Dan Welcher

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Dan Welcher (born March 2, 1948) [1] [2] [3] [4] is an American composer, conductor, and music educator.

Contents

Biography

Welcher was born in Rochester, New York and earned degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, studying bassoon, piano, and composition. He served the Louisville Orchestra as its principal bassoonist and taught composition and theory at the University of Louisville from 1972 to 1978. He also taught composition and bassoon at the Aspen Music Festival and School from 1976 until 1990. In 1978, he joined the faculty of the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, where he founded the UT New Music Ensemble. During this time he also served as the assistant conductor of the Austin Symphony Orchestra from 1980 until 1990. [5]

Welcher's compositions include concertos, symphonies, vocal literature, piano solos, and various kinds of chamber music. He also wrote two operas, Della's Gift, which premiered in Austin in 1987, and Holy Night, which premiered in 2004. [6] Della's Gift has been performed with several opera companies including the New York City Opera. His works have been performed by such ensembles as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Honolulu Symphony, the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. His music is published by the Theodore Presser Company, among others. Recently completed works include Personal Ads: Eight Cabaret Songs, which is a song cycle for piano, soprano and tenor, and the Fifth Symphony, premiered by the Austin Symphony Orchestra on May 1, 2009. [7]

Welcher's numerous accolades include awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the American Music Center, and ASCAP.

For several years, Welcher hosted a weekly radio series called Knowing the Score, aimed at introducing listeners to contemporary classical music. [8]

Welcher held the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Professorship in Composition at the University of Texas, teaching music composition, and served as director of the UT New Music Ensemble until his abrupt departure in 2019 following numerous allegations of sexual misconduct as reported in a September 26, 2019 article in VAN Magazine. [9] [10] [11]

List of works

Orchestra

Wind band

Chamber music

Keyboard

Opera

Vocal and choral

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References

  1. ↑ Joshua Kosman, "Welcher, Dan (Edward)", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001)
  2. ↑ Nicolas Slonimsky, Laura Kuhn, and Dennis McIntire, "Welcher Dan", Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, eighth edition, edited by Nicolas Slonimsky and Laura Kuhn (New York: Schirmer Books, 2001): 6:3891–3892.
  3. ↑ Bret Johnson, "Review: Kraft: Contextures II: The Final Beast; Interplay; Of Ceremonies, Pageants and Celebrations by Los Angeles Philharmonic, Andre Previn, Alabama Symphony, Paul Polivnick, Utah Symphony Orchestra, Christopher Wilkins and William Kraft; Kraft: Timpani Concerto; Piano Concerto; Veils and Variations for Horn and Orchestra by Thomas Akins, Mona Golabek, Alabama Symphony, Paul Polivnick, Jeff von der Schmidt, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, Kent Nagano and William Kraft; Tower: Silver Ladders; Island Prelude; Music for Cello and Orchestra; Sequoia by Peter Bowman, Lynn Harrell, St Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin and Joan Tower; Tower: Fantasy (... Those Harbor Lights); Breakfast Rhythms I and II; Wings; Clarinet Concerto by Robert Spring, Eckhart Sellheim and Joan Tower; Welcher: Haleakala; Prairie Light; Clarinet Concerto by Richard Chamberlain, Bil Jackson, Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, Donald Johanos and Dan Welcher", Tempo, New Series, No. 186 (September 1993): 45–46, citation on 46.
  4. ↑ Alán Saúl Saucedo Estrada, The Influence of Carlos Prieto on Contemporary Cello Music (Lanham, Maryland; Boulder, Colorado; New York; Toronto; Plymouth, UK: University Press of America, Inc., 2014): 103.
  5. ↑ Bio at Presser.com Archived 2007-06-25 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ↑ Opera Glass
  7. ↑ Robert Faires, "Austin Symphony Orchestra with Sarah Chang", The Austin Chronicle (May 8, 2009)
  8. ↑ "Dan Welcher". lib.umd.edu. University of Maryland. Archived from the original on 16 October 2020. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
  9. ↑ "Dan Welcher | Butler School of Music – The University of Texas at Austin". University of Texas at Austin. Archived from the original on October 26, 2019. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
  10. ↑ Sussman, Sammy (26 September 2019). "Music's Perpetually Open Secret". VAN Magazine . Archived from the original on 26 October 2019. Retrieved 26 September 2019.
  11. ↑ Karacostas, Chase (October 1, 2019). "Composition professor leaves music school following sexual misconduct allegations". The Daily Texan . Archived from the original on October 26, 2019. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
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