(b Seattle, 26 May 1938). American composer and pianist. He studied with Milhaud at Mills College (1958-61) and Leland Smith at Stanford (1961-4) and began teaching at the University of Michigan in 1973. As a pianist he has taken a leading part in the revival of ragtime and other American vernacular music. His works are polystylistic and concerned with momentous philosophical and religious themes: they include a monumental setting of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience for soloists, choirs and orchestra (1956-81).
Bolcom, William (William Elden Bolcom), 1938-, American composer, b. Seattle, Wash. He attended the Univ. of Washington (B.A., 1958) and studied composition at Mills College and Stanford (D.M.A., 1964). Teaching at various colleges since 1965, he has been on the faculty of the Univ. of Michigan since 1973. Bolcom was involved in the 1960s revival of ragtime and has given many piano recitals of American popular songs, often accompanying his wife, the mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. As a composer, he has worked in a wide variety of genres-symphonic, e.g., Fantasia concertante (1985); chamber music, e.g., New Etudes for Piano (1977-86, Pulitzer); and oratorio, e.g., Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1982). He has also written several operas, e.g., McTeague (1992); A View from the Bridge (1999), adapted from the Arthur Miller play; and A Wedding (2004), adapted from a Robert Altman film. Bolcom's eclectic approach represents a broad cross-fertilization of idioms, and his work typically combines a number of musical styles.
Born on May 26, 1938, in Seattle, WA; son of Robert Bolcom (an industrial lightbulb salesman) and Virginia Bolcom (an elementary school teacher); married Joan Morris (a mezzo-soprano singer), 1975. Education: University of Washington, B.A., 1958; Stanford University, Ph.D., 1964; studied at Mills College and Paris Conservatoire de Musiq.
Began studying music at the University of Washington at the age of 11; earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Washington, 1958; attended Paris Conservatoire de Musiq, 1961; won 2e Prix in Composition at Paris Conservatoire, 1965; earned first Guggenheim fellowship, 1965; served as composer-in-residence at the Yale University Drama School and the New York University School of the Arts, 1968-70; joined faculty at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1973; began recording music with wife Joan Morris, late 1970s; premiered Fantasia Concertante at the Vienna Philharmonic, 1986; began writing operas for Chicago Lyric Opera, 1990s.
Awards: BMI Award, 1953; Paris Conservatoire de Musiq, 2e Prix in Composition, 1965; Guggenheim Fellowships, 1965, 1968; Academy of Arts and Letters, Marc Blizstein Award, for Dynamite Tonight, 1966; Koussevitzky Foundation Award for First Piano Quartet, 1976, and for Lyric Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, 1993; Pulitzer Prize, for 12 New Etudes for Piano, 1988; State of Michigan, Governor's Arts Award.
Addresses:Office—University of Michigan School of Music, 1100 Baits Dr., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2085. Website—William Bolcom Official Website: http://www.bolcomandmorris.com/bolcom.html. E-mail—wbolcom@umich.edu.
Composer, pianist
Regarded as one of the most versatile of contemporary American composers, William Bolcom has experimented with a wide array of classical forms, including chamber music, piano works, song cycles, opera, and symphonies. An accomplished pianist as well, he is a lively performer, regularly engaging in cabaret performances with his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. Bolcom has cited Charles Ives as his greatest influence and, like Ives, he has often focused on American styles, themes and characters while drawing on a wide array of musical forms. He has adapted a novel by Frank Norris, a screenplay by Robert Altman, and the poetry of his peers Richard Tillinghast and Alice Fulton at the University of Michigan. One of his best-known compositions, Songs of Innocence and Experience, centers on the work of the British Romantic poet William Blake.
Bolcom was born in Seattle, Washington, to Robert Bolcom, an industrial lightbulb salesman, and Virginia Bolcom, an elementary school teacher and classical music enthusiast. By the time William Bolcom was four years old, his talent for composition became evident to his parents, who ignored suggestions that they should rush their son into a stage career. Instead, he
began his formal music education at the University of Washington at the age of 11, the earliest age at which the school would accept music students. There he studied composition with John Verall and piano with Berthe Poncy Jacobson. "I am so thankful my parents put their foot down," Bolcom told the University of Washington's alumni magazine, Columns. "Most child prodigies never really survive after that. They are all miserable because they have been exploited."
Bolcom earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in 1958 where, in addition to studying music, he took poetry courses with Pulitzer Prizewinning poet Theodore Roethke. He supported himself by performing at fraternity parties, burlesque shows, and church services. Following graduation he studied at Mills College in Oakland, California, with Darius Milhaud, who shared the younger composer's interest in far-ranging styles. In 1961 he joined Milhaud at the Paris Conservatoire de Musiq, where he also studied with Olivier Messiaen. Bolcom returned to the United States to study with Leland Smith at Stanford University. He completed his doctorate in music at Stanford in 1964, and then returned to the Paris Conservatoire, where he was awarded the 2e Prix in Composition in 1965. He earned the first of two prestigious Guggenheim fellowships that year as well.
While in Europe, Bolcom began writing scores for West German theaters, and he continued in a similar vein in the United States, working for Stanford University, Lincoln Center in New York, and the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. During this time he also completed the cabaret-influenced opera Dynamite Tonight, written with librettist Arnold Weinstein, for which he was awarded the Marc Blizstein Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters. From 1968 through 1970, Bolcom served as composer-in-residence at the Yale University Drama School and the New York University School of the Arts. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan's School of Music in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1973. That same year he released a recording of Gershwin's compositions that was named Record of the Year by Stereo Review magazine.
In 1975 Bolcom married mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, and the two began performing and recording popular music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The pair has continued to stage cabaret-style concerts in dinner clubs. Bolcom continued to compose and perform routinely as well. One of his most ambitious works, a setting of poet William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, premiered at the Stuttgart Opera in 1984. Bolcom had conceived of the project at an early age. "I was 17 when I resolved some day to set the Songs of Innocence and Experience, "he told the Financial Times of London. "I realized that the texts were eclectic in style and in turn required diverse musical approaches. It was Blake that allowed me to advance my multifarious types of style. And it's colored everything I have done since." Washington Post writer Pierre Ruhe noted the wide range of elements present in the work. "It borrows from so many camps and styles that it is practically a compendium of music in the 20th century," he wrote. "In 46 songs he evokes Mahler,
country and western, harsh atonality, '60s folk-rock, neoclassicism, ethnic pop, Broadway, and reggae."
Bolcom's Fantasia Concertante for viola, cello, and orchestra premiered in 1986 at the Vienna Philharmonic. Two years later Bolcom was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his 12 New Etudes for Piano, which was first performed in its entirety in Philadelphia by pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin on March 30, 1987.
In the 1990s Bolcom began a fruitful relationship with the Chicago Lyric Opera, for which he has written three major operas: McTeague, A View from the Bridge, and A Wedding. McTeague, which premiered in 1992, was based on the Frank Norris novel of the same name. Bolcom collaborated with filmmaker Robert Altman on the production. In 1999 playwright Arthur Miller served as librettist for his 1955 work A View from the Bridge, and Bolcom also composed the soundtrack for actor/director John Turturro's film Illuminata that same year. Bolcom and Altman reunited in 2004 for A Wedding, an operatic adaptation of Altman's 1984 film of the same name. "It's our hope that 100 years from now, just as people speak of Verdi in Venice and Milan and Rossini in Naples, they will speak of Bolcom in Chicago," the Lyric Opera's general director, William Mason, told the Financial Times.
Bolcom is often referred to as "eclectic," or as a "synthesizer" of disparate sounds, but he has bristled at both descriptions. "I'm interested in showing how different elements relate. My music tries to make the relationships clear. The more I look to the future of music the more I keep coming back to the past. They come together," he told the New York Times. "If you mix popular and classical forms, it brings life to both genres," he explained in Columns. "By making them touch, something fresh, new, and organic grows. I like the traditional and the newest culture coexisting in the same piece. The classical masters had that possibility—Haydn is full of pop tunes—and I want it, too."
Director Leonard Slatkin, who has worked with Bolcom on numerous projects, hailed the artist as an early and important collagist. "Bolcom was one of the first in our time to do it," he told the Washington Post. "Young composers might not acknowledge Bolcom as an influence, but someone had to break that psychological barrier and provide a means for a breakthrough. I think he'll be one of the people who sums up what music in this century is all about."
Selected discography Bolcom: 12 New Etudes/Wolpe: Battle Piece (composer), New World Records, 1992. Bolcom: Symphony No. 4 (composer), New World Records, 1992. Blue Skies: Songs by Irving Berlin (performer), Nonesuch, 1992. Gershwin: Piano Music/Songs (performer), Nonesuch, 1992. Violin Concerto/Fantasia Concertante/Fifth Symphony (composer), Polygram, 1992. Orchids in the Moonlight–Songs of Youmans (performer), Arabesque Recordings, 1996. Sure on the Shining Night (composer), Hyperion, 1997. Moonlight Bay: Songs As Is and Songs As Was (performer), Albany Records. 1999. Piano Rags (composer), Albany Records, 1999. Illuminata soundtrack (composer), Hybrid Recordings, 1999. Devil's Dance (composer), Deutsche Grammophon, 2000. Cabaret Songs (composer), BIS, 2001. Bolcom: A View from the Bridge (composer), New World Records, 2001. Bolcom: Caberet Songs Vols.3&4 (performer), Centaur, 2001. Battle Pieces (performer), Albany, 2003. Battle Pieces (performer), Equillibrium, 2003. Blue: Complete Cabaret Songs of Bolcom and Arnold (composer), Summit Records, 2003. Preludes & Postludes for the Year Beginning 9/1/2001 (composer), Gothic, 2003. Songs of Innocence and Experience (composer), Naxos, 2004.
Sources Periodicals Columns, June 2003. Financial Times (London, England), December 10, 2004. New York Times, January 18, 1995; December 11, 2004;. Washington Post, February 22, 1998.
William Bolcom (born 1938 in Seattle, WA) is a modern American composer and pianist, known for his eclectic compositions in all genres and for his piano accompaniment with wife and singer Joan Morris. Bolcom's most acclaimed work is his lavish setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, which took 25 years to compose. His three operas, McTeague, A View from the Bridge, and A Wedding, have also brought critical attention, though the list of Bolcom's works also contain several concertos, symphonies, chamber music, cabaret songs, and a body of keyboard pieces, including the popular Three Ghost Rags. ~ Blair Sanderson, Rovi
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Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano. In the fall of 1994, he was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan, a position which he still holds. In 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Notable students include John Edgar Berners, Gabriela Lena Frank, and David Karl Gompper.
Performance career
As a pianist, Bolcom has performed and recorded frequently in collaboration with Joan Morris, whom he married in 1975 (Johnson 2001). Bolcom and Morris have recorded twenty albums together, beginning with After the Ball, a collection of popular songs from around the turn of the 20th century. Their primary specialties in both concerts and recordings are showtunes, parlour, and popular songs from the late 19th and early 20th century, by Henry Russell, Henry Clay Work, and others, and cabaret songs (often from failed musicals). As a soloist, Bolcom has recorded his own compositions, as well as music by Gershwin and Milhaud (Johnson 2001).
Works
Bolcom's earliest compositions employed serial technique, under the influence of Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luciano Berio, whose music he particularly admired. In the 1960s he gradually began to embrace an eclectic use of a wider variety of musical styles. His goal has been to erase boundaries between popular and art music (Johnson 2001).
He has composed three major operas, McTeague, A View From the Bridge, and A Wedding, all commissioned and premiered by the Lyric Opera of Chicago conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. All were composed with librettist Arnold Weinstein, sometimes in collaboration with other writers. McTeague, based on the 1899 novel by Frank Norris, with libretto by Weinstein, was premiered on October 31, 1992. A View from the Bridge, with libretto by Weinstein and Arthur Miller, was premiered October 9, 1999. A Wedding, based on the 1978 motion picture by Robert Altman and John Considine, with libretto by Weinstein and Altman, was premiered on December 11, 2004.
He has also composed concertos such as Lyric Concerto for Flute and Orchestra for James Galway, the Concerto in D for Violin and Orchestra for Sergiu Luca, the Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra for Stanley Drucker, and Concert Suite for alto saxophone and band, composed for University of Michigan professor Donald Sinta in 1998. He composed his concerto "Gaea for Two Pianos Left Hand, and Orchestra" for Gary Graffman and Leon Fleisher, both of whom have suffered from debilitating problems with their right hands. It received its first performance on April 11, 1996 by the Baltimore Symphony conducted by David Zinman. The concerto is constructed so that it can be performed in one of three ways, with either piano part alone with reduced orchestra, or with both piano parts and the two reduced orchestras combined into a full orchestra. This structure mimics that of a similar three-in-one work by his teacher, Milhaud.
Bolcom's other works include eight symphonies, eleven string quartets, four violin sonatas, a number of piano rags (one written in collaboration with William Albright), four volumes of cabaret songs, three musical theater works ("Casino Paradise," "Dynamite Tonite," and "Greatshot"; all with Weinstein), and a one-act chamber opera, "Lucrezia," with librettist Mark Campbell. William Bolcom was also commissioned to write "Recuerdos" for Two Pianos by The Dranoff International Two Piano Foundation.
List of notable works
1957: First Symphony
1964: Symphony No. 2 "Oracles"
1967: Black Host (Nonesuch H-71260)
1970: Graceful Ghost Rag
1971: Commedia (for "Almost" 18th Century Orchestra)
2010: Romanza (for solo violin and string orchestra)
2010: La fantome du Clavecin
Bolcom Festival in 2007
VocalEssence celebrated the music of William Bolcom with a two-week festival in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota in April 2007. Nine different performances and a number of master classes were part of the festival. The spotlight performance was of Bolcom's setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, performed in Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis with over 400 musicians performing under projections of Blake's accompanying artwork by Wendell K. Harrington.
Music Now Fest 2009
Eastern Michigan University Celebrated its 16th Biennial Contemporary Music Festival by featuring William Bolcom as a guest composer. The three day festival showcased a range of Bolcom's compositions as well as a discussion on "Musical Grass-Roots" led by Bolcom himself.
References
Johnson, Steven. 2001. "Bolcom, William (Elden)". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
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