Composers

Jacob Groff

Jacob Groff was born in Hartford Ct. in 1975. He received his Bachelor's in Music Composition from the University of Oregon and his Master's in Music composition from Westminster Choir College of Rider University. Sought after for his vocal, choral, and chamber music, Mr. Groff's works have been performed in various concert series throughout northern New Jersey. In the summer of 2007 he will be published with Santa Barbara Music. Mr. Groff currently resides in Lodi, NJ where he teaches piano.

In May 2007, Voce premiered two of Mr Groff's compositions: The Poet and A Fixed Idea.

Sarah Meneely-Kyder

Composer/pianist Sarah Meneely-Kyder is a graduate of Goucher College, Peabody Conservatory and Yale University. Her composition teachers have included Robert Hall Lewis, Earle Brown and Robert Morris. In the years following her formal education in the Western musical tradition, she studied the North Indian sitar and was eventually initiated by Roop Verma, a student of world renowned sitarist, Ravi Shankar. She has also studied the South Indian veena. As a composer, most notable are those works that fuse disparate musical traditions into single pieces. Larger works have been performed by American Music/Theatre Group, City Singers of Hartford, the Albany Pro Musica Chorus, the Wesleyan University Orchestra and the New Haven Symphony. A member of American Composers Alliance, and a founding member of Connecticut Composers, Inc., her creative endeavors have been rewarded with several grants and prizes including Yale University's Rena Greenwald Memorial Prize and several Artist Project Grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. She has done two recordings for CD on the NORTH/SOUTH RECORDING,INC. label. She is published in the Dictionary of Contemporary Music, edited by John Vinton, and she has an entry on her music in the revised edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary, edited by Nicholas Slonimsky. As a pianist, she is most interested in the performance of contemporary music, with specialization in 20th century American music. She was praised by Kyle Gann, critic for the Village Voice, for a performance of a work by Alvin Lucier, noted exponent of sonic art. She has performed with the New London Contemporary Ensemble, the Nutmeg Chamber Ensemble, and at Wesleyan University, where she is currently on the faculty as an instructor of piano in the Private Lessons Program.

Lisa DeSpain

Lisa Despain is one of the leading young composers on the American concert music scene. Known for her tasteful blending of jazz, classical, American folk and theatrical music, she is prodigiously commissioned and sought after for works of a definitive “American” sound. Her musical training was conducted under some of the greatest masters in jazz and American musical theater including Ellis Marsalis, Eliane Elias, Manny Album, Stephen Flaherty, and Maury Yeston. In 2000, Ms. DeSpain was named emerging jazz composer of the year by ASCAP and awarded the ASCAP/IAJE Commission Honoring Duke Ellington. Additional awards have included an Aaron Copland Fellowship, a Barlow Commission, and three American Composers Forum Commissions. In musical theater, Ms. DeSpain and her collaborator, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, have been awarded a Dramatists Guild Fellowship and a Eugene O’Neill Musical Theater Fellowship, for their work, “Storyville” an original tale of redemption set during the last days of New Orleans’ famed red-light district and the birthplace of jazz.

Voce premiered An American Nativity with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra in December 2006.

Jason McCoy

Jason McCoy (b.1976) received his B.M. (1998) and M.M. (2003) degrees in composition from the University of Southern California, where he studied with James Hopkins, Erica Muhl, and Morten Lauridsen. Active mainly as a composer of choral music, he has received numerous performances by various choirs from the professional, college, and amateur ranks. Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at Florida State University, researching music of post-genocide Rwanda. He and his wife, Kristin, live in Tallahassee.

Voce premiered Santo in October, 2007.

David Byrne

Drawing from a range of performance experience, David Roggeveen Byrne (b. 1980) composes for a variety of musical ensembles. In the last several years, his experience in sacred and secular choral settings has led to an increased focus in this genre. David's works have been read and performed nationally, in cities including Syracuse, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Hartford. In addition to his musical pursuits, David has received National awards in the visual medium of linoleum block printmaking. A native of Syracuse, New York, he began musical lessons with Bette Kahler. While pursuing an undergraduate degree in mathematics at Haverford College, outside of Philadelphia, PA, David began his formal composition studies with Ingrid Arauco. He continues his studies with Larry Alan Smith and Ken Steen at the Hartt School, in Hartford, CT, from which he expects to receive his Master's Degree in Music Composition in the spring of 2008.

Voce will premiered his work, Trisagion Prayer, in February, 2008.