Congratulations to UB Alumn Adrienne Elisha on her MacDowell Colony Residency!

Congratulations to UB alumn Adrienne Elisha on winning a prestigious residency at the MacDowell Colony, which is located in an idyllic rustic environment in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where she is currently expanding a solo bass piece for James VanDemark into a collaborative work for solo bass and modern dance, as well as working on a handful of other exciting projects as a composer.

Elisha, who was Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition at Vassar College in 2008, is no stranger to artist colonies – she was recently nominated by Peter Eötvös for five months as a resident composer at Herrenhaus in Edenkoben, Germany, where she wrote a large work for sextet, and a work for solo viola. Other recent projects of hers include a multi-media collaboration with artist/sculptor Harry Roseman, head of the art department at Vasser College, which celebrated the anniversary of the Vassar Art Museum, and featured his murals on the walls of the museum.

Elisha is an active violist, and regularly joins us in Buffalo to perform with the Slee Sinfonietta, and also regularly performs with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. 

Below is a little more background on Elisha, taken from her bio:

“Adrienne Elisha and music have an extraordinary relationship. As a creator and a re-creator, she understands music from the inside out and from the outside in.

”She is a champion of new music--equally talented as both a skilled violist and as a composer whose voice is distinctly contemporary but whose inspiration is drawn directly from the heart. And for audiences experiencing her compositions, the result is a mesmerizing and emotional ride into an imaginary sound world unlike any other: Mario Davidovsky has described her sextet Anthelion as “a new kind of polyphony”. Her music, as Leonard Bernstein put it, is “excitingly unpredictable, yet inevitable in retrospect.

Marian MacDowell in front of Edward's log cabin,
the Colony's prototype studio.

”Adrienne is a 2007 winner of the Thayer Award in Music Composition, she received her Ph.D in Composition from the University of Buffalo, working with David Felder as a Presidential Doctoral Fellow. Also a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, Ms. Elisha's grants and commissions include those from Meet the Composer, the National Music Teachers' Association (naming her the 1997 "Ohio Composer of the Year"), Fortnightly Music of Cleveland, Cleveland Chamber Music Society, newEar Ensemble (Kansas City) and the American Music Center.

”Her works have been featured nationally and internationally, including at June in Buffalo, The Colorado Springs New Music Symposium, the Chintimini Chamber Music Festival, and at the International Bartok Festival in Szombathely, Hungary, where she performed her own solo and chamber works and premiered those of other composers.

 “Cry of the Dove—her cello concerto—was commissioned and premiered by The Cleveland Chamber Symphony for solo cellist Steven Elisha. Subsequent performances have included the Grand Rapids Symphony (David Lockington, conductor).”

We asked Adrienne about her time at UB and she remarked, "The composition program at UB allows each composer to express their unique voice, and David Felder sets the tone for this supportive environment."

Adrienne Elisha currently lives in Rhinebeck, New York. 

Link to this post here.