Jakov Jakoulov – composer

Jakov Jakoulov is an author of three ballets, five instrumental concertos, five string quartets, music for over 20 theatrical, TV and cinema productions and numerous symphonic, chamber and choral works. Jakov Jakoulov was born in Moscow, where he studied piano and composition at the Moscow Conservatory and the Gnesin Music Academy. He composed music for the leading Russian National Artistic Theater in Moscow, for State Television of the USSR, the Moscow Film Company and numerous others.

Jakoulov left the Soviet Union in 1987, working initially in Munich and then elsewhere in Europe. In 1990 he moved to the United States, where he completed a doctorate in composition at Boston University. He was nominated for the 1993 award in music composition by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1996 was elected to National Honor Music Society.

Recipient of five Annual Awards of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Jakov Jakoulov has an international reputation, with commissions and performances of his works in Germany, Sweden, Russia, Scotland, Armenia, Finland, Italy, Mexico, and Israel as well as the United States.

Susan Davenny Wyner – conductor

After an international career as a soprano—performing as a soloist with the Metropolitan Opera and major orchestras throughout the U.S. and Europe—Susan Davenny Wyner has received acclaim for an equally impressive career as a conductor.

The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour and WGBH Television have presented special documentary features on her life and work. The Cleveland Plain Dealer hailed her as “a galvanizing presence”, and went on to state: “Wyner…defines those attributes reserved for the finest conductors. She has a firm vision of how a score should sound, an instinctive feel for texture and phrasing, and the ability to communicate ideas with almost laser-beam exactness to colleagues.” The Los Angeles Times praised her “sensitive and thoughtful leadership” and The Chicago Tribune celebrated her “rousing and joyous” conducting.

Her conducting credits include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Boston Lyric Opera, and members of the Cleveland Orchestra in three special benefit performances. Andr� Previn, Lynn Harrell, Peter Serkin, Emanuel Ax, Richard Stoltzman, Dominique Labelle, and Robert Levin have been among her guest soloists. She has also conducted concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, in the Czech Republic, at the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals, and in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, as well as in New York and for CBS Radio. In 1998, The American Symphony Orchestra League named her a Catherine Filene Shouse Conductor, a first-time award given by a national panel of conductors and orchestral managers to conductors poised for major careers.

In addition to her guest conducting, Susan Davenny Wyner has been Music Director and Conductor of the Boston-based New England String Ensemble and the Warren Philharmonic Orchestra (near Cleveland, Ohio) since 1999. She has garnered praise for conducting a wide range of repertoire—orchestral, oratorio, operatic, and choral— from period instrument performances to world premieres of just-composed works.

Ms. Davenny Wyner graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with degrees in both comparative literature and music. She continued her studies at Yale and Columbia Universities and received conducting fellowships at the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals as well as at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. In 1998, she was Assistant Conductor of Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival.