Thomas Pfotenhauer maintains a performance career that is extensive and varied. He has performed with professional ensembles throughout the United States and Canada, and with numerous orchestras. Currently playing with the Duluth Superior Symphony, he was also a member of the Kansas Brass Quintet, one of the country's most active faculty brass quintets. In addition, Pfotenhauer has played lead and section trumpet in pit orchestras and in back-up bands for numerous stage productions, and has collaborated with artists such as Robert Goulet, Manhattan Transfer, Peabo Bryson, Bernadette Peters, Johnny Mathis and Shirley Jones. Pfotenhauer is currently Professor of Trumpet at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Vincent Fuh is writer and arranger for Madisalsa, a twelve piece latin jazz and salsa ensemble founded in 1992, and El Clan Destino, a contemporary Afro-Cuban quintet founded in 2004. Fuh, who has toured with Opera for the Young since 1997, has performed with the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the Oakwood Chamber Players, and Sound Ensemble Wisconsin, and regularly collaborates with visiting soloists throughout the upper midwest. He is recently featured on CDs with bassoonist Marc Vallon, oboist Laura Medisky, hornist Charles Tibbets and trombonist Mark Hetzler. Ida Gotkovsky is an award-winning French composer who has written extensively for brass and woodwind instruments throughout her long and rich career. This brief Concertino is typical for the style of the Paris Conservatory contest pieces from the mid-twentieth century. It begins with a brilliant fanfare introduction, followed by a haunting lyrical second movement. It ends with a technical display of fireworks for both the piano and trumpet in the last movement. The American composer Elaine Fine is a multi-instrumentalist and prolific composer of chamber music. This Sonata, written in three movements, showcases the lyrical qualities of the trumpet. Interjections of brilliant flashes of technique are heard throughout the piece. Anne Guzzo is Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Wyoming. Jazz Professor Glasses was premiered at the International Congress of Women in Music in Beijing in 2008. This piece, for unaccompanied trumpet, consists of three movements. The first movement describes the hustle and bustle of daily activity in Beijing. The second movement is lyrical and expressive, using dramatic leaping gestures that depict the expansiveness of a winter in Wyoming. The last movement, which is strongly influenced by jazz, rounds out the work in a light-hearted manner. The English composer Cecilia McDowall has written several works for trumpet and other brass instruments. Also a successful composer of choral music, she is composer-in-residence at Dulwich College in London. Framed consists of seven movements, each one a musical depiction of a work of art, in a range of styles. The artists represented are Renoir, Whistler, Giacometti, Avercamp, Warhol, Marmion and Rodchenko. Welsh composer Hilary Tann, currently the John Howard Payne Professor of Music at Union College creates music that is influenced by her homeland and nature, as well as by traditional Japanese music. Look Little Low Heavens is based on a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, entitled Spring. A dramatic fanfare lies at the center of Look Little Low Heavens and is surrounded by two serene, reflective sections. Faye-Ellen Silverman is currently on the music faculty at Mannes College and has received numerous awards, commissions and artistic residencies. She is the first woman to receive a DMA degree in composition from Columbia University. Stories for Our Time features an array of coloristic devices, including contrasting dynamics, articulations, trills anD flutter tonguing.
