Composition: Faculty Biographies

Michael Fiday
Mara Helmuth
Joel Hoffman

Michael Fiday, Assistant Professor, has had his works performed extensively throughout the United States and Europe. These works have engaged a diverse range of performers such as pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin, Percussion Ensemble: The Hague, American Composers Orchestra, Oakland East Bay Symphony, and the Atlanta Symphony. He has received commissions from the Composers Commissioning Project (American Composers Forum), the James Irvine Foundation (Oakland East Bay Symphony), and New York's Sequitur ensemble. His teachers have included Richard Toensing at University of Colorado, George Crumb at University of Pennsylvania, and in 1992 he studied privately in Amsterdam with Louis Andriessen under the auspices of a Fulbright Grant. Dr. Fiday is the recipient of numerous awards, grants and residencies from, among others, BMI, ASCAP, American Composers Forum, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Ohio Arts Council.
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania; CCM since 2002.
For more information on Dr. Fiday, see his personal webpage.


Mara Helmuth, Associate Professor, is a composer with special interest in acoustic, electro-acoustic, and computer music. Her compositions have received numerous performances in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, and her compact disk of collaborative compositions with Allen Otte was released in January, 2001 by Electronic Music Foundation (EMF 023). She has participated in research involving granular synthesis, object-oriented and graphical programming, Internet 2 applications, and she has created the composition applications StochGran and Patchmix. Her articles concerning computer and electronic music have appeared in the Journal for New Music Research, Perspectives of New Music, Computer Music Journal, and Computers and Mathematics with Applications. She has received grants from the Brazos Valley Arts Council, Texas A&M's Associate Provost for Computing, and the University of Cincinnati University Research Council. Dr. Helmuth is currently learning to play the Chinese qin to incorporate in her compositions. She has taught previously at New York University and Texas A&M.
DMA, Columbia University; CCM since 1995.


Joel Hoffman, Professor, is part of a distinguished musical family that includes brothers Gary and Toby, cellist and conductor, and Deborah, harpist. Honors include a major prize from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bearns Prize of Columbia University, a BMI Award, ASCAP awards since 1977, and three American Music Center grants.
During the 1993-94 season, he served as composer-in-residence with the National Chamber Orchestra of Washington, DC and in 1991-92, he held the position of New Music Advisor for the Buffalo Philharmonic. He has been a resident composer at the Rockefeller, Camargo, and Hindemith Foundations, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. Hoffman is also an active pianist, having appeared as soloist with, among others, the Chicago Symphony, the Belgian Radio and T.V. Orchestra, the Costa Rica National Symphony, and the Florida Orchestra.
Hoffman's works draw from such diverse sources as Eastern European folk musics and bebop, and are pervaded by a sense of lyricism and rhythmic vitality. They have been performed by many ensembles such as the Chicago Symphony Brass, the BBC Orchestra of Wales, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Quartet, the Shanghai Quartet, and the Golub-Kaplan-Carr Trio. "Self-Portrait with Gebirtig," for cello and orchestra, has been performed in New York, Paris, Tel Aviv, San Jose, Costa Rica, Washington, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Santa Barbara, Kronberg (Germany), and has been recorded by the Berlin Radio Symphony. Hoffman’s new opera, "The Memory Game," is scheduled for its first performance in May of 2002.
His music has been frequently heard at summer festivals such as Portogruaro, Korsholm, Evian, St. Nazaire, Newport, Chamber Music Northwest and the Seattle Chamber Music Festival. Organizations that have commissioned Hoffman’s music include the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, the Fromm Foundation, the Cincinnati Symphony, the National Chamber Orchestra, and the American Harp Society.
There are sixteen works in print, from RAI Trade, E.C. Schirmer, and G. Schirmer, and recordings on CRI, Koch, Stradivarius, Centaur, EMA, and Deutsche Welle. A disc devoted to Hoffman’s chamber music is available on the Gasparo label.
DMA, The Julliard School; CCM Since 1978