The composer, conductor and educator Raymond Wojcik was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver, where his composition teachers were David Schiff and Donald Keats. He studied conducting under George Manahan, Michael Charry and Harold Farberman. His music is emotionally direct and spontaneous, with elements of jazz in the Dance Symphony and a keen understanding of the creativity of young children in The Art Spirit, in which the composer was given the task of creating symphonic movements in response to students’ artwork. Akin to Fire reflects a musical kinship the composer felt to Beethoven’s Große Fuge, Op. 133 which he re-examined while in the middle of writing the work. But his comments about Jubilee, commissioned by the New Jersey Youth Symphony, best sum up his aesthetic:

‘My inspiration for this overture came from the young musicians themselves who possessed a wonderful level of energy, dedication, and love of music. I also could not help but notice a “love” of cell phones, video games and chatting when not engrossed in music making. As a result, I incorporated musical ideas that suggest those things into the compositional fabric.’