Who are we?
The Tiny Mahler Orchestra is an educational non-profit organization that specializes in the presentation of under-performed music. By juxtaposing works that are rarely heard, we hope to enable our audiences to make musical connections that have never before been possible, and to create concert experiences that are much more than the sum of their parts. We also strive to provide multiple presentations of new and unusual works, in contrast with the current custom of affording them only one performance. Our mission is to continually challenge, entertain, inspire, educate and thereby awaken the public to the best music they've never heard.
Why "Tiny Mahler"?
One of the founding directors, Leon Shernoff, was doing a production of Schoenberg's opera Die Glückliche Hand at the California Institute of the Arts. Like most Schoenberg pieces, it calls for a huge orchestra (about 120 musicians), but only a few of them are usually playing at a time. So he made an arrangement of it for ten live instruments and five sampling keyboards that supported the live ones. It worked very well at imitating the sound of a much larger ensemble, to the point where one of the singers in the chorus walked in while we were rehearsing the opening music, looked around for who was playing, couldn't find it, realized it was us, did a double-take, and said "Wow! It's a tiny Mahler orchestra!"
Current Board Memebers
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Leon ShernoffLike the famous American composer John Cage, Leon Shernoff is equally at home in music and mycology (the study of mushrooms). The winner of a BMI Award for Young Composers at age 16, he divides his time between musical activities and the editorship of Mushroom, the Journal of Wild Mushrooming, America’s only magazine for morel-hunters and other aficionados of edible wild mushrooms. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, the California Institute of the Arts and the University of Chicago, his music has been performed at the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and at the Pécs Music Festival in Hungary. His composition teachers include Mel Powell, Shulamit Ran, John Eaton, Andrew Imbrie, Stephen Mosko, Morton Subotnick, David Liptak and Robert Morris. Leon has rounded out his Western studies with study of and participation in music from a wide variety of other cultures, most notably the music of the Anlo Ewe people of coastal Ghana, which he studied with Kobla Ladzekpo, Alfred Ladzekpo, and Midawo Togbe Gideon Foli Alorwoyie. A former member of Golosa (the Russian choir of the University of Chicago), and a current member of the university’s Middle Eastern Music Ensemble, Leon ran an African music ensemble at the University of Chicago for eight years, teaching the coastal Ghanaian repertoire that he had learned. In his compositions, Leon aims for a synthesis of various approaches to music-making, and hopes to explore these through his work with the Tiny Mahler Orchestra. |
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Peter SlavinPeter Slavin received his BM in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Elinor Armer, David Conte and Conrad Susa, and his PhD in music from the University of California, Berkeley, where his teachers included Cindy Cox, Jorge Liderman and Andrew Imbrie. He has won awards and other recognition for his piano playing, and has worked professionally as an accompanist, organist and choir director, and freelance pianist since his teens. His compositions, which include a number of songs, choral works, chamber music, solo piano pieces, and an opera, have been performed widely in the San Francisco Bay Area and his native state of Texas. He is currently the music director of Immanuel United Church of Christ in Evergreen Park, IL. |
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Tiffany SevillaTiffany Sevilla received her bachelor and master's degrees in her native state of California at the University of California at Berkeley and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, respectively. Her composition teachers have included Andrew Imbrie, Tristan Murail, Shulamit Ran, Mario Lavista, and Marta Ptaszynska. Her music has been performed locally by prominent groups such as the Lincoln Trio, Pacifica String Quartet, eighth blackbird, Pinotage, CUBE, and the University of Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players. She has had performances in as far away places as Poland (Poznan's Spring Festival), and France (Fontainebleau) as well as in her home state through the Los Angeles Guitar Foundation of America and with San Francisco's opus 415. She recently finished her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and is currently teaching violin, composition, and studies in electronic/computer music at Columbia College. You can hear her music at http://www.myspace.com/tiffanysevilla |
See also our Board Emeritus