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10 Questions with EYO Guest Composer:
James Grant
About James:
For three decades, James Grant has been commissioned by individuals, choruses, chamber ensembles and orchestras who have performed his music throughout the world. As a composer of choral music, he has taken First Prize honors in three international competitions, and his orchestral overture Chart won first prize in the 1998 Louisville Orchestra competition for new orchestral music. In 2002, Grant was one of five American composers to win the Aaron Copland Award.
After completing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from Cornell University, Grant was Assistant Professor of Music at Middlebury College in Vermont between 1988-1992, where he taught composition, coordinated an American Music Week Festival each year, and directed the New Music From Middlebury concert series. In 1992, Grant left academe to compose full-time and from 1993-96 served as Composer-In-Residence to the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra in Fairfax, Virginia. From 1996-98, he served as Composer-In-Residence to the Institute for the Environment Through the Arts, a nonprofit organization that brought together presenters, funding sources, artists of all disciplines, and environmental leaders to promote environmental awareness in communities through artistic expression. Presently, Grant is finishing five years as Composer-In-Residence to the Bay-Atlantic Symphony in Bridgeton, New Jersey.
Recognized by Cornell University's Graduate School of Humanities and Arts and by the Vermont chapter of the National Music Teachers Association for exceptional contributions as an educator, Grant continues to be active as a lecturer and private teacher of composition. In collaboration with Copland House Artistic Director Michael Boriskin, Grant is designing a composition curriculum for the Copland House Young Composers Institute, tentatively scheduled to open in the summer of 2005.
Grant's colorful musical language is known by musicians and audiences for its honed craft and immediacy. After the May 2003 Kennedy Center premiere of his 55-minute work for chorus and large orchestra based on the writings of Walt Whitman, Such Was The War, the Washington Times declared it “a work of outstanding power and breadth of emotion.” The Baltimore Sun wrote, “the sincerity is never in doubt, and there's an unmistakable, cumulative power generated by the text and music. Such Was the War makes an honorable contribution to the choral repertoire.”
After the October 2004 premier of Grant's Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Strings by the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel commented: “Grant here has made music that is structurally smart, emotionally probing, rhythmically clever and harmonically subtle…. The momentum builds to some hair-raising hyena howls that had the audience howling back in approval when the 15-minute concerto ended.”
Grant's ability to compose music appropriate to specific levels of experience has found him working with groups ranging from professional orchestras, choruses, new music ensembles and ballet companies to community choruses and youth orchestras. His music is regularly programmed at music festivals, symposia, and clinics, and his Tribute for orchestra was a featured work at the 2002 Midwest Conductor's Clinic in Chicago, performed by the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra.
Current orchestral commissions take Grant through the 2007 – 08 season, including: Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, for virtuoso saxophonist David Stambler; a work for chorus and orchestra for the Choral Arts Society of Washington's 2005 Kennedy Center Holiday Concert; and an extended work for chorus and orchestra commissioned by the University of Mary Washington in celebration of that school's centennial. Recently, works by James Grant have been recorded and released in separate projects by clarinetist William Helmers, tubist Mark Nelson, and by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in Australia.
Further information and streaming audio of James Grant's music can be found at www.JamesGrantMusic.com .
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1. How did your musical career begin?
I was a choirboy at age 9 and sang in the school choir throughout high school. Played a little piano, took lessons for a few years. Didn't start composing seriously until I was in my late teens. First professional performance of music at age 20. Conducted choruses in college, then chamber ensembles and orchestras in my graduate studies. Never performed, other than with the baton.
2. Who are your primary musical influences?
Stravinsky, Steely Dan, Miles Davis, Bonnie Raitt, Shostakovitch, Ravel, Joni Mitchell... Whomever I'm listening to at the moment
3. What do you like to listen to when you aren't composing?
Silence. It's a rare commodity, because my studio is in downtown Toronto. If I choose to put on some music, it's often jazz, or some enormous symphonic work.
4. What are your hobbies outside of music?
Baking, swimming, walking, reading, studying, kayaking.
5. What has been your greatest opportunity provided to you because of your musical talent?
In 2002, I won an Aaron Copland Award and was honored to live in Copland's house for two months, composing. In fact, it was at Copland House that I composed a work commissioned by the EYSO, called “Tribute.” (More on Copland House and my residency there: http://www.jamesgrantmusic.com/PERSONAL/ch/ch.htm ) 6. What are your favorite movies or television shows?
Movies: Merchant of Venice; Run Lola Run.
TV: Anything on the food channel or Masterpiece Theater
7. You can have dinner with any four people, living or dead. Who would they be?
Four Iron Chefs;- or -Donald Fagan, Walter Becker, Margaret Wheatley (author of Leadership and The New Science: www.kaneandassociates.com/summary2.htm ),
and W. C. Handy
8. What would you like your legacy as a composer to be?
That my music moves people to ponder value and content in life
9. Who is your favorite historical figure?
Poet/philosopher Walt Whitman
10. Describe yourself in four words.
Philosophical, passionate, fascinated, inquisitive.
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