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Gerard Schwarz in 2009.

Gerard Schwarz (born August 19, 1947) is an American conductor. He was music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 2011.^[1]

In 2007 Schwarz was named music director of the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina, having served as principal conductor since 2005. There he has expanded the festival's audiences to the largest in its history, enhanced education and programming (to include a composer in residence and three new concert series), and increased collaboration with An Appalachian Summer Festival, where he is artistic partner for symphonic music programming.

From 2001 to 2006, Schwarz was music director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO). Earlier he served as music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and of a chamber orchestra in New York.

Early life[link]

Schwarz was born in Weehawken, New Jersey, to Austrian parents. He graduated from New York City's High School of Performing Arts and Juilliard School of Music and began his musical career as a trumpeter, performing until 1973 as principal of the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez, but also began conducting in 1966. In 1971 he won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. He has been Music Director of several other organizations, most notably of New York's Mostly Mozart Festival, which he led from 1982 to 2001. He was a a Music director of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in the 1970s.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

Schwarz is noted for championing American composers, past and present. The over 100 recordings he has made with the Seattle Symphony include many American works – in particular, he has won widespread acclaim for his recordings of symphonies and other orchestral works by Alan Hovhaness and David Diamond. Among the other orchestras which Schwarz has led on his other recordings are the Czech Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestre National de France. In 2003 he recorded two concertos by Philip Glass : the Cello Concerto (with Julian Lloyd Webber) and the Concerto for Two Timpanists (with Evelyn Glennie and Jonathan Haas with the RLPO). In 1989, he received the Ditson Conductor's Award for his commitment to the performance of American music. He has also recorded all of Mahler's symphonies and Richard Strauss's tone poems with the RLPO.

Schwarz is also noted for his success in building the strength of the orchestra; when he began directing the Seattle Symphony in 1983 it had 5,000 subscribers; as of 2008 it had 35,000.^[2] He also spearheaded the effort to build Seattle Symphony's new home, Benaroya Hall. However, his style of leadership and management of the Seattle Symphony has also been very controversial among some musicians there.^[3]

Awards[link]

His numerous awards include Musical America's Conductor of the Year in 1994 (the first American to win that award), 13 Grammy nominations, and 3 Emmy nominations (2 of which resulted in Emmy wins) for his performance of Mozart's Requiem on Live from Lincoln Center and performances with the Seattle Symphony on PBS.^[4] He received Seattle's City of Music Outstanding Achievement Award for 2010.^[5]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Gerard Schwarz biography
• Most Up To Date Biography retrieved from the Seattle Symphony Website

The Creatures were a musical act formed in 1981 as a side-project for Siouxsie and the Banshees members Siouxsie Sioux and Budgie. The Times described their music as "adventurous art rock built around Siouxsie's extraordinary voice and drummer Budgie's battery of percussion".^[1]

With the dissolution of Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1996, The Creatures graduated from an occasional side project to a full-time concern. They disbanded in 2005.

The duo released four studio albums: Feast in 1983, Boomerang in 1989, Anima Animus in 1999 and Hai! in 2003.

Their music was hailed by Jeff Buckley^[2][3] and PJ Harvey.^[4]

Biography[link]

[edit] Wild Things era (1981)

Singer Siouxsie Sioux and drummer Budgie created The Creatures while recording the Banshees' Juju album. During one session, they discovered by accident that the association of just the voice and the drums suited to the track "But Not Them". A recording session was organized with the aim of recording five songs. This project was released in the form of an EP titled Wild Things. The title track was a reworking of a hit by The Troggs and the other numbers were Creatures compositions. The EP reached number 21 in the UK Singles chart and the pair performed "Mad-Eyed Screamer" on Top of the Pops.

[edit] Feast era (1983)

In 1983, The Creatures released their first full length album Feast. The band decided where to record the album by randomly placing a pin on a map of the world. The result was Hawaii, which led to the featuring of The Lamalani Hula Academy Hawaiian Chanters on some tracks. In the week of its release, the band was on the front cover of both the Melody Maker and the NME.^[5][6] The Melody Maker described Feast as "an album of filtered brilliance, fertile, sensual and erotic"^[7] and the NME accentuated "The humours of Sioux's frosty larynx are nakedly outlined against skins of sometimes fabulous quality"^[8] The album reached number 17 in the UK Albums Chart. The hit single "Miss the Girl" took its inspiration from the book Crash by J. G. Ballard. Shortly after its exit from the charts, a follow-up "Right Now" was recorded: that song was initially performed by Mel Tormé. The Creatures revamped it by adding a brass section, and it became their most successful single, reaching the top fifteen.

[edit] Boomerang era (1989)

The Creatures came back six years later. Siouxsie and Budgie went to a stone barn in Jerez, Andalucia, Spain to record Boomerang. Brass arrangements were used on some tracks and Anton Corbijn took colour pictures for the sleeve. The record was critically acclaimed^[9] and widely regarded as Siouxsie and Budgie's crowning achievement as The Creatures. NME wrote : "it's a rich and unsettling landscape of exotica".^[10] One of the bluesy songs of Boomerang, "Killing Time", would be later covered live by Jeff Buckley.^[11][12] In late 1989, The Creatures made their live debut appearance on U.K television and went on tour shortly after for the first time, visiting Europe and North America.

[edit] Collaboration with John Cale and Eraser Cut EP (1996-1998)

When Siouxsie and the Banshees called it a day in 1996, The Creatures had already began composing new material. At the same time, the long-out-of-print Wild Things EP and Feast album were remastered and re-released through the compilation A Bestiary Of.

In February 1998, John Cale contacted them for a future collaboration. He was the organizer of the "With a Little Help from My Friends" festival that took place at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. The concert was shown on Dutch national television and featured a Siouxsie song (made for The Creatures) especially composed for the event and still unreleased, "Murdering Mouth" sung in duet with Cale.^[13] That night, the Creatures also premiered a live orchestra version of "I Was Me". During mid-1998, the pair toured with John Cale in the U.S, playing yet unreleased material to their audience.

During that period, Siouxsie and Budgie created their own label, Sioux Records, and became an independent act. The Eraser Cut (an anagram of The Creatures), was released in July followed in October by the single "2nd Floor".

[edit] Anima Animus era (1999-2002)

Early in 1999, the Creatures released Anima Animus, the first studio album in just under a decade. Its urban sound was an important departure from Boomerang's very organic atmosphere. The Times wrote: "It's entrancing, hypnotic and inventive",^[14] and PJ Harvey selected Anima Animus in her ten favourite albums released in 1999.^[15] Other singles from the album were "Say" (dedicated to Billy Mackenzie) and "Prettiest Thing". The song "Another Planet" was included on the soundtrack to the film Lost In Space in a version radically reworked by Juno Reactor. Live albums Zulu (London'98) and Sequins in the Sun (Glastonbury'99) were also released on limited editions via The Creatures website.

In June, The Creatures appeared on Marc Almond's Open All Night; Siouxsie sang in duet on the track "Threat of Love". Late 1999 saw the remix album Hybrids, which featured tracks remixed by other acts including The Beloved. During the same period, a compilation of unreleased Anima Animus-era tracks was released as U.S. Retrace and three one-track CDs, ("Murdering Mouth" - live version, "Rocket Ship" and "Red Wrapping Paper"), were edited to fan club members.

[edit] Hai! era (2003-2004)

Siouxsie and Budgie returned with a full-length album, Hai!, in 2003. The drum sessions were recorded in Japan less than 24 hours after the Banshees had completed their reunion tour Seven Year Itch. Budgie first worked with the Japanese taiko drummer Leonard Eto, the basis of the album being a spontaneous drum duet between the two. The rest of the sessions were done in France over a period of several months. The single "Godzilla!" was described as "spookily brilliant" by the NME^[16] and the reviews were favourable for Hai!.^[17][18]

That same year, Siouxsie was asked to be the guest vocalist on the Basement Jaxx's "Cish Cash": she wrote the lyrics and the electronic musicians composed the music for the track. This record was crowned at the 47th Grammy Awards.^[19]

In 2004, Siouxsie toured for the first time billed as a solo act but with Budgie still as drummer and musical arranger. The setlists combined Banshees and Creatures songs. A live DVD called Dreamshow depicted the last London concert of September 2004 performed with the Millennia Ensemble. Released in August 2005, this DVD reached the number one position in the UK music DVD charts.^[20]

This was the last release by the pair, as Siouxsie announced publicly during an interview with The Sunday Times in 2007 that she and Budgie had divorced.^[21] Their musical partnership has been discontinued for the foreseeable future and, thus, The Creatures have disbanded.

Siouxsie celebrated her 50th birthday in May 2007, and released the first solo album of her career, MantaRay, in October 2007, to critical acclaim.^[22]

Discography[link]

Singles[link]

Albums[link]

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Budgie. The Creatures Biography. The Creatures.com April 2000
• Paytress, Mark. Siouxsie & the Banshees: The Authorised Biography. Sanctuary, 2003. ISBN 1-86074-375-7

External links[link]

• The Creatures + Siouxsie Official Website

Richard Danielpour (born 28 January 1956 in New York) is an American composer.

Biography[link]

Danielpour is born of Persian/Jewish descent. He studied at Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory of Music, and later at the Juilliard School of Music, where he received a DMA in composition in 1986. His primary composition professors at Juilliard were Vincent Persichetti and Peter Mennin. Danielpour currently teaches at the Manhattan School of Music (since 1993) and the Curtis Institute of Music (since 1997).

Career[link]

Early on as a student—first at the New England Conservatory, then at The Juilliard School -- Danielpour established his reputation as a skilled pianist (studying under Hollander, Jochum, and Chodus) and gifted composer (under Persichetti and Mennin). In fact, his first Piano Concerto, completed in 1981 (but later withdrawn), was commissioned and received its first performances while Danielpour was yet a Juilliard student. Like many composers of his generation, Danielpour initially subscribed to certain serial methods; his works in the early 1980s employed them extensively. Works from the end of that decade, however, such as First Light (1988) and The Awakened Heart (1990), adopted a broader and more unapologetically expressive style. He emerged in the 1990s as one of a handful of composers, alongside figures including Adams, Rouse, Schwantner, Corigliano, and Kernis, who embraced both the sonic engagement of triadic harmony and the experimental innovations of the previous century—the familiar sound of the traditional orchestra as well as cultural ubiquity of pop, rock, and jazz. 1996's Concerto for Orchestra ("Zoarastrian Riddles"), for example, hides beneath its ostensibly serious surface musical allusions to Broadway, movies, and television. And like the music of his colleagues in this diverse cohort, Danielpour's works, including several symphonies and concertos and numerous chamber and vocal pieces, resonated with his audience and garnered wide acclaim; in fact, Danielpour became one of only three composers (the others being Stravinsky and Copland) to enjoy an exclusive recording contract with Sony Classical. By the end of the century, Danielpour's resume read like a checklist of classical music's highest honors: he had fulfilled commissions for numerous prestigious orchestras from the San Francisco Symphony to the New York Philharmonic, received several awards (including MacDowell, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim fellowships), completed numerous residencies, and served on the faculties of the Curtis Institute and the Manhattan School of Music. In 2005 he completed his first opera, Margaret Garner, in collaboration with Toni Morrison.

Music[link]

In common with many other American composers of the post-war generation, Danielpour began his career in a serialist milieu, but rejected it in the late 1980s in favor of a more ecumenical and "accessible" idiom. He cites the Beatles—along with John Adams, Christopher Rouse, and Joseph Schwantner—as influences on his more recent musical style. He also makes frequent references to Hemingway and Whitman, saying the emotion in prose and verse can be translated to music.^{[citation needed]} Danielpour's notable works include First Light (1988) for chamber orchestra, three symphonies (1985, 1986, and 1990), four piano concerti (1981, 1993, 2002 and 2009), the ballet Anima mundi (1995), and the opera Margaret Garner (2005).

Select list of works[link]

Operas[link]

• Margaret Garner (2005)
  • Libretto by Toni Morrison

Ballets[link]

• Anima Mundi (1995)
  • For the Pacific Northwest Ballet
• Urban Dances (1996)
  • For the New York City Ballet and choreographer Miriam Mataviani

Orchestral[link]

• Oratio Pauli (1982), for S.A.T.B. choir & string orchestra
• Symphony No. 1 - Dona Nobis Pacem (1984)
• Symphony No. 2 - Visions (1986), for soprano, tenor & orchestra
• First Light (1988)
• Cello Concerto No. 1 (1990), for cello & orchestra
• Piano Concerto No. 1 - Metamorphosis (1990), for piano & orchestra
• The Awakened Heart (1990)
• Symphony No. 3 - Journey Without Distance (1990), for soprano, S.A.T.B. choir & orchestra
• Song of Remembrance (1991)
• Toward the Splendid City (1992)
  • commissioned by the New York Philharmonic
• Piano Concerto No. 2 (1993), for piano & orchestra
• Anima Mundi (1995)
  • commissioned by the Pacific Northwest Ballet; choreographed by Kent Stowell.
    • premièred in Seattle, WA on 6th February 1996, Stewart Kershaw conducting.
• Canticle of Peace (1995), for baritone, S.A.T.B. choir & chamber orchestra
• Concerto for Orchestra - Zoroastrian Riddles (1996)
• Urban Dances (Dance Suite in Five Movements (1996)
• Celestial Night (1997)
• Elegies (1997), song-cycle for mezzo-soprano, baritone & orchestra
• Vox Populi (1998)
• A Fool's Paradise (1999), concerto for violin & orchestra
  • commissioned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Yaddo's collaboration with the Philadelphia Orchestra; written for violinist Chantal Juillet and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who premièred the work under Charles Dutoit at the Saratoga Center, NY in August 2000.
• The Night Rainbow (1999)
• A Child's Reliquary (2000), double concerto for violin, cello & orchestra
• Nocturne (2000), for string orchestra
• An American Requiem (2001), for mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone soli, S.A.T.B. choir & orchestra
• Cello Concerto No. 2 - Through the Ancient Valley (2001), for cello solo, kamancheh soloists & orchestra
  • commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who premièred the work under Kurt Masur at Avery Fisher Hall, NYC on 14 March 2001.
• In the Arms of the Beloved (2001), double concerto for violin, cello & orchestra
  • commissioned to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of Jaime Laredo (violinist) and Sharon Robinson (cellist), who premièred the work with the IRIS Chamber Orchestra under Michael Stern in Germantown, TN on 20 April 2002.
• Piano Concerto No. 3 - Zodiac Variations (2002), for piano left-hand & orchestra
  • commissioned by Herbert R. Axelrod for pianist Gary Graffman, who gave the work's première with the National Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. on 4 April 2002.
• Apparitions (2003), for chamber orchestra
  • commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony, who premièred the work under Zdenek Macal at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, NJ on 14 May 2003.
• Swan Song (2003), for string orchestra
  • an arrangement of the third movement of Danielpour's String Quartet No. 4 - Apparitions
• Songs of Solitude (2004), song-cycle for baritone & orchestra
  • written for baritone Thomas Hampson, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, who premièred the work under David Robertson in Philadelphia, PA on 21 October 2004.
• Adagietto (2005), for string orchestra
  • commissioned by the Wheeling Jesuit University for the Wheeling Symphony, who premièred the work (as part of the Wheeling Jesuit University's 50th anniversary celebrations) under André Raphael Smith in Wheeling, WV, on 11 March 2005.
• Voice of the City (2005), for concert band
• Washington Speaks (2005), for narrator & orchestra
  • commissioned by the Knights of Columbus for the Orchestra of St. Luke's, who premièred the work under Sir Gilbert Levine with Ted Koppel as narrator at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C. on 14 November 2007.
• Pastime (2006), song-cycle for baritone & orchestra
  • co-commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic in celebration of the 2006 Major League Baseball All-Star Game on 10 July 2006.
• Triptych (2006), for soprano & orchestra
  • three arias from Danielpour's 2005 opera Margaret Garner; commissioned by the Wheeling Symphony, who premièred the work with soprano soloist Tracie Luck and André Raphael Smith conducting in Wheeling, WV on 19 May 2006.
• Voices of Remembrance (2006), concerto for string quartet & orchestra
  • commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington, D.C.
• A Woman's Life (2007), for soprano & orchestra
  • commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra; premièred by soprano Angela Brown with the Pittsburgh Symphony under Leonard Slatkin on 16 October 2009 in Pittsburgh, PA.
• Rocking the Cradle (2007)
  • commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony, who premièred the work under Juanjo Mena on 22 March 2007 in Baltimore, MD.
• Three Prayers (2007), for soprano & orchestra
  • excerpted from Danielpour's opera Margaret Garner
• Souvenirs (2008), for chamber orchestra
  • commissioned by the Kravis Center for the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, who premièred the work under Philippe Entremont in Vienna, 2008.
• Vox Terrae (2008)
• Lacrimae Beati (2009), for string orchestra
  • commissioned by the Sejong Soloists, who premièred the work at Alice Tully Hall, New York in December 2009.
• Piano Concerto No. 4 - A Hero's Journey (2009), for piano & orchestra
  • commissioned by the Pacific Symphony for Jeffrey Biegel
• Icarus (2009), for large brass ensemble, seven percussion & two pianos
  • commissioned by a consortium of eighteen US universities, premièred by the Indiana University of Pennsylvania "Keystone Brass Ensemble" at the WASBE International Conference in July 2010. A further performance was given by the Pittsburgh Symphony in 2010. The score is dedicated to Jack Stamp.
• Kaddish (2008), rewritten for violin solo and orchestra
  • commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, with soloist Gil Shaham.

Chamber[link]

• "String Quartet No. 1 - Requiem" (1983), for two violins, viola & cello
• Piano Quintet (1988), for string quartet & piano
• Urban Dances (Book 1) (1988), for brass quintet
• Sonnets to Orpheus, Book 1 (1992), for soprano solo, flute, clarinet, horn, piano, percussion & string quintet
• Songs of the Night (1993), for tenor & piano trio
• String Quartet No. 2 - Shadow Dances (1993), for two violins, viola & cello
• Urban Dances, Book 2 (1993), for brass quintet
• Sonnets to Orpheus, Book 2 (1994), for baritone solo, flute, clarinet, horn, piano, percussion & string quintet
• String Quartet No. 3 - Psalms of Sorrow (1994), for baritone solo, two violins, viola & cello
• Fantasy Variations (1997), for cello & piano
• Sweet Talk (1997), for mezzo-soprano, cello, double bass & piano
• Feast of Fools - Concertino (1998), for bassoon & string quartet
• A Child's Reliquary (2000), for piano trio
• As Night Falls on Barjeantane (2000), for violin & piano
• String Quartet No. 4 - Apparitions (2000), two violins, viola & cello
• Portraits (2001), for mezzo-soprano, clarinet, violin, cello & piano
• String Quartet No. 5 - In Search of "La Vita Nuova" (2004), for two violins, viola & cello
• Troubadour's Feast (2005), for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello & piano
• The Book of Hours (2006), for piano quartet
• Benediction (2007), for two horns, two trumpets, three trombones & chimes
• River of Light (2007), for violin & piano
  • commissioned by the Isaac and Linda Stern Foundation for violinist Sarah Chang, who premièred the work on 18 March 2007 in La Jolla, CA.
• Kaddish (2008), for violin solo & string septet
  • written for Concertante, who premièred the work in Harrisburg, PA on 15 May 2010.
• Remembering Neda (2009), for flute, cello & piano
  • written for the Dolce Suono Trio, who premièred the work on 22 October 2010 at the Trinity Center for Urban Life in Philadelphia, PA.
• String Quartet No. 6 - Addio (2009), for two violins, viola & cello
  • commissioned by LifeMusic for the Ying Quartet, who premièred the work at the Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH in October 2009.
• The Faces of Guernica (2009), for piano trio
  • commissioned by the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation for the Trio Cavatina, who premièred the work at Carnegie Hall, New York in May 2010.

Choral[link]

• Oratio Pauli (1982), for S.A.T.B. choir & string orchestra
• Symphony No. 3 - Journey Without Distance (1990), for soprano solo, S.A.T.B. choir & orchestra
• Canticle of Peace (1995), for baritone solo, S.A.T.B. choir & chamber orchestra
• An American Requiem (2001), for mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone soli, S.A.T.B. choir & orchestra

Vocal[link]

• Symphony No. 2 - Visions (1986), for soprano, tenor soli & orchestra
• Sonnets to Orpheus, Book 1 (1992), for soprano solo & ensemble
• Songs of the Night (1993), for tenor solo & piano trio
• Sonnets to Orpheus, Book 2 (1994), for baritone solo & ensemble
• String Quartet No. 3 - Psalms of Sorrow (1994), for baritone solo & string quartet
• I Am Not Prey (1996), for soprano & piano duet
• Elegies (1997), for mezzo-soprano, baritone soli & orchestra
• Sweet Talk (1997), for mezzo-soprano solo & small ensemble
• Spirits in the Well (1998), for treble solo & piano
• Portraits (2001), for soprano solo & small ensemble
• Songs of Solitude (2004), for baritone solo & orchestra
• Four Arias, from "Margaret Garner" (2005), for baritone & piano
• He Is By, from "Margaret Garner" (2005), for soprano & piano
• Three Arias, from "Margaret Garner" (2005), for mezzo-soprano & piano
• Pastime (2006), for baritone solo & orchestra
• Triptych (2006), for mezzo-soprano & orchestra
• A Woman's Life (2007), for soprano & orchestra
• Three Prayers (2007), for soprano solo & orchestra
• Come Up from the Fields Father (2008) for baritone, viola and piano; words by Walt Whitman
  • commissioned by the Curtis Institute, Philadelphia; premièred by Adrian Kramer (baritone), Roberto Díaz (viola) and Mikael Eliasen (piano) at the Curtis Institute on 15 May 2009.
• Songs from an Old War (2009), for baritone & piano
  • written for American baritone Thomas Hampson

Solo instrumental[link]

• Psalms (1985), for piano
• Sonata (1986), for piano
• The Enchanted Garden (Preludes, Book 1) (1992), for piano
• Mardi Gras (1992), for piano
• Elegy (2003), for piano
• Three Preludes (2003), for piano
• Piano Fantasy: "Wenn Ich Einmal Soll Schneiden" (2008), for piano
• The Enchanted Garden (Preludes, Book 2) (2009), for piano

Current/recent projects[link]

Danielpour's current and forthcoming projects includes works for Yo-Yo Ma, the Iris Chamber Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Guarneri Quartet, Atlanta Symphony, Music from Copland House, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Singapore Symhony, Orchestre National de Lyon and the WDR Symphony Orchestra, Cologne.^[1]

Sources[link]

• G. Schirmer, Biography: Richard Danielpour

References[link]

External links[link]

• Richard Danielpour's official website (archive)

Alan Hovhaness (Armenian: Ալան Յովհաննէս) (March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an Armenian-American composer.

His music is accessible to the lay listener and often evokes a mood of mystery or contemplation. The Boston Globe music critic Richard Buell wrote: "Although he has been stereotyped as a self-consciously Armenian composer (rather as Ernest Bloch is seen as a Jewish composer), his output assimilates the music of many cultures. What may be most American about all of it is the way it turns its materials into a kind of exoticism. The atmosphere is hushed, reverential, mystical, nostalgic."^[1]

He was among the most prolific of 20th century composers, his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies (surviving manuscripts indicate over 70) and 434 opus numbers.^[2] However, the true tally is well over 500 surviving works since many opus numbers comprise two or more distinct works.

Early life[link]

He was born as Alan Vaness Chakmakjian^[3] in Somerville, Massachusetts, to Haroutioun Hovanes Chakmakjian (an Armenian chemistry professor at Tufts College who had been born in Adana, Turkey) and Madeleine Scott (an American woman of Scottish descent who had graduated from Wellesley College). When he was five, his family moved from Somerville to Arlington, Massachusetts. A Hovhaness family neighbour stated that Hovhaness's mother had insisted on moving from Somerville because of discrimination against the Armenians there.^[4] Upon his mother's death (October 3, 1930), he began to use the surname "Hovaness" in honor of his paternal grandfather,^{[citation needed]} and changed it to "Hovhaness" around 1944. He stated the name change from the original Chakmakjian reflected the desire to simplify his name because "nobody ever pronounced it right".^[5] However, Hovhaness' daughter Jean Nandi has written in her book Unconventional Wisdom,^[6] "My father's name at the time of my birth was 'Hovaness', pronounced with accent on the first syllable. His original name was 'Chakmakjian', but in the 1930s he wanted to get rid of the Armenian connection and so changed his name to an Americanized version of his middle name. Some years later, deciding to reestablish his Armenian ties, he changed the spelling to 'Hovhaness', accent on the second syllable; this was the name by which he later became quite famous."^{[page needed]}

Hovhaness was interested in music from a very early age, writing his first composition at the age of four after being inspired by hearing a song of Franz Schubert. His family was concerned after this first attempt at composition, a cantata in the early Italian style, for his late-night hours spent composing and possibly for his financial future as an artist. He decided for a short time to pursue astronomy, another of his early loves.^[7] The fascination of astronomy remained with him through his entire life and composing career with many works titled after various planets and stars.

It is recounted that his father took great pride in his composing and organised his first piano lessons with a neighbourhood teacher. (Alan also played the violin and made a small income for a short time teaching the violin to a neighbour's child.) His father helped to support him long into his young adulthood through many difficult years, and when recognised by Alan from centre stage of his successful Boston Symphony Orchestra Symphony Hall (Koussevitsky) concert, broke into tears.

He continued his piano studies, first with Adelaide Proctor and then with Heinrich Gebhard. Gebhard was a student of Theodor Leschetizky, a student of Carl Czerny, whose teacher was Ludwig van Beethoven. By age 14, Hovhaness decided to devote himself to composition. Among his first and most important influences were the recordings of Gomidas Vartabed, a great Armenian composer who had lived through the Armenian Genocide. He composed two operas during his teenage years, which were performed at Arlington High School, and the composer Roger Sessions took an interest in his music during this time. Following his graduation from high school in 1929, he studied with Leo Rich Lewis at Tufts and then the New England Conservatory of Music, under Frederick Converse. In 1932 he won the Conservatory's Samuel Endicott prize for composition, for a symphonic work entitled Sunset Symphony (elsewhere entitled Sunset Saga). In July 1934, with his first wife, Martha Mott Davis, he traveled to Finland to meet the composer Jean Sibelius, whose music he had greatly admired since childhood. The two remained in correspondence for the next twenty years.

In 1936 Hovhaness attended a performance in Boston by the Indian dance troupe of Uday Shankar (with orchestra led by Vishnudas Shirali), which began the composer's lifelong interest in the music of India.^[7] During the 1930s (until 1939) he was employed by the WPA's Federal Music Project.

Hovhaness married six times; the first marriage was around 1934, the last 1977. The daughter from his first marriage (his only child) was named Jean Christina Hovhaness (born June 13, 1935) and named after Jean Christian Sibelius, her godfather, with whom Hovhaness maintained a friendship.

Destruction of early works[link]

During the 1930s and 1940s, Hovhaness famously destroyed many of his early works. He later claimed that he had burned at least 1000 different pieces, a process that took at least two weeks;^[7] elsewhere he claimed that he had destroyed approximately 500 works, up to 1000 pages in total.^[8] In an interview with Richard Howard, he stated that the decision was based primarily on Roger Sessions' criticism of his works of that period, and that he wished to have a new start in his composing.^[7]

Musical career[link]

"Armenian Period"[link]

Hovhaness became interested in Armenian culture and music in 1940, as the organist for the St. James Armenian Apostolic Church in Watertown, Massachusetts, remaining in this position for approximately ten years. In 1942 he won a scholarship at Tanglewood to study in Bohuslav Martinů's master class. During a composer's seminar, while a recording of Hovhaness's first symphony was being played, Aaron Copland talked loudly in Spanish to the Latin American composers in the room, and when the recording finished, Leonard Bernstein went to the piano, played a melodic minor scale, and remarked, "I can't stand this cheap ghetto music."^{[citation needed]} Hovhaness was apparently angered and distraught by this experience at Tanglewood, and quit early despite being on scholarship. Following this experience, he again destroyed a number of his works.

The next year he devoted himself to Armenian subject matter^{[citation needed]}, in particular using modes distinctive to Armenian music, and continued for several years, achieving some renown and the support of other musicians, including John Cage and Martha Graham, all while continuing as church organist.

Beginning in the mid-1940s, Hovhaness and two artist friends, Hyman Bloom and Hermon di Giovanno, met frequently to discuss spiritual and musical matters. All three had a strong interest in Indian classical music, and brought many well known Indian musicians to Boston to perform. During this period, Hovhaness learned to play the sitar, studying with amateur Indian musicians living in the Boston area. Around 1942, Bloom introduced Hovhaness to Yenovk Der Hagopian, a fine singer of Armenian and Kurdish troubadour songs, whose singing served as an inspiration to Hovhaness.

In one of many applications for a Guggenheim fellowship (1941), Hovhaness presented his credo at the time of application:

I propose to create a heroic, monumental style of composition simple enough to inspire all people, completely free from fads, artificial mannerisms and false sophistications, direct, forceful, sincere, always original but never unnatural. Music must be freed from decadence and stagnation. There has been too much emphasis on small things while the great truths have been overlooked. The superficial must be dispensed with. Music must become virile to express big things. It is not my purpose to supply a few pseudo intellectual musicians and critics with more food for brilliant argumentation, but rather to inspire all mankind with new heroism and spiritual nobility. This may appear to be sentimental and impossible to some, but it must be remembered that Palestrina, Handel, and Beethoven would not consider it either sentimental or impossible. In fact, the worthiest creative art has been motivated consciously or unconsciously by the desire for the regeneration of mankind.^{[cite this quote]}

Lou Harrison reviewed a 1945 concert of Hovhaness' music which included his 1944 concerto for piano and strings, entitled Lousadzak:

There is almost nothing occurring most of the time but unison melodies and very lengthy drone basses, which is all very Armenian. It is also very modern indeed in its elegant simplicity and adamant modal integrity, being, in effect, as tight and strong in its way as a twelve-tone work of the Austrian type. There is no harmony either, and the brilliance and excitement of parts of the piano concerto were due entirely to vigor of idea. It really takes a sound musicality to invent a succession of stimulating ideas within the bounds of an unaltered mode and without shifting the home-tone.^[9]

However, as before, there were also critics:

The serialists were all there. And so were the Americanists, both Aaron Copland's group and Virgil's. And here was something that had come out of Boston that none of us had ever heard of and was completely different from either. There was nearly a riot in the foyer [during intermission] — everybody shouting. A real whoop-dee-doo.^[10]

Lousadzak was Hovhaness's first work to make use of an innovative technique he called "spirit murmur" — an early example of aleatoric music that was inspired by a vision of Hermon di Giovanno.[1] The technique involves instruments repeating phrases in uncoordinated fashion, producing a complex "cloud" or "carpet" of sounds.[2].

In the mid-1940s Hovhaness' stature in New York was helped considerably by members of the immigrant Armenian community who sponsored several high-profile concerts of his music. This organization, the Friends of Armenian Music Committee, was led by Hovhaness's friends Dr. Elizabeth A. Gregory, the Armenian American piano/violin duo Maro Ajemian and Anahid Ajemian, and later Anahid's husband, pioneering record producer and subsequent Columbia Records executive George Avakian. Their help led directly to many recordings of Hovhaness' music appearing in the 1950s on MGM and Mercury records, placing him firmly on the American musical landscape.

In May and June 1946, while staying with an Armenian family, Hovhaness composed Etchmiadzin, an opera on an Armenian theme, which was commissioned by a local Armenian church.

Conservatory years[link]

In 1948 he joined the faculty of the Boston Conservatory, teaching there until 1951. His students there included the jazz musicians Sam Rivers and Gigi Gryce.

Relocation to New York[link]

In 1951, Hovhaness moved to New York City, where he took up composing full-time. Also that year (beginning August 1), he worked at the Voice of America, first as a script writer for the Armenian Section, then as Director of Music, composer, and musical consultant for the Near East and Trans-Caucasian section. He eventually lost this job (along with much of the other staff) when Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeded Harry S. Truman as U.S. president in 1953. Beginning at this time, Hovhaness branched out from Armenian music, adopting styles and material from a wide variety of sources. In 1953 and 1954 he received Guggenheim Fellowships in composition. In 1954 he wrote the score for the Broadway play The Flowering Peach by Clifford Odets, a ballet for Martha Graham (Ardent Song, 1954), and two scores for NBC documentaries on India and Southeast Asia (1955 and 1957). Also during the 1950s, he composed for productions at The Living Theatre.

His biggest breakthrough to date came in 1955, when his Symphony No. 2, Mysterious Mountain, was premiered by Leopold Stokowski in his debut with the Houston Symphony. The idea that Mysterious Mountain was commissioned for the Houston Symphony is a common misconception [3]. That same year, MGM Records released recordings of a number of his works. Between 1956 and 1958, at the urging of Howard Hanson (who was an admirer of his music), he taught summers at the Eastman School of Music.

Trips to Asia[link]

From 1959 through 1963, Hovhaness conducted a series of research trips to India, Hawaii, Japan, and South Korea, investigating the ancient traditional musics of these nations and eventually integrating elements of these into his own compositions. His study of Carnatic music in Madras, India (1959–60), during which he collected over 300 ragas, was sponsored by a Fulbright fellowship. While in Madras, he learned to play the veena and composed a work for Carnatic orchestra entitled Nagooran, inspired by a visit to the dargah at Nagore, which was performed by the South Indian Orchestra of All India Radio Madras and broadcast on All India Radio on February 3, 1960. He compiled a large amount of material on Carnatic ragas in preparation for a book on the subject, but never completed it.

He studied Japanese gagaku music (learning the wind instruments hichiriki, shō, and ryūteki) in the spring of 1962 with Masatoshi Shamoto in Hawaii, and a Rockefeller Foundation grant allowed him to conduct further gagaku studies with Masataro Togi in Japan (1962–63). Also while in Japan, he studied and played the nagauta (kabuki) shamisen and the jōruri (bunraku) shamisen. In recognition of the musical styles he studied in Japan, he wrote his famous Fantasy on Japanese Woodprints, Op. 211 (1965), a concerto for xylophone and orchestra.

In 1963 he composed his second ballet score for Martha Graham, entitled Circe.

Hovhaness set up a record label devoted to the release of his own works, Poseidon Society. Its first release was in 1963, with around 15 discs following over the next decade.

In 1965, as part of a U.S. government-sponsored delegation, he visited Russia, and Soviet-controlled Georgia and Armenia, the only time he visited his paternal ancestral homeland. While there, he donated his handwritten manuscripts of harmonized Armenian liturgical music to the Yeghishe Charents State Museum of Arts and Literature in Yerevan.

In the mid 1960s he spent several summers touring Europe, living and working much of the time in Switzerland.

World view[link]

Hovhaness stated in a 1971 interview in Ararat magazine:

"We are in a very dangerous period. We are in danger of destroying ourselves, and I have a great fear about this ... The older generation is ruling ruthlessly. I feel that this is a terrible threat to our civilization. It's the greed of huge companies and huge organizations which control life in a kind of a brutal way ... It's gotten worse and worse, somehow, because physical science has given us more and more terrible deadly weapons, and the human spirit has been destroyed in so many cases, so what's the use of having the most powerful country in the world if we have killed the soul. It's of no use".^[3]

Later life[link]

Hovhaness was inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1951), and received honorary D.Mus. degrees from the University of Rochester (1958), Bates College (1959), and the Boston Conservatory (1987). He moved to Seattle in the early 1970s, where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1973 he composed his third and final ballet score for Martha Graham: Myth of a Voyage, and over the next twenty years (between 1973 and 1992) he produced no fewer than 37 new symphonies.

Continuing his interest in composing for Asian instruments, in 1981, at the request of Lou Harrison, he composed two works for Indonesian gamelan orchestra, which were premiered by the gamelan of Lewis & Clark College, under the direction of Vincent McDermott.

Hovhaness is survived by his wife, the coloratura soprano Hinako Fujihara Hovhaness, who administers the Hovhaness-Fujihara music publishing company [4], as well as a daughter, the harpsichordist Jean Nandi.

Hovhaness archives[link]

Significant archives of Hovhaness materials, comprising scores, sound recordings, photographs and correspondence are located at several academic centers, including Harvard University, University of Washington, Library of Congress, and Yerevan’s State Museum of Arts and Literature.

Partial list of compositions[link]

• 1936 (rev. 1954) - Prelude and Quadruple Fugue (orchestra), Op. 128
• 1936 - Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 17
• 1936 - Exile (Symphony No. 1), Op. 17, No.2
• 1940 - Psalm and Fugue, Op. 40a
• 1940 - Alleluia and Fugue, Op. 40b
• 1944 - Lousadzak (Concerto for piano and strings), Op. 48
• 1945 - Mihr (for two pianos)
• 1946 - Prayer of St. Gregory, Op. 62b, for trumpet and strings (interlude from the opera Etchmiadzin)
• 1947 - Arjuna (Symphony No. 8) for piano, timpani and orch., Op. 179
• 1949-50 - St. Vartan Symphony (No. 9), Op. 180
• 1950 - Janabar (Sinfonia Concertante for piano, trumpet, violin and strings), Op. 81
• 1951 - Khaldis, Op. 91, for piano, four trumpets, and percussion
• 1953 - Concerto No. 7 (Orchestra), Op. 116
• 1954 - Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Op. 123, No. 3
• 1955 - Mysterious Mountain (Symphony No. 2), Op. 132
• 1957 - Symphony No. 4, Op. 165
• 1958 - Meditation on Orpheus, Op. 155
• 1958 - Magnificat (SATB soli, SATB choir and orchestra), Op. 157
• 1959 - Symphony No. 6, Celestial Gate, Op. 173
• 1959 - Symphony No. 7, Nanga Parvat, for symphonic wind band, Op. 178
• 1960 - Symphony No. 11, All Men are Brothers, Op. 186
• 1963 - The Silver Pilgrimage (Symphony No. 15), Op. 199
• 1965 - Fantasy on Japanese Woodprints for xylophone and orchestra, Op. 211
• 1966 - Vishnu Symphony (No. 19), Op. 217
• 1967 - Fra Angelico, Op. 220
• 1968 - Mountains and Rivers without End, Chamber Symphony for 10 players, Op. 225
• 1969 - Lady of Light (soli, chorus, and orch), Op. 227
• 1969 - Shambala, Concerto for violin, sitar, and orchestra, Op. 228
• 1970 - And God Created Great Whales (taped whale songs and orchestra), Op. 229
• 1970 - Symphony Etchmiadzin (Symphony No. 21), Op. 234
• 1970 - Symphony No. 22, City of Light, Op. 236
• 1971 - Saturn Op. 243 for soprano, clarinet, and piano
• 1973 - Majnun Symphony (Symphony No. 24), Op. 273
• 1979 - Guitar Concerto No. 1, Op. 325
• 1982 - Symphony No. 50, Mount St. Helens, Op. 360
• 1985 - Guitar Concerto No. 2 for guitar and strings, Op. 394

Films[link]

Films about Alan Hovhaness[link]

• 1984 - Alan Hovhaness. Directed by Jean Walkinshaw, KCTS-TV, Seattle.
• 1986 - Whalesong. Directed by Barbara Willis Sweete, Rhombus Media.
• 1990 - The Verdehr Trio: The Making of a Medium. Program 1: Lake Samish Trio/Alan Hovhaness. Directed by Lisa Lorraine Whiting, Michigan State University.
• 2006 - A Tribute to Alan Hovhaness. Produced by Alexan Zakyan, Hovhaness Research Centre, Yerevan, Armenia.

Films with scores by Alan Hovhaness[link]

• 1955 - Assignment: India. NBC-TV documentary.
• 1956 - Narcissus. Directed by Willard Maas.
• 1957 - Assignment: Southeast Asia. NBC-TV documentary.
• 1962 - Pearl Lang and Francisco Moncion dance performance: Black Marigolds. From the CBS television program Camera Three, presented in cooperation with the New York State Education Department. Directed by Nick Havinga.
• 1966 - Nehru: Man of Two Worlds. From The Twentieth Century series; reporter: Walter Cronkite. A presentation of CBS News.
• 1973 - Tales From a Book of Kings: The Houghton Shah-Nameh. New York, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Time-Life Multimedia.
• 1980 - Cosmos. Hosted by Carl Sagan. Directed by Adrian Malone.
• 1982 - Everest North Wall. Directed by Laszlo Pal.
• 1984 - Winds of Everest. Directed by Laszlo Pal.
• 2005 - I Remember Theodore Roethke. Produced and edited by Jean Walkinshaw, KCTS Public Television, Seattle.

Notable students[link]

• Dominick Argento (b. 1927)
• John Davison (1930–1999)
• John Diercks (b. 1927)
• Robert Gauldin (b. 1931)
• Gigi Gryce (1925–1983)
• Sam Rivers (1923–2011)
• Mary Jeanne van Appledorn (b. 1927)
• W. Francis McBeth (1933–2012)
• John S. Hilliard (b. 1947)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Howard, Richard (1983). The Works of Alan Hovhaness: A Catalog, Opus 1-Opus 360. Pro Am Music Resources. ISBN 0-912483-00-8.
• Kostelanetz, Richard (1989). On Innovative Music(ian)s. New York: Limelight Editions.
• Malina, Judith (1984). The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1947-1957. New York: Grove Press, Inc. ISBN 0-394-53132-9.
• Rosner, Arnold, and Vance Wolverton (2001). "Hovhaness [Hovaness], Alan [Chakmakjian, Alan Hovhaness]". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.

External links[link]

• The Alan Hovhaness website
• Alan Hovhaness in conversation with Bruce Duffie
• Alan Hovhaness International Research Centre, Yerevan, Armenia
• Alan Hovhaness 2011 Centennial website
• Reminiscences of Alan Hovhaness by pianist Martin Berkofsky
• "All Men are Brothers" Memorial run honoring the 100th Anniversary of Alan Hovhaness
• An analysis of Hovhaness' rhythmic structuring based on the Golden Section

Listening[link]

• Other Minds Archive: "The World of Alan Hovhaness" from KPFA's Ode To Gravity series, aired 28 January 1976; includes an interview with the composer by Charles Amirkhanian recorded in late 1975
• Art of the States: Alan Hovhaness Lousadzak, op. 48 (1944)