Meet the Composer

Ed Harsh, President

Ed Harsh was appointed President of Meet The Composer in 2007, having served as Vice President since 2005. His background includes fifteen years of professional experience in the arts as program director, development officer, composer, teacher, and writer. Aside from his work with MTC, his principal positions have included the Managing Editor of the Kurt Weill Edition, Director of Development of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Associate Director of David Bury & Associates, and Managing Director of Sequitur new music ensemble. As a founding member of the grassroots Common Sense Composers Collective and as an individual composer, he has completed commissioned work for many prominent ensembles, among them the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, New Millennium Ensemble, and American Baroque. He has authored twenty published items, from essays on music to musical editions to recording reviews. His compositions are recorded commercially on the Albany, Santa Fe New Music, CRI, and Neuma labels. Mr. Harsh holds degrees in composition and musicology, including a DMA from Yale University, an MA from Columbia University, and a BM from Peabody Conservatory. He also studied at the Royal Conservatory in the Netherlands. His composition teachers included Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick, Jacob Druckman, and Robert Hall Lewis.

Scott Winship, Program Manager

Scott Winship was recently appointed as a Program Manger at Meet The Composer and joined the staff in June 2007. Prior to Meet The Composer, Mr. Winship served as the Associate Director and Youth Jam Coordinator for Chicago’s Rock For Kids, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Chicago’s homeless children through Holiday relief programs and Youth Jam, a free music education program. He has also served as the Development Assistant for the American Music Center in New York. An active composer, Mr. Winship continues to write music for various ensembles across the country.

Mr. Winship received his Master of Music in Composition degree from Bowling Green State University and a Bachelor’s of Music Education from Central Michigan University. His primary teachers have included Marilyn Shrude, Jeffrey Mumford, Phillip Grange, Mikel Kuehn, and David Gillingham. Mr. Winship’s music has been performed by numerous ensembles including the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Massachusetts High School Flute Choir, the Brevard Repertory Orchestra, and those at James Madison University, Central Michigan University, the University of Nebraska, and the University of Exeter in England.

Kevin Clark, Special Projects Manager

Kevin Clark began work at Meet The Composer after earning his MM and BM in Composition (Pi Kappa Lambda), and his BA in Philosophy (Phi Beta Kappa), from Peabody Conservatory and the Johns Hopkins University. His compositions range from orchestral and concert works to straight plays, music-theatre and opera, and is strongly connected with poetry.

Kevin is co-Artistic Director with Zachary Herchen of the new music ensemble No Signal, and frequently collaborates with Harbor Opera and Evident Films. As a student at Peabody, Clark created the Junior Bach program, in which Peabody student composers teach composition lessons at an inner city middle school. Begun as a student project, the program is now a credit-granting course, awarding a scholarship to one middle school composer each year.

A finalist for the Marshall Scholarship, Clark has received awards for his composition from the Peabody Camerata, Mu Phi Epsilon and the National Federation of Music Clubs among others. His composition professors include, among other, with Robert Sirota, Christopher Theofanidis and Michael Hersch.

Edward Ficklin, IT Projects Manager

Shyly courting the limelight, composer and librettist Edward Ficklin focuses his creative energy on the various forms of music-theater. He has realized his works in a number of unusual venues, like a store window near Grand Central Station and a vacant bank lobby near the World Trade Center (with the support of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the September 11th Fund). His work has also been presented by American Opera Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Opera Company of Astoria (Astoria, NY), Little Opera Theatre of New York, the Spring Fever Festival (New York, NY), David Parker/The Bang Group (a collaboration with choeographer Lise Brenner) and Opera Vista (Houston, TX).

In addition to music theater, Edward has published articles and guides for composers for the American Music Center and Meet The Composer. His new media work includes soundbiting, an audio blog about urban existence, “Sounds Like Staten Island”, an audio database of recordings made on and about New York City’s forgotten borough. Since 2003 he has been actively involved in the composers collective The South Oxford Six, a group of six composers dedicated to presenting new works, collaboration, and training new generations of composers. Edward also serves on the Artists Advisory Council of Fractured Atlas, a national service organization for independent and self-producing artists.