Composers from the Left Coast
Sunday, November 22, 2009, 7 pm
Morten Lauridsen, composer
Born: February 27, 1943, in Colfax, WA
Began his association with the LAMC: in 1985 when Roger Wagner conducted his Mid-Winter Songs on Poems by Robert Graves at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Was the LAMC composer-in-residence: from 1995 until 2001
The LAMC has premiered his: O Magnum Mysterium, Lux Aeterna, Ave Maria, Voici le Soir (from Nocturnes)
The LAMC has recorded: Lux Aeterna, Les Chanson des Roses, Ave Maria, Mid-Winter Songs, and O Magnum Mysterium on the Grammy Award®-nominated album Lauridsen – Lux Aeterna (1998)
Preparing the next generation of composers: as Distinguished Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music
Awards: in 2005, named an “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts; in 2007, the National Medal of the Arts “for his composition of radiant choral works combining musical beauty, power, and spiritual depth”
Ingram Marshall, composer
Born: May 10, 1942, in Mount Vernon, New York
Education: studied electronic music with Vladimir Ussachevsky at Columbia University and Morton Subotnick at California Institute of the Arts
Influences: minimalism, Jean Sibelius, Javanese gamelan, gambuh (traditional Balinese bamboo flute), electronic techniques using synthesizers, tape delay, feedback
Academia: Guest Teacher in Composition at the Hartt School of Music; visiting Professor at Yale School of Music
Commissions from: Kronos Quartet, Theatre of Voices, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Oakland Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Bang On a Can All-Stars
Compositional style: Marshall considers himself an “expressivist”; his works often combine taped sounds from the “real world” with live performers.
Perhaps best known for: Fragility Cycles (1978) for synthesizer, tape looping, gambuh and voice; Fog Tropes (1981) for six brass instruments and tape; Peaceable Kingdom (1990) for the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Other accomplishments: founded New Albion records with Foster Reed; senior Fulbright scholar; Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Literature; Guggenheim fellowship; NEA and Aaron Copland fund grants
Raves: “…some of the most spiritual art to be found in America today...the music offers a powerful recreation of solitude that is very close to an experience of the divine.” --New York Times
David O, composer
Born: June 2, 1970, in Salinas, CA
Known to thousands of los angeles children as: “The Professor,” as composer and performer for six years in The Voyage of the Global Harmony, part of the LA Phil’s “Summersounds at the Hollywood Bowl.”
Has taught hundreds of LAUSD 5th-graders as: a Master Teaching Artist and composer with the LAMC’s educational outreach program “Voices Within.”
Original musicals: The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip and The Legend of Alex, both commissioned by Center Theatre Group’s P.L.A.Y. Program; Atalanta, based on the story from “Free To Be You And Me”; other compositions for the theatre include the a cappella vocal score for Hippolytos, the inaugural production at the Getty Villa, and a score for voices, piano, percussion, and kazoos for Ubu Roi at A Noise Within.
Musical director: world premiere of Jason Robert Brown’s 13 at the Mark Taper Forum; the West Coast premiere of Michael John LaChiusa’s The Wild Party and Little Fish
Awards: Ovation Award for the score of Ubu Roi; LA Drama Critics Circle, LA Weekly, and Garland Awards for musical direction of multiple productions including 13, The Wild Party, and the world premiere of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World
Other choral compositions: Elements, with text by the ancient Greek philosopher/poet Empedocles, commissioned by the Sacramento Master Singers; Dadme, with text by Pablo Neruda, commissioned by the Eagle Rock Arts Center; arrangements and compositions featured in the Warner Brothers film License to Wed.
Eric Whitacre, composer
Born: January 2, 1970
Formal training: didn’t begin composing until college, when he sang in a choir for the first time
Quick study: He earned a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School, studying with John Corigliano
His recent musical: Paradise Lost, a cutting-edge work combining trance, ambient and techno electronica with choral, cinematic and operatic traditions, won both the ASCAP Harold Arlen award and the Richard Rodgers Award for most promising musical theater composer
Considered by many to be: one of the most popular choral composers of the last decade for works such as Water Night, Cloudburst, Lux Arumque, and Sleep
Other awards: his first recording, The Music of Eric Whitacre, was called one of the top 10 classical albums of 1997 by The American Record Guide; in 2001 he became the youngest recipient ever awarded the Raymond C. Brock commission by the American Choral Directors Association.