Robert Paterson (composer) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Robert Paterson is an American composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, percussionist and conductor

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

Biography

Paterson studied composition with Christopher Rouse

Christopher Rouse

Christopher Rouse is an American composer.-Biography:Rouse studied with Richard Hoffmann at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, graduating in 1971, and later completed graduate degrees under Karel Husa at Cornell University in 1977. In between, Rouse studied privately with George Crumb...

, Samuel Adler

Samuel Adler (composer)

Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer and conductor.-Biography:Adler was born to a Jewish family in Mannheim, Germany, the son of Hugo Chaim Adler, a cantor and composer, and Selma Adler. The family fled to the United States in 1939, where Hugo became the cantor of Temple Emanuel in...

, Joseph Schwantner

Joseph Schwantner

Joseph C. Schwantner is a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer and educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize....

, Warren Benson

Warren Benson

Warren Benson was an American composer. His compositions consist mostly of music for wind instruments and percussion...

and David Liptak

David Liptak

David Liptak is a composer and music teacher living in Rochester, New York.-Music career:...

at the Eastman School of Music

Eastman School of Music

The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...

, graduating in 1995. At Eastman, he was a double major and studied percussion with John Beck

John Beck

John Dalton Beck is an American football quarterback starting for the Washington Redskins of the National Football League. He was drafted by the Miami Dolphins in the second round of the 2007 NFL Draft...

. He received a Master's Degree in Composition in 2001 from Indiana University, where he studied with Frederick Fox and Eugene O'Brien. In 2004, he received a DMA in Music Composition from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

where he studied with Steven Stucky

Steven Stucky

Steven Stucky is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.Stucky was born in Hutchinson, Kansas. At age 9, he moved with his family to Abilene, Texas, where, as a teenager, he studied music in the public schools and, privately, viola with Herbert Preston, conducting with Leo Scheer, and...

and Roberto Sierra

Roberto Sierra

Roberto Sierra is a composer of contemporary classical music.Sierra studied composition in Europe, notably with György Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany...

. He also studied privately with Aaron Jay Kernis

Aaron Jay Kernis

Aaron Jay Kernis is an American composer and professor at the Yale School of Music.-Biography:Aaron Jay Kernis is Jewish, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied at the Manhattan School of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory, and Yale University .,Notable works include the...

at the Atlantic Center for the Arts

Atlantic Center for the Arts

Atlantic Center for the Arts is a nonprofit, interdisciplinary artists’ community and arts education facility dedicated to promoting artistic excellence by providing talented artists an opportunity to work and collaborate with some of the world’s most distinguished contemporary artists in the...

in 2000, and in 1999 he studied with John Harbison

John Harbison

John Harris Harbison is an American composer, best known for his operas and large choral works.-Life:...

and Bernard Rands

Bernard Rands

Bernard Rands is a composer of contemporary classical music.Rands studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy.He held residencies...

at the Aspen Summer Festival, as part of the Advanced Master Class and as the recipient of the Second ASCAP Aspen Film Fellowship. Paterson's music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. His music is influenced by nature, rock and roll, jazz, world music and the music of other classical composers.

Paterson's performances and commissions include works for such internationally acclaimed ensembles as the Louisville Orchestra

Louisville Orchestra

The Louisville Orchestra is the primary orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky and has been called the cornerstone of the Louisville arts scene. It was founded in 1937 by Robert Whitney and Charles Farnsley, Mayor of Louisville...

, Vermont Symphony Orchestra

Vermont Symphony Orchestra

The Vermont Symphony Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in, and supported in part by, the U.S. state of Vermont. It is a 501 corporation. It is one of the few, and the oldest, state-supported symphony orchestras in the United States....

, Quintet of the Americas, the Chamber Choir of Europe and the Volti Choir of San Francisco. Other ensembles that have performed Paterson's works include The New York New Music Ensemble

New York New Music Ensemble

The New York New Music Ensemble is a contemporary "Pierrot ensemble" chamber music group. The group formed in 1975 by Robert Block.Current members include: flutist Jayn Rosenfeld, clarinetist Jean Kopperud, violinist Linda Quan, cellist Chris Finckel, pianist Stephen Gosling and percussionist...

, Fireworks Ensemble, MAYA, Da Capo Chamber Players

Da Capo Chamber Players

Da Capo Chamber Players is an American contemporary music "Pierrot ensemble," founded in 1970. Winners of the Naumburg Award in 1973, its founding members included composer/pianist Joan Tower, violinist Joel Lester, Dean of Mannes College of Music, and flutist Patricia Spencer...

, California EAR Unit, Cygnus, Ensemble Aleph (Paris), Ensemble Nouvelles Consonances (Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

), the Kairos String Quartet, the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra

Cayuga Chamber Orchestra

The Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Lanfranco Marcelletti, Jr., is based in Ithaca, New York. The 2010-2011 season will mark its 34th year...

, the Russian Chamber Orchestra, the MANCA Festival presented by the Centre National de Creation Musicale (CIRM) and the June in Buffalo new music festival.

Paterson is the Classical Recording Foundation 2011 Composer of The Year for his forthcoming CD The Book of Goddesses. He has received fellowships and residencies from the MacDowell Colony

MacDowell Colony

The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...

, Aspen Music Festival, Cornell University

Cornell University

and Atlantic Center for the Arts

Atlantic Center for the Arts

, in addition to grants and awards from Meet The Composer

Meet the Composer

Meet the Composer is an American organization founded in 1974 by the composer John Duffy as a project of the New York State Council on the Arts. It seeks to assist composers in making a living through writing music by sponsoring commissioning, residency, education, and audience interaction...

, the American Music Center

American Music Center

The American Music Center is a non-profit organization which aims to promote the creating, performing, and enjoying new American music. The organization was founded in 1939 by composers Marion Bauer, Aaron Copland, Howard Hanson, Harrison Kerr, Otto Luening, and Quincy Porter.The organization has a...

, ASCAP, the American Composers Forum

American Composers Forum

The American Composers Forum is a non-profit membership organization dedicated to the promotion and assistance of American composers and their music. It was founded in 1973 as the Minnesota Composers Forum and is based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States...

, the Jerome Composers Commissioning Program, the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, the Copland Award and the Society for New Music's Brian M. Israel Prize. Paterson appears on recordings for American Modern Recordings (AMR), Mode Records, Bridge Records, Centaur Records, Capstone, and Riax.

As well as being a composer, Paterson is also a percussionist and has "been instrumental in the commissioning of six-mallet works for solo marimba" and has to date, written fourteen works using a six-mallet technique (extended technique

Extended technique

Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing, or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres....

) he developed.

Paterson is founder and artistic director of the American Modern Ensemble

American Modern Ensemble

The American Modern Ensemble is a contemporary classical music ensemble based in the United States in New York City with the goal of premiering, performing and recording and commissioning the widest possible repertoire written by American composers. The group's focus is to celebrate and showcase...

and lives in New York, New York with his wife Victoria Paterson, a violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

ist and their son Dylan.

Orchestra/Chamber Orchestra/Sinfonietta

Closet Full of Demons (2000-01)
Electric Lines (2002-03/04, awarded the Louisville Orchestra
Louisville Orchestra
The Louisville Orchestra is the primary orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky and has been called the cornerstone of the Louisville arts scene. It was founded in 1937 by Robert Whitney and Charles Farnsley, Mayor of Louisville...

Composition Contest prize in 2005)
Enlightened City (2005)
Slightly Comic Overture (1995-96)
Suite for String Orchestra (2001)
Symphony in Three Movements (2002)

Mixed Chamber Ensemble

Eating Variations (2006)
Embracing the Wind (1999)
Freya’s Tears (2010-11)
Looney Tunes (2006-07)
Skylights (2000)
Quintus (1996, awarded the Society of New Music's Brian Israel Prize in 1999)
Sextet (1999, awarded the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer's Award in 2000)
Star Crossing (1999, awarded the Tampa Bay Composers Forum First Prize for Excellence in Chamber Music Composition in 2001)
Sun Trio (1995)
Sunset (movement II from Sun Trio) (1995, awarded the Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble New Music Competition award in 2001)
The Book of Goddesses (2010, awarded the Classical Recording Foundation "Composer of The Year" award in 2011)
The Thin Ice of Your Fragile Mind (2004)
Up North (1994)
Winter Songs (2000/2007-08)

Woodwind

Elegy (2006-07)
Sonata for Bassoon and Piano (2001)
Wind Quintet (2000/2003-04)

Brass

Expressions (1989)
Fanfare (1997)
Fantasia (1997)
Overture for Brass Quintet (1990)

Strings

Elegy (2006-07/2008)
Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano (2003, awarded the Auros Group for New Music Eight Annual Competition prize in 2005)
String Quartet No. 1 (1996-97, awarded the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award in 1998)

Percussion

Christmas Time (1990)
Excerptia Overture (1991)
Helter Skelter (1984)
Humanus Ex Machina (1989)
Komodo (2004) (uses six-mallets)
Merry Go Round (1988-90) (uses six-mallets)
Piranha (2007) (uses six-mallets)
Postludes Nos. 1-3 (1990-93) (uses six-mallets)
Prison Cell (1989/2008)
Sabulum Reptilia (1985)
Stealing Thunder (1999-2000)
That's Amore (1992)
Voices (1988)

Marimba with one instrument

Braids (1998/2000) (uses six-mallets)
Clarinatrix (2011) (uses six-mallets)
Duo for Flute and Marimba (1998-99) (uses six-mallets)
Fantasia for Tuba & Marimba (1992) (uses six-mallets)
Links & Chains (1996/2000) (uses six-mallets)
Tongue and Groove (2008-09) (uses six-mallets)
Tongue and Groove (2009) (uses four-mallets)

Keyboard

Deep Blue Ocean (2010)
Meditation (1997)
Variations & Fantasies on an Accordion Song (1995)

Choral

A Dream Within A Dream (2010)
Did You Hear?” (2010)
Eternal Reflections” (2010)
Four Walden Canons (1999)
Life is But a Dream” (2010)
The Essence of Gravity (2004-05)

Vocal

Eating Variations (2006)
Stepping Into The Batter's Box, He Hears His Father's Voice (2005)
The Biographies of Solitude (1990)
Thursday (1999)
Winter Songs (2000/2007-08)

Film score

Journey Into Courage Film Score/Suite (1994-95) (percussion part uses six-mallets)

External links

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