William Bolcom
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William Elden Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer of chamber, operatic, and symphonic music.
Bolcom was born in Seattle, Washington. At the Age of 11, he entered the University of Washington to study composition privately with George Fredrick McKay and John Verall and piano 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 at the Paris Conservatoire, where he received the 2éme Prix de Composition.
In the fall of 1994, he was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan, a position which he still holds. Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano, and 3 Grammy Awards in 2006 for his setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. He is currently married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris.
As a pianist, Bolcom has performed and recorded his own work frequently in collaboration with Joan Morris. Bolcom and Morris have recorded twenty albums together, beginning with After the Ball, a collection of popular songs from around the turn of the 20th century. Their primary specialties in both concerts and recordings are showtunes and popular songs from the early 20th century, and cabaret songs (often from failed musicals).
Bolcom's setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, a full evening's work for soloists, choruses, and orchestra culminated 25 years of work on the piece. Its premiere at the Stuttgart Opera in 1984 was followed by performances in Ann Arbor, Chicago's Grant Park, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, St. Louis, Carnegie Hall, and London's Royal Festival Hall, the latter performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. In 2006, it won 3 Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Best Classical Album under the Naxos label.
His opera, A View from the Bridge, with libretto by Arthur Miller and Arnold Weinstein, was premiered October 9, 1999, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. He has also composed works for solo wind instruments such as Concert Suite for alto saxophone and band, composed for University of Michigan professor Donald Sinta in 1998.
Bolcom's other works include a number of piano rags, some written in collaboration with William Albright, and four volumes of cabaret songs which have recently been given new life by Michelle and David Murray, another husband-and-wife performing duo.
Works
- 1977: New Etudes for Piano
- 1984: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
- 1998: Concert Suite (for alto saxophone and band)
- 1999: A View from the Bridge
- 2004: A Wedding
External links
- [William Bolcom and Joan Morris's website]
- [Information about the best performers of Bolcom's Cabaret Songs, Michelle and David Murray]
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