Archibald Clyde Roller (October 13, 1914 – October 16, 2005) was an American music professor, conductor, and oboist.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
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Roller, a native of Rogersville, Missouri, received his musical education at the Eastman School of Music, graduating in 1941.
Rogersville is a city in Greene and Webster counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. The population was 3,073 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Springfield, Missouri Metropolitan Statistical Area. Rogersville was formally known as the "Raccoon Capital of the World". In 2006, 417 Magazine ranked Rogersville as the eighth-best place to live in Southwest Missouri.
The Eastman School of Music is the professional school of music of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. It was established in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman.
Roller was the principal oboist with several orchestras: the Oklahoma City Symphony from 1937 to 1939, the Birmingham (Alabama) Symphony from 1940 to 1942, and the Tulsa Philharmonic.
The Oklahoma City Philharmonic is an American symphony orchestra in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
The Alabama Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra based in Birmingham, Alabama.
The Tulsa Philharmonic was an American symphony orchestra located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The orchestra was founded in 1948 by H. Arthur Brown who was principal conductor from 1948 till 1958. The original Tulsa Philharmonic grew out of a small group called the Tulsa Civic Symphony created in 1926-27 by Kurt Berger, a German-born and -educated musician living in Tulsa. Many of the symphony's musicians also played in the pit orchestra for the Tulsa Little Theatre. After its premier concert at the Akdar Theater as the Tulsa Civic Symphony in January 1927, the small orchestra was directed by Berger until 1933, when illness forced him to retire. His daughter, Tosca Berger Kramer, briefly succeeded him. George Baum also directed an orchestra under Works Progress Administration funding in the 1930s and 1940s.
He conducted Dallas's Southern Methodist University Orchestra from 1947 to 1948, and from 1948 to 1962 was music director of the Amarillo Symphony Orchestra. He also guest conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra: Roller and Arthur Fiedler swapped conducting roles on occasion as well, with Fiedler leading the Amarillo Symphony and Roller conducting the Boston Pops Orchestra.
Southern Methodist University is a private research university in metropolitan Dallas, with its main campus located in University Park. SMU also operates satellite campuses in Plano, Texas and Taos, New Mexico.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five major American symphony orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at Tanglewood.
Arthur Fiedler was a long-time conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a symphony orchestra that specializes in popular and light classical music. With a combination of musicianship and showmanship, he made the Boston Pops one of the best-known orchestras in the United States. Fiedler was sometimes criticized for over-popularizing music, particularly when adapting popular songs or edited portions of the classical repertoire, but he kept performances informal and sometimes self-mocking to attract a bigger audience.
Returning to Eastman in 1963, he was ensembles professor at Eastman. For Mercury Records in 1963, he conducted the Eastman Wind Ensemble in Vittorio Giannini's Symphony No. 3 and Alan Hovhaness's Symphony No. 4. Roller served in similar positions at the University of Houston, University of Texas at Austin (from which he retired in 1979), Southern Methodist University, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Michigan. He was a conductor and faculty member, teaching oboe, at the Interlochen Center for the Arts from 1951 to 2004.
Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. In the United States, it operates through Island Records; in the UK, it is distributed by Virgin EMI Records.
The Eastman Wind Ensemble is an American concert band founded by Frederick Fennell at the Eastman School of Music in 1952. It is often credited with helping popularize wind music. Through the group, Fennell redefined wind ensemble to refer to a specific kind of wind band with only one player per part, and focusing on original wind music rather than orchestral transcriptions. The Eastman Wind Ensemble has premiered over 150 works, including works by composers Bernard Rands and Joseph Schwantner.
Vittorio Giannini was a neoromantic American composer of operas, songs, symphonies, and band works.
He was the resident conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the musical director and conductor of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra (Michigan) 1967–1978. Roller was a favorite of New Zealand, having appeared there six times to take the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra on tour, recording with them for television and radio, and also performing with the Royal Christchurch Society in an All-Beethoven concert. [1]
The Lansing Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is an American symphony orchestra headquartered in Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1929 under the leadership of its first Music Director, Izler Solomon. Since 2006, the orchestra has been headed by Music Director Timothy Muffitt.
New Zealand is a sovereign island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses—the North Island, and the South Island —and around 600 smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. Because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal, fungal, and plant life. The country's varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland.
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) is a symphony orchestra based in Wellington, New Zealand. The national orchestra of New Zealand, the NZSO is an autonomous Crown entity owned by the Government of New Zealand, per the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Act 2004. It is currently based in the Michael Fowler Centre and frequently performs also in the adjacent Wellington Town Hall. It also performs in Auckland and Christchurch.
Roller was in demand as a conductor of educational honor groups, making appearances throughout the U.S. as conductor of over 45 all-state orchestras, MENC, region orchestras, and string festivals, as well as the Congress of Strings on both the East and West Coasts.
Roller was married twice. His second wife was concert pianist Moreland Kortkamp. Roller died in San Antonio, Texas. He was survived by his younger brothers Roger Roller, an oboist and music teacher in Wichita, Kansas, and Dale Roller, a music teacher in Amarillo, Texas.
