Composer Howard Frazin is the co-founder/co-director of WordSong. He teaches composition at the New England Conservatory and currently serves as the Boston Classical Orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence at the Boston Arts Academy. His music has been performed throughout the U.S. and abroad, including festivals at Tanglewood, Aspen, Banff, Rockport, Monadnock, Bowdoin, and Yellow Barn. Recent commissions include from Triple Helix, A Far Cry, the Claremont Trio, the Boston Classical Orchestra, the Fromm Foundation, World-wide Concurrent Premieres, the PALS Children’s Chorus, and Andover Chamber Players. The Claremont Trio’s premiere of Mr. Frazin’s newest piano trio on Dallas Chamber Music’s concert series last winter was praised by the Dallas Morning News as “…[a] genuinely touching triptych, which wastes not a note,” and the performance made Scott Cantrell’s Top 10 Performances list for 2010. Mr. Frazin’s work is published by Peters Editions.

German-American composer Tom Schnauber is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the arts organization WordSong. A former member of Composers in Red Sneakers, he is currently Chair of the Performing Arts Department at Emmanuel College in Boston. He holds a Ph.D. in composition and theory from the University of Michigan. He has also studied French horn performance, ethnomusicology, and did a small stint in Hollywood scoring films no one will ever see. A versatile composer, Schnauber enjoys writing for a variety of ensembles. His list of more than three-dozen works includes music for unaccompanied instruments, chamber ensembles, solo voice and vocal ensembles, string orchestra, percussion ensemble, and symphony orchestra. He has written opera, musicals, and incidental music for stage productions by Toledo University, Coe College, and Ann Arbor’s Wild Swan Theater. Schnauber has won several awards for composition, including both the grand prize and the music director’s prize from the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin’s 2006 International “Homage to Mozart” competition; the American Composer’s Award from the Columbia Orchestra; and the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Meritorious Achievement Award for Original Musical Score. Excerpts from his ungrand opera With Such Friends…were selected and performed by the New York City Opera as part of the VOX 2007 Showcase of New American Opera. The entire opera was premiered in August, 2010 by the Bluegrass Opera in Lexington, KY. His music has been performed throughout the United States as well as in Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, and Taiwan by ensembles such as the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, the Columbia Orchestra, the NIH Philharmonia, Freon Ensemble, the Avalon String Quartet, and The Great Noise Ensemble. He has received commissions from ensembles such as the Annapolis Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, The Cambridge Madrigal Singers, Brave New Works, and the Falls Church Chamber Orchestra. Publishers of his music include Dramatic Publishing, Imagine Music Publishers, and Classical Vocal Repertoire. In addition to writing music and teaching, Tom Schnauber has conducted various ensembles, including the Cannon Valley Regional Orchestra, the Minnesota Symphonic Winds, and a fully staged production of The Gondoliers by the University of Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan Society. He is a Trekkie, a Whovian, and an avid collector and passionate listener of LPs and CDs.