W. A. Mathieu

Last updated

William Allaudin Mathieu (born 1937) is a composer, pianist, choir director, music teacher, and author. He began studying piano at the age of six, and began recording his music and compositions in the 1970s on his record label, Cold Mountain Music. Mathieu has composed and recorded solo piano works, chamber pieces, choral music, and song cycles, and he has written four books on music, music theory, and how to live a musical life.

Contents

Career

Mathieu studied jazz composition with William Russo from 1954 to 1958; Eurocentric music with Easley Blackwood from 1963 to 1967; Middle Eastern music with Nubian master musician Hamza El Din from 1971 to 2004, with whom he also collaborated; and raga with North Indian vocalist Pandit Pran Nath from 1973 to 1996. Mathieu's recordings reflect the integration of these and many other influences.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s (as Bill Mathieu), he spent several years as an arranger and composer for Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington orchestras. [1] Kenton's album Standards in Silhouette consists entirely of Mathieu's arrangements [2] and revealed the young Mathieu (then 22 years of age) to be an adept manipulator of compositional materials.

He was one of the founders and the musical director for The Second City in Chicago, [3] the first ongoing improvisational theater troupe in the United States, and was later the musical director for The Committee, an improv theater in San Francisco that was an offshoot of The Second City. In the 1970s, he was on the faculties of San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Mills College. In 1969, Mathieu founded the Sufi Choir in San Francisco among followers of Samuel L. Lewis, and he directed the choir until 1982.

Mathieu enjoys sharing his tuning expertise with others, including beginners — and especially those who are convinced they are tone-deaf. “Nobody is tone-deaf,” he claims. He has regularly trained his “Tone-Deaf Choirs” to sing in tune, often in public.

He now devotes himself to practice, performance, recording, composition, teaching, and writing from his home near Sebastopol, California.

Early life

Mathieu was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father was Aron M. Mathieu (1907-1996), publisher and founder of Minicam (later retitled Modern Photography) in 1937, editor at Writer's Digest for three decades, and founder of the Writer's Market franchise. His mother was Rosella Feher Mathieu (1906-2008), noted authority on herbs, and author of Herb Grower's Complete Guide (1950), one of the first books in the United States on growing and cooking with herbs.

In Cincinnati, Mathieu attended Kennedy-Silverton Elementary School (1942-1949) and Walnut Hills High School (1949-1954). In Chicago, he attended University of Chicago (1954-1958), earning a BA degree.

Discography

Solo piano improvisations

Multitrack compositions

Piano compositions

Instrumental compositions

Song cycles

Improvisational collaborations

Collaborations

Big Band jazz

The Sufi Choir

Audio books

Bibliography

An audio edition of The Listening Book was issued in 1991 by Shambhala Lion Editions. That audio material was remastered and issued along with new audio material read from The Musical Life in 2008 as a 2 CD set (W. A. Mathieu reads from The Listening Book and The Musical Life) on Manifest Spirit Records.
Harmonic Experience (561 pages) offers a view of music theory that harmonizes Western and Eastern perspectives. Understanding can be actively enhanced by utilizing its autodidactic ear-training and sight-singing exercises, especially using singing sargam syllables over a drone such as a tamboura or possibly a Western fifth played in just intonation. Mathieu is described as Neo-Riemannian [1] and he cites Ernst Levy, who wrote of harmonic polarity and undertones, as an influence. [4] The book has been praised by folk musician Pete Seeger. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milton Babbitt</span> American composer

Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Taylor (jazz)</span> British jazz pianist (1942–2015)

John Taylor was a British jazz pianist, born in Manchester, England, who occasionally performed on the organ and the synthesizer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark-Anthony Turnage</span> British composer

Mark-Anthony Turnage CBE is a British composer of classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerry Mulligan</span> American jazz musician (1927–1996)

Gerald Joseph Mulligan, also known as Jeru, was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though primarily known as one of the leading jazz baritone saxophonists—playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz—Mulligan was also a significant arranger, working with Claude Thornhill, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, and others. His pianoless quartet of the early 1950s with trumpeter Chet Baker is still regarded as one of the best cool jazz groups. Mulligan was also a skilled pianist and played several other reed instruments. Several of his compositions, such as "Walkin' Shoes" and "Five Brothers", have become standards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accompaniment</span> Part of a musical composition

Accompaniment is the musical part which provides the rhythmic and/or harmonic support for the melody or main themes of a song or instrumental piece. There are many different styles and types of accompaniment in different genres and styles of music. In homophonic music, the main accompaniment approach used in popular music, a clear vocal melody is supported by subordinate chords. In popular music and traditional music, the accompaniment parts typically provide the "beat" for the music and outline the chord progression of the song or instrumental piece.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Luther Adams</span> American composer (born 1953)

John Luther Adams is an American composer whose music is inspired by nature, especially the landscapes of Alaska, where he lived from 1978 to 2014. His orchestral work Become Ocean was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stan Kenton</span> American musician

Stanley Newcomb Kenton was an American popular music and jazz artist. As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades. Though Kenton had several pop hits from the early 1940s into the 1960s, his music was always forward-looking. Kenton was also a pioneer in the field of jazz education, creating the Stan Kenton Jazz Camp in 1959 at Indiana University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">R. Murray Schafer</span> Canadian composer (1933–2021)

Raymond Murray Schafer was a Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World (1977). He was the first recipient of the Jules Léger Prize in 1978.

Michael Harrison is an American contemporary classical music composer and pianist living in New York City. He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 2018–2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurindo Almeida</span> Brazilian guitarist and composer

Laurindo Almeida was a Brazilian guitarist and composer in classical, jazz, and Latin music. He and Bud Shank were pioneers in the creation of bossa nova. Almeida was the first guitarist to receive Grammy Awards for both classical and jazz performances. His discography encompasses more than a hundred recordings over five decades.

Luc Van Hove is a Belgian composer of contemporary classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Kay (composer)</span> Australian classical composer (born 1933)

Donald Henry Kay AM is an Australian classical composer.

Robert Paterson is an American composer of contemporary classical music, as well as a conductor and percussionist. His catalog includes over 100 compositions. He has been called a "modern day master" and is primarily known for his colorful orchestral works, large body of chamber music and clear vocal writing in his operas, choral works, vocal chamber works and song cycles.

Third stream is a music genre that is a fusion of jazz and classical music. The term was coined in 1957 by composer Gunther Schuller in a lecture at Brandeis University. Improvisation is generally seen as a vital component of third stream.

Miguel del Águila is an Uruguayan-born, American composer of contemporary classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maria Baptist</span> German musician and professor

Maria Baptist is a German musician and professor.

<i>Standards in Silhouette</i> 1959 studio album by Stan Kenton

Standards in Silhouette is an album recorded in September 1959 by Stan Kenton and his orchestra. The entire set of arrangements for the LP were written by Bill Mathieu. This recording stands alone in approach and style; Kenton himself only plays on "Django" and every standard is done at a slow, ballad tempo with very sparse, effusive writing.

<i>City of Glass</i> (Stan Kenton album) 1951 studio album by Stan Kenton

City of Glass, an album originally issued as a 10" LP by Stan Kenton, consists entirely of the music of Bob Graettinger. The original album has been reconstituted in different LP re-issues, and the entire set of Kenton/Graettinger Capitol Records sessions is on the digital CD City of Glass.

<i>Adventures in Jazz</i> (album) 1962 studio album by Stan Kenton

Adventures in Jazz is an album by the Stan Kenton Orchestra, recorded in late 1961 but not released until about a year later in November 1962. The album won a Grammy Award in the category for Best Jazz Performance – Large Group (Instrumental) category in 1963. This would be Kenton's second Grammy honor in as many years with the first being Kenton's West Side Story winning the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album in 1962. Adventures In Jazz was also nominated for Best Engineered recording for the 1963 Grammys. The 1999 CD re-issue of Adventures In Jazz is augmented with two alternate takes from the original recording sessions and one track from Kenton's release Sophisticated Approach.

John Buckley is an Irish composer and pedagogue, a co-founder of the Ennis Summer School and member of Aosdána.

References

  1. 1 2 Carey, Norman (2002-03-01). "W. A. Mathieu. Harmonic Experience. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1997". Music Theory Spectrum. 24 (1): 121–134. doi:10.1525/mts.2002.24.1.121. ISSN   0195-6167.
  2. Grimm, William (8 Oct 2002). "Stan Kenton: Standards in Silhouette". All About Jazz. Retrieved 2019-04-08.
  3. Coda Magazine: Issue 319–330
  4. Yang, Chien-chang (2000). "Review of Harmonic Experience: Tonal harmony from its natural origins to its modern expression". Notes. 56 (3): 687–689. ISSN   0027-4380. JSTOR   899661.
  5. "Harmonic Experience". innertraditions.com. Retrieved 2019-04-04.