Nathaniel Stookey (born 1970, San Francisco, California) is an American composer and musician.
Nathaniel Stookey (born 1970, San Francisco, California) is an American composer and musician.
Stookey is the son of Richard Phelps Stookey, an attorney and novelist, and Martha Milton Stookey, an actor, stage director, and teacher. Both parents came from musical families: Martha's father was an Army bugler and cornet player, and Richard's grandparents were church and barn-dance musicians whose descendants include Noel Paul Stookey of the folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary. Stookey spent his early childhood in the Basque village of Banca. He attended French American International School and Lowell High School in San Francisco and Lycée Hoche in Versailles, France. [1] [2] He began violin study at age 5 with Anna Teksler in San Francisco, continuing with Malgorzata Rouger at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, and with Daniel Kobialka of the San Francisco Symphony. As a student, he played violin and viola with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and sang in the chorus of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. He studied music theory with Donald Galfond [3] and took his first composition lessons from Tom Constanten of the Grateful Dead at the San Francisco Community Music Center. [4] He attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, San Francisco City College, the University of California, Berkeley (B.A. 1992), George Benjamin's composition seminars for the Royal College of Music, and Duke University (Ph.D 2003), where he was a Mary Duke Biddle Fellow and won the Klenz Prize for Composition in his first year of graduate study. Stookey's principal composition teachers were Peter Scott Lewis, Donald Erb, Andrew Imbrie, Cindy Cox, Stephen Jaffe, and Scott Lindroth.
Stookey was first commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony at age 17. [2] He has held composer residencies with the Hallé Orchestra, during the music directorship of Kent Nagano, and with the North Carolina Symphony from 2000-2003, a partnership that resulted in over 60 performances of eight works, including Out of the Everywhere (2003) for large orchestra. [5] [6] In 2006, the San Francisco Symphony commissioned, premiered and recorded The Composer is Dead (2006), a guide to the orchestra with text by Lemony Snicket. He has narrated performances of The Composer is Dead, in English as well as Spanish. He also co-authored the Spanish and French translations of Lemony Snicket's text for The Composer is Dead. In 2010, the NDR Sinfonieorchester and Christoph Eschenbach premiered Stookey's Mahlerwerk (2010) at the final concert of the centennial "Mahler in Hamburg" Festival.
Stookey has a long-standing musical relationship with the San Francisco Symphony and was one of the original curators of SoundBox, for which he created YTTE (2016), his third commissioned work for the orchestra. [7] Other orchestral works include the song cycles Zipperz (2008) and Into the Bright Lights (2009) [8] as well as several shorter works: Big Bang (2000), Wide as Skies (2003) and GO (2012).
Stookey's earliest published composition was a contribution to the Basque-language hymnal, Meza Abestiak, [9] a gift for the Benedictine monastery of Lazkao, where the composer lived and worked in 1990. [10] For thy sweet love (1993) for chamber chorus and organ and other early works were published by PRB Productions before being acquired by G. Schirmer/AMP in 2015. [10] In 2008, Manoel Felciano, Eisa Davis, and the Oakland Symphony conducted by Michael Morgan premiered Zipperz (2008) for two pop singers and orchestra, with texts by Dan Harder. [11] In 2009, Frederica von Stade launched her farewell tour with Stookey's Into the Bright Lights (2009) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, a setting of von Stade's own reflections on singing and aging. [12] Zheng Cao, in her final concert appearances, substituted for von Stade in the work's U.S. premiere. [13] Stookey created the score for John Doyle's 2010 production of Bertolt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle at the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) in San Francisco. [14] His monodrama Ivonne (2012) for soprano and chamber ensemble, with texts by Jerre Dye, was commissioned by Opera Memphis as part of the Ghosts of Crosstown project [15] and featured on Opera America's 2015 national showcase at Wolf Trap. Stookey was commissioned by West Edge Opera to compose the opera Bulrusher with a libretto by Stookey and playwright Eisa Davis based on her play Bulrusher. [16] The opera was developed at The Cincinnati Opera during their Opera Fusion: New Works 2022. [17]
Himself a violinist and violist, Stookey has continued to write chamber music throughout his career. Strings Magazine profiled him in 2009 as one of the "Next Generation of String Composers." [18] The Lindsay Quartet featured Stookey's String Quartet No. 1 (1998), dedicated to them, on their 40th anniversary tour of North America in 2004. [19] [20] String Quartet No. 2 – Musée Mécanique (2002) was commissioned and recorded by the Ciompi Quartet. [21] String Quartet No. 3 – The Mezzanine (2012), inspired by Nicholson Baker's eponymous book, was commissioned by Kronos Quartet [22] and featured at the 2015 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, where Stookey and Kronos were in residence together. [23] Additional chamber works include Piano Trio No. 1 (2009) for The Lee Trio, Fling (2005) for flute and string trio (commissioned by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble), Above the Thomas Gate (2001) for piano trio (commissioned by the Mallarmé Chamber Players), Tame Me (1995) for piano and prepared piano (commissioned by the Hallé Concerts Society), and Sonatina for Sam (1992) (see Alt, pop, dance, and Junk). [5] Where Every Verse is Filled with Grief (2009) for solo violin, an arrangement of the second movement of Alfred Schnittke's Concerto for Choir, was commissioned by Kunst-Stoff for choreography by Yannis Adoniou. [24]
Stookey has worked often in San Francisco's experimental music scene and his work uses influences outside of classical boundaries.<> Among his early collaborators was the crossover cellist Sam Bass (of the bands Deadweight, Loop!Station and Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade) for whom Stookey wrote both his "opus 1" Sonatina for Sam (1992) and the song Hard Up (2011). [25] [26] Stookey composed and recorded the string introduction to the song Soothsayer (2007) on The Mars Volta's album The Bedlam in Goliath . In the same year, he created Junkestra (2007) for an orchestra of instruments he built from objects scavenged from the city dump, and has performed on the musical saw in this work. That work was performed in vacant warehouses and public squares before being taken up by the San Francisco Symphony and other classical presenters. [27] Its 2010 release on Innova Recordings includes Junkestra Dance Mix (2010), also by Stookey. [28] His composition Mahlerwerk (2011) reorders hundreds of fragments of Mahler symphonies. The work is dedicated to composer Alfred Schnittke, who coined the term polystylist to describe composers who freely combine disparate elements. [29] Nobody Suffers Like We Do (2009), a drinking song inspired by the sounds of a convenience-store cash register, with words by Daniel Handler, was commissioned and recorded by the Harvard Din & Tonics in commemoration of their 30th anniversary season.
During his residencies with the Hallé Orchestra and North Carolina Symphony, Stookey taught at the University of Sheffield and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill respectively. As composer-in-residence with NPR-affiliate WUNC-FM in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, he created and hosted The Composers-in-Context Series, which included both live and broadcast performances of works by living composers in the context of their musical influences. [30] Stookey has also been composer-in-residence at the New Hampshire Music Festival, [31] the Walden School, [32] the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, [23] and the Eastern Sierra Symphony. A retrospective of his output, commemorating his years in North Carolina, was presented by the School of Music of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. [25] Stookey sometimes plays the musical saw in Junkestra (2007) and the OOVE (a unique electroacoustic instrument by Oliver DiCicco) in YTTE (2016).
Stookey's music is published under exclusive contract by G. Schirmer/A.M.P. (Music Sales Group) of New York and London. Some works are distributed in print by Hal Leonard Corporation.
| Album | Role | Librettist | Soloist(s) | Ensemble/Band | Conductor | Label | Release year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Music for Strings (1992-2002) | composer | Bonnie Thron, Brian Reagin, Rebekah Binford | North Carolina Symphony, Ciompi Quartet | William Henry Curry | Albany | 2005 | |
| San Francisco Premieres | composer (Fling) | Left Coast Chamber Ensemble | Chamber Music Partnership | 2005 | |||
| The Bedlam in Goliath | contributor (Soothsayer) | Omar Rodríguez-López, Cedric Bixler-Zavala | The Mars Volta | Edwin Outwater | Universal/Motown | 2008 | |
| The Composer is Dead | composer | Lemony Snicket | Lemony Snicket | San Francisco Symphony | Edwin Outwater | Harper Collins | 2009 |
| The Pursuit of Snappiness | composer (Nobody Suffers Like We Do) | Daniel Handler | Harvard Din & Tonics | Harvard Din & Tonics | 2010 | ||
| Junkestra | composer | David Weiss | San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra percussion section | Benjamin Shwartz | Innova Recordings | 2010 | |
| O Compositor està Morto | composer | Lemony Snicket, trans. Assis | Fabio Goes | San Francisco Symphony | Edwin Outwater | Companhia das Letrinhas | 2012 |
| Le Compositeur est Mort | composer | Lemony Snicket, trans. Stookey/Matéo | Pépito Matéo | San Francisco Symphony | Edwin Outwater | Didier Jeunesse | 2014 |
| Zipperz | composer | Dan Harder | Manoel Felciano, Robin Coomer | Magik*Magik Orchestra | Donato Cabrera | Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight | in press |
John Coolidge Adams is an American composer and conductor. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, many of which center around historical events. Apart from opera, his oeuvre includes orchestral, concertante, vocal, choral, chamber, electroacoustic, and piano music.
The Kronos Quartet is an American string quartet based in San Francisco. It has been in existence with a rotating membership of musicians for 50 years. The quartet covers a very broad range of musical genres, including contemporary classical music. More than 1,000 works have been written for it.
Osvaldo Noé Golijov is an Argentine composer of classical music and music professor, known for his vocal and orchestral work.
Aaron Jay Kernis is a Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning American composer serving as a member of the Yale School of Music faculty. Kernis spent 15 years as the music advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra and as director of the Minnesota Orchestra's Composers' Institute, and is currently the workshop director of the Nashville Symphony Composer Lab. He has received numerous awards and honors throughout his thirty-five-year career. He lives in New York City with his wife, pianist Evelyne Luest, and their two children.
Michael Gordon is an American composer and co-founder of the Bang on a Can music collective and festival. He grew up in Nicaragua.
David Bruce is a British composer and YouTuber.
Aleksandra Vrebalov is a Serbian-American composer based in New York City and Novi Sad, Serbia.
The Composer Is Dead is a 2009 composition for narrator and orchestra, released both as a musical recording and as a book with a CD insert, with text by Lemony Snicket, music by Nathaniel Stookey, and illustrations by Carson Ellis. It is a whodunnit about the orchestra.
Stephen Jaffe is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, United States, and serves on the music faculty of Duke University, where he holds the post of Mary and James H. Semans Professor of Music Composition; his colleagues there include composers Scott Lindroth, John Supko, and Anthony Kelley. Jaffe graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977; he received a master's degree the following year from the same institution. During his time in Pennsylvania, he studied with George Crumb, George Rochberg, and Richard Wernick.
Peter Scott Lewis is an American composer of contemporary classical music.
Mark Grey is an American classical music composer, sound designer and sound engineer.
Mason Wesley Bates is a Grammy award-winning American composer of symphonic music and DJ of electronic dance music. He is the first composer-in-residence of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he has also been in residence with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the California Symphony. In addition to his notable works Mothership, Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, he composed the score to Gus Van Sant's film The Sea of Trees. In a 2018 survey of American orchestras, he was rated the second-most performed living composer.
David T. Little is a Grammy-nominated American composer, record producer, and drummer known for his operatic, orchestral, and chamber works, most notably his operas JFK,Soldier Songs, and Dog Days which was named a standout opera of recent decades by The New York Times. He is the artistic director of Newspeak, an eight-piece amplified ensemble that explores the boundaries between rock and classical music, and is the Chair of the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music.
Richard Fleischman is an American violist and viola d'amore player, conductor and pedagogue.
Benjamin Shwartz is an American-Israeli orchestral and opera conductor, and music director of the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie, Koblenz (Germany). Formerly he held the position of music director of the Wrocław Philharmonic known for his interest in and commitment to new music. Born in Los Angeles and raised there and in Israel, he attended the Idyllwild Arts Academy in California before enrolling in the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied composition with James Primosch. He continued his composition studies in Germany with Karlheinz Stockhausen. As a conducting student at the Curtis Institute of Music, he studied with Otto-Werner Mueller and worked closely with Christoph Eschenbach and Ned Rorem. Shwartz won numerous awards including the Presser Award, and Third Prize in the 2007 International Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg, Germany.
The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO) is a youth orchestra organized by the San Francisco Symphony. The SFSYO performs an annual concert series and has made several recordings. The orchestra rehearses in Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall and has been directed by Radu Paponiu since the 2024-2025 season.
Absolute Jest is a concerto for string quartet and orchestra by the American composer John Adams. The work was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony for the orchestra's centennial. Its world premiere was given at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall on March 15, 2012, and was performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. However, after the premiere Adams heavily re-wrote the beginning of the piece; this revised version of Absolute Jest was first performed in Miami Beach on December 1, 2012, by the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the New World Symphony under the composer's direction.
Scott Joiner is an American singer, composer, teacher and conductor. He created the role of Dickon in the world premiere of Nolan Gasser's opera The Secret Garden with the San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances in 2013. Among the five one-act operas he has written, The Shower was presented at the Wiener Kammeroper in 2019, and Death of a Grailsman received a YouTube premiere in 2021. He composed the score and starred in the short opera film, Connection Lost or L'opera di Tinder, which won Best Score at Ireland's Kerry Film Festival. The miniature one-act opera received its live stage premiere by Opera Carolina in November 2016 as part of National Opera Week. Joiner and Tinder Opera Co-creator, Adam Taylor (writer/director) were featured on NPR's All Things Considered in 2017.
David Ross Garner is an American composer of opera and vocal, instrumental, and chamber music. He is also an educator, on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Joshua Kosman is an American music critic who specializes in classical music. Kosman was the chief classical music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle from 1988 to 2024, with a particular interest in contemporary classical music, championing composers such as John Adams and Aaron Jay Kernis. Described by the music critic Jayson Greene as having a "congenial, probing tone that blends a reporter’s instincts with a critic’s acumen," he has written for a variety of other publications.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
