MEET THE NC/EC

Richard Brooks
Producer of the CD Series
Nassau Community College

Richard Brooks (b. 1942) is a native of upstate New York and holds a B.S. degree in Music Education from the Crane School of Music, SUC Potsdam, an M.A. in Composition from SUNY Binghamton and a Ph.D. in Composition from New York University. Since 1975 he has been on the music faculty of Nassau Community College where he is Professor and Department Chair.

From 1977 to 1982 he was Chairman of the Executive Committee of the American Society of University Composers (now the Society of Composers, Inc.) on which he continues to serve as the Producer of the SCI Compact Disc Series. In 1981 he was elected to the Board of Governors of the American Composers Alliance and, after serving two terms as Secretary and three terms as Vice-President, he was elected President in the Fall of 1993. He is also currently a member of the Junior/Community College Commission on Accreditation of the National Association of Schools of Music. He has received a major grant from the SUNY Research Foundation, a Composer Fellowship from the NEA, an AMC grant and several Meet the Composer awards. In 1994 he received a commission for the Quintet for Oboe (Sax) and Strings from the New York State Music Teachers National Association; premiere performance took place at the NYSMTA Conference in Ithaca, NY in October 1994. Landscape...with Grace, commissioned for the twentieth anniversary season of the Kent Philharmonia Orchestra in Grand Rapids, Michigan was premiered on April 21, 1996.

He has composed nearly fifty works in all media. His opera for young audiences, Rapunzel, was commissioned by the Tri-Cities Opera (Binghamton) in 1971 and has been mounted also by the Opera Theatre of Nothern Virginia, Wolf Trap Farm Park, and the Denver Symphony/Central City Singers. A full length opera, Moby Dick, was completed in 1987. Sonata for violin and piano (1973) is published in Vol. XI of the ASUC Journal of Music Scores and recorded on Record no. 5 of the ASUC Record Series (Advance label). Prelude and Lament for wind quintet (1970), Suite for Percussion (1975), Chorale Variations for horns and string orchestra (1980), Serenade for flute, cello, and piano (1982), Seascape for orchestra (1987) and Landscape...with Grace for orchestra (1996) are recorded on the Capstone label.

The SCI CD Series is a peer-reviewed series of recordings representing the best work of the SCI membership. In order to ensure that all stylistic persuasions and all regions of the country are fairly represented, a different panel of composers is involved each time a selection of works is made. This policy dates from the late 1970s when the ASUC Record Series was launched. Ten LPs were produced in that series and the CD Series has now reached a total of ten with numbers eleven and twelve in the development stages. We are attempting to produce an average of two CDs per year. The CD Series is produced on the Capstone Record label which is distributed nationally by Albany Music Distributors.

When the LP series was undertaken it was intimately connected the the Journal of Music Scores in that every other LP and Journal were a complete match. This made both series uniquely valuable. Since the CD format allows for much more music to be included on a single album than can reasonably fit into one issue of the Journal, we are no longer able to maintain the same direct connection. However, many works on the CD Series are also included in issues of the Journal of Music Scores. We hope someday to be able to reissue the original series on CD so that it can continue to be available.