Philip Lasser

Director of EAMA Summer Music Institute, Founder of EAMA

Analysis, Composition, Counterpoint, Keyboard Harmony

Philip Lasser is a visionary composer native to French and American traditions. His music, direct and undisguised, creates a unique sound world that blends together the colorful harmonies of French Impressionist sonorities and the dynamic rhythms and characteristics of American music.

In 1979, he entered Nadia Boulanger’s famed Ecole d’Arts Americaines in Fontainebleau, France, where he began to establish his connection to the French lineage. Following his studies at Harvard College, Lasser lived in Paris, where he worked with Boulanger’s closest colleague and disciple, Narcis Bonet, and legendary pianist Gaby Casadesus. He received his master’s degree from Columbia University while studying with René Leibowitz’s disciple, Jacques-Louis Monod, and his doctorate at The Juilliard School, where he worked with David Diamond. Since 1994, Lasser has been a distinguished member of the faculty of The Juilliard School. Lasser is a gifted communicator and educator, as director of the European American Music Alliance (EAMA), he is dedicated to training composers, chamber musicians, conductors, and music educators, his unique pedagogy is inspired by the teaching of Nadia Boulanger and modernized for the 21st Century.

Lasser’s works can be heard on the Sony Classical, Telarc, New World, Crystal, and BMG RCA/Red Seal labels. His works have been performed worldwide by artists such as Simone Dinnerstein, Zuill Bailey, Susanna Phillips, Elizabeth Futral, Margo Garrett, and Cho-Liang Lin, as well as the Atlanta, Seattle, and Colorado symphonies, and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Mark Shapiro

Director of Conducting Studies

Keyboard Harmony, Score Reading

Six-time ASCAP Award-winner Mark Shapiro is active as a conductor of choruses, orchestras, and
opera. He is Music Director of The Cecilia Chorus of New York, Artistic Director of Cantori New York,
Principal Conductor of Marshall Opera, and Conductor Emeritus of The Prince Edward Island Symphony Orchestra, which he served as Music Director for a decade. Characterizing his leadership as “insightful,” The New York Times has praised his “virtuosity and assurance”; Opera News has noted his “superb pacing and great confidence.” Favorite venues include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Le Poisson Rouge, the Guggenheim and Rubin Museums, Charlottetown’s Confederation Centre of the Arts, and the amphitheater at Vaison-la-Romaine, France.

Opera credits include five productions with Juilliard Vocal Arts and appearances with American Opera Projects, Center for Contemporary Opera, Encompass New Opera, Opera Company of Middlebury,
and Underworld Opera, as well as the opera programs of Hofstra and Rutgers.

Shapiro has recorded for Albany, Arsis, Newport Classics, and PGM. His recording of Frank Martin’s oratorio Le vin herbé was an Opera News Editor’s Choice. An album of music by Philip Glass with Irish violinist Gregory Harrington and Shapiro conducting the Janacek Philharmonic was released in 2020. Radio appearances have included WQXR, WNYC, Minnesota Public Radio, and Sirius.

Emile Naoumoff

Director of Chamber Music

Piano, Piano, and Chamber Studio Workshops

Emile Naoumoff has been likened to both Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein as a pianist, displaying — as one critic remarked — the fire of the former and the poetry of the latter. He was also signed as a composer at age 18 — the youngest on their roster — with the music publisher Schott, Mainz. Emile revealed himself as a musical prodigy at age five, taking up the piano and adding composition to his studies a year later. At the age of seven, after a fateful meeting in Paris, he became the last disciple of Nadia Boulanger, who referred to him as “The gift of my old age”. He studied with her until she died in late 1979. During this auspicious apprenticeship, Mlle. Boulanger gave him the opportunity to work with Clifford Curzon, Igor Markevitch, Robert and Gaby Casadesus, Nikita Magaloff, Jean Francaix, Leonard Bernstein, Soulima Stravinsky, Aram Khachaturian, and Yehudi Menhuin. Lord Menhuin conducted the premiere of Emile’s first piano concerto, with the composer as a soloist when he was ten years old. At the same time, he pursued studies at the Paris Conservatory with Lelia Gousseau, Pierre Sancan, Genevieve Joy-Dutilleux, as well as at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris with Pierre Dervaux (conducting).

Upon the death of Mlle. Boulanger, Emile took over her classes at the summer sessions of the Conservatoire d’Art Americain in Fontainebleau. He was later appointed at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, Paris.

Emile is regularly invited by the world’s premier orchestras: the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Symphony, the Vienna Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the National Symphony in Washington, the Moscow Symphony, the NHK Symphony, the Residentie Orkest of the Hague, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, Camerata Bern, and has worked closely with conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Igor Markevitch, Leonard Slatkin, Mstislav Rostropovich and Eliahu Inbal. He has also collaborated with musicians including Jean-Pierre Rampal, Gerard Souzay, Yo-Yo Ma, Gary Hoffman, Olivier Charlier, Patrice Fontanarosa, Regis Pasquier, Philippe Graffin, Philippe Bernold, Gerard Caussé, Jean Ferrandis, Dominique de Williencourt and the Fine Arts Quartet.

Some highlights of his performing career include a performance of the Grieg Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and his own piano concerto version of Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. under the baton of Mstislav Rostropovich. In recent years Emile has been invited to numerous music festivals such as San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music’s Menuhin Seminars, Santander Summer Masterclasses, Verbier Academy Festival, the Banff Center, and residencies at Conservatory of Barcelona (ESMUC). In 1996, he opened his own summer academy at the Château de Rangiport in Gargenville, France, in the spirit of Nadia Boulanger.

Since 1998, Emile is a professor at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He is an avid composer of French mélodies, and is known for his mastery in transcribing music for the piano. Emile maintains a video journal of daily improvisations on his YouTube channel.

Kyle Blaha

Director of Music Pedagogy

Counterpoint, Keyboard Harmony, Musicianship

Kyle Blaha received his D.M.A. and M.M. from Juilliard and his B.M. from Eastman School of Music with high distinction in composition, clarinet, and German. He has studied composition with Darrell Handel, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez, Samuel Adler, Philip Lasser, and Robert Beaser and Solfège with Mary Anthony Cox. He is the Artistic Director of the Composition Program with the New York Youth Symphony and both Ear Training and Music Theory faculty in The Juilliard School’s College Division and the Chair of Ear Training and Music Theory in the Pre-College Division. He has received multiple ASCAP Young Composer Awards and awards for study in German, including a Fulbright grant and a D.A.A.D. (German government) grant as well as Arabic study in Cairo, Egypt. His work has been premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra and multiple performances by the New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute and has received commissions from the New York Youth Symphony, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the New Juilliard Ensemble, and the American Composers Orchestra.

Benjamin C.S. Boyle

Associate Director EAMA Summer Music Institute

 Analysis, Composition, Counterpoint, Keyboard Harmony

Benjamin C.S. Boyle is a composer who writes in a large swath of genres including opera, orchestral music, chamber music, choral music, art songs, and works for piano. Works have been commissioned and performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Chicago Lyric Opera, Montreal Chamber Orchestra, the Kobe City Orchestra, the Crossing Choir, Lyric Fest, and many others the world over.  The Crossing Choir’s recording of his Cantata No. 2: Voyages was nominated for a GRAMMY in 2020 for Best Choral Performance. In 2008, at the piano, he gave the US premiere of his Sonata-Fantasy with violinist Tim Fain at the Kennedy Center in Washington and Merkin Hall in New York. In 2005, Bachanalia Orchestra premiered the Cantata No. 1: To One in Paradise for string orchestra and four vocal soloists in New York. He was composer-in-residence with Young Concert Artists from 2005-7 and received representation from them for many years. He is particularly noted for his composition of art songs. A compendium of these works (Complete Songs and Melodies 1998-2014) including some 60 songs was published in 2016 by Rassel Editions. His song cycle Spirits in Bondage won first prize in the NATS Art Song Competition in 2018.

Performers who champion his music include tenor Bryan Hymel, baritone Randall Scarlata, sopranos Irini Kyriakidou, Sarah Shafer, and Kiera Duffy, marimbist Makoto Nakura, flutist Mimi Stillman, harpist Emmanuel Ceysson, the Daedalus Quartet, pianists Laura Ward,  JJ Penna, and Marcantonio Barone, and conductors Donald Nally and Mark Shapiro. 

His music is published by Rassel Editions. It is broadcast widely on many platforms the world over. Lyric Fest is currently recording a two-CD set featuring a large selection of his songs with an all-star cast of singers. Recordings of his Sonata-Cantilena  and Three Carols for Wintertide  are available from Innova Records. At the piano, Dr. Boyle recorded Les bois du paradis with Makoto Nakura in 2010.

His formative studies in composition, harmony, counterpoint, and analysis were under the guidance of Dr. Philip Lasser of the Juilliard School. He has been the Associate Director of the European American Musical Alliance since 2003.

At the age of 25, Dr. Boyle was the youngest person ever to receive a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Composition, after completing a M.M. from The Peabody Conservatory and a B.M. from the University of South Florida where he studied piano with Robert Helps.

Dr. Boyle maintains a lively private studio in Philadelphia and around the world via Zoom. He runs Analysis Salon, a lecture series now in its sixth season. He was formerly a professor of composition and music theory at Westminster Choir College, St. Joseph’s University, Temple University, and several other universities.

Abbie Betinis

Composition

Composer Abbie Betinis creates “inventive” (The New York Times), “beguiling” (BBC Music Magazine) music that “pushes forward a brooding, dissonant unease” (Boston Globe), or “expands into ethereal realms” (Cambridge University Press). With performances from Carnegie Hall to Disney Hall, international cathedrals to intimate summer campfires, state prisons to capitol buildings, her music transports performers and audiences alike through storytelling, relevance, and craft.

Known for her expressive text-setting, Abbie’s many vocal commissions include new work for Cantus, Chorus Pro Musica with New England Philharmonic, Conspirare with Miró String Quartet, Lyric Fest, St Olaf Choir, mezzo Christine Amon, and soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw. Her chamber work has been commissioned and premiered by Chione wind quintet, James Sewell Ballet, Zeitgeist, and the Zodiac Trio, and given its Wigmore Hall debut by clarinetist Michael Collins and pianist Michael McHale.

Lauded in Musical America for her “contrapuntal vitality” and “ability to use her talents to effect social change,” Abbie is a two-time McKnight Artist Fellow, with additional grants and projects funded by the American Choral Directors Association, ASCAP, American Suzuki Foundation, Minnesota Music Educators Association, New York State School Music Association, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Abbie is an advocate for small business and artist rights, and has presented on copyright and publishing at national conferences, organized national exhibits for independent publishers, and has been a community liaison to the board of the American Composers Forum.

She studied composition at St. Olaf College, the University of Minnesota, and the European American Musical Alliance Summer Institute in Paris, France. For over a decade, she was adjunct professor of music composition at Concordia University-St Paul, and is currently Adjunct Instructor of Music Composition at St. Olaf College.

Edouard-Axel Moubachir

Senior Coordinator for Instrumental Projects

Edouard-Axel Moubachir started the violin at the age of seven. After winning a 1st prize of violin of Paris (France), he obtained the Superior Musical Studies Diploma of Conservatoire National de Région of Paris(France) under Luc Hery, concertmaster of Orchestre National de France. During his studies, he benefited from the teachings of Roland Daugareil, Eric Lacrouts, Amaury Coeyteaux, Guillaume Sutre and Quatuor Debussy as well as leading conductors such as Christoph Eschenbach, Paavo Järvi and Georges Prêtre. Parallel to his musical studies, Edouard-Axel Moubachir graduated from University Pierre et Marie Curie in Mathematics (Master). He has performed as concertmaster or soloist in France in renowned concert halls such as Philharmonie de Paris, Salle Gaveau, La Seine Musicale and Salle Pleyel. His career has taken him around the world: Spain, Italy, Poland, Russia, Latin America.In 2017 he was named Concertmaster for the opening concert celebrating the year of Columbia in France at Philharmonie de Paris in presence of Presidents Emmanuel Macron of France and Juan Manuel Santos of Columbia.

In 2017, thanks to Mark Shapiro’s clairvoyant guidance and counsel, Edouard-Axel Moubachir founded and now conducts the Ensemble Monceau. He has also taken on the role of assistant conductor of Choeur et Orchestre des Grandes Ecoles (COGE) in Paris.

Driven by a deep desire to share his passion and knowledge, he is recognized for his qualities as an educator both as a conductor and violinist. He assists many amateur orchestras in Paris.

He is since 2008 Senior Coordinator for the EAMA String Projects.

Rebecca Myers

Guest Artist

Art Song

In 2023 Rebecca was a featured soloist on the GRAMMY award-winning album Born, recorded with The Crossing.  She made her New World Symphony Debut under the baton of Patrick Dupre Quigley in 2023 as a soprano soloist in Carmina Burana. In 2023 Rebecca was a featured soloist on the GRAMMY award-winning album Born, recorded with The Crossing.  She made her New World Symphony Debut under the baton of Patrick Dupre Quigley in 2023 as a soprano soloist in Carmina Burana. In 2023 Rebecca was a featured soloist on the GRAMMY award-winning album Born, recorded with The Crossing.  She made her New World Symphony Debut under the baton of Patrick Dupre Quigley in 2023 as a soprano soloist in Carmina Burana. In 2023 Rebecca was a featured soloist on the GRAMMY award-winning album Born, recorded with The Crossing.  She made her New World Symphony Debut under the baton of Patrick Dupre Quigley in 2023 as a soprano soloist in Carmina Burana.

Rebecca is the artistic director, and a founding soprano in the genre-bending, cutting-edge vocal chamber ensemble, Variant 6.  Her creative work with Variant 6 strives to blur the lines between audience and performer. The ensemble seeks to change perceptions of what a vocal ensemble can be by presenting virtuosic and obscure works from all eras of history in new and surprising ways.

Rebecca has appeared on over twenty-five acclaimed commercial recordings with The Crossing, Variant 6, Seraphic Fire, Lyric Fest, and Lorelei Ensemble.  She appears on two GRAMMY award winning albums (best choral performance 2018 and 2022) and eight GRAMMY award nominated albums.  

Michel Merlet, Professor Emeritus

 Composition, Orchestration

Born in St. Brieuc, Michel Merlet studied at the Conservatoire Superiere de Paris winning first prizes in clavecin, chamber music, counterpoint, composition, and analysis (the latter in the class of Olivier Messiaen). He has also won numerous prizes including the Prix de Rome, premiere grand prix international de la guilde du disque, premiere prix Pineau-Chaillou, prix Jacques Durand, prix Chartier, prix Stéphane Chapelier, SACEM, and the prix international de Naples.

His works are published by Billaudot, Choudens, E.F.M., Heugel, Leduc, Transatlantique, and Editions Rassel. His music has been performed by many of the greatest orchestras, conductors, and performers worldwide. He has also taught composition in France at the Conservatoire Superiere de Paris and the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris as well as in Japan, China, and Greece.

Michel Merlet is a Knight of Arts and Letters (France) and a member of the French Legion of Honor.