A Composer's Corner

Sally began her career as a full-time touring musician in 1979, after encouragement from Stan Rogers, the legendary Canadian singer-songwriter. That was followed by an invitation from Garrison Keillor to appear on A Prairie Home Companion. She appeared more than a dozen times on that show, which launched her performing career. Her travels have since taken her to Europe, China, Hungary and Poland, England and Scotland and all across the United States.

At the heart of Sally’s work is traditional and contemporary folk music. Her music is like a quilt, made up of soul-stirring ballads, messages of hope, knee-slapping dance tunes and gentle lullabies.

With fellow songwriter Claudia Schmidt, they have recorded four albums together including Closing the Distance, While We Live, and Evidence of Happiness. In 2016, Sally and Claudia released their fourth collaborative album, We are Welcomed.

Born into a musical family in Ukraine, Marina Baranova began playing the piano when she was five years old. Just two years later, she was accepted into a music school for talented children in her home town of Kharkov. At age 11, Marina won first prize at the International Competition for Young Pianists in Ukraine, which preceded her first international concert tour in Finland.

In the late 90's she moved to Germany to begin studying with Professor Vladimir Krainev at the University for Music, Theatre and Media in Hannover. Throughout her studies in Hannover, she won at least one internationally renowned competition every year. Marina still resides in Hannover, her base with which she returns from international tours across famous concert halls in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Benelux, Poland, Israel, Latin America and Thailand.

You can see more of her here: https://www.marinabaranova.com/

Santiago Bosch, born and raised in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, was inspired by his father, saxophonist Jaime Bosch, and began studying piano at the age of 9. By age 15, he started composing music and playing professional gigs, participating in album/recordings with diverse artists around the country.

He graduated from UPEL-IPB University with a professor's degree in Music Education. Santiago earned a Bachelor's degree in Piano Performance Magna Cum Laude from the Berklee College of Music, and a Master's Degree in Contemporary Jazz Performance from the Berklee Global Jazz Institute.

Santiago has been featured in live performances, master classes and recordings with artists such as Tucker Antell, Dave Santoro, Jack DeJohnette, Antonio Sanchez, Jacques Schwarz-Bart, Elliot Mason, just to name a few.

See his full bio here: https://www.santiagobosch.com/bio.

Join our host Andrew Celentano, a pianist and composer himself, for an interesting interview with Tom Beveridge, Music Director of the National Men’s Chorus. Mr. Beveridge is a prolific composer and arranger with over 450 compositions. He has been recognized for his multi-faceted abilities: singer, oboist, keyboard player, composer, arranger, teacher, and conductor. His works have been recorded on numerous labels, including Turnabout/Vox, Centaur, RCA, and Crystal. He attended Harvard College, studying composition with Randall Thompson and Walter Piston, and choral conducting with G. Wallace Woodworth.

Join our host Andrew Celentano, a pianist and composer himself, for a enlightening review of the works of the talented Eva Gertz, a multi-faceted musician, born and raised in a Boston suburb. Eva has been making and recording original music for 12 years. Her background lies in classical and jazz piano training, which later developed into arranging, directing, composition, and production at Berklee College of Music. Following school, she worked in New York as a music educator, accompanist, and composer’s assistant for Broadway level professionals. She also delved heavily into entertainment as a dueling pianist onboard cruise ships and in Manhattan, and as a wedding band singer and keyboardist with Silver Arrow Band. Currently Eva is working on her next album which is crowd-funded and inspired by a big road trip she undertook in 2021. Eva works at Berklee teaching arranging, and lives in Massachusetts.

With over 37 years of design and manufacturing experience, Michael Bourque is a Boston-based inventor driven by a passion for turning bold ideas into reality. We crossed paths online and have never actually met, even though we worked for the same company for a short period of time.

Unable to afford college, he embarked on a journey through trade school, emerging as a skilled machinist. Diligence propelled him to swiftly ascend the ranks, ultimately achieving a prominent programming position at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.

Shifting into software leadership, he became a Vice President at PTC, a distinguished $1.3 billion high-tech software enterprise based in Boston. Along the way he also founded a product company, raised $7.5 million, and negotiated a profitable exit.

I consider Michael to truly be a renaissance man. He excels at everything he touches, and has a wide variety of interests. When not working, he channels his creativity into painting, music composition, filmmaking, and artistry. In my interview, we will touch on his many pursuits, but focus primarily on his songwriting skills. Although his musicianship is largely unknown to the world, it is my hope that this hour interview will give viewers an appreciation for his artistry.

Michael Bierylo is an electronic musician, guitarist, composer, and sound designer. He was a faculty member at Berklee College of Music since 1995 and is chair emeritus of the Electronic Production and Design Department. He is also active with Berklee Online, Berklee’s online school, where he coauthors and teaches music technology courses.

Bierylo has performed throughout the U.S. at venues as diverse as the Knitting Factory, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Duke and Emory universities, and Dartmouth College as a member of Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. Bierylo's compositions are featured on the releases Dancing on A'A, Petrophonics, The Iridium Controversy, and Extreme Spirituals, all on Cuneiform Records. As a solo electronic artist, Bierylo has performed with a laptop computer and modular synthesizers in the U.S., Germany, China, and Poland, including at the DAT Festival, the Shanghai Electronic Music Festival, the Krakow Audio Art Festival, and at concerts with Grammy-nominated electronic musician BT and Terence Blanchard. His composition “Koralate" appeared on The $100 Guitar Project.

Bierylo's commercial work includes music and audio production for Hasbro Interactive, the Smithsonian, Nickelodeon, and the Oxygen Network, as well as music and sound design for the Incredible Hulk attraction at Universal's Islands of Adventure. As a commercial composer, Bierylo's work has been featured on A&E's Biography, the Learning Channel, and Martha Stewart Living. Recent projects include work on the films Granito, The Reckoning, and Traces of the Trade, all featured at the Sundance Film Festival.

Thomas Hojnacki has had an unusually varied musical career. As a keyboard player, he has worked with the national touring productions of A Chorus Line, Altar Boyz, and the Big Apple Circus. He has appeared with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Claflin Hill Symphony Orchestra, and the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra; and as a chamber musician in performances of the music of Brahms, Schubert, Bartók, Messiaen, and Shostakovich. As a jazz pianist, Hojnacki has appeared with Billy Pierce, Joe Lovano, Jimmy Giuffre, George Garzone, and many others. As a conductor, he has led numerous performances of ballet, opera, musical theater, and symphonic repertoire.

Hojnacki has written more than 50 compositions, including works for musical theater, orchestra, band, chorus, and various chamber ensembles. He has made a number of recordings, most notably "Symphony No. 1" with the Dvorák Symphony Orchestra (Prague) and Julius Williams, conductor. He has taught at Dean College and the New England Conservatory of Music. He is currently the assistant chair of the Harmony Department at Berklee, where he teaches theory, composition, piano, and conducting. Hojnacki is coauthor, with Joe Mulholland, of The Berklee Book of Jazz Harmony.

"I've had some astonishing teachers over the years. One of them, trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, who worked with Ray Charles, was a formative influence when I was a teenager in Detroit. He really explained swing articulation to me one night so that I got it, and that made all the difference to me. He was also very encouraging, and to be encouraged as a young person by someone that legendary gives you the courage to pursue music."

"My whole career as a professional musician has been about playing diverse styles of music. I've been fortunate enough to have the kind of training that lets me move pretty easily from one kind of style and performing group to another. So when I teach harmony, I try to show how much of the harmonic structure of music is the same from one style to another. The things that differentiate styles are often superficial."

"I often give my students the form of a tune and a specific chord progression and ask them to pick a key and write their own piece—to choose a style and create a rhythmic motif that will serve as a basis for the melody. It always astonishes students to hear all the stylistic diversity that comes back into class from the same chord progression. Students get three things from this project. First, they're working hands-on with the material in creating their own piece; second, by hearing the same chord progression over and over again, and having worked with it themselves, they learn to hear it and recognize it in other music; and third, they begin to appreciate the stylistic diversity that's possible from the same harmonic font of possibilities."

Rami Bar-Niv is one of Israel’s most acclaimed and sought after pianists.

He travels extensively and has become an international citizen, concertizing all over the world. Born in Tel-Aviv, he graduated with honors from the Rubin Academy of Music, and was the recipient of many prizes and scholarships. He won the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Competition and was awarded a scholarship to further his studies in the United States.

After graduating from Mannes College of Music in New York, where he studied with the renowned Mme. Nadia Reisenberg, he won numerous competitions and embarked on a highly successful concert career. He performs regularly in North, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and of course Israel, where he received the “Best Performer Award” from the Israeli government. He appears on TV and radio, in chamber ensembles, solo recitals, and as soloist with orchestras. He is always received with great enthusiasm. Often sent abroad by the Foreign Ministry to represent Israel in concerts, he has become an ambassador of goodwill for Israel.

Rami Bar-Niv made history by being the first, and so far the only, Israeli artist to perform in Egypt following the Begin/Sadat Peace Treaty.

Rami’s recordings for CBS and other labels in Israel and abroad have met with praise and popularity. His recordings and videos have also been very successful on the Internet and he has often been at the top of the charts.

His compositions are published, recorded and performed all over the world. Rami Bar-Niv offers music of great variety and contrast in style, and is an extremely versatile performer. Rami’s master classes, workshops, and private teaching are loved worldwide and he is constantly invited to teach in five continents.

You can see more here: https://rami.ybarniv.com/

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Lisa Swerdlow is an accomplished pianist and composer who lives in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she grew up in a progressive Jewish family. Her mother was an elementary schoolteacher and her father worked in the garment industry. Her childhood home was full of music thanks to her father's piano, accordion and mandolin playing.

Lisa studied classical piano from the age of six playing Fur Elise by Beethoven for her first piano recital at seven. She began writing and performing songs on piano and guitar at sixteen and went on to study music theory and composition at Humboldt State University and College of the Redwoods.

In the 1970’s Lisa performed in coffeehouses on Fairfax Avenue in L.A. and went on to play piano in a rock 'n' roll band in San Francisco. In the 1980's she performed at the West Coast Women's Music Festival and for three years, she toured Northern California with a ten-piece all women salsa band called Las Malandras.

Lisa's earliest musical influences range from Laura Nyro and Carole King to Harry Belafonte and Burt Bacharach. Later in life, she was drawn to the piano music of Keith Jarrett, David Lanz, Eddy Palmiery, Antonio Carlos Jobin, Barbara Higbie and Mary Watkins. After an extended hiatus from composing and performing, she returned to the piano and produced her debut album, Equus Rising in 2017.

go to Lisa's website here:

https://www.lisaswerdlow.com/

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