ISCM-Mid-Atlantic is an Associate Member of ISCM, and operates under the aegis of the Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music (RSF), a foundation that was created by the late Dina Koston (see her biography, below). Recently RSF funded a new solo piano recording of Leon Fleisher on Bridge Records that included three modernist works by US composers Dina Koston, Leon Kirchner, and George Perle. The disc was
the No. 1 selling classical recording in the US in September, 2014. In the fall of 2012, RSF and the Library of Congress together launched an unusual and controversial project called *Sounding Beckett*, which juxtaposed 3 of Beckett's highly abstract Ghost Plays with 3 works of abstract instrumental music. Launched at the Library of Congress in March, 2012, the project was expanded to a two-week run of sold-out shows at the Classic Stage Company in Greenwich Village. ISCM Mid-Atlantic hopes to draw attention to masterworks by American composers who are entirely unknown in Europe-- Yehudi Wyner (Pulitzer Prize winner), Martin Boykan, Frank Brickle, David Rakowski, Harold Meltzer (Pulitzer Prize-finalist), Jonathan Dawe, and many others. ISCM Mid-Atlantic celebrates the work of composers who are anathema to Central European moderist values--minimalists, PoMos, Neo-Romantics, applauding their courage, and applauding their remarkable expansion of the audience for new music in the US; at the same time, ISCM Mid-Atlantic does not forget the great modernist pioneers in the US-- Mario Davidovsky, Charles Wuorinen, and the late Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter. RSF supported concerts in New York featuring the work of Chou Wen-Chung, and elder statesman of Chinese Music who also happened to have been the confidant and assistant to Edgar Varese. Chou set a remarkable precedent, showing generations of Chinese composers how to embrace a world of compositional techniques *integrated with distinctly Chinese aesthetics*. Mario Davidovsky was featured in another event in March of 2014. RSF was a major supporter of Jonathan Dawe's last two operas, Cosi Faran Tutti, and Orlando. Both works exhibit Dawe's magical ability to utilize fractal procedures in a manner that can bring a new music neophyte from Mozart to Ligeti in the space of several operatic arias. RSF Founder Dina Koston
At the age of two-and-a-half, Dina Koston began studying piano and music theory with her mother, who was a professional musician. She continued her diverse musical studies at the American Conservatory of Music, including ear-training, harmony, several styles of counterpoint, orchestration, analysis, and composition. She had private studies with Gavin Williamson in harpsichord, with Mieczyslaw Horszowski and Leon Fleisher in piano, and summer courses with Nadia Boulanger and Luciano Berio; and she spent one summer at Darmstadt. With Leon Fleisher, she co-founded and co-directed The Theater Chamber Players (1968-2003), the first resident chamber ensemble of the Smithsonian Institution, and later, the first resident chamber ensemble of The Kennedy Center. During those years, she concentrated on studying new music and on being a pianist, and she stopped composing, "stopped writing down the music in my head.”
The return to composing arose unbidden on a train trip to a memorial service for a founding member of the Theater Chamber Players. Upon hearing this work, In Memory of Jeannette Walters, Leon Fleisher requested a chamber piece that would include piano left-hand. Both of these pieces were then performed at Tanglewood. Koston has received commissions from The Library of Congress, The Wolf Trap Foundation, The Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center, and The Cygnus Ensemble. The Cygnus Ensemble, as part of its 20th anniversary celebration, presented an entire program of Koston's music in Zankel Hall, New York City, in December 2005. Leon Fleisher has been playing a solo piano work (2-hands) in his recitals since his Carnegie Hall recital in October 2003, and The Raphael Trio has been playing a work of hers from many seasons. She has written a work for 22 solo winds/brass for Robert Levy and the Lawrence University Wind Ensemble. Solo works have been performed on tour by soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julsson, cellist Susan Salm, and guitarist William Anderson. n addition to many solo recitals, chamber music concerts, and university-level master classes, Ms. Koston has participated in several Marlboro Festivals and written music for theatrical productions at Café La Mama and the Arena Stage. She has taught at the Peabody Conservatory and at Tanglewood. Koston's last work, Distant Intervals, was written for the Cygnus Ensemble. It is a musical response to Samuel Beckett's Ohio Impromptu. Distant Intervals was first performed at Ms. Koston's memorial service at Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church on August 31, 2009.
