Meet the Composer
Success Stories
These stories taken from
An Individual’s Guide to Commissioning Music.
Contact MTC for a copy.
Betty Freeman, Los Angeles Legend
She was arguably the most influential philanthropist of contemporary music. Legendary in the music world, Betty Freeman has supported an astounding array of the most important composers in the past 50 years.
Kathryn Gould, Magnum Opus
Based in San Francisco, Kathryn Gould is a founding partner of Foundation Capital and is regularly recognized as one of the country’s most accomplished venture capitalists. She has been featured in Forbes magazine’s “Midas List” of Tech’s Best Venture Investors and has a primary focus on investing in the telecom, networking and enterprise software sectors.
Richard Gieser, M.D., Music and Faith
Dr. Richard Gieser, M.D. was a junior in college when one day he was listening to an LP of Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony and suddenly "really heard" the third movement. This revelation started him off on his musical journey of listening and commissioning.
In addition to his private medical practice in Wheaton, Illinois, Dr. Gieser spends a day a week teaching at Loyola University. His wife, Marge, is an artist who works in sculpture and textiles and has constructed three-dimensional wall-hangings for churches, as well as a banner for Coventry Cathedral.
David and Barbara Thomas, Music and Family
David Thomas, co-founder of the Leitner Thomas Group, and Barbara Thomas, CEO of HBO Sports are the devoted parents of a teenaged son and daughter. They live in Manhattan and describe themselves as “die-hard Westsiders.”
William Rubright, D.D.S., Sun Rings & Close Encounters
Football and basketball are big in the university town of Iowa city where the 60,000 residents include 28,000 students. But the university’s Hancher Auditorium for the Performing Arts is big too, important as a destination for world-class musicians and as a presenter and instigator of new music.
Hella Mears Hueg, The Commissioning Club
Born near Dusseldorf, Germany, Hella Mears Hueg grew up in an academic and musical household—her father was an historian and gifted amateur pianist. She was 14 when World War II ended and it was then she discovered theater and music, attended symphony and chamber music concerts and made friends with musicians. “When I was a teenager,” she remembered, “the world opened up with exciting things that had been verboten, and that impacted highly on my political outlook.”
Lillian and Maurice Barbash, The Insider’s Scoop
Maurice and Lilian Barbash might be called musical “musical insiders.” For 27 years, Lillian has directed the Islip Arts Council on Long Island. She has established and overseen a performing arts series that offers free events as well as concert by such star ensembles as the Juilliard and Tokyo string quartets. She has also presented performances by the new York Philharmonic on Long Island for 25 consecutive seasons. And Maurice has been active in musical organizations since his retirement 15 years ago when one of his daughters took over his very successful residential development enterprise.
Judy Goldberg, Variations in a Life
When Judy Goldberg of Newton, Massachusetts met Robert, her husband-to-be, on a blind date, he arranged for them to attend the opera—as ushers.
From the beginning, Robert, a computer scientist, and Judy, who plays the piano, shared a passion for music. For their wedding, they asked a friend, pianist Robert Levin, to perform a few of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. But the officiating rabbi was so delayed, that the assembled wedding guests heard all of the variations twice.