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Amazing Grace (1972)
| composer |
John Harbison (b. 1938) |
| performers |
Peggy Pearson, oboe |
| publisher |
Associated Music Publishers (BMI)http://www.schirmer.com
|
| recording |
Unreleased studio recording |
| duration |
10:09 |
John Harbison:
"It was in 1971 that my friend Phil West asked me to write him a solo oboe piece. On an earlier occasion he had sung me his southern rural version of 'Amazing Grace,' with whumping grace-note ornamentations that I guessed were part of the campmeeting tradition that had gathered around the song.
"I hadn't heard the song so much at the time but I somehow had learned it was a Scottish seafaring ballad; this I associated with bagpiping. (The tune had not yet become the all-occasion standard it is today.)
"My variations are both deconstructive and constructive. The tune can be followed, but with the help of a daring and brilliant performer."
John Harbison (b. 1938) is among the most prominent composers working in the United States today. A prolific composer of orchestral, operatic, and chamber works, Harbison is also an active conductor, teacher, administrator, and promoter of the work of other composers and performers. His music is distinguished by its expressive blend of many styles, including aspects of jazz, pre-classical forms of Bach and Schütz, and post-tonal techniques of Prokofiev and Stravinsky.
Harbison was born in Orange, New Jersey into a musical family. He learned a variety of instruments at an early age; his accomplishments as a jazz pianist led him to form a jazz band at age 12 and to perform in Italy and Germany by age 15. Harbison began his formal compositional training with Walter Piston at Harvard University. He continued his studies in Germany with Boris Blacher at the Berlin Musikhochschule, then returned to the US for graduate work at Princeton University, New Jersey, studying with Milton Babbitt, Earl Kim, and Roger Sessions. Harbison's own teaching career included positions at Harvard, Brandeis, and Boston Universities (all in Massachusetts), as well as Reed College (Oregon). Since 1969 he has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and was named Institute Professor there in 1996.
Harbison's extensive catalog of works includes three symphonies, three operas, and numerous concerto, choral and chamber works. Much of his violin music has been composed for his wife Rose Mary, with whom he runs the Token Creek Music Festival in Wisconsin. As a conductor, Harbison has led a number of ensembles including the Boston Symphony, Emmanuel Music, Cantata Singers, Collage New Music, Handel and Haydn Society, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Harbison has been composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Academy in Rome, and the Marlboro, Santa Fe, and Tanglewood Music Festivals. In 1987 his cantata The Flight into Egypt (1986) received the Pulitzer Prize in music; his numerous other honors include a MacArthur Fellowship and the Heinz Award. He was one of 12 composers invited to compose a section of a Requiem commemorating the victims of World War II, performed on the 50th anniversary of V-Day, August 1995, by the Stuttgart Bachchor and the Israel Philharmonic, conducted by Helmut Rilling. Other recent premieres include The Great Gatsby (1999), an opera based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel commissioned and premiered by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and Abraham, a motet commissioned for The Papal Concert of Reconciliation at the Vatican and performed there in 2004.
Recordings of Harbison's work can be found on many labels including Albany, Bridge, Centaur, CRI, Decca, First Edition, innova, Klavier, Koch International Classics, Music & Arts, Musica Omnia, New World, Nonesuch, and Northeastern.
related websites
http://www.schirmer.com/Default.aspx?TabId=2419&State;_2872=2&composerId;_2872=627
Oboist Peggy Pearson has performed solo, chamber, and orchestral music throughout the United States and abroad. She performs with the Bach Aria Group, Boston Philharmonic, and Emmanuel Chamber Orchestra, serves as artistic director and oboist of the Winsor Music Chamber Series in Lexington, Massachusetts, and is a founding member of the quintet La Fenice. She has toured and recorded extensively with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Music from Marlboro. An active exponent of contemporary music, Pearson was a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute and has premiered and recorded numerous works by composers from the United States, many of which were written for her. Her teachers have included Robert Bloom, Alfred Genovese, Fernand Gillet, Ralph Gomberg, Heinz Holliger, David Huston, Mela Tenenbaum, and Laurence Thorstenberg. She has been on the faculties of the Boston Conservatory, Longy School of Music, SUNY Purchase College, Tanglewood Music Center, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Wellesley College. Pearson is a winner of the Pope Foundation Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Music. Her performances can be found on the Arabesque, Bridge, CRI, New World, and Nonesuch record labels.
related websites
http://www.winsormusic.org/WMGreenBio.shtml
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