ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Performer 

“…beautiful sound…very insightful musicianship, transcends the technical difficulties of her instrument and phrases with great maturity and feeling. Her teaching instincts are sound and imaginative…students respond enthusiastically. I want to recommend her to you as strongly as I can. I am proud to have been her teacher and her friend and will watch her as her exciting career as musician and artist teacher unfolds.”

Leon Russianoff, Clarinet Instructor, The Juilliard School

Judith Pauley Markovich graduated with honors from The Juilliard School with a Master’s degree in performance. While in NYC, Markovich performed as clarinetist on some prestigious stages, including as guest artist at Carnegie Recital Hall. Her playing has inspired composers Alec Wilder, Allan Blank, Gilman Collier and Larry Smith, and Carl Della Peruti to write for her. At Morton Gould’s request, she soloed his jazz ensemble work. 

Markovich is exceptional…has that special flare that eludes many musicians.

Franklin Cohen, Principal Clarinet Emeritus of the Cleveland Orchestra

“That is some of the finest clarinet playing I have ever heard.”

Barry Tuckwell, international virtuoso, French horn

Teacher 

Though a contest winner, Markovich loves to teach. Markovich was leader of the Brioso Quintet, part of the Lincoln Center chamber music school program for NYC schools. She traveled as the teaching assistant of the late, world-renowned Leon Russianoff of the Juilliard School. Later, she became a Akron University’s clarinet instructor and principal clarinetist of the Akron Symphony under Louis Lane, former assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. She has built and conducted bands and orchestras in New York, New Jersey, and Kansas City, MO, and established the first State Junior High Jazz Ensemble in New Jersey.  

“…superbly equipped in being resourceful, imaginative…she is an impressive combination of maturity and professionalism on the one hand, and enthusiasm and strong motivation on the other…highest recommendation…”                                                

                                                                                        Richard Killough, Director, NYC

Composer 

Experienced as a performer of orchestral, operatic, show music, chamber music, and a touch of jazz, Markovich’s performance career paused abruptly due to an illness in 1980 that almost took her life. During her long but miraculous recovery, she discovered new purpose and direction. She also married Richard and raised his three young sons as her own. Markovich spent her free time teaching and developing a unique improvisational style for classical instruments in worship. As a result, she dabbled with a script and arranged music which she produced as a 2006 Christmas musical called The Soul Felt Its Worth, though she had no composition training. For years to follow, she wrote fragments of tunes and rhythms on napkin corners and notepads. She tossed them into a drawer with no idea she had a composer gene. This eventually led her at 65, out of curiosity, to her first composition lesson with Nashville’s composer David Moser McKay. She has since begun to produce chamber, choral, and orchestral works. At 70, she penned her first commission, Emergence, an orchestral tone poem that embraces the process of becoming who we were meant to be. Since then, one of the top international violists of our day, Brett Deubner, began to champion her work, having recorded Remember with PARMA Navona Records and performed several other premieres. The rest is history with a growing catalogue of choices.

Markovich was honored to be selected as one of the composers to be performed at the 2022 International Composers Festival in Sussex, UK, in May. In the short two years since her first premiere, several premieres occurred, including The Dabbling Duck, which was performed by the Arkansas Symphony on its chamber series, River Rhapsodies in 2020. Five premieres were scheduled for 2022 in Arkansas, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Germany in 2024. Her work was featured on ASCAP’s New Music Friday, another on Radio WPRB’s Classical Discoveries. The premiere of a new solo cello work was premiered by international cellist Diane Chaplin on a radio station in Kansas City this June and then off to Italy with it. A solo viola work for Amaro DuBois also premiered in June 2022, and among other premieres, Nashville’s Grammy-nominated ALIAS Chamber Ensemble premiered her piano quintet in March 2023 on an event celebrating Women’s History Month.

Often seeing five years ahead of what is happening, this activity, however,  was not something Markovich foresaw. However, she remains passionate about innovative, improvisational, classical and sacred works. She is not given to trends and catch words unless they fit what she is inspired by, nor does she avoid a beautiful melody. She aims to wed the anointed sounds and melodic writing of great classical masters of the past and forerunners who rise today with music only she hears. Often you will find her soundscape wrapped around a profound universal message. One example is Cornerstone, her upcoming viola concerto, which includes a parable she wrote called: The Bully and the Cornerstone.

Born and raised in Kingsport, TN, Markovich, like many, has pushed through seemingly immovable stereotypes and exclusions to now resides as an emerging composer in Spring Hill with her husband, Richard. When not performing, composing, or writing her novel series, you will most often find her in a flannel shirt digging in the garden, housing people in transition, drinking dandelion coffee over a Sudoku, or working in her ministry through the arts to serve the poor.

As a performer, publisher, and author, Markovich is a member of ASCAP, IAWM, and ACFW.

To read Markovich’s blog story on becoming a composer, click here: https://judithmarkovich.com/on-becoming-a-composer

Click Here for a List of Compositions

 Works in the Oven:

A work for survivors of a suicide loss for tenor, violin, clarinet in A, chimes, timpani, piano

   Commissioned by David Stern | Projected World Premiere with Franklin Cohen 2024

When Words Fail for Viola and Harp

   Commissioned by harpist Rachel Talitman, Tel Aviv, Israel | World Premiere, December 2023 | Album release 2024

Crossroads Sonata/Concerto No. 2 for Viola and Piano/Orchestra

   Commissioned by Amaro Dubois| World premiere, 2024 

Resting Place for Classical Guitar

  Commissioned by Sergio Puccini | World premiere, September 2023 | Album available by 2024

Cornerstone Concerto No. 1 for Viola and Orchestra (Ready for Orchestra!)

   2024 Premieres to be performed by international violist Brett Deubner