John Corigliano
2007-2008 COMPOSER OF THE YEAR
John Corigliano is one of the finest and most widely-recognized American composers. The dozens of citations, doctorates and other honors he has received include all of the most important music awards — several Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No.2, a Grawemeyer, and an Academy Award for his score to Francois Girard's 1997 film The Red Violin. One of the few living composers to have a string quartet named after him, Corigliano's work has been performed by some of the most visible orchestras, soloists and chamber musicians in the world, and recorded on the Sony, RCA, BMG, Telarc, Erato, Ondine, New World and CRI labels.
Corigliano's music most often builds a characteristic expressive melody into large-scale structures of compelling logic and transparency. His reputation as a conservative is inaccurate: attentive listening reveals a maverick imagination, an artist who has taken traditional notions like "symphony" or "concerto" and within them found a language all his own, drawn as much from his American forbears as from the explorations of the post-war European avant garde. "You must understand the importance of the past," says Corigliano, "but if you don't realize the importance of the present and the future, you don't nourish that — and our art form does not — then it's like a tree that grows no new shoots. Without new shoots the tree dies."
The composer was born in 1938 into a distinguished musical family: his father, John Corigliano, Sr., served as concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for almost 30 years, encompassing the tenures of both Toscanini and Bernstein. The younger Corigliano first came to prominence in 1964 when, at the age of 26, his Sonata for Violin and Piano was the first and only winner of the chamber-music competition of the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds in Italy. Support from Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation followed, as well as important commissions. For the New York Philharmonic he composed his Vocalise, Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra and Fantasia on an Ostinato; for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he wrote Poem in October; for the New York State Council on the Arts he wrote the Oboe Concerto; for flute phenomenon James Galway he composed the Pied Piper Fantasy. The Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned and introduced his Promenade Overture, as well as the Symphony No.2; the National Symphony Orchestra commissioned the evening-length A Dylan Thomas Trilogy.
Perhaps the most important symphonist of his era, Corigliano has to date written three symphonies, each a wholly separate landscape unto itself. Symphony No. 1 (1991), commissioned by Meet the Composer for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when he was composer-in-residence, channeled Corigliano's personal grief over the loss of friends to the AIDS crisis into music of immense power, color, drama, and scope. Performed worldwide by over 150 orchestras and twice recorded, this symphony earned him the prestigious Grawemeyer Award. His Symphony No.2, a rethinking and expansion of the haunted, surreal and glitteringly virtuosic String Quartet, was introduced by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2000 and earned him the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. The third symphony may be his most ambitious and remarkable yet: scored simultaneously for wind orchestra and a multitude of wind ensembles, Corigliano's excessive, crazed, and grandly barbarous “Circus Maximus,” commissioned by the University of Texas at Austin Wind Ensemble, had its New York premiere in 2005 at Carnegie Hall.
Corigliano made his operatic debut with The Ghosts of Versailles (1991,) a rangy, inventive, and emotional look at the costs of the French Revolution through the eyes of Beaumarchais, author of the famed Figaro trilogy. The Metropolitan Opera's first commission in three decades, The Ghosts of Versailles succeeded brilliantly with both critics and audiences; both its original engagement (and, later, its 1994 revival) boasted completely sold-out runs, and that season Corigliano was both elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and named Musical America's first-ever "Composer of the Year." The Chicago Lyric Opera performed the work in their 1995 season, Hannover Opera gave the German premiere in 1999, and several new productions are in the works. The Ghosts of Versailles remains Corigliano's only work expressly for the opera stage, but his other large-scale vocal works show a comparably lavish and powerful sense of vocal theatre. A Dylan Thomas Trilogy revisits and combines three of Corigliano's earlier settings of this poet (Fern Hill, Poem in October and Poem on His Birthday) into a "memory play in the form of an oratorio," scored for boy soprano, tenor, baritone, chorus and orchestra. Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan boldly refashions texts by the iconic songwriter into a compelling monodrama, by turns savage, yearning and hallucinatory. Begun as a song cycle for piano and soprano in 2000, Corigliano rescored the piece for full orchestra and amplified soprano in 2004.
Equally active as a creator of chamber music, Corigliano's catalogue includes (besides the Violin Sonata and the String Quartet) the virtuoso showpieces Etude Fantasy and Fantasia on an Ostinato for solo piano; Phantasmagoria, a suite of themes from The Ghosts of Versailles, for cello and for piano (as well as for orchestra); Fancy on a Bach Air for solo cello (recorded on Sony by Yo-Yo Ma); and the unique Chiaroscuro, for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart. Of late, he's ventured into the cabaret, setting Mark Adamo's lyrics Marvelous Invention and Dodecaphonia (or They Call Her Twelve-Tone Rose) for William Bolcom and Joan Morris.
Corigliano serves on the faculty at the Juilliard School of Music, and holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York, which recently established a composition scholarship in his name. He lives in New York City and in Kent Cliffs, New York.
ABOUT THE COMPOSER OF THE YEAR PROGRAM
The PSO began its Composer of the Year program in 2001, in an effort to bring audiences and living composers closer together. By focusing on a different composer each season, Pittsburgh audiences are able to build a level of familiarity with the work of living composers whose work they might otherwise encounter only once or twice.
Throughout each season the PSO performs several works by the selected composer and often also commissions a new work from them. The composer participates in ‘Concert Preludes,’ post-concert ‘Artist Chats,’ interviews with local media, and gives lectures at local universities. They also lead the PSO’s Student Composition Reading Session that takes place each spring, selecting one piece from each of the four participating universities to be performed and then discussed in a symposium.
Previous Composers of the Year:
Upcoming Composers of the Year
The Composer of the Year program has been extremely successful in supporting present-day composers and the works they contribute to the musical community. During the 2005/06 season the American Symphony Orchestra League paid the PSO a high honor by using the series as a model for its Meet the Composer Music Alive residency program. This recognition highlighted the dedication of the Pittsburgh Symphony to introducing living composers to the Pittsburgh community and the commitment of the orchestra to commissioning and playing new works.
ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS
AUDIO
PSO PERFORMANCES OF CORIGLIANO IN 2007/08
STUDENT COMPOSITION READING SESSION
The Student Composition Reading Session will take place on March 15, 2008 at Heinz Hall with Composer of the Year John Corigliano and student composers from Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University, University of Pittsburgh, and West Virginia University. Three pieces of student composers have been submitted by each school and the Composer of the Year will select one from each university for the Reading Session. Prior to this event, students will meet with Mr. Corigliano, Mr. Meyer, and orchestra librarians who will simulate what they can expect for the production and presentation of their future works. The selected works will then be played and rehearsed at the Reading Session by Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra members and Resident Conductor Daniel Meyer. There will then be a symposium at which the Composer of the Year, Resident Conductor, orchestra members, faculty members, and audience members will comment on and critique the pieces.
Photos from previous Reading Sessions
2006/07
Student composers with
Composer of the Year
Christopher Theofanidis
2005/06
Student composers with
Composer of the Year
Jennifer Higdon
2004/05
Student composers with
Composer of the Year
Christopher Rouse
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