James HARLEY

Born in 1959, Vernon, B.C., Canada, Harley began studying composition in 1980. Prior to that, he had been active as a pianist (jazz and classical), played percussion, and also studied electroacoustics at Western Washington University. After graduating in 1982, he took up residence in the UK in order to study composition with Paul Patterson at the Royal Academy of Music. The recipient of grants from the Canada Council and the Leverhulme Trust, among others, Harley remained in London for three years, benefitting from a number of performances and prizes. In 1985, having been awarded the prestigious Mendelssohn Scholarship, which enables British composers to spend a period of time abroad, he moved to Paris where he studied aesthetics with Iannis Xenakis, musical acoustics at the Université de Paris, attended seminars at IRCAM and the College de France (Pierre Boulez), and worked extensively with the UPIC computer music system at CEMAMu. In 1987-8 Harley lived in Warsaw, Poland, on a Polish Government Scholarship, at the Chopin Academy of Music, studying with Włodzimierz Kotoński and (privately) Witold Lutosławski. In 1988-1993 he completed his doctoral studies at McGill University in Montreal (computer-aided composition, developing CHAOTICS, compositional software based on functions derived from chaos theory, thesis work: Cantico Delle Creature). Over the years Harley taught at McGill University, Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, University of Southern California, and the California Institute for the Arts in Valencia. In 1999, he began teaching in Minnesota, directing the Music Technology program at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He has continued to compose to various commissions, and has seen a number of his works released on CD. Among his prizes the most recent is the McKnight Fellowship from the American Composers' Forum (2002).

Górecki - Bibliography
Article's Abstract

Luke B. HOWARD

After studying piano and music education at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in his native Australia, Luke Howard moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) and the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Michigan in 1997 with a dissertation on the history and reception of Henryk M. Górecki's Symphony No. 3, the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs". Howard has served on the music faculties of Minnesota State University Moorhead and the University of Missouri Kansas City, and is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Music at Brigham Young University. His research focuses on contemporary composers from Eastern and Central Europe, and on the appropriation of classical music into popular culture.

Howard's Article
Article's Abstract

David KOPPLIN

Kopplin's professional career in music began as extra percussionist for the Colorado Springs Symphony, and later as percussionist for the Colorado Springs Symphony Jazz Quartet. He has performed and recorded with San Francisco's Clubfoot Orchestra, the Brazilian jazz group Araça Azul, and the Leisure Time Orchestra, among many others. In 1983, Kopplin was chosen as a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellow, and in 1984 and again in 1985 was chosen for the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship. Kopplin holds a Master's in Music from the University of Southern California where he studied composition with Bob Linn, Morten Lauridsen, Donald Crockett, and jazz composition with Vince Mendoza. He received the Ph.D. in composition at UCLA, where he studied composition with Roger Bourland, Daniel Lentz, Manuel Enriquez, and Ian Krouse, and musicology and ethnomusicology with Robert Walser and Susan McClary. Professional credits as a composer include film scores, incidental music for theater, works for chorus, chamber orchestra, full orchestra, various electro-acoustic works for chamber ensembles, songs, and works for jazz and Latin-jazz ensembles.

Kopplin is active as a writer and speaker. He has lectured on music for the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Pacific Symphony Orchestra, as well as guest lectured at the University of Arizona, Loyola Marymount University, USC, UCLA, Pasadena City College, El Camino College, Whittier College, the University of Calif.-Riverside, and Occidental College. He is currently Vice President of the College Music Society's Pacific Southern Chapter. Kopplin presently is Assistant Professor of Music in music at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He regularly contributes articles to Performing Arts magazine, program notes and features for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, UCLA, the Phillip's Performing Arts Center, and for the Hollywood Bowl, and served as editor of the summer Hollywood Bowl program guide from 1998-2001. The Górecki paper is a preliminary study towards his D.M.A. thesis on the concept of time in Górecki's music.

Kopplin's Article
Article's Abstract

Anna MASLOWIEC

Anna Maslowiec completed her Honours Degree in Musicology in 1995 at the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney, where she is currently enrolled in the Master of Music program. Her research area is the sonoristic movement in Polish music. She has also written for Ruch Muzyczny.

Maslowiec's Article
Article's Abstract

Adrian THOMAS

Adrian Thomas is Professor of Music at Cardiff University, United Kingdom. His previous positions have included Visiting Scholar at the University of California at San Diego (1983-4), Professor of Music at The Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland (1985-90) and Head of Music at BBC Radio 3 in London (1990-93). He is the author of monographs on Bacewicz (PMC, 1985) and Górecki (Oxford University Press, 1997; Polish translation, PWM, 2001) and of many articles and chapters on Polish music from Chopin to Lutoslawski. He is the author of over fifty entries on twentieth-century Polish music in the Second Edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2000-01).

Prof. Thomas has lectured widely in the United States and in Europe and is the recipient of the Polish Composers' Union medal (1989) and the Polish Government's Cultural Order of Merit (1996). In 2002, Prof. Thomas received the Wilk Book Prize for Research in Polish Music for his monograph on Górecki. While at the BBC, he initiated and played a major programming role in "Polska!," Radio 3's nationwide festival of Polish music and culture. He has completed a research project, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board, into the interaction of "socrealizm" and musical creativity in post-war Poland. His forthcoming books include a study of Polish music since 1937 (Cambridge University Press) and a monograph, with accompanying CD, on Lutosławski's Cello Concerto.

Thomas's Article
Article's Abstract

Maja TROCHIMCZYK

Born in Poland, and educated in Poland and Canada, Dr. Trochimczyk serves as Research Assistant Professor and Stefan and Wanda Wilk Director of the Polish Music Center at the Flora L. Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. After receiving two M.A. degrees in Poland (in sound engineering from the F. Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, 1987, and in musicology from the University of Warsaw, 1986) she completed her doctoral dissertation on Space and Spatialization in Contemporary Music at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada (1994) and moved to California in order to dedicate her future to researching and promoting Polish music. Dr. Trochimczyk is the recipient of grants, awards, and fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships, 1993-1996), the American Council of Learned Societies (2001), the University of Southern California (grants from the Zumberge Fund for New Faculty in 1997, Southern California Studies Center Junior Faculty Award in 1999), Mu Phi Epsilon Professional Music Fraternity (first prize for the doctoral dissertation, 1998), and the Wilk Prize for Research in Polish Music (Professional Prize, 1994).

In her musicological research Trochimczyk has focused on the study of music by Polish composers (Bacewicz, Górecki, Lutosławski) while continuing to pursue her interests in 20th-century music (Bartók, Andriessen, Schafer, Xenakis), spatial music, and constructs of Polish national identity (anthems, immigrant communities and musicians, dance groups). Dr. Trochimczyk has published over forty articles and book chapters in an international array of books and journals, e.g. Journal of Musicological Research, The Musical Quarterly, American Music, The American Journal of Semiotics (US), Contemporary Music Review (UK), Muzyka (Poland), Studia Musicologica (Hungary), Women Composers: Music Through the Ages (USA), Lutosławski Studies (UK), and Crosscurrents and Counterpoints (Sweden). She has also given presentations at over forty musicology and interdisciplinary conferences in six countries. Her book After Chopin: Essays in Polish Music was published in 2000 by the Polish Music Center; a volume of essays about The Music of Louis Andriessen appeared in 2002 (New York: Routledge). In 1987-2000 she was known as Maria Anna Harley and published under that name.

Trochimczyk's article
Górecki - Bibliography

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Copyright 2003 by the Polish Music Journal.
Editor: Maja Trochimczyk. Assistant Editor: Linda Schubert.
Editorial Assistance: Krysta Close.
Design: Maja Trochimczyk & Marcin Depinski.
Comments and inquiries by e-mail: polmusic@email.usc.edu