JEFFREY BISHOP     
  Jeffrey Bishop was born in Hastings on the south coast of England in 1943. Education at Eastbourne College led to a composition scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. Here he studied violin with Pierre Tas, conducting with Sir Adrian Boult and composition with Herbert Howells. He was also taught by Nadia Boulanger. He graduated winning all the composition prizes.
   The next several years were spent variously playing the violin and viola, lecturing and conducting. Of lasting influence was the time spent with Sir Adrian Boult working on editions of English composers with whom Boult was associated. It was this connection which eventually lead to a career in publishing. Meanwhile he continued to compose with performances at festivals and in London, and on the BBC.
   In 1975 he moved to New York becoming head of the performance side of the Oxford University Press in America. There were performances of his music, some in highly prestigious settings with all the fanfare of arts promotion puff, and others where the essential matter of developing a compositional language was better served. Among these were several commissions for children's choruses, with specific musical and educational parameters.

  In 2002 Bishop shook the time-consuming music business off his back and concentrated on composition with the ideal of finding out just what he had to say, if anything. It is his hope that the jury will stay out long enough to enable him to answer his own question for himself.

 JAY ELFENBEIN 
www.elfpagesmusic.com 

   New York musician Jay Elfenbein, born in 1955, is a performer, composer, and teacher. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School. The New York Times has described his performances with the words "played magnificently" and "with virtuosity and flair." 

   Elfenbein's instruments are many:  bass, violone, Baroque bass, basse de violon, viola da gamba, Ruby gamba (electric), vihuela d'arco, vielle, rebab, and psaltery. He has performed widely in modern and early music ensembles, in concert and theatre orchestras, and in jazz venues: principal bassist with the New York Collegium, Boston Early Music Festival, Opera Lafayette, and the Washington Bach Consort;  as viola da gamba soloist in both Bach Passions throughout the Northeast, and on bass violin (basse de violon) with Tragicomedia, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, and Early Music New York. He has recorded for Sony Classics, CBS, PGM, and Newport Classics, and can be heard playing vihuela and vielle on Paul Simon's Warner Brothers release, "You're the One." 

   Elfenbein is the founder and director of the Ivory Consort.  a performing and recording ensemble specializing in medieval music (CD: "Music in the Land of Three Faiths"), and of GambaDream, a creative new jazz/contemporary ensemble spotlighting him on Ruby gamba (CD: "GambaDream"). 

   A published composer, Elfenbein has been commissioned and performed in the U.S., Japan, Canada, Europe, and South America. He writes in a wide variety of genres and for many vocal and instrumental combinations, including early instruments. His orchestral and large jazz works have been premiered in New York City. With his wife, singer and lyricist Andree Pages, he wrote “Stepping Stones” for the New York Children’s Chorus, of which their son was a member.

JAMESON MARVIN
ed., Monteverdi Three Canzonets
 
   Jameson Marvin is Director of Choral Activities and Senior Lecturer on Music at Harvard University. He conducts the Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Society, and Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, and teaches courses in Conducting, Masterworks of Choral Literature, and Vocal Music of the Renaissance and Baroque. Under Dr. Marvin’s direction since 1978, his Harvard ensembles have risen to be among the premier collegiate choruses in the United States. He has expanded a choral environment rich enough to attract thousands of students over the past thirty years, from the beginning singer to the advanced musician.
   During the past thirty-five years Dr. Marvin has conducted some eighty symphonic-choral works. He has a national reputation as a distinguished conductor, teacher, author, performance scholar, editor, arranger, and composer.
   Dr. Marvin was raised in Glendale, California, and received his BA in Music Theory/History and Composition from the University of California, Santa Barbara, MA in Choral Conducting and Early Music Performance from Stanford University, and DMA in Choral Music from the University of Illinois. The Boston Globe calls Dr. Marvin “a musician of consummate mastery.”
   Dr. Marvin has written monographs on many important choral topics: The Conductor’s Process (Pendragon Press), Mastery of Choral Ensemble (EC Schirmer), Renaissance Choral Performance (Oxford University Press), Choral Intonation (ACDA Choral Journal). Beginning in 1979 he served for 16 years on the National Committee for the Selection of Fulbright Fellows in Conducting. His many folk song arrangements and some 40 editions of Renaissance choral music appear in numerous catalogues.
 

BROCK McELHERAN
    Brock McElheran has taught advanced music reading (sight-singing) to hundreds of music majors, using the basic approach outlined in this volume. He has found it invaluable in conducting many of the most difficult major works in the choral repertory, from Bach’s Mass in B Minor to Penderecki’s Dies Irae, and in preparing choral performances for over thirty distinguished conductors,s including Eugene Ormandy, Robert Shaw, Leopold Stokowski, James Levine, Aaron Copland, Erich Leinsdorf, Lukas Foss, Zubin Mehta, and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
    Educated in Toronto, McElheran served on the faculty of the Crane School of Music, State University of New York at Potsdam, for forty-eight years. He was director of the Saratoga-Potsdam Choral Insitute for sixteen years and conductor of its 250-voice chorus, which sang fifty-four concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, several under his own critically acclaimed baton.
    McElheran is the author of Conducting Technique (Oxford University Press) and V-Bombs and Weathermaps (McGill-Queen’s University Press), an account of his experiences during World War II. He has composed several choral works, all in avant-garde notations, including Patterns in Sound, Funeral March on the Deaths of Heroes, Here Comes the Avant-Garde, Let the Spirit Soar (all published by Oxford University Press) and A Bilogy (Carl Fischer).
    McElheran retired in 1997 from the conductorship of La Chorale Nouvelle de Montreal, a position he held for ten years.
    Music Reading by Intervals, Brichtmark’s first publication (BRM-1) is the culmination of a life dedicated to choral music.

STEVEN POWELL
http://www.dvmpublicatons.com

   Music engraver, font and sound designer, publisher, choral conductor, and Professor of Music at Drexel University, Steven Powell was born in Detroit in 1954. His university degrees are from the University of Michigan (B.Mus.) and Indiana University (M.Mus., D.Mus.). Powell taught one of the nation’s first MIDI and digital audio courses as a faculty member in the University of Texas system in the 1980’s; he built choral programs at five universities and a high school, taking his groups to NY (Carnegie Hall), Montreal, Boston, Washington DC, and San Antonio. Several thousand copies of his music font designs, “Metronome” and “Kidnotes,” have been sold in over 32 countries. At Drexel he serves as Director of Choral Activities, conducting the University Chorus, Chamber Singers, and Vocal Jazz Ensemble, and is the Associate Dean of the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design.
   Owner/managing editor of DVM Publications, a top music engraving company, Powell has won eleven Paul Revere Awards, annual prizes given by the Music Publishers’ Association for outstanding music engraving. His client list includes Oxford University Press, Hal Leonard Publishing, Boston Music, Garland Music, Plymouth Music, and Brichtmark Music.

HILARY TANN
http://www.hilarytann.com

   Welsh-born composer Hilary Tann lives near the Hudson River in Upstate New York where she is the John Howard Payne Professor of Music at Union College. Her music is influenced by her love of Wales, her strong identification with the natural world, and a deep interest in the traditional music of Japan. Her scores are published by Brichtmark Music, Inc., Rowanberry Music, and Oxford University Press. Her chamber and orchestral works are available on CD with new recordings forthcoming on Channel Classics, Deux Elles, and Albany Records.

   Over the last ten years she has increasingly turned to vocal music, culminating in an invitation to compose the female choir test piece for the Llangollen International Music Festival in 2008.  Ensembles that have commissioned and performed her works include the Radcliffe Choral Society, North American Welsh Choir, Tenebrae,  Swansea Bach Choir, Louisville Symphony Orchestra, Women’s Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and KBS Philharmonic in Seoul, Korea.