South Orange Symphony’s ‘Jersey Score’ concert to highlight area composers

SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD, NJ — The South Orange Symphony will be hosting “Jersey Score,” a recital of new works by five leading composers in the New Jersey and New York City area on Sunday, Nov. 7, at 6:30 p.m. at The Woodland, 60 Woodland Road in Maplewood. This free concert is being organized by South Orange Symphony concertmaster Robert Radliff, who is also performing on violin.

The composers’ works range from orchestral music and film scores to Broadway, jazz, chamber music, choral music and solo piano. The composers — Frank Gulino, Chris Opperman, Clint Edwards, Martin Sedek and Ting Ho — will be on hand to discuss their work.

Gulino is a bass trombonist and prolific composer of music for piano and brass chamber ensembles. His works have been commissioned, performed and recorded by some of the world’s foremost brass players, by many regional orchestras and by all four premier military bands based in Washington, D.C. Gulino is a multiple winner of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Plus Award in the concert music category.

Opperman is a versatile composer, with compositions ranging from music for rock bands and jazz combos to music for symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles. He also performs on piano. Among Opperman’s accomplishments, his orchestration of “For the Love of God” with Steve Vai has exceeded 44 million views on YouTube. 

Edwards is a composer, arranger and pianist whose primary interest is music for film and theater. He got his start by writing a musical score for his high school’s production of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” His compositions and arrangements have been performed widely, including at New York City’s Carnegie Hall and the Eugene O’Neill National Musical Theater Conference; on WQXR, a radio station that plays classical music; and in concert venues throughout Europe and Asia. He hosts the virtual weekly “Clint Edwards Show,” a nearly hour-long celebration of musical theater, on which he discusses the history of famous shows and plays numerous selections on piano.

Sedek is a composer and conductor of choral music, with forays into orchestra and chamber compositions. He is composer-in-residence at Harmonium Choral Society and the Baldwin Festival Chorus of New York City, and is currently the music director and conductor of Choral Art Society of New Jersey and associate conductor for the Masterwork Chorus. Previously he was a professor of music at Montclair State University. His music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe and Africa and commissioned by professional ensembles around the United States. Notable composition awards he has won include the Yale Glee Club Emerging Composers Award in 2015 and the Stephen Paulus Emerging Composers Award in 2018.

Ho is a composer and professor emeritus of music theory at Montclair State University. Many of his compositions are chamber music for a variety of instruments. His compositions have been premiered and presented at such venues as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City; the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; and elsewhere in the United States and abroad. Ho has received awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and he is the recipient of the Louis Lane Prize.

  South Orange Symphony, The Woodland