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Andrew Thomas Kuster is an American writer, composer, and conductor.
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Andrew Thomas Kuster is an American writer, composer, and conductor.
Kuster was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Thomas and Judy Kuster. He grew up in New Ulm, Minnesota. After attending Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota, he earned a Bachelor of Music in Composition from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. At St. Olaf he studied composition with Arthur Campbell and performed with the St. Olaf Choir under Kenneth Jennings and Anton Armstrong. He earned a Master of Music in Composition from Minnesota State University, Mankato, where he studied with Steve Heitzeg. In 2000, he received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in the Literature and Performance of Choral Music from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he studied with Joan Catoni Conlon, Lawrence Kaptein, Lynn Whitten, William Kearns, and Alan Luhring. He worked as a text reviewer for the Text Creation Partnership at the University of Michigan and as staff editor for the Kurt Weill Foundation in New York City. He is a member of the American Choral Directors Association Research and Publications Committee. From 1997 to 2011 he was married to the composer Kristin Kuster. Currently, he lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Dr. Kuster works as Executive Editor of scholarly editions at Music of the United States of America.
He has written and composed music for Lessons With Hypatia, a fictionalized historical account of the philosopher Hypatia and the burning of the Library of Alexandria for music theater, and The Soulless, a work for music theater set about love, death, and discovering joy in the unexpected.
He regularly organizes and conducts performances and recordings of music for chamber chorus. He has worked closely with University of Michigan faculty composers Evan Chambers and Andy Kirshner in performances and recordings of their new works. He has specialized in music by Stravinsky, Messiaen, Amy Beach, Kurt Weill, and Heinrich Schütz. His conducting responsibilities have included the University of Colorado Women's Chorus, the Boulder Chorale, and the associate conductor of the University Musical Society Choral Union in Ann Arbor.
He co-edited the critical edition of Zaubernacht by Kurt Weill ( ISBN 978-0-913574-65-2) and has published several scholarly performing editions of music by Heinrich Schütz, including Geistliche Chor-Music ( ISBN 1-4116-4243-0). His articles about Webern, Rachmaninoff, and Britten have appeared in the Choral Journal, and A-R Editions has published his critical edition of Amy Beach's The Sea-Fairies ( ISBN 0-89579-435-7).
In 2001, the American Choral Directors Association awarded Dr. Kuster the Julius Herford Prize for Distinguished Doctoral Research in Choral Music for his writing about Igor Stravinsky's twelve-tone choral works.
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Kurt Julian Weill was a German composer, active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work, The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose, Gebrauchsmusik. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943.
Heinrich Schütz was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as one of the most important composers of the 17th century. He is credited with bringing the Italian style to Germany and continuing its evolution from the Renaissance into the Early Baroque. Most of his surviving music was written for the Lutheran church, primarily for the Electoral Chapel in Dresden. He wrote what is traditionally considered to be the first German opera, Dafne, performed at Torgau in 1627, the music of which has since been lost, along with nearly all of his ceremonial and theatrical scores.
Michael Praetorius was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms based on Protestant hymns.
Samuel Scheidt was a German composer, organist and teacher of the early Baroque era.
Michael Kevin Daugherty is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. He is influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism. Daugherty's notable works include his Superman comic book-inspired Metropolis Symphony for Orchestra (1988–93), Dead Elvis for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Ensemble (1993), Jackie O (1997), Niagara Falls for Symphonic Band (1997), UFO for Solo Percussion and Orchestra (1999) and for Symphonic Band (2000), Bells for Stokowski from Philadelphia Stories for Orchestra (2001) and for Symphonic Band (2002), Fire and Blood for Solo Violin and Orchestra (2003) inspired by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Time Machine for Three Conductors and Orchestra (2003), Ghost Ranch for Orchestra (2005), Deus ex Machina for Piano and Orchestra (2007), Labyrinth of Love for Soprano and Chamber Winds (2012), American Gothic for Orchestra (2013), and Tales of Hemingway for Cello and Orchestra (2015). Daugherty has been described by The Times (London) as "a master icon maker" with a "maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear."
Gebrauchsmusik is a German term, meaning "utility music", for music that exists not only for its own sake, but which was composed for some specific, identifiable purpose. This purpose can be a particular historical event, like a political rally or a military ceremony, or it can be more general, as with music written to accompany dance, or music written for amateurs or students to perform.
Kristin P. Kuster is an American composer of symphonic, vocal and chamber music.
Richard Toensing was an American composer and music educator. He studied composition at St. Olaf College and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1967. His most notable teachers include Ross Lee Finney and Leslie Bassett.
Elegy for J.F.K. is a piece of vocal music composed by the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky in 1964, commemorating the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Heinrich Albert was a German composer and poet of the 17th century. He was a member of the Königsberg Poetic Society. As a song composer, he was strongly influenced by Heinrich Schütz.
Heinrich Schwemmer was a German music teacher and composer.
Stephen Chatman is an American-born Canadian composer residing in Vancouver. His compositions have been performed across Canada and in the United States.
Ingeborg Reichelt is a German soprano singer known for her interpretation of works by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Threni: id est Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae, usually referred to simply as Threni, is a musical setting by Igor Stravinsky of verses from the Book of Lamentations in the Latin of the Vulgate, for solo singers, chorus and orchestra. It is important among Stravinsky's compositions as his first and longest completely dodecaphonic work, but is not often performed. It has been described as "austere" but also as a "culminating point" in his career as an artist, "important both spiritually and stylistically" and "the most ambitious and structurally the most complex" of all his religious compositions, and even "among Stravinsky's greatest works".
A singular desire to bring to Boston's listeners music that isn’t being heard anywhere else has inspired Cantata Singers’ programming for 50 years.
Matteo Messori is an Italian keyboard player, conductor, musicologist, composer and teacher. He performs on period instruments including the harpsichord, pipe organ, clavichord and pedal piano. He founded the early music ensemble Cappella Augustana.
Cantiones sacrae, Op. 4, is a collection of forty different pieces of vocal sacred music on Latin texts, composed by Heinrich Schütz and first published in 1625. The pieces have individual numbers 53 to 93 in the Schütz-Werke-Verzeichnis (SWV), the catalogue of his works. The general title Cantiones sacrae was common at the time and was used by many composers, including Palestrina, Byrd and Tallis and Hans Leo Hassler (1591).
Geistliche Chormusik is a collection of motets on German texts for choir by Heinrich Schütz. It was printed in Dresden in 1648 as his Opus Undecimum, and comprises 29 individual settings for five to seven voices, which were assigned numbers 369 to 397 in the Schütz-Werke-Verzeichnis (SWV). The original title was Geistliche Chor-Music, Erster Theil which indicates that Schütz planned a second part. It is also known as Geistliche Chor-Music 1648. The collection contains earlier and new works and a German arrangement of a motet by Andrea Gabrieli.
Karl Vötterle was a German music publisher.
Thomas Walter Buchholz is a German composer and music educator.
