August 8, 2006

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Bonnie Pomfret, D.M.A., and William Price, D.M.A., have joined the faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Music. Pomfret will teach as assistant professor of voice and opera. Price will teach as assistant professor of music theory.

Pomfret, a native of Massachusetts, began piano studies at 7. She received degrees in piano and voice from the Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany, and earned her master’s degree in voice from the Boston Conservatory. She holds a doctorate in vocal performance from Indiana University, where she was a student of Virginia Zeani, leading soprano of La Scala and Covent Garden. Pomfret was a 1994 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Wagner-Festspiele in Bayreuth, Germany. She taught at Illinois State University, Emory University, and since 2004, Shorter College, and maintains a private studio in Atlanta. A soprano, she has performed music from the 12th to 21st centuries, in seven languages, in the United States, Europe and Asia. Her interests include contemporary music and the music of the bel canto period.

Price earned his undergraduate degree in music education at the University of North Alabama and his master’s and doctorate in music from Louisiana State University. He was most recently visiting assistant professor of music theory at UAB.

As a composer, Price has received awards and commissions from numerous organizations, including the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, the Percussive Arts Society, the American Composers Forum, the National Association of Composers U.S.A., the Louisiana Music Teachers Association and the Southeastern Composers League. His music has been performed and premiered by the Contemporary Ensemble of the Conservatory in Athens, Greece, the Louisiana Sinfonietta, the Ensemble Rosario, the Thelema Trio, the Macedonian Saxophone Quartet and the U.S. Coast Guard Saxophone Trio, among others.