Mr. Pautza (b. 1943) received his MFA in Music from the Bucharest Academy of Music in 1965 and studied composition at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena, Italy with Franco Donatoni. Among the awards he has received are the George Enescu Prize from the Romanian Academy and the Honorable Mention at the Nissim National Composition Contest for his Simfonia Sacra commissioned by the Choral Art Society of New Jersey. Mr. Pautza’s music has been released as a ten CD series by Swift Records in the Opera Omnia Series. He made his American debut at Carnegie Hall in January 1985 with the New York University Orchestra, conducting his own composition Haiku, poems for Soprano and Orchestra. In November 1997, the Plainfield Symphony performed his Saxophone Concerto with Paul Cohen, who commissioned the work, as soloist. He is the Music Director of the Plainfield Symphony, NJ.