New Zaimont CD, Feature Article and Copland House Grant

There are several important current developments in the career of
American composer Judith Lang Zaimont - a new CD, a feature article
in a major music magazine and a significant grant.

Albany Records has just issued "Callisto - Music for Piano" (Troy 617),
a survey of Ms.  Zaimont's most significant recent piano music by her
longtime collaborator and musical interpreter Joanne Polk.  The recording
of the 3-movement "Sonata for Piano Solo" is especially significant.
The piece was premiered in May of 2000 at the Phillips Collection in
Washington D.C.  and was cited as the most important solo piano piece
of 1999 by Piano & Keyboard magazine in its great piano compositions of
the 20th Century timeline.  It is the composer's largest solo statement
to date for the instrument and has also been performed in New York City
and Minneapolis.  The third movement, Impronta Digitale, was chosen as
a representative American work for the 2001 Van Cliburn Competition and
was performed by both of the competition's Gold Medal winners.

"Jupiter's Moons", in six movements, was created on a commission from
Focus on Piano Literature 2000 and was premiered by Paul Stewart on June
9, 2000 at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  "Nocturne:
La Fin de Siecle", premiered in New York City in March of 1979, was
chosen for the repertoire list for the 1988 General Motors/ Seventeen
Magazine Competition.  It has since been performed around the world.
"Hesitation Rag" was commissioned and premiered by Virginia Eskin in
1997.

You can find more information about the CD at
http://www.jamesarts.com/releases/nov03/JZCD_112403.htm.

Kyle Gann's appreciation of Zaimont's music forms the substance of his
American Composer profile of Judith Lang Zaimont in the December issue
of Chamber Music magazine.  He describes her music as "subtle, vigorous...
elegantly professional [and] deeply felt" and the range in her works as
"capable of thorny abstraction, but also of light atmosphere and humor...."
He concludes that "in some ineffable way, they all sound like her, and
all very musical."

The significant grant is a 2003 Aaron Copland Award, which will allow
Ms.  Zaimont to spend several months as solo resident this coming Spring
at Copland House, the longtime home of Aaron Copland north of New York
City.  The composer will use this time to create her new orchestral tone
poem "Stillness", which is being written for a consortium of American
and European orchestras.  You can find more about Aaron Copland House
at http://www.coplandhouse.org.

Judith Lang Zaimont, a Tennessee native who grew up in New York, and now
teaches at the University of Minnesota, is an internationally recognized
composer whose music is characterized by its expressive strength, dynamism,
and rhythmic vitality.  Her musical language is coloristic, and she has
contributed significant works to virtually every genre.

Among her many composition awards are a just-announced 2003 Aaron Copland
Award, joining earlier awards of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and commission
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Minnesota Composers
Forum; First Prize Gold Medal in the Gottschalk Centenary Composers
Competition, First Prize in the Chamber Orchestra Composition contest
to honor the Statue of Liberty Centennial; and First Prize in the
international 1995 McCollin Competition for Composers (for Symphony No.
1, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra in season 1995-96).  She has
offered masterclasses at many institutions, and has also been featured
Composer at the 1995 Society of Composers International American meeting;
Scholar in Residence with a consortium of Atlanta-area colleges (1995),
and Filene Artist in Residence at Skidmore College (1997-98).  Her music
appears on two Century lists (Chamber Music America; Piano & Keyboard
Magazine), and is the subject of many articles, book chapters and several
dissertations.  In addition to being the 2003 Commissioned Composer for
the San Antonio International Piano Competition, Ms.  Zaimont is also
the 2002 Composer for the National Federation of Music Clubs, and 2002
Commissioned Composer for the Music Teachers Association of California,
and the National Board Member for Composition for the College Music
Society (2003-2005).

Ms.  Zaimont's music is widely performed (Connecticut Opera, Philadelphia
Orchestra, Women's Philharmonic, Kremlin Chamber Orchestra, Czech Radio
Symphony) and has been recorded for the Koch International Classics,
Arabesque, Milken Family Foundation, Albany, Jeanne, Leonarda, Northeastern,
and 4Tay labels.  She was awarded the 1995 Recording Award - First Prize
awarded by the International Alliance for Women in Music (for the Arabesque
CD Neon Rhythm).  Her vocal works (NATS Journal), choral music (Choral
Journal), chamber music featuring winds (The Clarinet, June 2001) and
piano work (Piano & Keyboard, 1998) have all been the featured subject
of earlier articles, and a composer profile also appeared in the April
2003 Clavier.  Several other Zaimont compositions have been honored by
selection for competition repertoire lists, including works for the
Carnegie - Rockefeller competition for interpreters of American vocal
music, and the 2003 San Antonio International Piano Competition (held
in mid-autumn).

An Electronic Dialogues interview with Judith Lang Zaimont can
be read at the Internet Classical Music Magazine Sequenza 21 -
http://www.sequenza21.com/Zaimont.html.  You can read "Reflections on
an Undescribable Art - Being A Composer," Ms.  Zaimont's February 2002
Keynote Speech to the Minnesota Listening List Competition at
http://www.jamesarts.com/releases/feb02/JLZ_021202.htm.

More information about Ms. Zaimont, including sound clips of many of her
compositions, is available at her website http://www.jzaimont.com/.

She is represented by Jeffrey James Arts Consulting, who can be
contacted at 516-797-9166 or at [log in to unmask]

Jeffrey James Arts Consulting
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://www.jamesarts.com