Paul Alan Levi (born June 30, 1941, in New York City) is an American composer whose compositions have been performed in Carnegie Hall, among other major venues in United States and Europe, as well as on national television. He is the composer of the 1971-1984 PBS identity music.
Levi received a B.A. in music at Oberlin College and later received his M.M. and D.M.A at Juilliard while studying with composition teachers Hall Overton and Vincent Persichetti.
He has taught at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Rutgers University, Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Lehman College, and Baruch College, and has been the composer in residence at Wolf Trap Farm Park, Portland State University, and the White Plains High School.
Levi has won numerous awards and grants including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Grand Prize for Opera from the National Music Theater Network, Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Composers Alliance Recording Award, and grants from the American Music Center and Meet the Composer. He lived for a year in Munich on a DAAD Grant and has had residencies at several artist colonies.
Levi's commissions include the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York Choral Society, New Amsterdam singers, New York Chamber Symphony, Chamber Music Northwest, Robert DeCormier Singers, and the Music Today Series. Performers of his music include conductors Pierre Boulez, Jesús López-Cobos, Robert De Cormier, Clara Longstreth, Gustav Meier, and Gerard Schwarz; pianist Justin Kolb; and singers Margaret Ahrens, David Bender, Adam Klein, Antonia Lavanne, Douglas Perry, Neva Pilgrim, Lucy Shelton, Sheila Schonbrun, and James Archie Worley, as well as Cantors Richard Botton and Mark Lipson.
Publishers include Becatone Music, Lawson-Gould Music Publishers, Margun Music, Merion Music, Mobart Music Publications, and New Jewish Music Press. Recordings can be heard on Albany Records (Acts of Love; Bye, Bye Toots), Centaur Records (Mark Twain Suite), and CRI (Five Progressions for Three Instruments).
Levi composes in a wide variety of styles and genres, never pigeonholing himself as a composer of a specific type of music. His vocal and choral works are notable for their clear projection of content and meaning of the text without compromising the quality of the music. In addition to his many works written for professional performers, Levi has composed a group of pieces that were commissioned as presents for major birthdays of amateur musicians, including cellist James Wolfensohn.
Levi writes, “The most important thing I learned from Hall Overton was to write with a comedian's sense of timing, even in non-comedic works.” His pieces feature a combination of lyricism and drama, often with an underlying or overt sense of humor. His most significant works, both for chorus, orchestra, and soloists, include the comedic Mark Twain Suite as well as his Passover Oratorio, Dayenu, which commemorates the Exodus from Egypt and an escape from a concentration camp during the Holocaust. The New Music Connoisseur has written, “Mr. Levi has a natural flair for theatrical choral music”. Like many composers, Mr. Levi has written memorial works, but also has composed a piece celebrating birth, In the Womb, for chorus with electronic accompaniment.
Levi has been an influential composition teacher to many composers including Alex Weiser [1] and Murray Hidary. [2] Levi is also a pianist and conductor. He has accompanied many songs by 20th-century composers and conducted his own works as well as musicals, operettas, and the works of Murray Hidary. Levi and his wife, Cathy Waldman, have performed as the Four-Hand Band.
Poems by Sally Fisher For chorus and chamber orchestra
Poems by Sally Fisher For chorus and chamber orchestra (Albany Records)
From In the Beginning... (2000) Libretto by Toni Mergentime Levi Chorus with electronic accompaniment
Based on poems by Ann Chernow and Burt Chernow For chorus and piano (Lawson-Gould Music Publishers)
A Passover Oratorio For tenor and baritone solos, chorus and orchestra (Mobart Music Publications)
Poems by Toni Mergentime Levi For chorus and chamber orchestra (Mobart Music Publications)
Text by Robert Burns For chorus and chamber orchestra (Mobart Music Publications)
Psalms 86 and 19 For 8 voices or double chorus, a cappella
Co-composer: Rabbi Mark Lipson For cantor, adult and children's choirs, and quintet or chamber orchestra (New Jewish Music Press)
For chorus, tenor solo and orchestra (Lawson-Gould Music Publishers)
Libretto by Toni Mergentime Levi An opera parable in seven scenes
A serio-comic opera in one act Libretto by Toni Mergentime Levi For 12 singers and chamber orchestra
Geoffrey Alan Burgon was an English composer best known for his television and film scores. Among his most recognisable works are Monty Python's Life of Brian for film, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Brideshead Revisited for television, the latter two earning Ivor Novello Awards in 1979 and 1981 respectively. He also won BAFTAs for his themes for the remake of The Forsyte Saga and Longitude.
Ilja Hurník was a Czech composer and essayist.
Chen Yi is a Chinese-American violinist and composer of contemporary classical music. 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.
Daniel Steven Crafts is an American composer. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, but has spent most of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Éric Gaudibert was a Swiss composer.
John Purser is a Scottish composer, musicologist, and music historian. He is also a playwright.
Jeronimas Kačinskas was a Lithuanian-born American composer.
Raymond Wilding-White ; was an American composer of contemporary classical music and electronic music, and a photographer/digital artist.
Christopher Marshall is a New Zealand classical music composer who resides in Orlando, Florida, United States.
Robert Xavier Rodríguez is an American classical composer, best known for his eight operas and his works for children.
Robert Comrie Turner, was a Canadian composer, radio producer, and music educator. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in music from McGill University in 1943. While there he studied with Douglas Clarke and Claude Champagne. He continued his studies briefly at Colorado College in 1947, where he met his wife, percussionist Sara Scott. They married in 1949. In 1947, Turner transferred to Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he studied with Roy Harris. He graduated in 1950 with a master's degree. During this time, Turner spent two summers studying with Herbert Howells and Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music and one summer at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood studying with Olivier Messiaen. He returned to McGill University in 1951, graduating with a doctorate two years later.
Jiří Teml is a Czech composer and radio producer.
William Mayer was an American composer, best known for his prize-winning opera A Death in the Family.
Odaline de la Martinez is a Cuban-American composer and conductor, currently residing in the UK. She is the artistic director of Lontano, a London-based contemporary music ensemble which she co-founded in 1976 with New Zealander flautist Ingrid Culliford, and was the first woman to conduct at the BBC Promenade Concerts in 1984. As well as frequent appearances as a guest conductor with leading orchestras throughout Great Britain, including all the BBC orchestras, she has conducted several leading ensembles around the world, including the Ensemble 2e2m in Paris; the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; the Australian Youth Orchestra; the OFUNAM and the Camerata of the Americas in Mexico; and the Vancouver Chamber Orchestra. She is also known as a broadcaster for BBC Radio and Television and has recorded extensively for several labels.
Fabrizio De Rossi Re is an Italian composer and librettist. He composes operas, symphonic, choral and chamber music, and performs as a pianist.
Charles Clement Fussell is an American composer and conductor of contemporary classical music. He has composed six symphonies and three operas. His symphony Wilde for solo baritone and orchestra, based on the life of Oscar Wilde and premiered by the Newton Symphony Orchestra and the baritone Sanford Sylvan in 1990, was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Music. He received a citation and award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1992.
Andrea Clearfield is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Regularly commissioned and performed by ensembles in the United States and abroad, her works include music for orchestra, chorus, soloists, chamber ensembles, dance, opera, film, and multimedia collaborations.
Composer's Official Website: www.PaulAlanLevi.com