Reynold Tharp (born June 17, 1973) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. His music reflects a fascination with transitory physical aspects of sound, such as resonance and decay.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 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.
A composer is a musician who is an author of music in any form, including vocal music, instrumental music, electronic music, and music which combines multiple forms. A composer may create music in any music genre, including, for example, classical music, musical theatre, blues, folk music, jazz, and popular music. Composers often express their works in a written musical score using musical notation.
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s to early 1990s, which includes modernist, postmodern, neoromantic, and pluralist music. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 musical forms.
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Tharp was born in Indiana, and studied music composition and history at Oberlin College before entering the graduate program in composition at the University of California, Berkeley. As a recipient of the university's Ladd Fellowship, he spent two years in Paris studying composition with Philippe Leroux and orchestration with Marc-André Dalbavie. He was selected for the Stage d’Automne at IRCAM in 2000 and has participated in workshops and seminars with Ivan Fedele, Brian Ferneyhough and Jonathan Harvey.
Indiana is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern and Great Lakes regions of North America. Indiana is the 38th largest by area and the 17th most populous of the 50 United States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th U.S. state on December 11, 1816. Indiana borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north, Ohio to the east, Kentucky to the south and southeast, and Illinois to the west.
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio. Founded as the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1833 by John Jay Shipherd and Philo Stewart, it is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and the second oldest continuously operating coeducational institute of higher learning in the world. The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. In 1835 Oberlin became one of the first colleges in the United States to admit African Americans, and in 1837 the first to admit women.
The University of California, Berkeley is a public research university in Berkeley, California. It was founded in 1868 and serves as the flagship institution of the ten research universities affiliated with the University of California system. Berkeley has since grown to instruct over 40,000 students in approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs covering numerous disciplines.
In recent years, his music has been performed in the U.S. and Europe by groups such as the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players, the Orchestre Lyrique de Region Avignon-Provence and the Nieuw Ensemble (Amsterdam), which commissioned and premiered his work A Backward Glance in 2000. Several of these performances have been broadcast on French and Dutch radio.
The Nieuw Ensemble was founded in 1980 in Amsterdam. It has a unique instrumental structure, using plucked instruments such as mandolin, guitar and harp in combination with wind, string and percussion. Ed Spanjaard has been the principal conductor since 1982. The lack of literature for this group makes it as dependent upon composers, as composers have always been upon musicians. The Nieuw Ensemble has thus set out to build its own repertoire, encouraged by continuous contact with composers from different cultures, countries and generations, and long-term workshops for young composers. Almost five hundred pieces have been written for the ensemble.
Awards for his music include BMI’s William Schuman Prize, Columbia University’s Joseph H. Bearns Prize for his orchestral work Drift and UC Berkeley’s Nicola DeLorenzo Prize. Recent projects include commissions from the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players for their 2008-2009 season and a duo for flute and harp for Jonathan Keeble and Ann Yeung.
Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Established in 1754, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence, seven of which belong to the Ivy League. It has been ranked by numerous major education publications as among the top ten universities in the world.
The Joseph H. Bearns Prize in Music was established on February 3, 1921, by Lillia M. Bearns, in memory of her father. It was her desire to encourage talented young composers in the United States. The Prize, administered by Columbia University, is open to United States citizens who are at least 18 and no more than 25 years of age, and is divided among larger-form works and smaller-form works. The Prize is one of the largest given to young American composers, totaling $7200 in 2006.
The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players is an ensemble of classically trained instrumentalists that commissions, performs, and records innovative new music, including music that integrates electronic and acoustic sounds.
Tharp has taught composition, orchestration, analysis and theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UC Berkeley, Northwestern University and San Francisco State University.
Northwestern University (NU) is a private research university based in Evanston, Illinois, United States, with other campuses located in Chicago and Doha, Qatar, and academic programs and facilities in Miami, Florida; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco, California. Along with its undergraduate programs, Northwestern is known for its Kellogg School of Management, Pritzker School of Law, Feinberg School of Medicine, Bienen School of Music, Medill School of Journalism, and McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
San Francisco State University is a public university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different bachelor's degrees, 94 master's degrees, 5 doctoral degrees, along with 26 teaching credentials among six academic colleges.
