American Music Center: About AMC

WILLIAM BOLCOM

National Medal of Arts, Pulitzer Prize, and Grammy Award-winner William Bolcom is an American composer of chamber, operatic, vocal, choral, cabaret, ragtime, and symphonic music. Born in Seattle Washington, he began composition studies at the age of 11 with George Frederick McKay and John Verall at the University of Washington while continuing piano lessons with Madame Berthe Poncy Jacobson. He later studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College while working on his Master of Arts degree, with Leland Smith at Stanford University while working on his D.M.A., and with Olivier Messiaen and Milhaud at the Paris Conservatoire, where he received the 2éme Prix de Composition. As a composer, Bolcom has written four violin sonatas; eight symphonies; three operas (McTeague, A View from the Bridge and A Wedding), plus several musical theater operas; eleven string quartets; two film scores (Hester Street and Illuminata); incidental music for stage plays, including Arthur Miller's Broken Glass; fanfares and occasional pieces; and an extensive catalogue of chamber and vocal works. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan's School of Music in 1973, was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition in 1994, and retired in 2008 after 35 years. Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano, and his setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience on the Naxos label won four Grammy Awards in 2005.

COPLAND HOUSE

Copland House was inaugurated in 1998 as a creative center for American music based at Aaron Copland’s restored, longtime home in New York’s lower Hudson River Valley, one hour north of Manhattan. The hilltop, prairie-style house surrounded by three acres of woods had been preserved by a genuine grassroots coalition of local townspeople who envisioned Copland’s home becoming the living, enduring embodiment of his seminal artistic and personal legacies, and his lifelong advocacy of American composers. A National Historic Landmark and an Official Project of the White House Save America's Treasures program, Copland House is the only composer’s home in the U.S. dedicated to nurturing and renewing America’s vibrant musical heritage through a broad range of public, educational, informational, and electronic-media activities. Its support for composers includes coveted, all-expenses-paid residencies; post-residency awards and performances that advance their work; fiscal sponsorships; and composer commissions. Its public programs include concerts, recordings, broadcasts, and Webcasts by its touring resident Music from Copland House ensemble; film screenings and visual exhibitions; and an annual performance series at its vast new satellite venue at the historic Merestead estate in nearby Mount Kisco. Its educational activities include in-school and on-site student programs; guided House tours for school, senior, and community groups; free reference services; and seminars, master classes, lectures, and workshops exploring the creative process.

JOHN HARBISON

John Harbison is among America's most prominent artistic figures. He completed his undergraduate work at Harvard University and earned an MFA from Princeton University. Following completion of a junior fellowship at Harvard, Harbison joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where, in 1984, he was named Class of 1949 Professor of Music; in 1994, Killian Award Lecturer in recognition of "extraordinary professional accomplishments;" and in 1995 he was named Institute Professor, the highest academic distinction MIT offers to resident faculty. Furthering the work of younger composers is one of Harbison's prime interests, and he serves as president of the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Harbison has been composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Tanglewood, Marlboro, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festivals, Songfest, and the American Academy in Rome. As a conductor, Harbison has led a number of leading orchestras and chamber groups. From 1990 to 1992 he was Creative Chair with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, conducting music from Monteverdi to the present, and in 1991, at the Ojai Festival, he led the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Harbison has also conducted many other ensembles, among them the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony. In 1998, Harbison was named winner of the Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities. He is the recipient of numerous other awards, among them the Distinguished Composer award from the American Composer's Orchestra (2002), the Harvard Arts Medal (2000), the American Music Center's Letter of Distinction (2000), the Kennedy Center Friedheim First Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship (1989), and the Pulitzer Prize (1987).

SO PERCUSSION

Since 1999, So Percussion has been creating music that explores all the extremes of emotion and musical possibility. It has not been an easy music to define. Called an “experimental powerhouse” by the Village Voice, “astonishing and entrancing” by Billboard Magazine, and “brilliant” by the New York Times, the Brooklyn based quartet’s innovative work with today’s most exciting composers and their own original music has quickly helped them forge a unique and diverse career.Their music runs the gamut from percussion classics (Steve Reich’s Drumming), to new commissions (David Lang’s the so-called laws of nature), to original music (group member Jason Treuting’s Amid the Noise). So Percussion has performed this music all over the United States, with concerts at the Lincoln Center Festival, Carnegie Hall, Stanford Lively Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and many others. In addition, recent tours to Russia, Australia, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Ukraine have brought them international acclaim. The members of So Percussion are co-directors of a new percussion program at the Bard College Conservatory of music, which will admit its first class in fall of 2011. They are also co-directors of the So Percussion Summer Institute, held each year on the campus of Princeton University. So would like to thank Pearl/Adams Instruments, Zildjian cymbals, Vic Firth drumsticks, Remo drumheads, and Estey organs for their sponsorship.

THE WALDEN SCHOOL

The Walden School is a summer music festival offering programs that emphasize creative application through a comprehensive musicianship curriculum, improvisation and composition. In residence on the campus of the Dublin School, the School provides an inspiring retreat-like environment ideal for creative music making. Since 1973, Walden’s Young Musicians Program has provided fun and rigorous training for young musicians ages 9 to 18. The school is deliberately small, and a student to faculty ratio of 4 to 1 ensures that coursework is geared to the individual student, beginner through advanced, and that a supportive musical community is formed and nurtured. During the five-week program, students attend classes in music history, analysis, computer musicianship, jazz and other topics to complement Walden’s core curriculum of musicianship and composition. The School’s Concert Series features performances by renowned artists and ensembles that interact closely with students, including during Composers Forums where students’ creative work is presented and discussed. All students and faculty participate in chorus, which meets daily and performs a concert at the end of the session. The Walden School offers a Teacher Training Institute that presents a weeklong summer intensive to help music educators sharpen their musicianship skills, enrich their teaching with imaginative activities, and more effectively guide the creative voices of their students. Interactive sessions with master teachers include classes in musicianship, computer music, solfege, choral singing, jazz, rhythms, and improvisation. At Walden’s Creative Musicians Retreat, adult musicians take classes, sing in chorus, compose music, and improvise. Participants are exposed to a variety of Walden musicianship materials and take classes in contemporary music topics, music history, computer music and applied skills (conducting, improvisation and more). Composition lessons and tutorials are also offered. For more information, please visit www.waldenschool.org.