Andrew Janes

American Composer Biographies

Orchestral Literature
John Coolidge Adams (b. February 15, 1947, Worcester,
Mass.)
American composer/conductor whose works are among
the most performed contemporary pieces of classical music.
Adams became proficient on the clarinet at an early
age, and by his teenage years was composing. His teachers
at Harvard (A.B., 1969; M.A., 1971) included Leon Kirchner
and Roger Sessions. After graduation he moved to California,
where from 1972 to 1982 he taught at the San Francisco
Conservatory of Music. In 1978 he founded and directed the
San Francisco Symphony Orchestras series New and
Unusual Music, and he was composer in residence with
the orchestra from 1982 to 1985. From 2003 through 2007
he held the composers chair at Carnegie Hall in New York
City, where he founded the eclectic and diverse In Your Ear
festival.
His use of minimalist techniquescharacterized by
repetition and simplicitycame to be tempered by
expressive, even neo-Romantic, elements. His works
encompass a wide range of genres and include influential
works such as Shaker Loops (1978), Grand Pianola
Music (198182), Harmonielehre (198485), for orchestra, an
homage to Arnold Schoenberg, whose music was the
antithesis of minimalism; and Wound-Dresser (1988).
Adamss most ambitious works, however, were his
operas. Nixon in China (1987) took as its subject the visit of
U.S. Pres. Richard M. Nixon to China in 1972. The Death of
Klinghoffer (1991) was based on the hijacking by Palestinian
terrorists of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 and the
killing of a disabled Jewish passenger. The composers
third opera, Doctor Atomic (2005), was the story of the

scientists in Los Alamos, N.M., U.S., who during World War II

devised the first atomic bomb.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the New
York Philharmonic Orchestra and Lincoln Center for the
Performing Arts in New York City commissioned a work from
Adams: On the Transmigration of Souls, for orchestra,
chorus, childrens choir, and prerecorded sound track, first
performed Sept. 19, 2002. The text of the work derived from
three sources: fragments from notices posted at the World
Trade Center site by friends and relatives of the missing,
interviews published in the New York Times, and randomly
chosen names of victims. For this composition Adams was
awarded the 2003 Pullitzer Prize in music; the recording won
three 2004 Grammy Awards.
He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and
Letters in 1997. Also in 1997 he was named Composer of the
Year by the venerable magazine Musical America. A festival
in his honor at Lincoln Center in April and May of 2003 was
the most extensive single-composer festival that had ever
been held there.
Samuel Adams (b. 1985, San Francisco, CA)
Son of John Adams, Samuel Adams is a composer of
acoustic and electroacoustic music. Adams grew up in the
San Francisco Bay Area, where he studied composition and
electroacoustic music at Stanford University while also active
as a jazz bassist in San Francisco. Prior to working in New
York City between 2010 and 2014, Adams received a
master's degree in composition from Yale, where he studied
primarily with Martin Bresnick. He currently lives and works
in Chicago, Illinois.
His inventively orchestrated and atmospheric works,
hailed as "wondrously alluring" (The San Francisco
Chronicle), thoroughly ingenious" (The San Francisco
Examiner) and mesmerizing, music of a composer with a
personal voice and keen imagination (The New York Times),

draw from a diverse array of musical influences, including

noise music, jazz, and field recording.
He has received commissions from Carnegie Hall, San
Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, ACJW (The
Academy, a program of Carnegie Hall, Juilliard, and The Weill
Institute of Music) and St. Lawrence String Quartet. Adams
was recently named a Mead composer-in-residence with the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In the fall of 2014, his Drift
and Providence, a work co-commissioned by the San
Francisco Symphony and New World Symphony, was
featured as part of the San Francisco Symphonys national
tour.

George Gershwin (1898-1937; Brooklyn, NY)

Born Jacob Gershowitz to Russian-Jewish immigrants, George
Gershwin began to show musical gifts at a very young age.
As a boy he could play popular and classical works on his
brothers piano by ear. By age 15, he quit school to study
music and play professionally in New Yorks Tin Pan Alley. Six
years later, he had his first hit Swanee and his first
Broadway show La, La, Lucille. He wrote his most famous
work, the Rhapsody in Blue, for Paul Whiteman in 1924 upon
his request, and did so in just 3 weeks time after forgetting
about the commission. His success would continue with
Funny F ace in 1927, American in Paris (1928), Girl
Crazy (1929), Of Thee I Sing (1931, and the first musical
to win the Pullitzer Prize), and the first true American opera,
Porgy and Bess (1935).
He then moved to Hollywood, and his works were
frequently performed by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers. In
1937 he fell in love with Paulette Goddard, who was married
to Charlie Chaplin at the time. After a spell of unrequited
love, Gershwin began experiencing headaches, which were
fatefully written off as stress-related. After being diagnosed
with a brain tumor, he passed away during surgery in 1937,
at just 38 years old.

Henry Brant (1913-2008; born in Montreal, moved to NY in

1929)
Henry Brant is considered to be one of the principal pioneers
of 20th Century spatial music, writing works in which the
planned positioning of the performers throughout the hall, as
well as on stage, is an essential factor in the composing
scheme. Brant composed and conducted for radio, film,
ballet, and jazz groups, while also composing experimentally
for the concert stage. In his career, Brant has garnered major
international recognition, including numerous awards and
accolades ranging from two Guggenheim Fellowships, the
Prix Italia (being the first American to win this award), and
the American Music Center's Letter of Distinction, to major
international retrospectives of his work and the designation
of a Henry Brant Week in Boston by Mayor Kevin White.
Brant's work has spanned the spectrum of styles and genres
from tone poems and chamber music to ritual oratorios and
symphonies. The 1984 work Fire in the Amstel is written for
four boatloads of 25 flutes each, four jazz drummers, four
church carillons, three brass bands and four street organs. A
more recent work Millennium 2 calls for a 35-piece brass
orchestra, jazz combo, percussion ensemble, gospel choir,
gamelan ensemble, bluegrass group, boy's choir, three
pianos, organ and ten vocal soloists. At age 88, Brant
remains a dynamic and prolific figure in modern music: his
1997 spatial work, Festive Eighty, had its first performance in
Central Park in July, 1997, and in Vienna's Musikverein, the
Vienna Radio Orchestra performed the premiere of Brant's
completion of Schubert's B minor Symphony on October 14,
1997.
Brant turned 88 on September 15, 2001, and appeared
onstage as organist for the premiere of his work Ice Field,
written for over 100 orchestral musicians, as Michael Tilson
Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony presented its

world premiere at Davies Symphony Hall. The work won the

Pullitzer Prize for music in 2002.
Anthony Vine (b. 1988, Ohio)
Anthony Vine is a Brooklyn-based composer of acoustic
and electroacoustic concert music, similar to Samuel Adams.
Vine studied composition with Huck Hodge at the University
of Washington (MM), and wit Thomas Wells at the Ohio State
University (BM).
His upcoming and previous collaborations inclue
performances by the Minnesota orchestra, Ensemble
Surplus, Pascal Gallois, Bearthhoven, and the Illinois Modern
Ensemble, among others. His music has been programmed
at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Internationales
Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Minnesota Orchestra Composer
Institute, Composit New Music Festivak, and more.
Vine is also the founder and executive director of the
Columbus//NYC New Music Exchange, a programming and
outreach initiatice that seeks to build relationships between
the contemporart music communities of Columbus, Ohio and
NYC.
Matthew Browne (b. 1988 in Burlington, Vermont)
Composer Matthew Browne strives to create music that
meets Sergei Diaghilevs famous challenge to Jean Cocteau:
Astonish me!, through incorporating such eclectic
influences as the timbral imagination and playfulness of
Gyrgy Ligeti, the shocking and humorous eclecticism of
Alfred Schnittke, and the relentless rhythmic energy of Igor
Stravinsky. His music has been described as compelling
(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) and beautifully crafted and
considered (Whats On London).

Matthew has had the honor to collaborate with such

ensembles as the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the
Villiers Quartet, the Donald Sinta Quartet, the Tesla Quartet,
and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra. His
music has been performed for, and given masterclasses by
such renowned artists as Otis Murphy, George Crumb, and
the Kronos String Quartet.

Recently, Matthews music has received honors such as an

ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers award (2014), a BMI
Student Composer award (2015), winner of the New England
Philharmonic Call for Scores (2014), participant at the
Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute (2016), winner of
the American Viola Societys Maurice Gardner Composition
award (2014), and a residency at the Milwaukee Symphony
Orchestras First Annual Composers Institute (2013).
Matthew holds a Master of Music in Music Composition from
the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a Bachelor of Music
from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is currently a
Doctoral of Musical Arts candidate in Music Composition from
the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Previous teachers
include Michael Daugherty, Kristin Kuster, Carter Pann, and
Daniel Kellogg.