Music for Pianos

Biography

Elizabeth R. Austin, Ph.D.
President, Connecticut Composers, Inc.

Born in Baltimore in 1938, Elizabeth R. Austin received her early musical training at the Peabody Conservatory Preparatory Department.  When Nadia Boulanger visited Goucher College (Towson, MD), where Elizabeth R. Austin was a liberal arts music student, she awarded the composer a scholarship to study at the Conservatoire Americaine in Fontainebleau, France.

Elizabeth R. Austin has taught composition and theory at various music institutions in Hartford, Connecticut.  Her association with the Hartt School(University of Hartford), where she earned a Master's in Music while on the faculty, continues  on an unofficial basis through a faculty/student exchange with the Staatliche Hoschschuloe für Musik Heidelerg-Mannheim, which she helped to initiate in 1990.

While studying for her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut, Elizabeth R. Austin won first prize in the David Lipscomb Electronic Music Competition for her Klavier Double for piano and tape (1983).  In 1996, she received a Connecticut Commission on the Arts award to write a ballet-oratorio.  International recognition has included her selection by GEDOK (Society of Women Artists in German-speaking countries) to represent the Mannheim-Ludwigshafen region in the national seventieth-year anniversary exhibition (Spring, 1996) in Lübeck.  Mannheim and Jena are her residences in Germany during the summer.

In June, 1998, GEDOK sponsored a retrospective concert of Austin chamber music in Mannheim.  Other performances of her work in 1998 took place in Fiuggi, Italy, Rheinsberg, Germany, as well as in Virginia, Nebraska, and Connecticut.  Her A Hommage for Hildegard won First Prize in the IAWM's 1998 Miriam Gideon Competition.

In 1999, her new setting of Frauenliebe und leben was performed in part in Mannheim, Potsdam and London.  In March 2000, her Drei Rilke Lieder were performed in Chicago; in New York City in April, Klavier Double was performed.  The Prague Sonata for French horn and piano, premiered in May in Prague.  In November, 2000, the premiere of Showings for soprano, trombone, and organ took place in Rome.

Dr Austin and her husband, Prof. Gerhard Austin, divide their time between Germany and the United States, as they promote an exchange of ideas and people through internationally sponsored projects, with an emphasis on cultural activities in eastern Europe.  She  organized an exchange of composers between Rheinsberg and Connecticut in 1997.  Often called upon to translate scholarly papers and books (Continuum Press has published The Future of the Universe: Chance, Chaos, God? by Arnold Benz, translated by Dr. Austin) she also acts as interpreter for German-speaking composers.  She is President of Connecticut Composers, Inc. as well as organist at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Windham Center.

Published by Arsis Press and Peter Tonger Verlag and recorded on the Capstone label, Elizabeth R. Austin is also represented on the 1994 Society of Composers CD and Journal.  Her scores are available through the American Composers Alliance.

A doctoral dissertation on her music was accepted in 2000 by the University of Houston (Dr. Michael Slayton).

10/05/08