2006 New Music Festival
November 8-11
MICHAEL COLGRASS, Guest Composer
Concert Programs Only
(Acrobat pdf file – 336kb)
MICHAEL COLGRASS (b. 1932) began his musical career in Chicago where professional experiences were as a jazz drummer (1944-49). He graduated from the University in 1954 with a degree in performance and composition and his studies included Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Festival and Lukas Foss at Tanglewood. He served two timpanist in the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart, Germany and then supporting his composing as a free-lance percussionist in New York City where performance venues included such varied groups as the New York Philharmonic, Gillespie, the Modern Jazz Quartet, the original West Side Story orchestra on Broadway, Columbia Recording Orchestra’s Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky series, and numerous jazz ensembles. He organized the percussion sections for Gunther Schuller’s recordings concerts, as well as for premieres of new works by John Cage, Elliott Carter, Edgard others. During this New York period he continued to study composition with Wallingford (1958) and Ben Weber (1958-60).
Colgrass has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic and Symphony (twice), as well as the orchestras of Minnesota, Detroit, San Francisco, St. Washington, Toronto (twice), the National Arts Centre Orchestra (twice), The Canadian Corporation, The Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the Manhattan and Quartets, The Brighton Festival in England, The Fromm and Ford Foundations, The Public Broadcasting, and numerous other orchestras, chamber groups, choral groups.
He won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Déjà vu, which was commissioned premiered by the New York Philharmonic. In addition, he received an Emmy Award documentary “Soundings: The Music of Michael Colgrass.” He has been awarded Fellowships, A Rockefeller Grant, First Prize in the Barlow and Sudler International Competitions, and the 1988 Jules Leger Prize for Chamber Music.
Among recent works are Ghosts of Pangea (2000) for orchestra, commissioned University of Miami in Oxford, Ohio, for their millennium celebration, Dream Dancer saxophone and wind orchestra, commissioned by the World-Wide Concurrent Commissioning Fund, Inc. for 25 wind ensembles, and Crossworlds (2002) for flute piano commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and premiered with soloists and Andreas Heafliger. In 2003 he conducted the premiere of his new chamber orchestra the Bach-Goldberg Variations with members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Recently, he devised a system of teaching music creativity to children which middle and high school music teachers who have used his techniques to teach children perform new music of their own. His articles on these activities have appeared in Educators Journal (September 2004) and Adultita, an Italian education magazine. He number of works for children to perform.
As an author, Colgrass wrote My Lessons With Kumi, a narrative/exercise techniques for performance and creativity. He also gives workshops throughout psychology and technique of performance.
He lives in Toronto and makes his living internationally as a composer. journalist and editor who writes about music and the arts, and his son Neal is an and screenwriter.
For more information see: www.michaelcolgrass.com.
