Our Spring concert brings together not only female composers, but also artists with a local connection. We are pleased to present the following artists.

Composer: Linda Robbins Coleman

Linda Robbins Coleman is an internationally acclaimed composer especially in the areas of orchestra and chamber music. She served as the Composer-in-Residence with the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra for the 1994-96 seasons, the first Iowa woman to hold this position with any orchestra. She was invited back during the 2001-02 season to help the CRSO celebrate their 80th anniversary. During the 1995-97 seasons Coleman also became Composer-in-Residence with the Wartburg Community Symphony. A native of Des Moines, she is a graduate of Drake University and has studied with the Greek National Theatre. From 1977-97 Coleman was Composer-in-Residence for Drake Theatre, scoring 35 plays ranging from the ancient Greeks to the moderns.

An accomplished pianist, Coleman has been performing since the age of six and worked professionally as a jazz and classical soloist and accompanist. She was on the Iowa Arts Council Arts to Go performing artist roster with singer Nancy Cooper for five years touring with their program, Music for the Grand Salon.

She has been recipient of more than 60 commissions for compositions ranging from chamber to symphonic music, and from jazz to theatre and film. To date her music has been performed and broadcast in more than twenty-six states in the USA, as well as Great Britain, Europe, Canada, and Mexico. Her music has been performed by more than sixty organizations ranging from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra to regional and local professional, community, and university ensembles and individuals. Many orchestras have performed more than one of Coleman's works, and new commissions have often followed as a result.

In 1987, Coleman co-founded the Iowa Composers Forum where she served as its original Executive Secretary and chief administrator for ten years. In 1981 she founded the Friends of Drake Arts and worked with promotion and community outreach for fifteen years at the university. As an educator, Coleman spent five years as a visiting artist teaching music composition at a magnet elementary school in Des Moines's inner city. She was on the Iowa Arts Council's Artist in the Schools/Communities roster for fifteen years and provided residencies in many Iowa communities.

For twenty-nine years she served as research associate to Professor William S. E. Coleman, working on materials related to William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody and the 19th century Lakotas; the escape of the Danish Jews from Nazi persecution in 1943; and modern productions of ancient Greek plays by the Greek National Theatre. From 1988-2000 she served as research associate and copy editor for the book Voices of Wounded Knee that detailed the events and attitudes leading to the 1890 Massacre and the end of the Plains Indian Wars. It was published by the University of Nebraska Press in September, 2000. It is currently available at bookstores and online.

For the past thirty years she has been owner and president of Coleman Creative Services, working in music, promotion, marketing and publicity, desktop publishing, research, and consultation. She has served as author, copy editor, grantwriter, composer, educator, and coordinator on various projects for numerous organizations and groups around the USA and abroad. Additionally, she has served as a caregiver to elderly relatives for the past two decades.

On May 16, 2008, Coleman will be awarded Drake University's distinguished Alumni Achievement Award at the Drake National Awards Dinner. This honor is bestowed annually to one individual for outstanding achievement in a career or profession and reflects the pride of Drake University in those achievements.

When she is not working on something musical or historical, Coleman can be found digging in her gardens, creating a new recipe in her kitchen, or doing repair and renovation (including drywall, brick laying, and floor refinishing) on the 1910 home she shares with her husband William and their two cats.

Check out Linda's new web page where you can listen to musical excerpts, and see news of coming events.

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Composer: Tracey Rush

A native of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, Tracey has been writing and arranging music since grade school. She earned a BS in Music Education from Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina, and was a composition student of Dwight Gustafson. She earned a Master in Music Education from the University of Northern Iowa. Tracey is founder and Executive Director of the Northeast Iowa School of Music in Dubuque, Iowa, and teaches instrumental music in the Dubuque Community Schools. She plays in the Dubuque String Quartet and served as principal violist with the Dubuque Symphony for many years, where she also served as Education Coordinator and head librarian.

As Composer-in-Residence of the Dubuque Symphony's 1996-97 season, the DSO performed four of her works during the season as well as commissioning "Spirit of Freedom." A rousing concert fanfare, this piece was chosen to be performed at the MENC 56th National In-service, April 1998, in Phoenix, Arizona. The Owensboro Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Nicholas Palmer, performed "Spirit of Freedom" at the Kentucky governor's inaugural in December 1999. "Angels in the Snow" was premiered December 18-20, 1998, by Maestro Kirk Trevor and the Knoxville (Tennessee) Symphony. Lucas Richman of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, who conducted seven performances of ANGELS IN THE SNOW in 1999, said the work is "destined to become a new holiday standard." The work has been since conducted by Erich Kunzel and the Naples Philharmonic. She has had over 20 commissions, and her educational works appear on festival and preferred music lists nation-wide, including Texas and Virginia. Tracey was a finalist in several states for the American Composers Forum "Continental Harmony Project." Dramatic Publishing, Inc has published the musical-comedy review, "Mothering Heights," which Rush co-wrote with Rebecca Christian. In March 2008, she conducted the Brookfield East (WI) High School in a performance of her "Fantasia in F" at Carnegie Hall.

In 1998, she formed the Dubuque Community String Orchestra which she still conducts. A former board member for the Dubuque Arts Council Artists in Residence, she was elected to four terms as Chair of the Iowa Composers Forum. Tracey and her husband, John, live in Dubuque where they raised two sons.

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Composer: Elaine Erickson

Elaine Erickson received a Master of Music degree in Music Composition from Drake University. She has won numerous awards, fellowships and residencies, including from the Ford Foundation (Contemporary Music Project), Meet the Composer, the Charles Ives Center (four times), the National League of American Pen Women (including the $1000 Music Composition Award), the Pyle Commission Award from the Iowa Composers Forum, among others.

Elaine has done additional study in composition at the University of Iowa and at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. Her teachers have been Francis Pyle, Richard Hervig, Jean Eichelberger Ivey and Robert Hall Lewis. She has composed five operas, three of which were performed at Peabody. She travels to schools throughout Iowa, presenting workshops involving her compositions, as an artist for VSA arts of Iowa. She is also a published poet.

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Flutist: Michael G. Finegold

Michael G. Finegold, is Flutist and Artistic Director of the Essex Chamber Music Players. As aflutist, composer, and Professor Ementus of Music  at Northern Essex Community College, Haverhill, Massachusetts, he enjoys a diversified career in music. He created Essex Chamber Music Players (ECMP) at Northern Essex Community College in 1999 while Professor and Coordinator of Music. ECMP is involved in a unique project of preserving local cultural history through music in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts, as well as performing and recording new music. He studied flute with Doriot Dwyer, former principal flutist of the Boston Symphony, while doing post-graduate work at the New England Conservatory; with flutists Samuel Baron and Thomas Nyfenger, as a graduate student while working on his Masters of Music and Masters of Musical Arts degrees at the Yale University School of Music.

Michael and ECMP premiered Elaine Erickson's The Voice Outside for solo flute in 1995, Journey Through A Lifetime- a song cycle for tenor, flute, cello and piano (poem by Anthony Marlow) in 2005, Love Lost, Love Held for Soprano, Flute and Cello, and Lament for solo piano in 2006. As artistic director of ECMP, Michael has chosen Erickson's music for performance because of its dramatic emotional evocation, warmth and clarity of texture.

Michael has performed and recorded with symphony orchestras, theater orchestras, chamber music groups, jazz groups, and given recitals. In 1994, with pianist David Pihl, he recorded William Thomas McKinley's Romances #2, Secrets of The Heart for the MMC (Master Musicians Collective) Recordings. In 1995 he recorded and performed in concert McKinley's Concerto for Flute and Strings with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Prague, Czechoslovakia for MMC. In 1998 he performed as soloist, J. Windel Brown's About Time, and Mitch Hampton's Pop Goes The Concert Hall: The Swingin' Seventies with the Czech Radio Orchestra when they visited the United States performing at Boston's Symphony Hall and the Everett Collins Center in Andover. 

In February of 1999 Finegold recorded the works in Prague with the orchestra. In 2000 he and internationally renowned clarinetist Richard Stolzman recorded Mitch Hampton's The Four Humors with the Warsaw Philharmonic. in 2002 he premiered and recorded Mare Rossi's Dance to the Music of Being and Fantasy in Adi Talam with ECMP. In 2003 he recorded William Thomas McKinley's Three Movements for Flute and Strings with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bratislava, Slovakia. The work is on the new (2006) CD release "The Four Flutists" on MMC Recordings. In 2007 he recorded works for the newly released "John Mitchell: Music for Woodwind, Vol. 1" CD, and upcoming release Trios and Duos of John Vollrath for MMC. The CDs can be purchased at http://www.mmcrecordings.com as well as downloaded from iTunes, http://www.emusic.com and other Internet sites.

From 2001-2006, Michael was chosen for inclusion on the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) roster in the Category of Performing and Touring. The MCC Roster is a list of high-quality Massachusetts artists across a wide range of artistic disciplines, who are qualified to give performances and/or conduct school residencies. Past honors have included receipt of the Fromm Fellowship in Contemporary Music while studying at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood.

Michael resides in Andover, MA, with his wife, Sondra, They have three children.

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