Compositions

MICHAEL POAST conducted the world premiere of his Color Music for Orchestra and was honored with an ASCAP Award.  Poast is nationally known for his large steel sculpture and as a composer for his Color Music that uses visual colors and shapes as an alternative musical notation method. While still a student at the University of Cincinnati College-Concervatory of Music, Poast was already questioning the connection between sound and color.  He received his Masters of Fine Arts from the City University of New York and is currently Composer-in-Residence  at the Players Theatre in Greenwich Village, NYC.  He has numerous public art credits and has been honored with awards from the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund, Meet the Composer and the Gottlieb Foundation. View his Color Music Tutorial on youtube.com and  read his article Color Music: Visual Color Notation for Musical Expression, Leonado Journal, 2000. Six Dimensional Color Music was premiered at The Players Theatre in April 2010, performed by Jean Kopperud, clarinet and Haleh Abghari, soprano.  In this performance the color score was constructed out of multi-dimensional  shapes that functioned as a stage set through which the musicians moved.

Email: mushad@hofstra.edu

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Herbert A. Deutsch has had an eclectic career as a composer, author, educator and music marketing consultant. Professor Emeritus of Music and, until September. 2001, Chairman of the Music Department at Hofstra University, he directed the Music Business Program, the Electronic Music and Recording Studios and taught composition and multimedia. A composer of music in various media, his work has been widely performed and commissioned works have been featured at national and regional conferences of The Music Educators National Conference, Small Computers and the Arts Network, the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States and other organizations. In 1972, he co-founded the Long Island Composers Alliance, and is currently its President and Archivist. He is a recipient of numerous Meet The Composer and ASCAP Awards. At Hofstra he composed the scores for six Shakespeare Festival productions, including two while still an undergraduate student. During his forty-eight year teaching career at Hofstra, he founded the Jazz Ensemble, the Electronic Music Studios, the New Music Ensemble and created the B.S. Degree programs in Jazz, Composition/Theory and Music Business. He received the George Estabrook Distinguished Alumni Award in 1996 and the Hofstra Alumni Achievement Award in 2001. In his honor the Music Department has established the Herbert Deutsch Award for highest honors in Music Education.

His interest in electronic music led him to collaborate, in 1964, with Robert A. Moog on the development of the first Moog Synthesizer and, in September of 1965, his “New York Improvisation Quartet” gave a Town Hall, New York concert which included the Moog’s first live public performance. In 1969 his quartet presented the Moog’s first jazz program at “Jazz in the Garden” at the Museum of Modern Art. His multimedia opera, Dorian (based on the Oscar Wilde novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”) received its world premiere performances by the Hofstra Opera Theater in February,1995. Since 1994, he has been a member of The NY State School Music Association’s Music Technology Committee. He is also a member and judge of NYSSMA’s Composition and Improvisation Committee. He is a regular clinician in composition sessions at NYSSMA’s All-State Conference and is a NYSSMA all-state jazz adjudicator.

He was Director of Marketing and Sales at Moog Music from 1979-83, and has been a marketing and development consultant to Roland Corporation, Multivox Music, Norlin Industries, Passport Designs Software and Jim Henson’s Muppets. He is the author of Synthesis (Alfred Publishing Co.), in its second edition and published in Japanese and Korean, Electroacoustic Music; Its First Century (CPP/Belwin) and Teach Yourself Piano (Karamar Publications). He is active in the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, Small Computers in the Arts Network, was co-founder, Educational Consultant and feature writer for The Music & Computer Educator and a reviewer for The American Record Guide. His CD Woman in Darkness was released in September, 1999 on 4Tay Records. His String Quartet Preamble & Fugue performed by the Meridian Quartet appears on Capstone Records. His CD From Moog to Mac was released in June 2007. In June, 2000 he was featured on a History Channel production on the First Moog Synthesizer and he appears and has music credits in the 2004 film MOOG. He is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in Education. In September, 2007 he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to electronic music at BB Kings in NY City. He was inducted into the LI Music Hall of Fame as 2007 Music Educator of Note, and received the NY State School Music Association Distinguished Service Award at that year’s All-state conference.

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Herbert A. Deutsch, current President of the Long Island Composers Alliance, earned a Bachelor’s at Hofstra University and a second Bachelor’s and Master’s from The Manhattan School of Music. He studied composition with Albert Tepper and Elie Siegmeister, studying with Siegmeister both at Hofstra and privately over a period of several years. A pioneer in electronic and multimedia composition, he collaborated with Robert Moog in 1964 on the design of the first Moog Synthesizer. In 1965 he gave the first live concert performance on the Moog at Town Hall and the first synthesizer ensemble concert at the Museum of Modern Art in 1969. He is the author of three books and over 40 published articles on electronic and computer music and is a Professor Emeritus at Hofstra University, where he was Department Chairman. He is the recipient of Hofstra’s George Estabrook Distinguished Alumni Award, the Hofstra Alumni Acheivement Award and numerous “Meet The Composer” and ASCAP Awards. He has been listed in Who’s Who in America since 1999.He was given a Lifetime Acheivement Award at BB Kings in NYC for his contributions to electronic music, and has been inducted into the L.I. Music Hall of Fame as 2007 Music Educator of Note.