Ricardo Iznaola has pursued a multi-faceted musical career for over four decades as concert and recording artist, composer, teacher, lecturer, and writer. An American citizen, he was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1949, lived and studied in Venezuela, where his musical roots began to grow and develop, and Spain, where he was mentored by the great Spanish master Regino Sainz de la Maza, with whom he developed a deep professional and personal relationship. He has won nine prizes as performer and composer in Venezuela, Spain, England, Germany and the United States. Critics, colleagues and audiences in four continents have being unanimous in highlighting the importance of his re-discovery and promotion of the monumental Sonata by Antonio José, which he has edited and published with Bèrben in Italy, his interpretations of music by the Spanish composers of the so-called Generation of 1927, and his unique transcriptions of piano and orchestral masterpieces such as Chopin’s Waltzes, Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso, or Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance.

Ricardo Iznaola’s didactic works have become standard texts for the training of guitar professionals, and are used as required materials in many prestigious conservatories and universities in the U.S. and Europe. These include Kitharologus – The Path to Virtuosity, a technical handbook; On Practicing, an essay on practicing approaches; and The Physiology of Guitar Playing, a treatise on the physiomechanics of guitar playing. Mr. Iznaola’s comprehensive treatise on the art of guitar playing, Summa Kitharologica, is in progress.

Worthy of mention among his orchestral, chamber, vocal and solo works are the symphonic suite In the Eyes, a Silver Dagger – Four Symphonic Tableaux after Lorca’s Blood Wedding, the guitar concerto Tiempo Muerto , Musique de Salon (in versions for solo guitar, guitar duo, various mixed ensembles, guitar and string orchestra. etc.), Gran Guaguancó for cello and guitar, Beethovenspiel for violin and guitar, Tríptico Criollo for flute or violin and guitar, Corinna’s Songbook for mezzo-soprano and piano, Danzas de la Abuela for flute, cello and guitar, Trio Classico for flute, viola and guitar, and, among the solo guitar works, the Sonata Daedalus, the Ten Etudes-Homages, Death of Icarus (in memoriam Regino Sainz de la Maza,) Music for Blood Wedding, among many others.

Since 1970, when his debut recording with the world-premiere of Antonio Lauro’s legendary Sonata was released by the Promus label in South America and Belter in Spain, Ricardo Iznaola has produced 15 recordings for the Promus, Columbia and Luthier labels. In 1991 he founded his own recording and publishing company, IGW (Iznaola Guitar Works), through which his most recent and critically acclaimed CD’s have been issued. IGW has recently released a double CD set, Heritage – The Guitar in Venezuela, an anthology of music by Venezuelan composers and a double CD set with Mr. Iznaola’s guitar arrangement of Franz Schubert’s lieder cycle Die Winterreise (Winter’s Journey), with acclaimed American basso Kenneth Cox.

Ricardo Iznaola is Artist-in-residence, Director of the Conservatory Program and Chair of the Guitar and Harp Department at the Lamont School of Music of the University of Denver, where he has been honored with the Distinguished Faculty Artist Award in 1990 and the 1999 University Lecturer Award. In 2004, he was awarded the John Evans Distinguished Professorship, the highest distinction bestowed by the University of Denver. Since 2001 he has been a faculty-artist at the prestigious Bowdoin International Music Festival, in Maine, USA.

The Playground Ensemble, Artists-in-Residence at DU’s Lamont School of Music, is a force for new music in the Rocky Mountain region. We are a group of professional musicians and composers dedicated to presenting classical music as a living art form.

In addition to an annual concert season that features the work of recognized composers, we cultivate a thriving local composition community and we conduct dynamic educational programs with youth and people of all ages. With exciting outreach programs like “Living Music, Living Composer” and “American Made” the Playground is working to show young people that classical music is not a museum piece. It is vibrant, adventurous and relevant to the world they live in.

Now in its 6^th year, our Colorado Composers Concert (CoCoCo), has featured 49 works by 39 different Colorado-based composers including a number of K-12 composers. Be watching our web site for the next deadline and be sure to alert any composers you know to this opportunity.

The Playground has performed at many notable venues and festivals including the Arvada Center, the Denver Art Museum, the International Society of Improvised Music Annual Conference, the National Performing Arts Convention, the Mile High Voltage Festival, and the Denver Music Summit. We have performed with, or shared a bill with a number of new music luminaries including So Percussion, Evan Ziporyn, Tatsuya Nakatani and Ron Miles. Our efforts have been recognized with awards and funding from the American Music Center, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado, as well as numerous regional foundations and individuals.

In the Spring of 2011 The Playground released its debut CD, Dreams Go Through Me. This project features a number of Colorado based composers and is supported by the American Music Center’s CAP Recording Program, made possible by endowment funds from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and with funds from The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, along with the Newman Center, and Colorado Public Radio.

The Playground’s mission is to provide stimulating performances, expand common perceptions of both contemporary music and the chamber ensemble, and nurture a community around this music that we love.

If you want to get involved, please write us at playground@du.edu or visit www.PlaygroundEnsemble.org.

Artistic Director and Conductor Brian Patrick Leatherman, now in his 17th year with the Chorale, leads a multi-faceted life as conductor, teacher, singer, and clinician. A fully certified Orff-Schulwerk teacher, Mr. Leatherman is a vocal/general music specialist in the Douglas County Colorado schools. His students have performed at the National Conference of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association and the Colorado Music Educator’s Association annual Clinic/Conference. He is active as a choral clinician and adjudicator. Mr. Leatherman has appeared as tenor and counter-tenor soloist with the San Juan Symphony, National Repertoire Orchestra, Colorado Springs Symphony, Greeley Philharmonic, Aurora Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Fort Collins Symphony, Breckenridge Music Institute Chamber Orchestra, Colorado Chorale, Columbine Chorale, Repertoire Singers of Colorado, Larimer Chorale, Pueblo Chorale, Desert Chorale of Santa Fe, the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, and the Robert Shaw Festival Chorus.

Bitten by the conducting bug in high school, he was the first junior to conduct the pep band, as well as the first student to conduct both the Concert Chorale and the Symphonic Band in concert. Prior posts include directorship of the Pueblo Choral Society and the Douglas County Children’s Chorus. He has been guest conductor for the Greeley Chorale, the Colorado Springs Chorale, the Arapahoe Philharmonic and the Pueblo Symphony.  He has conducted opera and ballet with Opera Fort Collins, the Colorado Opera Troupe, and the Colorado Ballet.

Mr. Leatherman has served on the Board of Directors of the Colorado Chapter of the American Choral Directors Association and the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the American Orff Schulwerk Association.  He holds the BME and the MM degree, with emphasis in choral conducting, from Colorado State University, and cites as his two greatest influences Barbara Grenoble in pedagogy and Robert Shaw in choral work.

Patrick Sutton began his journey with the guitar at the age of 11 in Evergreen, Colorado. He completed his Bachelor and Masters in classical guitar performance at the Lamont School of Music, studying with Ricardo Iznaola, Masakazu Ito and Jonathan Leathwood. While at Lamont, he received several honors including, first place in the 2009 Lamont chamber music competition, three recital of distinction awards and induction into the Pi Kappa Lambda national music honor society. Patrick is a two-time prizewinner in the Denver Classical Guitar Society Solo Competition and has performed in master classes for many top guitarists and pedagogues, including, Sharon Isbin, Elliot Fisk, Fredrick Hand, Richard Wright, Fabio Zanon, Marcin Dylla and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. Chamber music is Patrick’s favorite musical outlet. His extensive repertoire includes a wide variety of genres and mixed ensembles. He has received chamber music coaching’s from some of today’s most important composers for the guitar, such as, Robert Beaser, Gilbert Babarian and Stephen Goss.

Patrick maintains a passionate interest in a wide variety of musical styles and is sponsored by Godin Guitars. He is currently on the music faculty at Community College of Denver and is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder as a teaching assistant.

Deborah Marshall, clarinet, has performed with artists ranging from Peter Serkin to Yo-Yo Ma.  She lived in Germany for 22 years where she performed with many of the country’s best-known orchestras.  She served on the faculty of the Hochschule fur Musik in Munich and the Richard Strauss Conservatory for 14 years and has coached and given master classes throughout Europe.  She has recorded for practically every German broadcasting corporation, as well as Austrian Radio ORF, Swiss Radio SRG and Radio Orfeo Moscow. The following 11 years were spent in Budapest and Moscow, where she continued her active career as soloist and chamber musician.  She now resides in Boulder, Colorado.

Austin Wintory is quite certain that the 21st Century is the greatest to have ever lived and worked as a composer. His career has thus far spanned concert music, film and television, video games, commercials, a wide array of so-called “digital media,” albums (both his own and in collaboration with others), installation art, modern dance and theater, and all manner of esoteric others.

His concert music has been performed by orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States and Europe. Recent performances include “Woven Variations” (a miniature cello concerto fashioned from the score to an upcoming PlayStation3 game called JOURNEY), performed by Tina Guo (cello soloist) and the Golden State Pops Orchestra (conducted by Wintory); “Concatenation” for wind ensemble, by the Cherry Creek Wind Ensemble in May 2011; and “Shakes,” for chamber orchestra, by the American Studio Orchestra that same month in Baltimore, Maryland. Shortly thereafter recordings began of a chamber music album in collaboration with the LA-based group “Symbiosis.”

Austin’s first major effort at a video game, 2006′s FLOW on PlayStation3, earned him a British Academy Award nomination, a Game Audio Network Guild award for “Rookie of the Year,” and a handful of other industry awards. In 2011 another Playstation3 title, JOURNEY, will be released featuring a score that Austin has worked on for over 2 years. The score will feature acclaimed cello soloist Tina Guo, singer Lisbeth Scott, as well as the Skopje Radio Orchestra conducted by Wintory.

In the film world, Austin recently completed JUNCTION, his 30th feature film score. Other recent scores include LEAVE (starring Rick Gomez and Frank John Hughes) and A LITTLE HELP (starring Jenna Fischer and Chris O’Donnell) both due out in 2011. For his score to CAPTAIN ABU RAED, completed in 2007, Austin was shortlisted as a contender for the 2008 Academy Award for ‘Best Original Score,’ and won several other awards (such as the Hollywood Music Award for “Best New Composer”) and nominations (such as the International Film Music Critic Association’s “Breakout Composer of the Year”). His strange score (utilizing sampled recordings of horse flies and babies crying in addition to a large choir of contrabass clarinets recorded in London’s famed Abbey Road Studios) for the horror/drama GRACE also received attention; the notorious Fangoria Chainsaw Awards nominated it for “Best Original Score” in 2010 and Visions in Sound radio named it in the Top 10 Scores that year.

Beyond these activities Austin keeps busy with various odd pet projects. In 2010 he launched a blog called “Allogamy” which features one (short) piece of music for every day of the calendar year; the project ended up producing nearly 9 hours of music and featuring dozens of Hollywood’s top musicians. 2010 also marked the release of a solo meditation album called “Sounds of Darkness,” featuring ancient chants and poetry by the world’s last surviving Aztec Tetzkatlipoka medicine man, Miktlan Ehekateotl Kuauhtlinxan.

Learn more at Austin’s website!

Conrad Kehn is a composer, improviser, performer, educator, writer and artist. He is the founding Director of The Playground; a chamber ensemble dedicated to modern music.

An award winning composer, Conrad’s style spans many genres from traditional chamber pieces to aleatory, graphic scores, multimedia works and experimental rock. His music has been performed across the U.S. including Issue Project Room (NY), Audio Inversions (Austin, TX), Pendulum New Music Series (CU-Boulder), and the Summer New Music Symposium at Colorado College.

Conrad has two beautiful daughters, Brianna and Eris. They have a considerable influence on his creative output. Their artwork is featured on the covers of his scores. They often appear visually and aurally in his multimedia works. In 2008 he used their texts in his very successful song cycle for cello and soprano Bedtime Stories.

Conrad also works in digital formats and visual arts. His graphic scores have also been displayed in art galleries. He has numerous electronics compositions- many accompanied by his own video creations. He collaborates regularly with film-makers Nicole Esquibel (Flying Dragon Films) and Chad Smith (Monkey Angel Studios). These collaborations have appeared at festivals world-wide.

As a vocalist, Conrad specializes in improvisation, contemporary music, and the use of electronics. Improvisatory collaborations include Wu Fei, Tatsuya Nakatani, James Ilgenfritz, Brandon Vaccaro, and Nate Wooley. Recent concert hall performances include Bolcom’s Satires, Ligeti’s Nonsense Madrigals, Morton Feldman’s O’Hara Songs, and George Crumb’s Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death.

Conrad has performed with a variety of acts including the improv ensembles Mystery Children and Rhythmic Void, multimedia ensemble itchy-O and the itchy-O Marching Band, defunct rock bands Kallisti and Skull Flux, and of course The Playground.

Conrad is an advocate for arts education. He currently serves on the Denver Public Schools Arts Resource Council, an organization that advocates for funding and support from the Denver Board of Education to deliver a comprehensive arts education for every student.

In the summer of 2010 Conrad attended the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival as a teaching artist in the Young Composers Project. Here he worked directly with New York Philharmonic bassist Jon Deak, to learn the composition program Deak developed for young children.

Conrad believes that it is essential for young people to see classical music is a vibrant, living art form and not a museum piece. This is done through composition and new music!!

Conrad holds a Master of Business Administration Degree (2010) from the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. He also holds a Master’s degree in Composition (2000) and Bachelor’s degree in Commercial Music/Recording Technology (1996) from the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music. His composition instructors include Donald Keats, M. Lynn Baker, and Bill Hill. Conrad is currently a lecturer of Music Theory and Music Technology at Lamont.

Equally sought after as performer and composer, The Boulder Symphony Orchestra has recently commissioned Colin Thurmond for a new orchestral work, resulting in the Concierto de Pampas, a duo concerto for guitar and percussion, to be premiered in April of 2011 with Mr. Thurmond himself as guitarist. In addition, his works have been performed by Denver’s premier contemporary music ensemble, The Playground, in which he has been a regular performer.

Mr. Thurmond’s concert engagements have carried him across the United States, Canada and Europe. As a collaborator and chamber musician, he has shared the stage with performers such as Daniel and Maria Stabrawa, concertmaster and violinist of the Berlin Philharmonic, Tracy Silverman, electric six-string violinist and American flamenco guitar virtuoso, Miguel Antonio. Mr. Thurmond maintains a passionate interest in chamber music, performing with mezzo-soprano, Molly Kittle in the voice and guitar duo, Eisteddfod.

Colin Thurmond earned his Bachelor of Music from the University of Denver with renowned pedagogues Ricardo Iznaola and Jonathan Leathwood, graduating Magna Cum Laude and being awarded the 2007 Senior Recital of Distinction and the Elective Recital of Distinction in the same year.  He was also prizewinner in the Lamont Concerto Competition in 2007 and grand prizewinner of the 2009 Lamont Chamber Music Competition.  He earned his Masters of Music in March of 2010 after being awarded the Graduate Recital of Distinction.  Thurmond is currently pursuing his doctorate at the New England Conservatory with guitar virtuoso, Eliot Fisk.

Mr. Thurmond has been Adjunct Professor of Music Theory at the University of Denver, Guitar Instructor at Arapahoe Community College and Musicology Instructor at the Academy of Lifelong Learning.
Thurmond interests include a strong commitment to contemporary music, aiming for the expansion of repertoire through composition and commissioning of new works.

Chip Michael (b. 1962) recently returned from the UK after studying composition with Kenneth Dempster and Stephen Davismoon.  He is currently studying with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Percussionist, William Hill.

Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra premiered Chip’s Symphony No. 1 “Figuratively Speaking” in 2008.  The Edinburgh Quartet also premiered several string quartets and chamber pieces over the past four years and has maintained a “Skimming Rock & Skipping Stones” as part of their permanent repertoire.

While in Colorado several of Chip’s pieces have premiered with local artists and ensembles, including Cantilena’s with the Lamont Symphony Orchestra, violin concerto performed by Hannah Barton and Piano Preludes by Ani Gyulamiryan.  Exchanging Glances is his latest orchestral work commissioned by the Boulder Symphony Orchestra and premiering in late 2010.

Chip Michael’s blog, Interchanging Idioms, is one of the foremost classical music blogs on the internet covering news, reviews and commentary from professional classical music artists around the world.  He also is published in the monthly journal 21^st Century Music.