2005-2006 Featured Composer:
Victoria Sabo
It is a pleasure to announce this year’s PPLS adopted composer, Victoria Sabo. We will have the opportunity this year to work with Ms. Sabo as each student in the PPLS has the opportunity to learn her compositions and compose and improvise original compositions of his/her own. The PPLS teachers will encourage students to write questions to Ms. Sabo (submitted to her via e-mail in batches) and everyone will be able benefit from her feedback. As part of the Festival of Contemporary Art Music, selected students will be invited to perform Ms. Sabo’ compositions and several new works commissioned by the PPLS. Ms. Sabo will offer a master class for those student performers and any other students able to participate, and will also present a clinic for PPLS teachers, WSU composition majors, and community teachers during the FoCAM. Finally, a portion of the PPLS Spring Recital will be dedicated to the performance of the new commissioned compositions and other works by Ms. Sabo, amid the usual prepared selections of literature by the students. This is going to be another exciting year for everyone, and I hope you will join with me in encouraging your students to unleash their creativity in improvisation and composition this year at the piano!
Biography
Victoria Ebel-Sabo, besides being a composer, pianist, and teacher, is an avid outdoors woman and adventure traveler. It is from her mountain climbing, back country skiing, and wilderness back-packing experiences that she receives inspiration for her compositions. She and her husband, Daniel, have trekked and skied in numerous mountain ranges throughout the world. Since moving to Washington, Victoria and Dan have summited numerous alpine peaks in the Cascades.
Victoria’s children’s choral compositions, chosen for state music festivals across America, have been published by Boosey and Hawkes, Mark Foster, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Shawnee Press, and Kjos. Four collections of intermediate piano pieces, Micro Musings, More Micro Musings, Still More Micro Musings, and Micro Meowings have recently been published by Willis Music Company as a part of their popular new composer series, Pianovations. Victoria has been featured on several nationwide broadcasts of Chamber Music Minnesota, a chamber music series show-casing Minnesota composers.
Victoria has become very active in the Bellingham chapter of the Washington State Music Teachers Association, presenting workshops in Bellingham and Seattle, and serving as Vice President in 2003-4 and Chapter President in 2005 (she will co-chair the chapter in 2006). Before moving to Bellingham, Victoria presented programs for chapters in Minnesota. She has presented programs at the Washington State Music Teachers convention two years in a row and will be one of the featured presenters at the conference in October held in Marysville. The Sabos’ love of performing helped create an active soiree group in Bellingham, consisting of local piano teachers and UWW professors, current and retired.