Composition in Diverse Styles: Compositions of BMCC Composers

The fourth Borough of Manhattan Community College Composers Now Festival concert will feature compositions of faculty composers Joyce Solomon Moorman, John D. Parran, Douglas Anderson and Quentin Angus. Quentin Angus, the newcomer to the concert series who has received Downbeat Magazine awards for jazz composition and as a jazz soloist, will perform with bassist Raviv Markovitz and pianist Yiu-Hsuan Liao, who is on the faculty of the BMCC Music and Art Department.

Joyce Solomon Moorman's songs sung by Louise Toppin, soprano, and Yvonne Hatchett, contralto and accompanied by percussion and piano. This will be the New York City premiere for her songs "Still I Rise" and "Caged Bird," settings of poems by Maya Angelou, which were commissioned by Louise Toppin, Professor of Voice at the University of Michigan. Yvonne Hatchett will perform the aria "Sorrow's Bride" from Dr. Moorman's opera, Elegies for the Fallen, libretto by Rashidah Ismaili, which is about the Soweto, South Africa uprising of 1976. John D. Parran, who uses graphic notation, will perform a work entitled "Double Bass" featuring the lower clarinets. Douglas Anderson's songs will be sung by Margaret Astrup, soprano.