Russell Riepe
'Trio 488' was honored and overjoyed that Dr. Russell Riepe agreed to compose a piece for the ensemble. In March of 2009, the trio premiered two movements of Riepe's Five Rivers of Hades at the College Music Society Regional Conference at University of Oklahoma in Norman. Further, the trio is looking forward to performing additional movements and various locations around the world. Future planned performances include concerts in Birmingham and Oxford, England.
Dr. Russell Riepe, Professor and Coordinator of Music Composition Programs, Founder and Director of the Texas Mysterium for Modern Music, and Director of Graduate Music Studies at Texas State University, is a long-standing member (a Fellow since 1967) of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. He studied under the renowned pedagogue, Mlle. Nadia Boulanger, and in 1972 earned his Ph.D. in Music Composition at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, where he also won the Howard Hanson Prize for his work, Symphonic Fantasy. Under the aegis of Rotary International, he toured Japan in 1978 as a representative of American artists, subsequently returning as guest speaker at several cities in the Yamaguchi Prefecture. At the request of the Ministry of Culture, he visited music conservatories as a consultant throughout the People's Republic of China in 1988.
After a two-year teaching sabbatical as Senior Lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he also oversaw the development of the Hong Kong Electronic/Computer Music Centre, he resumed in the fall of 1989 his Professorship at Texas State University. He has also lectured in Europe at the Trinity College of Music, London, where as pianist he accompanied the premiere performance of his composition, Lacrimosa for Clarinet and Piano, spring, 1994. Under his direction, the Texas Mysterium for Modern Music spent a week in residence in Blonay, Switzerland, the summer of 1994 at the invitation of the Paul Hindemith Foundation, from where his new music ensemble conducted a concert tour in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, including the Innsbruck Conservatory of Music.
He has since featured his most recent American electronic-computer music and solo piano pieces in a series of lecture-recitals at the Moscow State Conservatory, Moscow, Russia (1997); Northern College, Aberdeen, Scotland; and the University of Silesia, Cieszyn, Poland (1998). Dr. Riepe is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). His published works include articles, musical arrangements, and original compositions which are internationally performed and recorded. One of his pieces, Three Studies in Flight, is part of the standard international clarinet repertoire. Moreover, his music has received favorable reviews in The New York Times, Gramophone, Brass Bulletin, The Instrumentalist, as well as in other periodicals and books. Although his career is principally devoted to composition and teaching, as a pianist he has also appeared at Carnegie Hall and at the Lincoln Center, New York City, and recorded in ensembles for Deutsche Grammophon and Columbia Records. He is a recipient of the Presidential Seminar Award for excellence in scholarship at Texas State University. For his distinction and service to his students and profession, Dr. Riepe is listed in the Who's Who of American Teachers as well as in the International Who's Who in Music, Cambridge, England.