including Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Lauren Wagner, Gary Louie, Marina Piccinini, Maria Bachmann, Jon Klibanoff, Kurt Ollman, Fred Weldy, and David Teie. She has finished a song cycle Holocaust 1944 for Sanford Sylvan, baritone, and Gary Karr, double bass.

Performances

In 1997 Four Dickinson Songs, a song cycle for soprano and piano, was performed in its entirety at a NACUSA concert at Christ and St. Stephen's Church, New York, NY, with Karen Bogan and Eric Trudel (Feb. 25); and she had selected songs presented at Stonybrook (NY) School, with Melissa Coombs and Jeanell Brown (May 4). 1997 performances of I Never Saw Another Butterfly, for soprano and saxophone, occurred at the North American Saxophone Alliance Regional Meeting, in Manhattan, KS, with Anne Foradori and David Nabb (Mar. 7); at the University of Nebraska World Affairs Conference, with Foradori and Nabb (Mar. 16); at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, with Patricia Green and Louie (Apr. 27); and at The Concertgebouw and The Hague, The Netherlands, with Wagner and Louie (Oct. 9-10). In spring 1997 selections from Days and Nights, for soprano and piano, were sung at the Sumner School Museum, Washington, DC, with Coombs and Laitman (Mar. 7); at the Everson Art Museum, Syracuse, NY, with Julianna Sabol and Ida Trebicka (Mar. 27); and at the Performing Arts Society, Walnut Creek, CA, with Nancy Mariella and James Meredith (Apr. 8). A Westminster Choir College program included soprano Jennifer Check and pianist Jose Melendez in The Metropolitan Tower and Other Songs, Apr. 19, 1997. In 1997, Miyuki Yoshikami, koto, and Laitman, flute, played Rokudan-Flute for the Celebration of Asian-American Week, at the Food and Drug Administration, Washington, DC (May 15); and at the Ellipse Art Gallery, Arlington, VA (May 22); and then gave a performance of Rokudan-Flute and Blossom at the Ellipse Art Gallery (Sept. 11).

Publications

Days and Nights; six songs for soprano and piano; Merion Music (Presser).

Further Information

For more complete information, you may contact the composer by e-mail.