David Amram is 84 years old today. Amram is a composer, conductor, multi-instrumentalist and author. As a classical composer and performer, his integration of jazz (including being one of the first noted as an improvising jazz French hornist, folkloric and world music has led him to work with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Willie Nelson, Langston Hughes, Charles Mingus, Pepper Adams, Leonard Bernstein, Sir James Galway, Tito Puente, Mary Lou Williams, Joseph Papp, Arthur Miller, Arturo Sandoval, Stan Getz, Pete Seeger, Elia Kazan, Christopher Plummer, Ingrid Bergman, Odetta, Lord Buckley, Dustin Hoffman, Steve Allen, Machito, Earl Fatha Hines, Allen Ginsberg, Nina Simone, Gregory Corso, Bob Dylan, Steve Goodman, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, T.S. Monk, Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp, Levon Helm, Betty Carter and Jack Kerouac. In the early 1950s, he was encouraged to pursue his unique path by mentors Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, the New York Philharmonics conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, Miles Davis, Aaron Copland, Gunther Schuller, and visual artists Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Today, as he has for over 50 years, Amram continues to compose music while traveling the world as a conductor, soloist, bandleader, visiting scholar and narrator in five languages. Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works, written many scores for Broadway theater and film, including the scores for the films Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate; two operas, including the Holocaust opera The Final Ingredient, a comic opera Twelfth Night with a libretto by Joseph Papp; and the score for the 1959 film Pull My Daisy, narrated by novelist Jack Kerouac. He is also the author of four books, Vibrations, an autobiography, Offbeat: Collaborating With Kerouac, a memoir, Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat and David Amram: The Next 80 Years. Along with Julius Watkins, Amram is considered a pioneer of jazz French horn. He also plays piano, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion and dozens of folkloric instruments from 25 countries, as well as being an improvisational lyricist. Since working with Leonard Bernstein, (who chose him as The New York Philharmonics first composer-in-residence in 1966, he has been one of BMIs twenty most performed composers of concert music of the last thirty years. Some of Amrams most critically acclaimed recent orchestral works include Giants of the Night, a concerto for flute and orchestra (commissioned and premiered by Sir James Galway in 2002); Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie,(commissioned by the Woody Guthrie Foundation and premiered in 2007); and Three Songs: A Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (written for and premiered by pianist Jon Nakamatsu in 2009). Amram guest conducted the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in Denver in a program which included his Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie and Theme and Variations on Red River Valley, for flute and strings, both of which will appear on a new CD of Amrams music in 2013. The Boston Symphonys classical saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky has commissioned Amram to compose a new work, Greenwich Village Portraits, to be premiered worldwide February 1, 2014, by forty different saxophone soloists in forty different venues, sponsored by The Worldwide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Funds, Inc. There are plans to release a CD of Amrams symphonic and chamber compositions for saxophone with Radnosky as the soloist in 2013. Radnofsky also appears with Sir James Galway, Pete Seeger, Kurt Elling, Buck Henry, Tiokaskin Ghost Horse, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, David Broza, Candido, Bobby Sanabria, the Queens College Orchestra (conducted by Maurice Peress and Candido), singers and players from the LSU Opera, and other artists, in Lawrence Kramans new documentary feature film David Amram: The First 80 Years. Amram also appears in Andrew Zuckermans book and new feature film documentary Wisdom: The Greatest Gift One Generation Can Give To Another, as one of the world’s 50 Elder Thinkers and Doers, and his instructional video, Origins of Symphonic Instruments, released by Educational Video, is shown in over 6,000 schools throughout the United States and Canada. The Lincoln Center Performing Arts Branch of the New York Public Library has acquired the complete archive of David Amrams manuscripts, scores, recordings, videos, photographs and artwork. There are plans for exhibition, and the archive provides the opportunity for scholars and the general public to study his work. All of his concert music is published by C. F. Peters Corporation. Douglas A. Yeager Productions Ltd represents Amram for all of his live appearances and residencies. Here’s the trailer for the documentary, “David Amram: The First 80 Years.”
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 09:50:05 +0000
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