A native of California, Eric Sawyer has received performances of his compositions in the San Francisco Bay Area, at New York's Weill and Merkin concert halls and at Tanglewood, as well as in England, France, and Germany. He has received the Joseph Bearns Prize, the C. D. Jackson Award from Tanglewood, and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his commissions have been works for the New York Youth Symphony, baritone Paul Hillier, the Alaria Chamber Ensemble, the Boston Chamber Ensemble, and the International Arts Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Sawyer has appeared frequently as a pianist in solo and chamber recitals. He has taught theory and composition at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and currently teaches music theory as a Visiting Scholar at MIT. Mr. Sawyer received his undergraduate musical training at Harvard University and completed his graduate studies at Columbia University and the University of California, Davis. His teachers have included Leon Kirchner, Ross Bauer, George Edwards, and Andrew Imbrie.

It is my hope that Region I of SCI can serve both as a forum of communication for New England composers and as a channel of outreach to a wider musical audience. By bringing together composer members with the communities of musical institutions and the concertgoing public, regional conferences can provide not only performances for the membership by an oppourtunity for audiences to hear a diverse body of music they could hear no other way. Regional concerts can and should be made an attractive opportunity for those both inside and outside the academy to discover varied and interesting music of our time.