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Press Release

 

Dan Welcher, Host of KMFA’s Knowing the Score, Takes Artistic Sabbatical

Dan Welcher
Dan Welcher
U.T. Professor, Composer, and Host of KMFA's program "Knowing the Score"

August 19, 2009 (Austin, TX) – Award-winning composer, conductor, radio producer and educator Dan Welcher will be taking a break from the KMFA airwaves effective September 1, 2009. While listeners will surely miss his easy-mannered exploration of contemporary music on Knowing the Score, we are all very excited for the wonderful opportunities ahead of him:

The Camargo Foundation – a famous colony for artists and the humanities in the port city of Cassis, France – has granted Dan a four-month fellowship for the winter and spring of 2010.

Dan is also the recipient of his fourth fellowship at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, whose mission is nurturing the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which to produce enduring works of the imagination. He will spend six weeks in residence there concentrating on composition.

At the center of Dan’s composition projects is a tour-de-force for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1890 short story The Yellow Wallpaper. He wrote the libretto himself, and will begin composing the music later this year. This comes on the heels of the Austin Critics Table Award for Outstanding Original Composition/Score presented to Dan Welcher for his Symphony #5.

Dan’s music has been widely recorded, and later this summer Naxos is slated to release a new recording of all three of his string quartets performed by the acclaimed Cassatt String Quartet.

Says KMFA’s Program Director, Lauren Rico: “We wish Dan all the best in the coming months, and look forward to his return to Central Texas and KMFA next summer!”

About Dan Welcher: For more information about Dan Welcher and his work, visit www.DanWelcher.com.

About the Camargo Foundation: For more information about the Camargo Foundation, visit www.CamargoFoundation.org .

About the MacDowell Colony: For more information about the MacDowell Colony, visit www.MacdowellColony.org.

About Classical 89.5, KMFA: Classical 89.5 KMFA is a listener-supported community radio station, incorporated in 1967, relying on the majority of its funding from direct listener and business contributions. A non-commercial, all-classical format station serving an average of 90,000 listeners each week, KMFA features both local programming and nationally-distributed programming from Public Radio International, American Public Media and National Public Radio. For more information on KMFA, visit www.kmfa.org.