The Judges
Patrick Russ
Patrick Russ, symphonic orchestrator and classical recording producer, has worked for a number of Hollywood’s finest film composers, including Academy Award winners Elmer Bernstein, James Newton Howard, Maurice Jarre, and Rachel Portman. His orchestration credits for over 150 films include Eight Below, Shaggy Dog, King Kong, Far From Heaven, The Day After Tomorrow, Ghost, Big Momma’s House, Dead Poets Society, Chocolat, The First Wives Club, and Shall We Dance. He has also reconstructed a number of film scores from Hollywood’s Golden Age by such composers as Dmitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklós Rózsa, and Victor Young. Reconstructions and arrangements for the Tiomkin estate include The Guns of Navarone, Rawhide, Dial M For Murder, and The Sundowners. Other notable projects include El Cid, Double Indemnity, Lost Weekend, Shane, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Previn Conducts Korngold, the “Best Classical Crossover Album” Grammy winner for 2003.
His arrangements in the classical field have been aired on the Grammy Awards and Live from Lincoln Center and have been recorded by Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, Placido Domingo, and guitarist Christopher Parkening. In 1992, his adaptation of Sir William Walton’s Five Bagatelles for Guitar and Orchestra received its world premiere recording by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for the 90th anniversary celebration of Walton’s birth. His re-orchestrations and reconstructions for CD recordings include the Genesis Suite and Abraham Ellstein: Great Songs of the Yiddish Stage, Volume 1 for the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music.
Russ earned a Master of Arts degree in music composition from U.C. Santa Barbara. A native Californian, he resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two children
John Sutherland
Guitarist John Sutherland was described in the Atlanta Journal Constitution as the "Dean of Guitarists." He studied with Andre Segovia, Christopher Parkening, John Marlow, Jose Tomas, and Evangelos Assimakopoulous. Since starting the guitar program at Georgia in 1971, Mr. Sutherland has been responsible for initiating numerous guitar programs in the state, including those at Georgia State University, Dekalb College, and Columbus College. He has been involved in the planning of a state-wide guitar curriculum for Georgia public schools. Since 1978 Sutherland has taught with Christopher Parkening in master classes at Montana State University. Parkening selected Sutherland's transcriptions (published by Sherry Brener Publications), for his Angel recording of Simple Gifts. Mr. Parkening calls Mr. Sutherland "one of the finest teachers in the United States." His students have been prize winners in the National Federation of Music Clubs Competition, Music Teachers National Association, and the American String Teachers Association. Three of the twelve students at the final Segovia Master Class studied with John Sutherland at the University of Georgia. He has served as adjudicator and clinician throughout the United States.
David Thomas
David Thomas has been involved in the music industry for the last 20 years. An active recording producer, he has produced the last nine Christopher Parkening recordings for EMI and Sony Classical. Thomas has also produced recordings for soprano Kathleen Battle, baritone Jubilant Sykes, guitarists Virginia Luque and Liona Boyd, as well as for the movie Last Flight Out. He has worked on recordings with some of the world’s finest orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. His profession has taken him to such internationally acclaimed studios as Abbey Road in London as well as Capitol and SonyMGM studios in Los Angeles. Thomas’s current projects include EMI’s Grace Like a River, a companion CD to Tyndale House Publishers release of Christopher Parkening’s autobiography of the same title, scheduled for a May/June release, and another EMI project, Jubilation, featuring Parkening with baritone Jubilant Sykes, slated for the fall.
In the early '90s, he founded Thomas-York, Inc., and TYI/Concert Marketing, which coordinates venue marketing for many major labels, including EMI, SonyBMG Masterworks, Universal, and Warner/Atlantic. The company also includes the labels Arioso Classicsa and Christian Classicsa, as well as a management division.
Born in the Napa Valley in California, Thomas now resides in Fayetteville, AR, with his wife Joanna, a physician, and their two sons.
