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Billy Higgins Photo by Dimitri Ianni

Billy Higgins, one of the best-loved and most-recorded drummers in postwar jazz, died on May 3, 2001, at Daniel Freeman Hospital in Inglewood, Calif. He had been in failing health and was awaiting his second liver transplant. He was 64 and lived in Los Angeles.

“Billy Higgins was the drummer of the 20th century who put the music back into the drums,” commented bassist Ron Carter. “He was fabulous. He always played the form, and he was aware not only of the soloists, but also of his rhythm section mates.” Higgins was known for his “light but active swing,” his “delicate symbol sound,” and a “melodic style of drumming,” according to New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff. Carter remembers that Higgins carefully monitored the pitch of the drums as it related to the pitch of the bass.

It was such attention to detail that helped to make Billy Higgins “the consummate professional,” Carter concluded. “He was always on time, with his equipment ready, and he contributed to the general outlook of the group no matter where [we were] or how many people were involved. He made the music feel good.” He got his nickname, “Smiling Billy,” because he always seemed to be in a state of glee while performing.

“His style is well-documented” on over seven hundred recordings, explained pianist Cedar Walton, “but to see Billy in person at his drums was the ultimate jazz experience.” Among the many jazz greats with whom Higgins recorded are Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley; Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Pat Metheny, David Murray, Charles Lloyd, John Scofield, and Mr. Walton himself. Besides playing the drums, he sometimes sang and played guitar.

Mr. Higgins started playing the drums at age 5, and at 14 hooked up with another important young musician, the trumpeter Don Cherry, forming a group called the Jazz Messiahs with saxophonist George Newman. In the mid-fifties, Higgins and Cherry befriended the avant-garde sax player/composer Ornette Coleman. They ended up forming a quartet with Mr. Coleman and bassist Charlie Haden that was devoted to playing Coleman’s music.

Mr. Higgins came to New York with Mr. Coleman for an extended booking at the Five Spot Cafe that began in November 1959. The opening night of that stand, according to Jon Thurber of the Los Angeles Times, was “one of the legendary jazz events of the time. The event crowded the room with every available jazz musician and aficionado.” Once settled in New York, he became more or less the house drummer for Blue Note Records for a fifteen-year period starting in 1964, playing on countless hard-bop recordings.

In the 1970’s he became a regular member of the Cedar Walton Trio, which continued into the late 1990’s. He also found steady work with the Timeless All-Stars, as well as the Hank Jones Trio. By the end of the 70’s Mr. Higgins was releasing his own records, beginning with Soweto, Soldier and Once More.

“Billy Higgins’s talent will never be duplicated – not that any style can be – but his mark on jazz history is indelible,” Mr. Walton wrote in a prepared statement. “Billy Higgins represents four decades of total dedication to his chosen form of American music: jazz.”

Billy was honored with a Grammy Award in 1988 for Best Instrumental Composition, an honor he shared with co-composers Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter for their tune “Call Sheet Blues” from the movie Round Midnight. Billy also appeared in the film, and subsequently worked frequently with the film’s star, the late Dexter Gordon, as a member of the Round Midnight Band.

In addition to his recordings and performances, Higgins was also involved in jazz education activities such as teaching workshops, clinics, and master classes on drums and improvisation. Mr. Higgins was on the faculty of the jazz studies program at the University of California at Los Angeles, and taught at World Stage, a Monday-night program for budding musicians in the Leimert Park section of Los Angeles that he founded with Kamau Daa’oud, a poet.

In March 1996 Mr. Higgins had his first liver transplant and needed another one within 24 hours when it was determined that the first liver was bad. Jazz aficionados were surprised when he began playing again, coming to New York with Mr. Coleman, Mr. Lloyd and Harold Land.

His final performance was at the Los Angeles club Bones and Blues, on Jan. 22, 2001, when his students and his colleagues – including Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Land – played in a benefit to support his fight against liver disease.

He is survived by four sons: Ronald, William Jr., David and Benjamin, all of Los Angeles; two daughters, Ricky and Heidi, both of Los Angeles; a brother, Ronald, of Palmdale CA; a step son, Joseph Walker, a nephew, Billy Thedford, and a fiancée, Glo Harris.

Robert Starer Photo courtesy of Sigma Alpha Iota

Robert Starer, a respected composer of operas, ballets and many orchestral and instrumental works, and the author of two books on rhythm that are widely used by music students, died of heart failure on April 22 in Kingston, N.Y. He was 77.

In a 1994 review of Starer’s piano music, Alex Ross wrote in The New York Times: “When history books are written, Mr. Starer will probably land somewhere in the great open middle of American compositional tradition. His language is sometimes dissonant and even 12-tone in orientation, but it is fundamentally consonant beneath the surface, and his liking for open intervals puts him a shade closer to Copland than, say, to Elliott Carter. Among other qualities, he has a certifiable gift for melody.”

Robert Starer was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for Science and Art by the President of Austria in 1995, and received an Honorary Doctorate from the State University of New York in 1996. He was given a Presidential Citation by the National Federation of Music Clubs in 1997. Mr. Starer was also the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships.

Mr. Starer wrote several pieces for the stage, including three ballets for Martha Graham – Samson Agonistes (1961), Phaedra (1962) and The Lady of the House of Sleep (1978) – as well as Pantagleize, an opera. Pantagleize, composed to his own libretto and adapted from a play by Michel de Ghelderode, had its premiere in 1973.

Mr. Starer also wrote several dramatic works with his companion, the novelist Gail Godwin. These include The Last Lover, a chamber opera (1975), and Apollonia, an opera in two acts, which was given its premiere in 1979 by the Minnesota Opera. They also collaborated on a major concert work, Journals of a Songmaker, composed for the conductor William Steinberg‘s farewell concert as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1976.

His orchestral works have been performed by major orchestras around the world under such conductors as Steinberg, Mitropoulos, Bernstein, and Mehta. Interpreters of his music include Janos Starker, Jaime Laredo, Paula Robison and Leontyne Price. The recording of his Violin Concerto (Itzhak Perlman with the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa) was nominated for a Grammy. CD recordings of his music are available from CRI, VOX, Albany Records, Transcontinental and MMC.

Pianist Justin Kolb met Robert Starer in 1988, and gave the world premiere of the Sonata No. 3 at Weill Hall in 1994. Starer dedicated the work to Kolb. “He had very little to say if you knew the score,” Kolb commented. “He so appreciated it when anyone performed his music.” Kolb is “astounded even now” in remembering how Starer would keep track of these performances. “You would think he wasn’t aware of your performance, and then he would send you a little note” acknowledging the date. Kolb recorded the Sonata as part of a retrospective of Starer’s piano music for the Albany label in 1997

“His music, when played well, is accessible to everyone,” Kolb elaborated. When he has performed Starer’s music, whether in Toronto, Santa Barbara, or Miami, he has always received “a happily enthusiastic response” from the audience. “People can relate to the big pieces and the small pieces. It’s not that the music was ‘dumbed-down.’ It’s that this man could make a melody out of two notes.”

When Kolb decided to record the disc for Albany, Starer suggested that he include some of his famous “student” pieces, as well. Kolb recorded The Contemporary Virtuoso and three pieces from Sketches in Color alongside three more “adult” works. “He wanted to give the kids an opportunity to hear a professional pianist hear their music. He had that kind of a spirit.”

“We had fun when we worked,” Kolb reminisced. “He had the formality, when it was appropriate, of a Viennese elegance, but he [also] had a house on the Upper West Side, and one in Woodstock, of all places. He was a man of spirit and breadth. He led the way for me, and I loved him.”

Mr. Starer was born on Jan. 8, 1924, in Vienna, where he entered the State Academy of Music at age 13. In 1938, as Hitler‘s forces annexed Austria, he watched the German troops march into the city from his bedroom window. Because the Starers were Jewish, they soon left for Jerusalem, where Mr. Starer attended the Palestine Conservatory. During World War II he served with the Royal British Air Force. After the war, he came to New York to continue his education at The Juilliard School. He became an American citizen in 1957.

Retired Juilliard composition professor David Diamond, who first made Robert Starer’s acquaintance in the 1940s, remembers him as “a very profound human being.” “He was a very serious man,” Diamond explained. “His Judaism gave him a seriousness of purpose, of humanity.” Diamond expressed admiration for his late colleague’s music.
“It was wonderfully crafted, and it had a stimulating rhythmic vitality,” he commented. “His lyrical music was very, very beautiful.”

In the summer of 1948, Starer studied composition with Aaron Copland at the Tanglewood Institute. The next year he was appointed to the faculty at Juilliard, teaching there until 1974. Starer was among the elite group of composers selected by William Schuman to implement a new curriculum, “Literature and Materials,” that combines elements of theory, analysis, and music history.

Starer also taught at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York from 1963 to 1991.

Diamond recalls Starer’s excellence as a teacher. “I sat in on one of his classes at the old Juilliard building. He was a very good teacher. He knew his craft – all the techniques of contemporary composition, as well as those of older music, medieval music, even. His students learned a great deal from him.”

One of his students at Brooklyn College was Los Angeles-based composer and conductor Michael Isaacson. Isaacson credits Robert Starer with teaching him “a great lesson in integrity.” “It was a time in my life when I was writing a lot of Broadway incidental music. I would come into his studio with music for a production of [Jean Giraudoux‘s] The Madwoman of Chaillot, and he would say ‘this is very good French music.'” Later, Isaacson came into a lesson with music for Dylan Thomas‘s Under Milk Wood, and Starer’s comment was “this is very good Welsh music.” Predictably, when he brought in music for Ansky’s The Golem, Starer described it as “very nice Polish music.” Finally the student expressed his frustration. “Every week I bring my music in, and you say ‘it’s nice French music,’ and so on…but it’s all my music!” he raged. Isaacson trembled as Starer “turned beet red” and exploded “get out of my studio and don’t come back until you bring me Isaacson music!!”

“He made me a composer,” Isaacson admits. Until that tense moment, he was “an arranger who thought he was a composer.” After the two of them “reconciled,” Isaacson brought him the first pieces of music that he considered his own. “When you’re a beginning composer, you always write more than you have to,” he explained. Starer “eschewed all artifice” in favor of what Isaacson calls “the pure line.” “Any time there was something that didn’t need to be there, he would let you know.” Isaacson’s own writing style is transparent because of the courage that Starer gave him to “believe in each element” that he put into a composition.

After Isaacson graduated from Brooklyn, going on to Eastman for his Ph.D., he continued to correspond with former teacher about new pieces and recordings. “He was a mentor all through my growing years,” Isaacson remembers. “He was always very generous with his approbation and his encouragement.”

Starer was named a Distinguished Professor at C.U.N.Y. in 1986. H. Wiley Hitchcock, Distinguished Professor of Music Emeritus at C.U.N.Y., introduced him at the awarding of the Brooklyn College Presidential Medal in 1986. “Robert Starer is a composer through and through,” Hitchcock commented at the time, “a composer by helpless necessity, a prolific professional, and by now recognized so widely as such that he has trouble filling his commissions – those that he accepts.”

Mr. Starer left an engaging account of his life in his 1987 memoir, Continuo: A Life in Music. In one section of the book he conducts a pointed imaginary conversation with a concertgoer who has walked out of one of his premieres. In 1997 The Overlook Press published The Music Teacher, his first work of fiction.

Hitchcock emphasized that the music community should be grateful to Robert Starer, whose life exemplified Nietzsche‘s statement that “without music, life would be a mistake.” All who worked with him seem to remember him similar reverence. “We lost a giant in Robert Starer,” Michael Isaacson concluded. “He was a giant in the field. Not only was he a great artist, he was also a great role model. We will miss him terribly.”

Besides Ms. Godwin and his son, Daniel, Mr. Starer is survived by a sister, Hanni Weiselberg of Israel, and a grandchild. A funeral service for Mr. Starer was held on April 24, 2001, in Woodstock NY. The service included a performance of the composer’s last work, “Evening,” for soprano and piano, completed on April 20.

Robert Starer’s Sonata for Piano, No. 3

Bill Ivey Photo by Max Hirshfeld

On April 24, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Bill Ivey announced his resignation, effective September 30, 2001, eight months before the end of his four-year term. Ivey has submitted a letter to President George W. Bush informing him of his decision.

“My hope is that by announcing now that I will step down at the end of this fiscal year, the new administration will be able to move efficiently to choose new leadership for the Arts Endowment,” Ivey stated. “I will continue to work aggressively with this Congress to complete the budget appropriations process for Fiscal Year 2002 and to ensure that there is a smooth transition within the Office of Chairman.”

Ivey was unanimously confirmed as NEA Chairman by the United States Senate in May 1998. Since then, he has developed a new strategic plan for the Arts Endowment and has met with more than 250 members of Congress to discuss the crucial role of federal arts support for American artists, arts organizations, and communities. Through these efforts, Ivey achieved a $7 million funding increase, the first such increase for the NEA since 1992. The additional funding is earmarked for the Challenge America program, developed under Ivey’s leadership to support arts education, services for young people, cultural heritage preservation, community partnerships and expanded access to the arts.

A folklorist and musician, Ivey is a staunch protector of America’s living cultural heritage and a forceful voice on national arts policy. As Chairman, he has traveled extensively, giving over 100 speeches and meeting with leaders and representatives of cultural, business, education and civic groups including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, chambers of commerce and Rotary Clubs.

From 1971 to 1998, Ivey was Director of the Country Music Foundation, an accredited nonprofit education and research center in Nashville. He is the first Endowment Chairman who has developed and run a nonprofit cultural organization. Also a teacher and writer, Ivey holds degrees in history, folklore and ethnomusicology.

Ivey’s background in the arts has been crucial to his success at the Endowment, according to John Sparks, Vice President for Government and Public Affairs at the American Symphony Orchestra League. “He came from the world of the arts. He was educated in the history of music. He ran and helped to found the Country Music Hall of Fame, but his roots go beyond country music. He understands and has a passion for [all of] the arts.

Sparks emphasized that Ivey’s way with people has also been a key factor in his ability to run the Endowment. “These days, the Chairman of the NEA has to be able to sit in front of a senator, listen to a lot of difficult and often inaccurate claims, and then be able to respond in a constructive and civil manner, pointing out the facts, and helping the other person to understand his point of view.” Ivey excelled at such work. “Bill Ivey has a manner that is reassuring to the different parties [who] have had to deal with the future of the NEA. He can get across his point without being ‘in your face’ about it. He speaks clearly, and he is friendly and unpretentious. He gave us a lot of confidence in his ability to deal with difficult situations.”

“He was definitely the right person at the right time,” Sparks concluded. “We will be sorry to see him go.”

Beginning in October, Ivey plans to take some time to reflect on all he has learned as Chairman. “This will be my first real break from work in 30 years,” he said. “I’m going to relax, begin several book projects and get ready to take on some new challenges right after the first of the year.”

New York Youth Symphony

Four composers have recently received commissions from the New York Youth Symphony‘s First Music Program. Emily Lenore Doolittle, Anthony Cheung, and John Kaefer will each receive premieres of a new orchestral work in Carnegie Hall during the 2001-2002 Season. In addition, Michael Klingbeil has received the Chamber Music Commission; his new work will be performed in Weill Recital Hall in 2021.

The four selected composers were chosen on the basis of artistic potential, level of craftsmanship, and programming balance. The advisory committee for this year’s commissions consisted of John Corigliano (chair); David Lang, Fred Sherry, Michael Torke, and Charles Wuorinen. Each composer will receive a commissioning fee of $2000.

Of the First Music Commissioning Program, The New York Times writes: “when it comes to making new music a natural part of the concert going experience, few orchestras in the United States can match the record of the New York Youth Symphony.”

Past winners of the First Music Awards include Pulitzer Prize winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis as well as Augusta Read Thomas, Julia Wolfe, and Derek Bermel.

Eric Lyon Photo by Paul Herman Reller

Last month, I shared my enthusiasm for Nick Didkovsky’s fusion of computer programming and composition. This month, I continue my explorations with the work of two other composer/programmers, a generation apart. Reviewing the activities of the latest SEAMUS conference, I was lucky enough to read about the work of Eric Lyon, Assistant Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, and Christopher Ariza, a second-year PhD student at NYU. Both men presented papers at a session on March 2, 2001 entitled “Systems for Composition.” Ariza has developed a program called Athena that is both a powerful set class utility and an algorithmic front-end to the popular Csound acoustic compiler. Lyon has developed a program called Mushroom that puts input sounds through strings of randomly sequenced processors.

There are similarities between the programs of Ariza, Lyon, and Didkovsky. All three composers assigned the computer some “dirty work” that would otherwise take hours. Ariza has the computer search for complicated relationships between set classes, for instance. Didkovsky, Ariza, and Lyon all use the computer to create music samples based on certain specifications. Depending on what they want in a particular composition, they may give the computer very specific parameters, or leave the computer to create random and interesting results, John Cage-style. Most importantly, perhaps, all three composers have written programs that can be easily shared and customized. Thanks to the Internet, two of the three programs (JMSL and Athena) can be downloaded in standalone versions; two of the three can also be accessed directly on the web (JMSL and Mushroom). All three programs can personalized, thanks to their object-oriented design.

For more information on Christopher Ariza’s Athena, click here.

For more information on Eric Lyon’s Mushroom, click here.

The American Academy in Rome announced the winners of the 105th annual Rome Prize Competition on Thursday, April 19, 2001 in New York City. The prestigious Rome Prize provides fellowships for American artists and scholars to live and work at the Academy’s twelve-building, eleven-acre site atop the Janiculum hill in Rome, Italy.

Two prizes were awarded in musical composition. The Frederic A. Juilliard/Walter Damrosch Rome Prize Fellowship in Musical Composition was awarded to Derek Bermel of Brooklyn, NY.

While at the Academy, Mr. Bermel plans to work primarily on two pieces: a large-scale symphonic work for the Westchester Philharmonic‘s 2002-2003 season and an opera commissioned by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. He will also be writing a series of solo études for Dutch electronic guitarist Wiek Hijmans.

The Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellowship in Musical Composition was awarded to Kevin Matthew Puts, Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Texas at Austin. While on leave from the University, Dr. Puts plans to concentrate on three orchestral commissions: a work for the Phoenix Symphony‘s Beethoven Festival in January 2002, a joint commission from the Cincinnati and Utah Symphonies to be premiered in March 2002, and work for the American Composers Orchestra to be premiered in Carnegie Hall in April 2002. Puts has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2001-2002.

Jefferson Friedman and Stacy Garrop are the alternates for this year’s Composition Fellowships.

The Rome Prize is awarded through an annual, open competition and each year, distinguished artists and scholars volunteer their time as jurors for this award. This year’s musical composition jurors were Robert Beaser, Melissa Hui, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman, and David Rakowski.

The Rome Prize winners receive stipends, and living and working accommodations at the American Academy in Rome for terms that range from six months to two years. Additionally, they have the opportunity to present their work in exhibitions, performances, concerts and lectures in Rome, at the Academy’s headquarters in New York City, and elsewhere throughout the U.S.

For more information on prizewinners in other fields, and on the Academy itself, please click here.

On April 30, ASCAP Foundation President Marilyn Bergman announced the 26 winners of the 2001 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.

Congratulating the award recipients, Marilyn Bergman said, “The Morton Gould Young Composer Awards provide recognition and encouragement for gifted young composers under the age of 30. We congratulate the recipients and extend thanks to the dedicated panel of ASCAP composers whose difficult task was to choose from among 435 submissions.”

Established in 1979, this ASCAP Foundation program recognizes composers under 30 years of age whose works are selected through a juried national competition. Morton Gould, who served as President of ASCAP and The ASCAP Foundation from 1986-1994, was among America’s most eminent and versatile composers. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1995. Honoring Gould’s lifelong commitment to encouraging young creators, the annual ASCAP Foundation Young Composer program was dedicated to his memory following his death in 1996. The winning composers share prizes of over $30,000, including the Leo Kaplan Award, honoring the distinguished jurist who served for twenty-eight years as ASCAP Special Distribution Advisor.

The 2001 Winners were welcomed to the ASCAP family and presented at the second annual ASCAP Concert Music Awards on May 24, 2001at Lincoln Center‘s Walter Reade Theatre in New York. ASCAP’s Concert Music Honorees included:

Leonard Slatkin, renowned Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra and champion of American composers and the music of our time; Fred Sherry, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Merkin Concert Hall for “A Great Day in New York”; John Corigliano, 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra; Tan Dun, 2001 Academy Award Winner for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Chen Yi, Charles Ives “Living” Fellowship; H. Robert Reynolds, retiring Director of University Bands and Instrumental Studies at the University of Michigan School of Music, for his career long efforts to commission American repertory for Concert Band and Wind Ensemble; Martha Mooke, composer/electric violist, for conceiving and producing ASCAP’s Thru the Walls Showcases, for composers whose music defies stylistic boundaries, with support from Tony Visconti, legendary record producer and Showcase Host. Peter Schickele served as Master of Ceremonies.

The 2001 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards recipients are: Randall Bauer of Princeton, NJ; Brian Current of Toronto, Canada; Emily Doolittle of Halifax, Nova Scotia; Jason Eckardt of New York, NY; Paul Fowler of Brookfield, WI; Jefferson Friedman of New York, NY; Michel Galante of San Francisco, CA; Brooke Joyce of Princeton, NJ; John Kaefer of Basking Ridge, NJ; Daniel Kellogg of New Haven, CT; Nancy Kho of New Haven, CT; Michael Klingbeil of Urbana, IL; David McMullin of Boston, MA; Leah Muir of Bennington, VT; Carter Pann of Ann Arbor, MI; Vineet Shende of Western Springs, IL; Gregory Spears of Virginia Beach, VA; Mischa Zupko of Kalamazoo, MI; and Craig T. Walsh of Tucson, AZ.

The following composers were recognized with Honorable Mention: Kristen Kuster of Ann Arbor, MI; Nathan Michel of Charleston, SC (a former Assistant Editor of NewMusicBox); Brian R. Nelson of San Antonio, TX; and Joshua Penman of New Haven, CT.

The ASCAP Foundation has made special Awards for composers under the age of 18: Preben Antonsen (age 10) of Berkeley, CA; Julia Scott Carey (age 14) of Wellesley, MA; Sebastian Chang (age 13) of Orange County, CA; Ann Fontanella (age 12) of West Chester, PA; Sheridan Seyfried (age 16) of Oreland, PA; Natasha Sinha (age10) of Milton, MA; and Alex Temple (age 17) of Boston, MA. [Be sure to check out Frank J. Oteri’s talk with Natasha Sinha, the youngest Award winner, in the July 2001 issue of NewMusicBox.]

The following composers under the age of 18 received Honorable Mention: Nathan Bello (age 14) of Portland, OR; Christopher Lim (age 12) of New York, NY; Marcus Macauley (age 15) of Mercer Island, WA; Kyung Sun Min (age 17) of Milton, MA; and Joseph Sowa (age 16) of Hartford, CT.

The six ASCAP composer/judges for the 2001 competition were: Chen Yi; Eve Beglarian; Jennifer Higdon; Paul Lansky; P.Q. Phan; and Roberto Sierra.

The ASCAP Foundation supports the American composer and the development of American music through educational programs. Included in these are songwriting workshops, grants to young composers, music education programs, and public service projects for senior composers and lyricists. The ASCAP Foundation is supported by contributions from ASCAP members and music lovers throughout the United States.

On May 31, 2001, the National Music Council presented its American Eagle Awards to John Corigliano. Michael Kamen and Marian McPartland at the 20th Annual Awards Luncheon. Each year, the National Music Council presents the American Eagle Awards to individuals who have made significant contributions to American music and music education. The Awards Luncheon included presentations by Leonard Slatkin, Dave Brubeck, and Billy Taylor. Awards are made upon the recommendation of the National Music Council Board.

John Corigliano has been internationally celebrated as a leading composer of his generation. In 1991, Musical America named him their first Composer of the Year. In 2000, he won an Oscar for Best Original Film Score for The Red Violin. In April 2001, Corigliano was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Symphony No. 2.

Michael Kamen Photo by Sandra Keenan Kamen

Michael Kamen has had an illustrious career as composer, arranger, conductor and collaborator. He has written music from rock ballads to compositions for the Joffrey Ballet, worked with diverse artists from Pavarotti to Pink Floyd, composed the scores for numerous films and has won three Grammy Awards. Kamen was commissioned by Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra to compose The New Moon in the Old Moon’s Arms (Symphony for the Millennium). National Music Council Director Dr. David Sanders noted that the Board wanted to recognize Kamen’s work with the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, which he founded, in addition to his “incredibly eclectic contribution to American music.”

Marian McPartland Photo by James Salvano courtesy of the Baldwin Piano Company

Marian McPartland, host of NPR’s Piano Jazz, is a legendary jazz pianist, having spent more than 60 years in music. She has interviewed and performed with countless jazz musicians, recorded over 50 albums for the Concord Jazz label and was inducted into the International Association of Jazz Educators Hall of Fame in 1986. Ms. McPartland has authored several articles and books on jazz. In 2000, she received the ASCAP Foundation‘s Lifetime Achievement Award.

According to Sanders, the Board chose Marian McPartland in recognition of her work “bringing the art of jazz into the homes and hearts of Americans for over sixty years. In addition to her musicianship and her music, she has brought jazz to so many people in an educational format.”

The National Music Council was founded in 1940 to provide a forum for the free discussion of American musical affairs and to act as a clearing-house for the joint opinions and decisions of its members. It supports and promotes music education in American classrooms and works to strengthen the importance of music in our lives and culture. The Council was chartered by Congress in 1956; it is the official U.S. representative to the International Music Council.

Membership in the National Music Council is confined to music-related organizations. The membership of these constituent organizations amounts to millions of people. One of the upcoming projects of the Council is the creation of an email database that would be shared by the Council and its member organizations. This would allow the Council to directly address national legislative issues, for instance, without the extra time and effort required to get constituent member organizations to each do a mass mailing.

Another upcoming NMC initiative is the co-sponsorship with MENC of an event on Capitol Hill. “In the past, this event (which is as yet unnamed) has just involved the education community. We want to bring in the music community at large,” Sanders commented. The event will take place immediately preceding Arts Advocacy Day. “It will be good for the music community to have some positive dialogue with legislators in an informal setting.”

The council is also planning to produce several half-hour television programs on issues of importance to the music community. “They will be geared towards the general public, but also towards schools,” Sanders commented. Currently, the Council is discussing these plans with a national television programming distributor.