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PAN PIPES WINTER 2015 saI-NaTIONal.ORg 4 p ianist Elaine Fukunaga, a Beta Beta initiate, will perform at the SAI Philanthropies Inc. Benefit Concert at the 2015 National Convention in St. Louis, MO. She completed her Soloist Diploma with distinction in May of 2010 at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in Switzerland. Just before moving to Zürich she spent a year in Madrid as a graduate research fellow of the Fulbright program. Having completed the Masters degree program in Piano Performance at New York's Manhattan School of Music in May of 2007, she gave her debut recital at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall in March of 2008. A 2005 graduate with distinction of the University of Kansas, where she was initiated into SAI, she has regularly performed and taught within three disciplines: piano, saxophone, and violin. She has been heard in major performing venues in Switzerland, Spain, India, China, and Italy, as well as at New York's Steinway Hall, the Kennedy Center, Aspen's Harris Hall, and the Lied Center of Kansas. She has also been featured as soloist with the Winterthurer Symphoniker (Switzerland), the Orchesterverein Wiedikon (Switzerland), the KU Symphony Orchestra, and the Blue Valley Northwest High School Wind Ensemble, and she has performed and presented at the conventions of SAI, the Music Teachers National Association, and the World Piano Pedagogy Conference. Among her many honors, Elaine has received a 2003 Triennial Undergraduate Performance Scholarship, a Mary Ann Starring Memorial Award for Piano, the 2003 Elin J. Stene Scholarship At the University of Kansas, the 2009 SAI Career Performance Grant In Memory of Verna Ross Orndorff, and a 2009 Conductors Retreat Summer Music Scholarship. She has also garnered awards from the Fulbright fund, from Downbeat Magazine, the Presser Foundation, Manhattan School of Music, the World Piano Pedagogy Conference, the Empire State Competition, the KU Honors Program, and the Kansas City Musical Clubs. In 2009 she won Second Prize at the International Music Competition Premio Vittoria Caffa Righetti in Cortemilia, Italy. Her summer activities have included the Sommer-Akademie Lenk in Switzerland, the International Academy of Music in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, Italy and also a regular dedication to the Aspen Music Festival. She has taught privately and for the Manhattan School of Music Educational Outreach program, and has been a constructive member of Pianovision and the Music Teachers National Association. In great demand as a pedagogue in the Swiss Canton of Zurich, Fukunaga is currently employed by the Kantonsschule Zürcher Unterland in Bülach, the Musikschule Zollikon and the Musikschule alwil. She has served as Principal Second Violinist of the Winterthurer Symphoniker since October of 2010. Among the pieces she will perform in July is a composition by SAI Member Laureate Libby Larsen (see below). 2015 CONvENTION T he 2014 American Guild of Organists Distinguished Composer Award was presented to Libby Larsen, Member Laureate of SAI. e prestigious award, created in 1986, is presented biennially to recognize outstanding composers of organ and choral music in the United States. A 1970 Sigma Sigma initiate at the University of Minnesota, Larsen is one of America's most prolific and most performed living composers, and has created a catalogue of over 400 works spanning virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music, to massive orchestral works, and over twelve operas. Her music has been praised for its dynamic, deeply inspired, and vigorous contemporary American spirit. Constantly sought aer for commissions and premieres by major artists, ensembles and orchestras around the world, Libby Larsen has established a permanent place for her works in the concert repertory. Larsen has been hailed as "the only English- speaking composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively" by USA TODAY, and e Wall Street Journal noted she "has come up with a way to make contemporary opera both musically current and accessible to the average audience." She premiered her "Pocket Sonata," an engaging piece for alto saxophone, cello, marimba/vibraphone, piano, and violin commissioned by SAI, at the SAI Centennial National Convention in 2003. She has received numerous other awards and accolades, including a 1994 Grammy as producer of the e Art of Arlene Augér, an acclaimed recording that features Larsen's Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her opera Frankenstein, e Modern Prometheus was selected as one of the eight best classical music events of 1990 by USA Today. e first woman to serve as a resident composer with a major orchestra, she has held residencies with the California Institute of the Arts, the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, the Philadelphia School of the Arts, the Cincinnati Conservatory, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony, and the Colorado Symphony. Larsen's many commissions and recordings are a testament to her fruitful collaborations with a long list of world-renowned artists, including e King's Singers, SAI Honorary Benita Valente, and Frederica von Stade, among others. Her works are widely recorded on such labels as Angel/EMI, Nonesuch, Decca, and Koch International. In 1973, she co-founded (with Stephen Paulus) the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum, which has been an invaluable advocate for composers in a difficult, transitional time for American arts. Consistently sought-aer as a leader in the generation of millennium thinkers, Libby Larsen's music and ideas have refreshed the concert music tradition and the composer's role in it. Johns Hopkins University awarded Larsen the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America in May 2010. Fukunaga to Perform at SAI Philanthropies Benefit Concert Libby Larsen Work to be Featured at Convention