CULTURE & THE ARTS
New Works by Long Island Composers--
A Forecast
[original title: LICA Summer/Fall Forecast]
AUFBAU 63:17 Aug. 15, 1997 p13
808 words
by L.J.L.
Copyright by Leonard J. Lehrman & AUFBAU Aug. 12, 1997

On Wednesday evening, August 13, The Long Island Composers Alliance (LICA) presented its 25th annual Heckscher Park concert, this one devoted to the magic of the flute. Composer/flutists Martin Halpern and Daniel Waitzman performed new works by Herbert Deutsch, Joel Feigin, Vladimir Polezhayev (who also accompanied on piano), and Waitzman. Deutsch, a co-founder of LICA in 1972, is chair of the Hofstra University Music Department, and has been managing these summer concerts every year since their inception in 1972. Joel Feigin, whose works have been reviewed previously in these pages, is a former resident of Queens now teaching in California, and enjoyed the first performance of a work of his on a LICA concert. Polezhayev, a recent emigr from Moscow, plans to be concert manager of a 1998 LICA concert on Russian themes, featuring also the work of LICA's newest member, Natasha Jitomirskaya, and the world premiere of LICA President Leonard Lehrman's Chekhov opera, The Birthday of the Bank. Jitomirskaya is a prize-winning composer from Kiev via Moscow, and currently student cantor of the Metropolitan Synagogue in Manhattan. Lehrman's opera was commissioned and workshopped (but never performed in its entirety) by the Lake George Opera Festival on an Opera America grant in 1988.

On Saturday evening, August 30, at 8pm, LICA will present its first concert in the Hamptons: a birthday tribute to composer/conductor/pianist/educator Lukas Foss and mezzo-soprano Constance Beavon, born exactly 25 years apart on August 15. The concert is co-sponsored by The Aviva Players, Meet The Composer, and the Southampton Cultural Center, which will host the event, and will feature three works by Foss along with pieces by Bruce Saylor (Beavon's husband), Jane Leslie, Mira Spektor, the late Dorothy Taylor, and former Foss students Leonard Lehrman (the world premiere of the marimba version of his "Secular Kaddish"), Joel Mandelbaum, and Matthew Marullo. Performing the Foss will be Beavon, flutist Kathy Shankman, percussionist Frank Cassara, cellist Janet Holmes-Maday, and pianists Leonard Lehrman and Joel Mandelbaum.

On September 9, at 1pm, LICA will present its 200th concert, a solo piano recital by Leonard Lehrman at Queens College's Lefrak Concert Hall, which is to be recorded on LICA's third CD. The program consists of works by 13 Long Island composers, 11 of whom will be there. Included will be works by the late Morton Gould and Elie Siegmeister, along with Eleanor Cory, Herbert Deutsch, Lukas Foss, Andre Hosza, Leo Kraft, Joel Mandelbaum, Angelo Musolino, Raoul Pleskow, Hale Smith, Serge Suny, and Leonard Lehrman - his Suite from the incidental music to Goethe's Reineke Fuchs. Meet The Composer is a co-sponsor. Capstone Records plans to issue the concert on a CD.

Sunday, October 19 at 3pm LICA will present its first concert of Organ Music and Sacred Song, at Malverne Community Presbyterian Church, co-sponsored by Meet The Composer and the Nassau County Office of Cultural Development. Soloist Janis Sabatino Hills and the Malverne Community Presbyterian Church Choir will be performing works by Albert Tepper (his "Jewish Wedding Music"), Joel Mandelbaum, Adele Berk, Allen Brings, William Goldberg, Janis Hills (her 3 Psalms), Leonard Lehrman, Daniel Dorff, David Lalama, and the late George Selbst.

Meet The Composer will also be co-sponsoring LICA's first concert at New York University on Tuesday evening, October 28 at 8pm in the Little Recital Room, 35 West 4th Street, Room 779. Janis Sabatino Hills will be performing works by Dinu Ghezzo and Mary Inwood. Ronald Edwards will perform a setting by Leo Kraft and the world premiere of Leonard Lehrman's "The Vision of Chief Seathl." Henry Martin and David Lalama will be heard in their own solo piano works, and Mary Lou Schriber will perform Julie Mandel's "Subway Suite." Helene Williams will close the program singing Lehrman's settings of Seven Poems by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, found in the Tamiment Collection of the NYU Library.

Williams will also be performing Sunday afternoon, October 26, at a memorial to the late poet/composer/dancer/choreographer Edith Segal at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan, and in a Brahms Centennial Recital at Great Neck House Sunday afternoon, December 7.

Other LICA concerts planned this fall include the organization's first at Kingsborough Community College on Thursday morning, November 20, featuring works by Eleanor Cory, Charles Griffin, Dana Richardson, Arnold Rosner, and Christopher Scinto for soprano, flute, clarinet, and piano; and the final concert of the year at Queens College, featuring works by Donald Hagar, Inwha Nam Lee, Joel Mandelbaum, Akmal Parwez, Bruce Saylor, and Edward Smaldone.

Plans are already under way for three LICA concerts next January: at Community Church of Boston, in southeast Florida, and in Oyster Bay - commemorating the 80th birthday of composer J. Willard Roosevelt (grandson of Theodore Roosevelt). The organization is also looking for places to perform its expanded concert on German (and Yiddish) themes next summer.



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