John Harbison

Last updated

John Harris Harbison (born December 20, 1938) is an American composer and academic.

Contents

Life

John Harris Harbison was born on December 20, 1938, in Orange, New Jersey, to the historian Elmore Harris Harbison and Janet German Harbison. The Harbisons were a musical family; Elmore had studied composition in his youth and Janet wrote songs. [1] Harbison's sisters Helen and Margaret were musicians as well. He won the prestigious BMI Foundation's Student Composer Awards for composition at the age of 16 in 1954. He studied music at Harvard University (BA 1960), where he sang with the Harvard Glee Club, and later at the Berlin Musikhochschule and at Princeton (MFA 1963). He is an Institute Professor of music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a former student of Walter Piston and Roger Sessions. His works include several symphonies, string quartets, and concerti for violin, viola, and double bass.

Harbison won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1987 for The Flight into Egypt , and in 1989 he received a $305,000 MacArthur Fellowship. [2] In 1998, he was awarded the 4th Annual Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities. [3] He was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal in 2000. [4] In 2006, a recording of his Mottetti di Montale was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Small Ensemble Performance category.

The Metropolitan Opera commissioned Harbison's The Great Gatsby to celebrate James Levine's 25th anniversary with the company. The opera premiered on December 20, 1999, conducted by Levine, with Jerry Hadley, Dawn Upshaw, Susan Graham, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Mark Baker, Dwayne Croft, and Richard Paul Fink amongst the singers. [5]

In 1991, Harbison was the music director of the Ojai Music Festival in conjunction with Peter Maxwell Davies. Harbison has served as principal guest conductor for Emmanuel Music in Boston. [6] After founding director Craig Smith's death in 2007, Harbison was named acting artistic director. Harbison and his wife Rose Mary Harbison, a violinist, ran the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival from 1989 to 2022. [7]

Partial discography

  1. I. It's True, I Went to the Market
  2. II. All I Was Doing Was Breathing
  3. III. Why Mira Can't Go Back to Her Old House
  4. IV. Where Did You Go?
  5. V. The Clouds
  6. VI. Don't Go, Don't Go
  7. Variations i–v
  8. Variations vi–x
  9. Variations xi–xv
  10. Finale and Epilogue
  1. The Flight into Egypt , text from the King James translation of the story of the Flight into Egypt in the Gospel of Matthew
  2. The Natural World: Prelude
  3. Where We Must Look for Help, text from Robert Bly
  4. On the Road Home, text from Wallace Stevens
  5. Milkweed, text from James Wright
  6. Concerto for Double Brass Choir and Orchestra: I. Invention on a Motif: Tempo giusto
  7. II. Invention on a Chord: Cantabile
  8. III. Invention on a Cadence: Molto allegro
  1. Due Libri dei Mottetti di Montale
  2. Snow Country
  3. Chorale Cantata
  4. Concerto for Oboe, Clarinet, and Strings
  1. Ulysses' Bow ballet performed by Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and conducted by André Previn
  2. Samuel Chapter performed by Susan Larson (soprano) and conducted by John Harbison

Works

Operas

Ballet

Orchestral

External videos
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg John Harbison (on his Symphony No. 1), March 22, 1984, 4:20, Boston TV Digital Archive [10]

Choral

Chamber

Vocal

Solo

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark-Anthony Turnage</span> English composer (born 1960)

Mark-Anthony Turnage is an English composer of contemporary classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Stucky</span> American composer

Steven Edward Stucky was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.

Richard Danielpour is an American composer and academic, currently affiliated with the Curtis Institute of Music and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Bernard Rands is a British-American contemporary classical composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus.

Chen Yi is a Chinese-American composer of contemporary classical music and violinist. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts (M.A.) in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Chen was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji, and has received awards from the Koussevistky Music Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School and in 2012, she was awarded the Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Augusta Read Thomas</span> American composer (born 1964)

Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, where she is also director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition.

Roberto Sierra is a Puerto Rican composer of contemporary classical music.

Sean Hickey is an American composer and record label executive, born in 1970 in Detroit, Michigan, and currently based in New York. In 2022, he was appointed Managing Director of Pentatone.

Stefans Grové was a South African composer. Before his death the following assessment was made of him: "He is regarded by many as Africa's greatest living composer, possesses one of the most distinctive compositional voices of our time".

Iain Ellis Hamilton was a Scottish composer.

David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Ludwig (composer)</span> American composer of classical music (born 1974)

David Serkin Ludwig is an American composer, teacher, and Dean of Music at The Juilliard School. His uncle was pianist Peter Serkin, his grandfather was the pianist Rudolf Serkin, and his great-grandfather was the violinist Adolf Busch. He holds positions and residencies with nearly two dozen orchestras and music festivals in the US and abroad. His choral work, The New Colossus, was performed at the 2013 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.

Charlotte Bray is a British composer. She was championed by the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London Sinfonietta and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BBC Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been performed by many notable conductors such as: Sir Mark Elder, Oliver Knussen, Daniel Harding, and Jac van Steen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guillaume Connesson</span> French composer

Guillaume Connesson is a French composer born in 1970 in Boulogne-Billancourt.

References

  1. ↑ "Janet G. H. Penfield". Obituaries. Town Topics . Vol. LVII, no. 4. Princeton. January 28, 2004.
  2. ↑ "John Harbison, Composer and Conductor: Class of 1989". MacArthur Foundation. 1989-08-01. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  3. ↑ The Heinz Awards, John Harbison profile
  4. ↑ "History of the Harvard Arts Medal". Harvard University Office for the Arts. Retrieved 23 February 2019.
  5. ↑ Bernard Holland (1999-12-22). "Opera Review: Music Catering To the Words Of Fitzgerald". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  6. ↑ Tom Jacobs (2022-08-08). "John Harbison: From Child Prodigy to Elder Statesman". San Francisco Classical Voice. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  7. ↑ Jeromey Hodsdon (2022-08-27). "Harbisons host final year of Token Creek Chamber Music Festival". Sun Prairie Star. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  8. ↑ Anthony Tommasini (2005-11-06). "Astringent Modernism Below a Romantic Surface". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  9. ↑ Peter Dizikes (2021-11-18). "Q&A: John Harbison on his new album, 'Diotima'". MIT News. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  10. ↑ "Ten O'Clock News; John Harbison", 1984-03-22, 4:20, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed September 23, 2016.
  11. ↑ John Rockwell (1991-03-10). "Review/Music; John Harbison Premiere". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  12. ↑ Daniel J. Wakin (2005-03-24). "Wrestling With a 'Lolita' Opera and Losing". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  13. ↑ Anthony Tommasini (2006-02-25). "When Lyrics Are Fragmentary and Melodies Elusive". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  14. ↑ "Harbison's 'Symphony No. 5' to premiere April 17-18". MIT News. 2008-04-15. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  15. ↑ Peter Dizikes (2012-01-13). "3 Questions: John Harbison on his sixth symphony". MIT News. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  16. ↑ Bernard Holland (2003-03-11). "Music Review: A Requiem Conscious Of Its Debt To the Past". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  17. ↑ "Professor brings papal music to Wind Ensemble". MIT News. 2005-04-27. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  18. ↑ James R. Oestreich (1998-02-05). "Music Review: Portrait of a Composer As Man and Musician". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  19. 1 2 3 Allan Kozinn (2001-01-15). "Music Review: Talk Is Not Cheap When It Comes to New Music". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  20. ↑ Allan Kozinn (2012-04-27). "Inserting the Brand-New Alongside the Old Familiar". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  21. ↑ "John Harbison's "IF" World Premiere". MIT Music & Theater Arts. 2018-10-20. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  22. ↑ Allan Kozinn (2006-07-23). "Classical Recordings: Raw and Dark Contemporary Works, a Nimble Mendelssohn". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
  23. ↑ David Allen (2015-02-01). "A Bach Interpretation Springs to Life". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-04-05.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.