Title: Five Songs on Poetry of W. S. Merwin
Commission: 2002
Completed: 2005
Instrumentation: soprano, violin, cello, and piano
Premiere Location: Tenri Cultural Institute, NYC
Premiere Ensemble: Cabrini Quartet
Notes:

David Taddie, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in composition from Cleveland State University and the Ph.D in composition from Harvard University. His principal teachers were Mario Davidovsky, Donald Martino, Bernard Rands, Edwin London, Bain Murray, and Rudolph Bubalo. His music has been widely performed in the United States and Europe by soloists and ensembles such as the Cleveland Orchestra, Alea III, the New Millennium Ensemble, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the California Ear Unit, the Core Ensemble, the Cabrini Quartet, the Mendelssohn String Quartet, the Portland Chamber Players, the Gregg Smith Singers, harpists Ann Yeung, Jocelyn Chang, and Christine Mazza, flutists Elizabeth McNutt and Rebecca Dunnell, pianists Mark George, Joanna Sobkowska, and James Avery, and many other soloists and ensembles. Among his awards are the Adelbert W. Sprague, Francis Boott, and Bohemians prizes in composition from Harvard University, the Kaske Fellowship to the Wellesley Composers Conference, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation and the Fromm Foundation, and, in 1995, was named the Music Teachers National Association Distinguished Composer of the Year.