Lucia Matos
Brazilian-born conductor Lucia Matos is the director of the NIU Philharmonic and music director of the Opera Workshop. She has appeared with numerous orchestras in the US and abroad and her first commercially distributed CD, with the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, was released in 2007 by Cala Records. Also intensively involved with opera, Lucia Matos has conducted several productions at Opera Illinois and was a semi-finalist at the 2007 Bela Bartok International Opera Conducting Competition.
Dr. Matos studied conducting with Henrique Gregori at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas and after graduating she was assistant conductor for two professional orchestras in Brazil (Sinfonica Municipal de Campinas and Orquestra da UNICAMP). In 1998 she was awarded a fellowship to continue her studies in the United States. She received a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Iowa, studying with William LaRue Jones. From 2003 to 2008, Lucia Matos was the orchestra director at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.
Thomas Fraschillo
Thomas V. Fraschillo has served as catalyst and mentor for the teaching profession for 43 years. His high standards of performance have had a sustained influence on ensembles at every level, and his performances serve as models in both the professional or academic arena throughout the world. Through his recordings, The Music of Luigi Zaninelli and The University of Southern Mississippi Wind Ensemble LIVE IN ITALY (recorded in Italy with the USM Wind Ensemble), and his publishing, conducting, and lecturing in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia, he is considered an international musician/scholar. His publications, translations from the original Italian of Alessandro Vessella’s Studi di strumentazione (Instrumentation Studies), and La Tecnica dell’orchestra contemporanea (The Technique of Contemporary Orchestration) by Alfredo Casella and Vittorio Mortari, both published by BMG Ricordi, Milan, have put his name in music libraries of the entire English speaking world. The translation of the Casella/Mortari makes available an English version of the most significant music publication on writing for instruments after the Second World War. As a writer/scholar Dr. Fraschillo is a contributing editor to the American Grove Dictionary, 2nd Edition and serves as a frequent conductor and lecturer in Italy as an American scholar. It should be noted that while there he lectures in Italian. His most recent appearances in Italy have been with La Banda dell’esercito/The Italian Army Band in Rome. One of his most significant engagements with them signaled a very important milestone for the Italian Army in that Dr. Fraschillo was the first American-born conductor to have been invited to appear in a public performance by what is considered Italy’s most prestigious military concert band. The concert with Dr. Fraschillo conducting was the opening concert of the International Festival in Spoleto, “The Festival of Two Worlds, Festival dei due mondi.” His appearance was enormously significant for conductors of bands in that the opening performance featured such international artists as Gian Carlo Menotti, the renowned composer who organized and began the event, the Orchestra and Giuseppe Verdi Chorus of Milan with Ricardo Chailly conducting, and the Italian actress, Claudia Cardinale whose work was being displayed in a film retrospective. Finally, in Italy Dr. Fraschillo often serves as a member of the giuria (judging panel) for many international festivals, most notably the Concorso Internazionale di Composizione “R. Marenco” di Novi Ligure, and the Concorso Internazionale di Composizione Originale per Banda di Corciano.
Aside from Dr. Fraschillo’s work in Europe, he is often engaged throughout the continents of Asia, and Australia. The Melbourne, Australia, Summer Youth Music Program has invited Dr. Fraschillo to be their guest conductor for their week long summer session for five years. In addition the Australian Band and Orchestra Directors Association has invited him to lecture and to adjudicate at their large ensemble festivals. Dr. Fraschillo’s other work in the Pacific Rim includes having recently served as clinician and guest conductor of the Central Armed Forces Band in Singapore and as conductor of the Singapore All-College Band sponsored by the Wind Band Association of Singapore. In 2009 and 2010 Dr. Fraschillo served as Artistic Director for the weeklong Winter Band Festival at Disney, Hong Kong.
Dr. Fraschillo has devoted a significant amount of his career to public education at the secondary level. For example his tenure at Meridian High School was highlighted by an invitation to perform at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious music event for band directors. Dr. Fraschillo’s Meridian students obtained successes not before reached, for he taught and helped place the first African-American students in the Mississippi All-State Band.
Dr. Fraschillo has attained a significant level in the realm of international leadership in that he serves as a past president of the prestigious American Bandmasters Association following a long line of distinguished conductors in that office. Other offices have been the presidency of the world’s largest organization for band directors, the National Band Association, and President of the CBDNA Southern Division.
Under his leadership the University of Southern Mississippi’s Wind Ensemble has been featured on frequent public radio broadcasts in Mississippi, on Performance Today, a program of PRI (Public Radio International), and has performed for many regional and national conventions including two of the American Bandmasters Association and three of the College Band Director’s National Association. In 1998, he brought for the first time the national convention of the American Bandmasters Association to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. As a result of all of the above he is constantly in demand as a conductor and lecturer throughout the world and attracts a steady stream of graduate students to USM to study in its doctoral programs.
Juan Tony Guzman
Conductor, composer, arranger, and music educator from the Dominican Republic. Guzmán is currently director of the jazz program and associate professor of music education at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He has conducted All-State, honor festivals, recording studio, shows, summer camps choirs, concert bands, jazz bands, and orchestras in several countries during the past thirty years. He has written many arrangements of Caribbean and Latin American music, some of which are published by Boosey & Hawkes and Oxford University Press. Recent clinics and presentations include the Dominican Republic National System of Youth Orchestras, World Choral Symposium, the Music Educators National Conference, Associação de Regentes de Corais do Brasil, The Association of British Choral Directors, the Scottish Association for Music Education, and the Festival 500 in Canada, among others.
Guzmán holds a Ph.D. in Music Education from the Florida State University and a degree in Electromechanical Engineering from the Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in Santiago, Dominican Republic. Guzmán received a bachelor’s degree from Luther College, and a master’s degree from Florida State University in music education. While attending Florida State, he also received a certificate in pedagogy of music theory. He frequently serves as a guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator in national and international festivals.
Edith Copley
Dr. Edith A. Copley joined the NAU music faculty in 1990 and is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Studies. She conducts the highly acclaimed Shrine of the Ages Choir and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in conducting and graduate choral literature. The Shrine of the Ages Choir has performed state, divisional and national convention of the American Choral Directors Association and the Music Educators National Conference. NAU choral ensembles under her direction have toured internationally to Western Europe, Peoples Republic of China, Australia, and New Zealand. Shrine is planning a concert tour to South Africa in 2010.
In addition to her responsibilities at NAU, Dr. Copley conducts the Master Chorale of Flagstaff, an auditioned 100-voice community chorus that performs major choral/orchestral works each spring with the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra (FSO). Dr. Copley has conducted numerous choral/orchestral works with the FSO, including the Britten’s War Requiem, Mozart’s C Minor Mass, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, and Brahms’ German Requiem, and served as FSO’s resident conductor for their 50th anniversary season.
Dr. Copley is a life member of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), and is currently past-president of the ACDA Western Division. She has received numerous honors, including NAU School of Performing Arts Centennial Teacher of the Year Award in 1999, Arizona Music Educator of the Year in 2004 and theArizona ACDA Outstanding Choral Director Award in 2007.
Prior to her appointment at NAU, Dr. Copley served as the assistant and interim principal conductor of the May Festival Chorus that performs with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops. Dr. Copley has her own series with Santa Barbara Music Publications and is in high demand as a festival clinician and guest conductor in the US. She has also conducted international choral festivals in Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Luxembourg, Tasmania, Australia, and China.
Timothy Stalter
Stalter is Director of Choral Activities at the University of Iowa where he conducts the premier choral ensemble, Kantorei, The University of Iowa University Choir, teaches graduate advanced conducting, and oversees the graduate program in choral conducting and pedagogy. Prior to coming to the University of Iowa, Dr. Stalter was assistant director of choral activities at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, director of choral activities at the University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point, and assistant professor of music at Goshen College (IN).
He received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin—Madison in choral conducting under Robert Fountain, his masters from the University of Illinois—Urbana in choral music under Don Moses, and his undergraduate degree in voice performance from Goshen College.
Dr. Stalter is particularly interested in researching issues relating to the teaching of conducting to undergraduate and graduate students, contemporary British choral music, and historical musical performance. He is a frequent guest clinician in the United States and is an active member with the American Choral Directors Association.
In addition to conducting and teaching choral music, Dr. Stalter is active as a tenor soloist in the United States and abroad, specializing in music of the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods. He is widely known for his performances as the Evangelist in the Passions of J.S. Bach and Heinrich Schütz. Among his credits are appearances as tenor soloist with the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, the Robert Shaw Festival Singers in France, the Robert Shaw Chamber Choir in Atlanta, the Classical Music Seminar and Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria, and the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival. He has also served as the tenor soloist in Haydn’s Creation for the International Cathedral Music Festival in Oxford and London, England and as the Evangelist in J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Dr. Stalter has also recorded as soloist with Robert Shaw on two compact discs (Amazing Grace and Songs of Angels) released on the Telarc label and with Albany Records (Monsterology) as a conductor and soloist of contemporary music.