Celebrate Local Returns

Celebrate Local highlights South Bend’s vibrant compositional talent, showcasing works by local composers John Liberatore, Jorge Muñiz, and Marjorie Rusche. This program features guest pianist Clare Longendyke and South Bend Symphony Principal Flute Leslie Short.

Program

John LIBERATORE
Piano Concerto – (Clare Longendyke, piano)

Jorge MUÑIZ
Concerto for Flute and Orchestra – (Leslie Short, flute)

Marjorie RUSCH
Eclipse – (Clare Longendyke, piano)

About Clare Longendyke, Piano

Photo by Chris Whonsettler

Pianist Clare Longendyke is a soloist, chamber musician, and fearless advocate for new music who brings daring repertoire and thoughtful storytelling to the concert stage. Her performances are marked by imaginative programming, charismatic stage presence, and a gift for weaving together contemporary works and classical favorites.

In 2024, Clare released her debut solo album, …Of Dreams Unveiled, featuring music by Claude Debussy, Amy Williams, and Anthony R. Green. The album debuted at #2 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart and was praised as “a work of remarkable pianistic invention” (The WholeNote) and “delightfully daring” (EarRelevant).

A passionate collaborator with living composers, Clare has commissioned more than 30 new works and premiered over 250 pieces in the last decade. Her programs often pair canonical composers like Beethoven, Debussy, and Amy Beach with today’s most compelling musical voices, creating concerts that speak to the depth of the classical tradition.

Highlights of Clare’s 2025/26 season include appearances with Symphony New Hampshire, the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, and the Atlanta Contemporary Music Collective. She has appeared on recital series across the country and as a soloist with the Mankato Symphony, Rochester Symphony, and Symphonicity.

Clare holds degrees from Boston University and Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Whether from the stage or in conversation, Clare invites audiences into the heart of her artistry—one that builds bridges between tradition and transformation and brings the concert experience vividly to life.

About Leslie Short, Flute

Leslie Short is a native of Virginia Beach, Virginia where she grew up attending Virginia Symphony concerts with her parents. After hearing her teacher, Debra Cross, perform Afternoon of a Faun she made it her goal to become an orchestral musician. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin Conservatory as a student of Michel Debost and a Master of Music degree from Mannes School of Music in New York City where she studied with Judith Mendenhall and Nadine Asin.

In 1996 she was named Principal Flute of the South Bend Symphony. Some of the highlights of her Symphony career have been four solo appearances with the orchestra, performing all nine Beethoven symphonies with Maestro Willis and playing the National Anthem during the Winter Classic at Notre Dame Stadium. As principal flute she is a member of the Symphony’s woodwind quintet and has performed hundreds of community concerts in the Michiana area. She has also served the Symphony in many capacities including being a member of the board, serving on various search committees and representing the musicians in three contract negotiations.

Leslie is an active freelance musician in the Chicago area, and has performed with many of the area’s regional orchestras including, Chicago Sinfonietta, Northwest Indiana Symphony, and The New Philharmonic. She has been teaching private flute lessons throughout her professional career, teaching at various high schools in her area as well as at her home.

About John Liberatore

John Liberatore is a composer with many interests. His music seeks poignancy through levity, ambiguity through transparency, and complexity within simple textures—“to feel pulled along at varying speeds in multiple directions, but always forward” (Cleveland Classical). His distinct compositional voice combines many styles and influences, with an emphasis on instrumental color and textural clarity. In addition to his work as a composer, Liberatore performs as a pianist, narrator, and one of the world’s few glass harmonica players.

Over the past several years, his music has received hundreds of performances in venues around the world. He is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell (2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, 2020), Tanglewood, Yaddo, the Brush Creek Arts Foundation, the I-Park Artist’s Enclave, and the Millay Colony. Other notable distinctions include commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation and the American Opera Initiative, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, and the Brian Israel Prize. Through a 2012 Presser Music Award, he studied in Tokyo with Jo Kondo—a mentorship that made an indelible impression on his music.

In 2015, Liberatore commissioned glass blowers G. Finkenbeiner Inc. for a new glass harmonica, becoming one of the few exponents of this rare instrument in contemporary music. So far, he has collaborated as a composer and performer with Roomful of Teeth, percussionist Daniel Druckman, soprano Jamie Jordan, and several others.

In 2018, Albany Records released Line Drawings, a portrait album of Liberatore’s chamber music. The album features his recording debut on the glass harmonica (alongside Druckman and Jordan), as well as pieces for the Mivos Quartet, pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, Bent Frequency, and Duo Damiana. Other recordings of his work are available on the Centaur, Innova, and Ravello record labels. In collaboration with Zohn Collective, Liberatore released a second portrait album, Catch Somewhere, with New Focus Recordings.

He holds a doctor of philosophy and a master of music from the Eastman School of Music, and a bachelor of music degree, summa cum laude, from Syracuse University. Since 2015, he has taught at the University of Notre Dame, where he serves as Associate Professor of Composition and Theory, having taught previously at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford and Syracuse University.

About Jorge Muñiz

The music of Jorge Muñiz has been performed in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Singapore, Australia, and the United States by such ensembles as the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Seville Symphony Orchestra, Malaga Symphony Orchestra, Asturias Symphony Orchestra, Oviedo Filarmonía, South Bend Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, the Das Scardanelli Quartett, Euclid Quartet, Avalon Quartet, Cámara XXI, Duo Ahlert & Schwab, Cuarteto Quiroga, Cuarteto Quattro, Duo Saxperience, the Vesper Chorale and Chamber Orchestra, Duo Sonidos, and Forward Motion.

In October 2010, the South Bend Symphony Orchestra presented the world premiere of Requiem for the Innocent, written in remembrance of victims of terrorism around the world, featuring baritone soloist Ivan Griffin and five choruses. The South Bend Tribune called the work “a magnificent oratorio… a creation that is profound, mature and well-proportioned.”

Opera Oviedo (Spain) commissioned Muñiz to compose a three-act opera, Fuenteovejuna for the opening of the house’s 71st anniversary season in 2018-2019. The opera was the first mainstage production to be commissioned by the company in its history. It received three new performances in October 2022 opening the new season of Opera de Tenerife (Spain).

Motown Dreams, a concerto for saxophone and orchestra was performed on October 1, 2022 by Timothy McAllister and the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra. Recent album releases include his Portraits from the Heartland with guitarist Adam Levin in 21st Century Spanish Guitar (Vol. 4) (Frameworks) and his “Salve Regina” with violinist Lucia Veintimilla in Origins (Aria Classics).

On February 1, 2025, his third symphony, Solidarity Symphony was premiered by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and maestro Matthew Kraemer.

Muñiz received his masters in music composition from Carnegie Mellon University where he studied with Leonardo Balada and his doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music with Richard Danielpour. Dr. Muñiz is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Music, Composition and Theory, at the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts at Indiana University South Bend.

About Marjorie M. Rusche

Marjorie M. Rusche is an internationally performed award winning composer who combines romantic, modernist, and vernacular influences in her music. Dr. Rusche composes for opera, music theater, orchestra, chorus, dance, soloists, and a variety of vocal and instrumental chamber ensembles.

Awards and commissions include: Border Songs, for soprano, E-flat alto saxophone, and piano commissioned by Stacy Maugans, saxophone, funded by a FY2024 Arts Project Support Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission, premiered

May 4, 2024; a version for soprano and piano is published by North Star Music. The Gamboling Girl, commissioned by the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, premiered January 9, 2022.

Dreams and Visions (Searching the Shadows) for oboe, viola, and piano, commissioned by Jennet Ingle, oboe, with partial funding support from the Indiana Arts Commission, premiered in January 2020 with subsequent performances throughout Indiana and Michigan. Victoria Sabonjohn, oboe, performed the first movement for The Pasadena Alumnae Chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota annual Composers Concert at California State University, Northridge, Los Angeles, California.

Her opera Our American Odyssey premiered October 2023 in piano-vocal form, produced by the South Bend Lyric Opera.

Rusche was a guest composer with Musica Reginae Productions, New York City and was honored as a guest composer at the London New Music for Winds Festival, in 2010 in London, England. Her compositions have been performed live and on radio in Amsterdam, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, San Francisco, Vienna, Denmark, Kenya, Spain, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, and Wisconsin, her birth state.

She has taught music composition, orchestration, opera history, music theory and piano at Indiana University South Bend, the University of Notre Dame, St. Mary’s College, Southwestern Michigan University, and Columbia College Chicago. She taught music in Kenya while serving in the United States Peace Corps. She earned a doctor of music in Composition from Indiana University Bloomington, and her master of arts in Music Composition & Theory from the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis, where she was a charter member of the American Composers Forum (aka Minnesota Composers Forum).

Meet the Musicians Here!