Composer bios
The composers listed below are among those who have contributed music to the ARS website for members' enjoyment. Click Here to search or browse the ARS downloadable music libraries.
Jamie Allen has over 25 years of experience as a composer, conductor, performer and music educator. After completing his bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Chicago (IL), Allen earned a master’s degree in composition from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1992, he was named “Composer of the Year” by the New Mexico Music Teachers Association and was hailed in 1997 as “the most inventive young composer in the state”by The Santa Fe Reporter. He has won awards from both ASCAP and the American Music Center for his work, as well as commissions from numerous ensembles and arts organizations. In spring 2016, Allen was the stage director and assistant music director, for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s production as part of the 2016 Soluna Festival, of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, an inspiring community event presented at the Cathedral Shrine of Guadalupe in Dallas. He was also co-director of the Dallas Recorder Society for several years.
While I learned to play flutophone in 3rd grade, I didn’t really encounter the recorder until taking Music Education classes in college for my BME. Somehow I didn’t drop it, and when encountering recorder players in an ARS chapter in Colorado Springs, I joined in. Eventually I got a good bass recorder, and then a good tenor recorder, and these are still my favorite recorders today. While I didn’t explicitly study music composition, I’ve always felt that a good all around musician can and should write their own music. So in my professional musical life, I’ve written music for choir, handbells, organ, harpsichord, voice, and now my special love, Renaissance lute.
My musical credentials are a Bachelor of Music Education, a Master of Music in Church Music, and the Choir Master Certificate of the American Guild of Organists. To help pay the bills I was a Software Engineer for 20 years, having also acquired a BS and MS in Computer Science along the way.
Will Ayton, the youngest of four children, was born in 1948 in Kansu province, China, of missionary parents. He received a BME from Shenandoah Conservatory of Music, a MME from New England Conservatory of Music, and a DMA in Music Theory and Composition from Boston University. He currently lives with his wife, Nancy, in Providence Rhode Island. He is a retired professor of music, performs on the Viola da Gamba, and composes in stolen moments.
Jeannette Bertles is graduate of Bennington College, and a member of the Westchester (NY) Recorder Guild.
Gary grew up in a family of musicians who loved singing four-part harmony around the house as well as at family gatherings. At age nine, he talked his parents into letting him take up the clarinet at school, adding alto clarinet, alto and baritone saxophones, and oboe in junior high, English horn, and recorders in high school, and flute in college. His love for Renaissance music began when he was researching a paper on European History and he came across a book that had John Wilbye’s madrigal, “Adieu, Sweet Amaryllis,” printed in the appendix. Gary has enjoyed singing in amateur and professional madrigal choirs. He holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Delaware, and a Master of Music from West Chester University, Pennsylvania. He taught vocal and instrumental music for thirty-one years in public and private schools in both Delaware and Florida. Now retired from teaching, he is a free-lance flautist.
Frances Blaker performs on recorders of all types and sizes as a soloist and with Ensemble Vermillian, Calextone, Farallon Recorder Quartet, and Tibia Recorder Duo. She has performed as soloist with the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, with the North Carolina H.I.P. Festival 2013 and to come in 2020, with Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, and others. She is conductor and music director of the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, and of BABO (Bay Area Baroque Orchestra), a community orchestra for accomplished amateur players. Ms. Blaker received her Music Pedagogical and Performance degrees in recorder from the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen where she studied with Eva Legêne. She also studied with Marion Verbruggen in the Netherlands. As co-director of Tibia Adventures in Music, she organizes workshops for small groups of adult students in the U. S., France, Italy and Great Britain. She has been co-director of both the SFEMS Medieval and Renaissance workshop and the Baroque workshop, and is now Festival director of the Amherst Early Music Festival. She teaches recorder privately, both in person and long distance via Skype and FaceTime. Ms. Blaker is the author of The Recorder Player's Companion and the "Opening Measures" column in American Recorder, published in book form in 2014, and a collaborator and performer on the Disc Continuo series of play-along recordings.
Dr. Ray Braswell received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. He has been a band director as well as a choir director since graduating from ASU. He completed his doctorate in education from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. His band, choral and orchestral compositions have been performed across the US, the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. He describes his musical style as contemporary romanticism, with melodic passages combined with accessible harmonies.
Jaymar Joshua (JJ) Calayag (b. 1992), is a Filipino musician and multi instrumentalist living in metro Manila. He has been interested in music since he was a child, but did not pursue a musical career because life as a musician in the Philippines is very challenging. Rather, he holds a Bachelor’s degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management and follows his passion for music while working in the food industry. His musical influences are generally from the Baroque period, specifically works by Antonio Vivaldi, as well as later Classical music and contemporary music in video games. Aside from playing and composing music, he also enjoys creating visual art, gardening, cooking and making desserts. He regularly posts new recorder videos to his YouTube channel AeolusJoshua.
Sikharin Dit-em, nickname Hai (b. 1989), is a Thai musician and teacher of Western music in Bangkok, with a degree in Western Music Education from Bunditpatanasilpa Institute (BPI). He began studying traditional Thai instruments in primary school, and was introduced to the recorder at age 10. In high school he started playing Western string instruments, first ’cello and then violin. While at BPI he became interested in composition and music pedagogy, and after graduating joined the faculties of both KPN Music Academy and Music Tree Academy. Sadly, despite his best efforts, there’s not a large community of recorder players in Bangkok; Sikharin hopes that someday more people will play recorder in Thailand!
Victor Eijkhout is a Dutch-born performer and composer currently living in Austin TX. He performs as a recorder player with the Austin Troubadours and the Texas Early Music Project; he can also be seen, heard, and felt holding down the root and fifth on bass guitar with the 1001 Night Orchestra and Ojala. As evidence of his interest in world music, he has a CD of Native American Flute music under the artist name Oakensong. Victor has been composing recorder music which he releases on IMSLP or by subscription through his Patreon channel “Flutecore”. He uses an idiom that is largely tonal with modern influences, favouring large ensembles of sometimes up to 15 voices.
Musical Direcor of Maalot-Tarshicha Music Center in Israel, Head of Havrutav Music education program (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N636EBIZOXU&t=4s). Studied in Franz Liszt Music Academy - Budapest, Hebrew University - Jerusalem. Graduate of Mandel Leadership Institute - Jerusalem. Composer and teacher.
Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, Kass Finlay McAuliffe has lived in Sydney, Australia since 1998. Her musical background includes being a violinist in two New Zealand university orchestras, during which time she played string backing for a rock band. Due to being the sole chime bar player in her primary school orchestra, she never learned the recorder until aged 21 when at Teachers College as mastering the recorder was considered a prerequisite for teaching music at high school. As a result of finding the repertoire rather dull, she composed some recorder music herself.
As keyboardist for the Wellington-based all-female Palm Court trio, The Victorian Players, a member of Fipple Flutes Four (a recorder group comprising teachers from the New Zealand Correspondence School (Te Kura) ) and later as resident pianist in various restaurants, she has performed her own compositions in both New Zealand and Australia.
She has written, recorded and produced various albums of piano, recorder and light instrumental music. In 2003, her landscape instrumental composition, "Down in Mesopotamia" was awarded First Prize, Best Instrumental Composition, in the Australian-wide 5th Johnny Dennis Music Awards adjudicated by the Australian Guild of Screen Composers. Her Australian Independent Record label, Kass Music also publishes scores of her original music.
Philippe Goudour is a French recorder player and teacher born in 1960. His compositions for recorder ensembles are widely published: A Joke, Foehn, and Hast, published by Tre Fontane; Ah Robin, Stella, The Last Train, and Blue among others, published by Soldano; Calypso, and Rocking-chair, published by Recorder Musicgarden; and Les Buissonnières, published by Billaudot. He is also the author of the method books Blue Sun and Emerald Sun published by Robert Martin. Over time, he has developed a particular skill in working with people suffering from Autism, Alzheimer’s, and Down Syndrome. He uses the restorative power of music as a language to help people with these conditions structure their thinking. His music, in its melodic and harmonic structure, always flows from spoken language. Philippe Goudour has recorded his reflections in two books, Music Differently and Logbook, published by L’Harmattan.
Just a small town boy living in SE Missouri who has a penchant for music - whether it be arranging or playing recorder, flute or dabbling on piano.
I began writing music when I was a teenager in a garage band. For years I just wrote songs by ear. All that time I had more elaborate music in my head, but I lacked the technical grounding I needed to capture it in a form that would allow anyone but me to hear it. When personal computers and MIDI arrived in the 1980s, I could compose in "classical" music forms, but I was still working from instinct and trial-and-error. The results sounded good to me at the time, but today when I listen to the MIDI files I created then, I can only shudder. Still, some of the musical themes I recorded have been worth salvaging for later works. Finally, after I ended my career at IBM, I had time for formal instruction in composition, instrumentation, and orchestration at the University of North Texas. Here in Denton I've found friends who are gracious enough to perform many of the chamber works I compose. And as a member of the Denton Songwriters Guild I'm still writing songs, more than ever in fact. Pretty much all of my music is online at my website, jentprints.com.
Michel Marinier studied music at the University of Ottawa (BA. Concentration Music 1984) and has performed as an amateur tenor in various choirs in the Ottawa-Gatineau area (Canada). Before going to university, Michel sang in several choirs from an early age, played of a variety of instruments including the French horn in high school.
After a long break from music related to stress from work and performance anxiety, Michel rediscovered the joys of music in 2018 by taking on enjoyable low-stress projects, including joining an a Capella community choir and the Carleton Recorder Group (Ottawa, Canada) under the direction of Jennifer Davis. Michel participated in and has led the weekly sing-along sessions in a senior’s residence, witnessing first-hand how music fills the heart of those who participate and listen with great joy. Michel also plays clarinet in a concert band managed by the Ottawa New Horizons Band.
Inspired by the outstanding variety of wonderful music and software resources freely available on the Internet, Michel began creating musical arrangements and original compositions in 2019, starting with arrangements for recorder ensemble of known classics like the Overture to Handel's Messiah and the Overture to the 1st movement Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 23 (K488), and then moving on to his first original composition in the summer of 2019 (“After the Storm”, available in the ARS library). Michel published his own version of the song “We’ll Meet Again” during the initial COVID crisis.
You can find Michel Marinier’s work on YouTube and on the MuseScore web site.
BM in Flute Performance and Theory and Composition, Baylor University
MM in Flute Performance USC
I was a member of the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra and the first Flute with the Tehachapi Symphony Orchestra. I am now a retired Instrumental Music Teacher with 30 years teaching experience in Bakersfield, California I have been playing recorders seriously since 2017. I now live in San Antonio, Texas and play in the San Antonio Recorder Ensemble with Gerald Self (after Covid).
Played recorder on and off for 5 decades, career as an accountant, music as a hobby with interest.
Burkhard Mohr, *1955, composer of modern classical music at various genres, living at Wiesbaden, Germany. Music for recorders mainly is written for Petra Mohr's ensemble "Flutes and More". As a duo they perform with two keyboard-instruments at any combination. Organ works have been posted to YouTube by Carson Cooman.
Ex-Music Teacher, Helicopter and C-130 Pilot, Software Engineer, and (presently) a literacy tutor. Tinkers with recorders, kalimba, banjo, concertina, psaltery, clavichord, organ, etc. Composed music for Organ, Chorus, Brass Choir. This is my first try with recorders. Plays with Sacramento Recorder Society.
Born 1939. Currently I am a retired Physicist and engineer. I play bassoon and contra-bassoon and recorders, mostly tenor to contra-bass. I enjoy playing music with my friends. I enjoy transcribing music to play informally with my friends. If there is something I really like playing on recorders, I might transcribe it to play with a double reed quartet or vice-a-versa.
Erik Pearson has a degree in composition from Oberlin Conservatory and has been on the teaching faculty of the San Francisco Community Music Center for nearly 20 years. As a guitarist and banjo picker he records and performs all over the place with bay area based bands including The Evie Ladin Band and The Crooked Jades, creates live soundtracks with internationally acclaimed storyteller Diane Ferlatte and has written chamber music for different ensembles, dance performances, films, and radio. His music has been featured in Sean Penn’s film “Into the Wild” and has been the recipient of various awards including a Grammy nomination with Diane Ferlatte for their CD “Wickety Whack Brer Rabbit Is Back”. His recorder orchestra piece Creeping Dawn: Mountain & Shadow, originally written for the Washington Recorder Society, has been performed most recently by the Barbary Coast Recorder Orchestra. Also for recorders, Erik’s SATB composition Leaves in the River (Autumn) was included as an ARS Members’ Library Edition (MLE #38) in 2009.
Bruce Sankey is a chemical engineer who worked in various research facilities across North America during his career. He adopted recorder playing along with other activities, such as building hiking trails and managing a small cherry orchard, after retirement
He has been active with the Okanagan Recorder Orchestra since its origin and has arranged several pieces for that group. As a co-founder of the TaleWinds ensemble, which has played educational musical stories at local schools over the past nine winters, he has written numerous short compositions and painted illustrations for these original productions.
He is a member of the “Piperazzi” recorder quartet which has played at concerts featuring local choirs, in churches and at other venues in the Kelowna area of British Columbia.
My first exposure to the recorder was in graduate school, where I played tenor recorder in the collegium for a semester. The tenor is similar in size and fingering to the baroque oboe, my major instrument, and I readily acquired just enough skill to navigate though renaissance repertoire.
I resumed the recorder when I stopped playing the oboe in my thirties, but wanted to have a low-maintenance instrument (i.e. no reeds, no embouchure upkeep), so took up the soprano and alto recorders. By forty, I found myself in a group, at which point I acquired the tenor and bass.
The group met roughly once a month exclusively to read music; it did not perform in public. Although my undergraduate degree was in composition, I’d done rather little composing, since finding publishing, performance (or even reading) opportunities took far more time and perseverance than actual composing. But with my group, I’d found a niche: extraordinarily competent colleagues who have for nearly two decades encouraged me to compose for a variety of recorder combinations and in several styles. My compositions have had little exposure outside the group, so I am only too happy to make them available to the ARS through its website.
Players will find that many of my works are informed by 20th-century composers who did not write for recorders. Likewise, many of them are adaptable to other woodwind groups, both the standard (e.g. woodwind quintet) and more unusual (e.g. saxophone trio).
Anthony St. Pierre (b. Schenectady NY, 1956) earned a B.Mus. in composition from The Ohio State University and a M.Mus. in historical performance practices from Washington University. He played the oboe with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in the 1980s, but has since focused on composition. His S-O-S quartet (SATB) and Mere Bagatelle IV (AAA) appear in the ARS Members' Library catalog. Website: anthonystpierrecomposer.com
Keith Terrett (b.1956), is a composer, arranger, conductor, band trainer, instrumental teacher, trumpeter, cornettist, flugelhornist & multi-instrumentalist born in London. He has performed and taught throughout Europe, the Caribbean & Middle East, North America, the South Pacific, and Asia, and has recently been appointed "Composer in Residence" to the Kinta Valley Orchestral Society in Malaysia. Since 2010, Keith has been Head of Performing Arts at Pathways School in Gurugram, India.
Keith has studied with, and gained academic musical qualifications from the Royal Military School of Music, Open University, Trinity College of Music, Royal College of Music, Royal Academy of Music, London College of Music, and the Bandsman's College of Music in Manchester, and the Victoria College of Music in London. Keith is currently studying with the Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi Christian University in Florida for his Doctorate in Sacred musical composition, and is composing a Requiem Mass.
Keith is an internationally acclaimed composer/arranger, writing in all genres from full orchestra, brass band, and wind band, to music for string quartet, brass ensemble, saxophone group, clarinet choir, recorder consort, oboe consort, and even for the steel drums, harmonica and accordion! His music is published in the England, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Canada, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, the USA and Norway.
His catalogue of over 2000 compositions & arrangements can be found at: https://www.scoreexchange.com/myaccount/profile
He also has an on-line store with ArrangeMe, run by the Hal Leonard Corporation.
Bradford B. Wright is a Ph.D. chemist and patent agent living in Woodbury, Minnesota, where he studied recorder for over 20 years with Cléa Galhano. Sometime around 2014 he decided to take up composition, studying with Dr. Peter Arnstein at the St. Paul Conservatory of Music. He writes for many instruments, but states that he is most comfortable with recorder. Mr. Wright plays with several amateur recorder ensembles, and enjoys giving recorder demonstrations in schools.
Jamie AllenSuzanne M. AngevineWill AytonJeannette BertlesGary BettsFrances BlakerRay BraswellJaymar Joshua CalayagSikharin Dit-emVictor EijkhoutEran El-BarKass Finlay McAuliffePhilippe GoudourMark Andrew HotopSteven JentMichel MarinierRhonda MartinGary W. MeyerBurkhard MohrJack MuellerBoyd OsgoodErik PearsonBruce SankeyAnthony St. PierreKeith TerrettBradford Wright
