Award-Winning Composer/Arranger to Write Piece
Commemorating C.W. Post’s 50th Anniversary

Brookville, NY - Carl Strommen, an internationally regarded composer/arranger, has been commissioned by C.W. Post Provost Joseph Shenker to compose a musical selection to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. The piece will be scored for the C.W. Post Chorus, under the direction of C.W. Post Music Professor Alexander Dashnaw, and the C.W. Post Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Professor James McRoy. The text will be drawn from Walt Whitman’s 1855 volume of poems, "Leaves of Grass."

The choral portion of the piece will be performed at several campus events celebrating C.W. Post’s 50th anniversary, which begins September 2004. The piece will be performed at a winter concert at Tilles Center for the Performing Arts in December 2004 and at C.W. Post commencement exercises on May 8, 2005. "This is a great honor," said Strommen, who has been an adjunct music professor at C.W. Post for seven years. "There are such wonderful musical groups at C.W. Post. It will be a pleasure to write for them."

A resident of Glen Head, N.Y., Strommen teaches graduate orchestration and composition during the fall and spring semesters, and workshops in arranging during the summer. A graduate of the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University and City College of New York, he is a composer/arranger for Warner Bros. and Carl Fischer Publishing. He has been awarded countless commission assignments of all styles and settings, and has been a consistent winner of the yearly American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers writers award.

"It’s appropriate that the musical selection will be based on a poem by such a distinguished poet as Walt Whitman," Strommen said. "This celebration is a tribute to a great Long Island institution and it’s fitting that a great Long Island poet serves as the inspiration."

Founded in 1954, the C.W. Post Campus will celebrate its 50th anniversary from September 2004 to August 2005. The Brookville campus, located on the former estates of cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and financial wizard E.F. Hutton, educates more than 12,000 full- and part-time students in accountancy, business, education, liberal arts and sciences, library science, computer science, public service, health professions and nursing, and visual and performing arts. For information, call the C.W. Post Office of Public Relations at 516-299-2334.