ROREM
at 90 |
THOMAS PIERCY CLARINET RISA RENAE HARMAN SOPRANO MATTHEW ODELL PIANO |
ROREM at 90 - SPECTRUM
October 26, 2013 • Saturday, 7 pm Tickets: $15 121 Ludlow St., Second Floor, NY, NY 10002 More info: [email protected] |
“Three Poems without Words”
clarinet and piano “Four Colors” (composed for Piercy) clarinet and piano “Recalling” piano “ARIEL: Five Poems of Sylvia Plath” soprano, clarinet and piano "Melody & Nelody" Special tribute piece by Paul Anthony Romero |
New York Times
"Celebrating Ned Rorem’s 90th Birthday"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/arts/music/celebrating-ned-rorems-90th-birthday.html?pagewanted=2
"Celebrating Ned Rorem’s 90th Birthday"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/arts/music/celebrating-ned-rorems-90th-birthday.html?pagewanted=2
Ned Rorem is one of America's most honored composers. In addition to a Pulitzer Prize, awarded in 1976 for his suite Air Music, Rorem has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship (1951), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1957), and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1968). He is a three-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award; in 1998 he was chosen Composer of the Year by Musical America. The Atlanta Symphony recording of the String Symphony, Sunday Morning, and Eagles received a Grammy Award for Outstanding Orchestral Recording in 1989. From 2000 to 2003 he served as President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2003 he received ASCAP's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in January 2004 the French government named him Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Words and music are inextricably linked for Ned Rorem. Time Magazine has called him "the world's best composer of art songs," yet his musical and literary ventures extend far beyond this specialized field. Rorem has composed three symphonies, four piano concertos and an array of other orchestral works, music for numerous combinations of chamber forces, ten operas, choral works of every description, ballets and other music for the theater, and literally hundreds of songs and cycles. He is the author of sixteen books, including five volumes of diaries and collections of lectures and criticism.
Among his many commissions for new works are those from the Ford Foundation (for Poems of Love and the Rain, 1962), the Lincoln Center Foundation (for Sun, 1965); the Koussevitzky Foundation (for Letters from Paris, 1966); the Atlanta Symphony (String Symphony, 1985); the Chicago Symphony (Goodbye My Fancy, 1990); Carnegie Hall (Spring Music, 1991), and the New York Philharmonic (Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra, 1993). Among the distinguished conductors who have performed his music are Bernstein, Masur, Mehta, Mitropoulos, Ormandy, Previn, Reiner, Slatkin, Steinberg, and Stokowski.
Rorem is justly renowned for his art songs; his catalog includes more than 500 works in the medium. Evidence of Things Not Seen, his evening-length song cycle for four singers and piano, represents his magnum opus in the genre. New York magazine called Evidence of Things Not Seen "one of the musically richest, most exquisitely fashioned, most voice-friendly collections of songs I have ever heard by any American composer;" Chamber Music magazine deemed it "a masterpiece."
Rorem's most recent opera, Our Town, which he completed with librettist Sandy McClatchy, is a setting of the acclaimed Thorton Wilder play of the same name. It premiered at the Indiana University Jacob's School of Music in February 2007 and has enjoyed subsequent performances throughout the world.
October 23, 2003 marked the composer's 80th birthday, highlighting a season of international festivities. Chief among them was the Curtis Institute of Music's "Roremania," a two-week celebration encompassing works in every genre, and a concert celebration at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall featuring the world premier of "Four Colors" composed for clarinetist Thomas Piercy and pianist Judith Olson. The birthday season brought a trio of new concertos from Rorem: Cello Concerto, commissioned by the Residentie Orchestra and the Kansas City Orchestra for David Geringas; Flute Concerto, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra for its principal flutist Jeffrey Khaner; and Mallet Concerto, commissioned for Evelyn Glennie by the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Eos Orchestra.
His most recent publication, Facing the Night: A Diary (1999-2005) and Musical Writings, chronicles Rorem's dark journey after the death of 32 year companion, Jim Holmes. In his diary, Lies, (published by Counterpoint Press in 2000) Roremsaid: "My music is a diary no less compromising than my prose. A diary nevertheless differs from a musical composition in that it depicts the moment, the writer's present mood which, were it inscribed an hour later, could emerge quite otherwise. I don't believe that composers notate their moods, they don't tell the music where to go - it leads them....Why do I write music? Because I want to hear it - it's simple as that. Others may have more talent, more sense of duty. But I compose just from necessity, and no one else is making what I need."
Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana on October 23, 1923. As a child he moved to Chicago with his family; by the age of ten his piano teacher had introduced him to Debussy and Ravel, an experience which "changed my life forever," according to the composer. At seventeen he entered the Music School of Northwestern University, two years later receiving a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He studied composition under Bernard Wagenaar at Juilliard, taking his B.A. in 1946 and his M.A. degree (along with the $1,000 George Gershwin Memorial Prize in composition) in 1948. In New York he worked as Virgil Thomson's copyist in return for $20 a week and orchestration lessons. He studied on fellowship at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood in the summers of 1946 and 1947; in 1948 his song The Lordly Hudson was voted the best published song of that year by the Music Library Association.
In 1949 Rorem moved to France, and lived there until 1958. His years as a young composer among the leading figures of the artistic and social milieu of post-war Europe are absorbingly portrayed in The Paris Diary and The New York Diary, 1951-1961 (reissued by Da Capo, 1998). He currently lives in New York City and Nantucket. More information at: http://nedrorem.com
Words and music are inextricably linked for Ned Rorem. Time Magazine has called him "the world's best composer of art songs," yet his musical and literary ventures extend far beyond this specialized field. Rorem has composed three symphonies, four piano concertos and an array of other orchestral works, music for numerous combinations of chamber forces, ten operas, choral works of every description, ballets and other music for the theater, and literally hundreds of songs and cycles. He is the author of sixteen books, including five volumes of diaries and collections of lectures and criticism.
Among his many commissions for new works are those from the Ford Foundation (for Poems of Love and the Rain, 1962), the Lincoln Center Foundation (for Sun, 1965); the Koussevitzky Foundation (for Letters from Paris, 1966); the Atlanta Symphony (String Symphony, 1985); the Chicago Symphony (Goodbye My Fancy, 1990); Carnegie Hall (Spring Music, 1991), and the New York Philharmonic (Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra, 1993). Among the distinguished conductors who have performed his music are Bernstein, Masur, Mehta, Mitropoulos, Ormandy, Previn, Reiner, Slatkin, Steinberg, and Stokowski.
Rorem is justly renowned for his art songs; his catalog includes more than 500 works in the medium. Evidence of Things Not Seen, his evening-length song cycle for four singers and piano, represents his magnum opus in the genre. New York magazine called Evidence of Things Not Seen "one of the musically richest, most exquisitely fashioned, most voice-friendly collections of songs I have ever heard by any American composer;" Chamber Music magazine deemed it "a masterpiece."
Rorem's most recent opera, Our Town, which he completed with librettist Sandy McClatchy, is a setting of the acclaimed Thorton Wilder play of the same name. It premiered at the Indiana University Jacob's School of Music in February 2007 and has enjoyed subsequent performances throughout the world.
October 23, 2003 marked the composer's 80th birthday, highlighting a season of international festivities. Chief among them was the Curtis Institute of Music's "Roremania," a two-week celebration encompassing works in every genre, and a concert celebration at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall featuring the world premier of "Four Colors" composed for clarinetist Thomas Piercy and pianist Judith Olson. The birthday season brought a trio of new concertos from Rorem: Cello Concerto, commissioned by the Residentie Orchestra and the Kansas City Orchestra for David Geringas; Flute Concerto, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra for its principal flutist Jeffrey Khaner; and Mallet Concerto, commissioned for Evelyn Glennie by the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Eos Orchestra.
His most recent publication, Facing the Night: A Diary (1999-2005) and Musical Writings, chronicles Rorem's dark journey after the death of 32 year companion, Jim Holmes. In his diary, Lies, (published by Counterpoint Press in 2000) Roremsaid: "My music is a diary no less compromising than my prose. A diary nevertheless differs from a musical composition in that it depicts the moment, the writer's present mood which, were it inscribed an hour later, could emerge quite otherwise. I don't believe that composers notate their moods, they don't tell the music where to go - it leads them....Why do I write music? Because I want to hear it - it's simple as that. Others may have more talent, more sense of duty. But I compose just from necessity, and no one else is making what I need."
Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana on October 23, 1923. As a child he moved to Chicago with his family; by the age of ten his piano teacher had introduced him to Debussy and Ravel, an experience which "changed my life forever," according to the composer. At seventeen he entered the Music School of Northwestern University, two years later receiving a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He studied composition under Bernard Wagenaar at Juilliard, taking his B.A. in 1946 and his M.A. degree (along with the $1,000 George Gershwin Memorial Prize in composition) in 1948. In New York he worked as Virgil Thomson's copyist in return for $20 a week and orchestration lessons. He studied on fellowship at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood in the summers of 1946 and 1947; in 1948 his song The Lordly Hudson was voted the best published song of that year by the Music Library Association.
In 1949 Rorem moved to France, and lived there until 1958. His years as a young composer among the leading figures of the artistic and social milieu of post-war Europe are absorbingly portrayed in The Paris Diary and The New York Diary, 1951-1961 (reissued by Da Capo, 1998). He currently lives in New York City and Nantucket. More information at: http://nedrorem.com
American soprano Risa Renae Harman has been widely acclaimed for her technical virtuosity and communication skills as an artist. As noted by The New York Times, “she is that rare creature among singers, a really good recitalist.” Operatic performances include The Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte, Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Adele in Die Fledermaus, Violetta in La Traviata, the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor, as well as creating the role of Louise in the world premiere of William Schuman’s A Question of Taste for Glimmerglass Opera.
A favorite of composer, Sheila Silver, Miss Harman recently premiered songs composed for her based on poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay with American Opera Projects at Symphony Space. Likewise she sang the NY premiere of Silver’s The Wooden Sword, a chamber opera, also at Symphony Space. Other recent engagements include soloist in Bach’s Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51 with The Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra, a solo recital at the Brooklyn Library, guest artist with the Greenwich Chamber Players and a return engagement as Artist-in-Residence with the Bay View Music Festival. Other engagements for the soprano include Samuel Barber’s The Prayers of Kierkegaard at the Kennedy Center with The Washington Chorus, Dorine in Kirke Mechem’s Tartuffe with Lake George Opera and Mum in the East Coast Premiere of Mark Anthony Turnage’s Greek with Stony Brook Opera. In appreciation of Miss Harman's artistry, a local music-lover has endowed the position of The Karen Schuiling Endowed Chair, currently held by Miss Harman, at the Bay View Music Festival.
She has appeared with New York City Opera, Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Lake George Opera, Lyric Opera Cleveland, and Glimmerglass Opera and as soloist at the National Cathedral, Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Weill Hall and the Kennedy Center. Miss Harman’s international credits include recitals in Sweden as the winner of the American Jenny Lind Competition and the Italian Festivals Da Bach a Bartok and Musica nei Chiostri. Miss Harman is the recipient of numerous awards including the Lee Schaenen Foundation, Lotte Lehmann Foundation, Sullivan Foundation, Shoshana Foundation, Washington International Competition, Jenny Lind Competition, and Licia Albanese-Puccini Competition. She received her DMA from Stony Brook University and currently is Artist-in-Residence with the Bay View Music Festival, Michigan.
A favorite of composer, Sheila Silver, Miss Harman recently premiered songs composed for her based on poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay with American Opera Projects at Symphony Space. Likewise she sang the NY premiere of Silver’s The Wooden Sword, a chamber opera, also at Symphony Space. Other recent engagements include soloist in Bach’s Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51 with The Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra, a solo recital at the Brooklyn Library, guest artist with the Greenwich Chamber Players and a return engagement as Artist-in-Residence with the Bay View Music Festival. Other engagements for the soprano include Samuel Barber’s The Prayers of Kierkegaard at the Kennedy Center with The Washington Chorus, Dorine in Kirke Mechem’s Tartuffe with Lake George Opera and Mum in the East Coast Premiere of Mark Anthony Turnage’s Greek with Stony Brook Opera. In appreciation of Miss Harman's artistry, a local music-lover has endowed the position of The Karen Schuiling Endowed Chair, currently held by Miss Harman, at the Bay View Music Festival.
She has appeared with New York City Opera, Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Lake George Opera, Lyric Opera Cleveland, and Glimmerglass Opera and as soloist at the National Cathedral, Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Weill Hall and the Kennedy Center. Miss Harman’s international credits include recitals in Sweden as the winner of the American Jenny Lind Competition and the Italian Festivals Da Bach a Bartok and Musica nei Chiostri. Miss Harman is the recipient of numerous awards including the Lee Schaenen Foundation, Lotte Lehmann Foundation, Sullivan Foundation, Shoshana Foundation, Washington International Competition, Jenny Lind Competition, and Licia Albanese-Puccini Competition. She received her DMA from Stony Brook University and currently is Artist-in-Residence with the Bay View Music Festival, Michigan.
Thomas Piercy is a critically acclaimed musician with orchestral, concerto, solo recital and chamber music appearances throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. Described by The New York Times as “Brilliant...playing with refinement and flair…evoking a panache in the contemporary works…,” Mr. Piercy presents audiences to varied and exciting concerts of standard classical music, jazz-inspired programs, contemporary works, pieces written specifically for him and his own original arrangements, compositions and collaborations. Piercy performs and records on rare rosewood English-bore clarinets made for him by Luis Rossi of Santiago, Chile.
A versatile artist defying categorization – performing on the Emmy Award-winning Juno Baby CDs and DVDs; playing Rhapsody in Blue with pianist Earl Wild; performing concert improvisations with pianist Donal Fox; performing Mozart with mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade; playing Broadway songs with Raoul Julia; conducting Cabaret or Rodgers & Hammerstein; working with the composer Leonard Bernstein; appearing in a KRS-ONE music video; recording with members of Maroon 5; cited by the New York Times for his performances of Brahms and Beethoven as well as contemporary pieces written for him - as an instrumentalist, singer, director and music director/conductor and actor, he has performed for Broadway and Off-Broadway, television, radio, video and commercial recordings.
Mr. Piercy has performed at many of the worlds acclaimed concerts halls including Carnegie Hall (NY, NY), Lincoln Center (NY, NY), the Kennedy Center (Washington, DC.), the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series (Chicago, Illinois), Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), Wigmore Hall (London, England), Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome, Italy) and Parthenon (Tokyo, Japan). His many festival appearances have included a featured performance in memory of Leon Russianoff at the 1991 International ClarinetFest, a concert of contemporary American music at the 2005 ClarinetFest in Tokyo, Japan, and an all-Piazzolla concert at the 2007 International Clarinet Festival in Vancouver, Canada.
A recipient of numerous scholarships, prizes and awards, he studied clarinet, voice and conducting at the Juilliard School, Mannes College of Music, Virginia Commonwealth University and Shenandoah Conservatory. Piercy's earliest studies were in both voice and clarinet. He began his college education studying clarinet under Dr. Stephen Johnston at Shenandoah Conservatory and Gailyn Parks at Virginia Commonwealth University. He later moved to New York City to study with Gervase De Peyer under scholarship at Mannes College of Music; he continued to study extensively with De Peyer after leaving Mannes. Piercy later studied with and soon became an assistant to the renowned clarinet pedagogue Leon Russianoff; additional clarinet and reed-making studies were undertaken with clarinetist Kalmen Opperman. He has had arrangements and transcriptions published by Boosey & Hawkes, and as an assistant to Kalmen Opperman, he has contributed to clarinet study books and clarinet compositions published by Carl Fischer, Inc., and Baron Publishing. In demand as a clarinet, sax and voice teacher, many of Piercy's students have gone on to schools and careers in music.
Piercy is currently the Artistic Director and clarinetist of the Gotham Ensemble. A mixed vocal and instrumental ensemble based in New York City, the Gotham Ensemble premieres, performs and records a wide variety of repertoire, from the Classical to the avant-garde. A New York Times review of Gotham's Merkin Hall, New York City, performance of a program of Olav Thommessen's music specifically encouraged the public to go out and purchase the recordings. After a performance of Ned Rorem's "Ariel" at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Mr. Rorem wrote of Gotham as one of America's important chamber music groups performing new music today.
A frequent performer of new music, Mr. Piercy has premiered numerous compositions, including over 50 new pieces n the last three years. Mr. Rorem, a Pulitzer Prize winner and Grammy Award-winning composer, wrote his only clarinet and piano piece, "Four Colors," for Mr. Piercy. The work had its premier at an 80th birthday concert celebration for Mr. Rorem at Carnegie Hall in the fall of 2003.
His discography includes "Gotham Ensemble Plays Ned Rorem", a CD of chamber music featuring the clarinet (Albany Records), "CAFE", a CD of music for clarinet and guitar (Tonada Records), the world-premier recording of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's "Ballad in Memory of Shirley Horn" (Tonada Records), and the Emmy Award-winning CD and DVD "Juno Baby." More info at: www.thomaspiercy.com
A versatile artist defying categorization – performing on the Emmy Award-winning Juno Baby CDs and DVDs; playing Rhapsody in Blue with pianist Earl Wild; performing concert improvisations with pianist Donal Fox; performing Mozart with mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade; playing Broadway songs with Raoul Julia; conducting Cabaret or Rodgers & Hammerstein; working with the composer Leonard Bernstein; appearing in a KRS-ONE music video; recording with members of Maroon 5; cited by the New York Times for his performances of Brahms and Beethoven as well as contemporary pieces written for him - as an instrumentalist, singer, director and music director/conductor and actor, he has performed for Broadway and Off-Broadway, television, radio, video and commercial recordings.
Mr. Piercy has performed at many of the worlds acclaimed concerts halls including Carnegie Hall (NY, NY), Lincoln Center (NY, NY), the Kennedy Center (Washington, DC.), the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series (Chicago, Illinois), Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), Wigmore Hall (London, England), Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome, Italy) and Parthenon (Tokyo, Japan). His many festival appearances have included a featured performance in memory of Leon Russianoff at the 1991 International ClarinetFest, a concert of contemporary American music at the 2005 ClarinetFest in Tokyo, Japan, and an all-Piazzolla concert at the 2007 International Clarinet Festival in Vancouver, Canada.
A recipient of numerous scholarships, prizes and awards, he studied clarinet, voice and conducting at the Juilliard School, Mannes College of Music, Virginia Commonwealth University and Shenandoah Conservatory. Piercy's earliest studies were in both voice and clarinet. He began his college education studying clarinet under Dr. Stephen Johnston at Shenandoah Conservatory and Gailyn Parks at Virginia Commonwealth University. He later moved to New York City to study with Gervase De Peyer under scholarship at Mannes College of Music; he continued to study extensively with De Peyer after leaving Mannes. Piercy later studied with and soon became an assistant to the renowned clarinet pedagogue Leon Russianoff; additional clarinet and reed-making studies were undertaken with clarinetist Kalmen Opperman. He has had arrangements and transcriptions published by Boosey & Hawkes, and as an assistant to Kalmen Opperman, he has contributed to clarinet study books and clarinet compositions published by Carl Fischer, Inc., and Baron Publishing. In demand as a clarinet, sax and voice teacher, many of Piercy's students have gone on to schools and careers in music.
Piercy is currently the Artistic Director and clarinetist of the Gotham Ensemble. A mixed vocal and instrumental ensemble based in New York City, the Gotham Ensemble premieres, performs and records a wide variety of repertoire, from the Classical to the avant-garde. A New York Times review of Gotham's Merkin Hall, New York City, performance of a program of Olav Thommessen's music specifically encouraged the public to go out and purchase the recordings. After a performance of Ned Rorem's "Ariel" at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Mr. Rorem wrote of Gotham as one of America's important chamber music groups performing new music today.
A frequent performer of new music, Mr. Piercy has premiered numerous compositions, including over 50 new pieces n the last three years. Mr. Rorem, a Pulitzer Prize winner and Grammy Award-winning composer, wrote his only clarinet and piano piece, "Four Colors," for Mr. Piercy. The work had its premier at an 80th birthday concert celebration for Mr. Rorem at Carnegie Hall in the fall of 2003.
His discography includes "Gotham Ensemble Plays Ned Rorem", a CD of chamber music featuring the clarinet (Albany Records), "CAFE", a CD of music for clarinet and guitar (Tonada Records), the world-premier recording of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's "Ballad in Memory of Shirley Horn" (Tonada Records), and the Emmy Award-winning CD and DVD "Juno Baby." More info at: www.thomaspiercy.com
The New Hampshire-born pianist Matthew Odell began his studies at the age of 10 and has since won acclaim for performances of a wide range of repertoire as a solo recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and chamber musician. He has been hailed as “excellent” by the New York Times and “brilliant . . . playing with total commitment and real abandon” by Gramophone. Recent concerts have including such diverse projects as Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles. . . with Maestro David Robertson and the Juilliard Orchestra for the reopening of Alice Tully Hall, a performance in the New York Philharmonic’s Stravinsky Festival, and solo recitals of Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus. He also performed numerous contemporary works for piano and orchestra with the AXIOM Ensemble and completed a six-concert tour of Taiwan with the Hampton Trio.
In addition to performances in Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and the 92nd Street Y in New York, Mr. Odell has appeared at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in Boston, Chicago, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Taipei, Taiwan, and Helsinki, Finland. He has also performed at the Aspen Music Festival, the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, New York’s Focus! Festival, the La Gesse Festival in Toulouse, France, Nuits musicales and Concerts du cloître in Nice, France, and the Rohm International Music Festival in Kyoto, Japan.
A passionate advocate of the music of our time, Mr. Odell frequently premieres works written for him. He has performed contemporary repertoire with the New Juilliard Ensemble, the AXIOM Ensemble, and the American Art Song Festival, a group he founded in 2004. In addition, he has also worked with many prominent composers, including Pierre Boulez, John Corigliano, Ned Rorem, Mark Adamo, Michel Merlet, and Robert Aldridge. Mr. Odell’s affinity for the music of Olivier Messiaen has been seen in performances of his Couleurs de la cité céleste with the Peabody Camerata, Des canyons aux étoiles . . . and Sept Haïkaï with the AXIOM ensemble. He has also performed the Quartet for the End of Time in Alice Tully Hall, numerous songs and other chamber works, and an ongoing project of Messiaen’s complete works for solo piano. Recent recitals include a program of the music of Messiaen and his students and a tribute to Messiaen’s wife, Yvonne Loriod.
Mr. Odell is a founding member of the Hampton Trio, a group actively involved in presenting outstanding pieces from the established repertoire alongside newly-commissioned works. Mr. Odell’s special love of the art song repertoire has resulted in countless recitals with singers from around the world. He serves on the coaching faculty of the Académie internationale d’été de Nice in France and has performed in the Marilyn Horne Foundations’s festival The Song Continues at Carnegie Hall.
Mr. Odell currently teaches at The Juilliard School and frequently presents master classes, workshops, and lectures at professional conferences and universities throughout the U.S and Europe. In 2010 he graduated with a doctoral degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Margo Garrett, Jonathan Feldman, and Brian Zeger. He studied further with Marian Hahn at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, graduating Pi Kappa Lambda with both a master of music degree and a graduate performance diploma in piano performance. He also worked with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, with Ann Schein at the Aspen Music School, with Laurence Morton at Bob Jones University, and in master classes with Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Ian Hobson, Martin Isepp, Peter Hill, and the Tokyo String Quartet.
Mr. Odell has been awarded the Presser Award, the Sarah Stuhlman Zierler Award, two Peabody Career Development Grants, the Lucrezia Bori Grant, the Virginia Allison Accompanying Award, and a numerous fellowships and grants from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. For more information, visit www.matthewodell.com.
In addition to performances in Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and the 92nd Street Y in New York, Mr. Odell has appeared at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in Boston, Chicago, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Taipei, Taiwan, and Helsinki, Finland. He has also performed at the Aspen Music Festival, the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, New York’s Focus! Festival, the La Gesse Festival in Toulouse, France, Nuits musicales and Concerts du cloître in Nice, France, and the Rohm International Music Festival in Kyoto, Japan.
A passionate advocate of the music of our time, Mr. Odell frequently premieres works written for him. He has performed contemporary repertoire with the New Juilliard Ensemble, the AXIOM Ensemble, and the American Art Song Festival, a group he founded in 2004. In addition, he has also worked with many prominent composers, including Pierre Boulez, John Corigliano, Ned Rorem, Mark Adamo, Michel Merlet, and Robert Aldridge. Mr. Odell’s affinity for the music of Olivier Messiaen has been seen in performances of his Couleurs de la cité céleste with the Peabody Camerata, Des canyons aux étoiles . . . and Sept Haïkaï with the AXIOM ensemble. He has also performed the Quartet for the End of Time in Alice Tully Hall, numerous songs and other chamber works, and an ongoing project of Messiaen’s complete works for solo piano. Recent recitals include a program of the music of Messiaen and his students and a tribute to Messiaen’s wife, Yvonne Loriod.
Mr. Odell is a founding member of the Hampton Trio, a group actively involved in presenting outstanding pieces from the established repertoire alongside newly-commissioned works. Mr. Odell’s special love of the art song repertoire has resulted in countless recitals with singers from around the world. He serves on the coaching faculty of the Académie internationale d’été de Nice in France and has performed in the Marilyn Horne Foundations’s festival The Song Continues at Carnegie Hall.
Mr. Odell currently teaches at The Juilliard School and frequently presents master classes, workshops, and lectures at professional conferences and universities throughout the U.S and Europe. In 2010 he graduated with a doctoral degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Margo Garrett, Jonathan Feldman, and Brian Zeger. He studied further with Marian Hahn at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, graduating Pi Kappa Lambda with both a master of music degree and a graduate performance diploma in piano performance. He also worked with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, with Ann Schein at the Aspen Music School, with Laurence Morton at Bob Jones University, and in master classes with Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Ian Hobson, Martin Isepp, Peter Hill, and the Tokyo String Quartet.
Mr. Odell has been awarded the Presser Award, the Sarah Stuhlman Zierler Award, two Peabody Career Development Grants, the Lucrezia Bori Grant, the Virginia Allison Accompanying Award, and a numerous fellowships and grants from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. For more information, visit www.matthewodell.com.