Visiting Master Artists
Paul Chihara Michael Klingbeil Robert Morris Paul Sperry
Paul Seiko Chihara UCLA , was born in Seattle, Washington in 1938. He received his doctorate degree (D.M.A.) from Cornell University in 1965 as a student of Robert Palmer. Mr. Chihara also studied with the renowned pedagogue Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Ernst Pepping in Berlin, and with Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood. With Toru Takemitsu, Chihara was composer-in-residence at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1971, and also the first composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Neville Marriner, Conductor. More recently, he has served as the composer-in-residence with the Mancini Institute in Los Angeles.
Chihara’s prize-winning concert works have been performed in most major cities and arts centers in the U.S. and Europe. His numerous commissions and awards include those from The Lili Boulanger Memorial Award, the Naumberg Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Fellowship, the Aaron Copland Fund, and National Endowment for the Arts, as well as from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New Japan Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New Juilliard Ensemble, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Active in the ballet world, Chihara was composer-in-residence at the San Francisco Ballet from 1973-1986. While there, he wrote many trailblazing works, including Shin-ju (based on the "lovers' suicide" plays by the great Japanese dramatist Chikamatsu), as well as the first full-length American ballet, The Tempest.
In addition to his many concert works, Chihara has composed scores for over 90 motion pictures and television series. He has worked with such luminaries as directors Sidney Lumet, Louis Malle, Michael Ritchie, and Arthur Penn.
Chihara’s works have been widely recorded. His compositions appear on many labels including BMG Records, Reference Recordings, CRI, Music and Art, Vox Candide, New World Records, The Louisville Orchestra First Editions Records, and Albany Records.
Paul Seiko Chihara is a Professor of Music at UCLA.
Michael Klingbeil Yale, is a composer who is active in contemporary concert music, electroacoustic music, and computer music research. He completed his formal training at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, and Columbia University. Principal teachers include Tristan Murail, Heinrich Taube, Gary Lee Nelson, P.Q. Phan and James Beauchamp. His works have been played in both the U.S. and Europe by ensembles including the Manhattan Sinfonietta, Columbia Composers, the U of I New Music Ensemble, Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon-Provence, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Argento Chamber Ensemble. He is the first prize winner in the 2009 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award Competition. Additional honors and awards have come from the Concours Internationaux de Bourges, The MacDowell Colony, First Music, the Concorso Internazionale “Luigi Russolo,” and ASCAP. His music is recorded on the ICMC label. In addition to musical activities, he was a computer science research fellow at the University of Iowa, and has earned industry awards for computer software development. He is active in computer music in both the academic and commercial fields and has developed novel software for audio analysis and re-synthesis.
Robert Morris Eastman, born in Cheltenham, England in 1943, received his musical education at the Eastman School of Music (B.M. in composition with distinction) and the University of Michigan (M.M. and D.M.A. in composition and ethnomusicology), where he studied composition with John La Montaigne, Leslie Bassett, Ross Lee Finney, and Eugene Kurtz. At Tanglewood, as a Margret Lee Crofts Fellow, he worked with Gunther Schuller. Morris has taught composition, electronic music, and music theory at the University of Hawaii and at Yale University, where he was Chairman of the Composition Department and Director of the Yale Electronic Music Studio. He was also Director of the Computer and Electronic Studio, Director of Graduate (music) Studies, and Associate Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1980 Morris joined the faculty of the Eastman School of Music where he presently teaches as Professor of Composition in additional affiliation with the theory and musicology departments. (He was chair of the Composition Department from 2008-11 and 1999-2005. Before that he was a member of both the composition and music theory departments.) Other teaching posts have included positions at the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts, the Governor's School for the Arts held at Bucknell University, the University of Pittsburgh Computer Music Workshop, and the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood.
Morris is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the A. Whitney Griswald Foundation, the American Music Center, the Hanson Institute of American Music, and the American Council of Learned Societies. In 1975 he was a MacDowell Colony fellow. He has been guest composer at many festivals and series of new music including: the ISCM Festival of Contemporary Music (Paris, 1975; Boston, 1991); the International Conferences of Computer Music (Rochester, 1984; Urbana, 1987); "Composer to Composer" (Telluride, 1990); Composer's Symposium (Albuquerque, 1991 and 2009); Contemporary Music Festival (Santa Barbara, 1992); The 1993 Kobe International Modern Music Festival in Japan; The Heidelberg Contemporary Music Festival (Heidelberg College, 2005); The New Music Festival 2009 (Western Illinois University); Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (University of California, Santa Barbara, 2009); New Music Festival, MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music (Bowling Green State University, 2010). He has received numerous awards and commissions including those from the Pittsburgh Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Yale University, Speculum Musicae, Brave New Works, The Society for New Music, Alienor Harpsichord Society, Hartt College Festival of Contemporary Organ Music, National Flute Association. His many compositions have been performed in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Morris's music is recorded on CRI, New World, Music Gallery Editions, Neuma, Music and Arts, Fanfare, Centaur, Open Space, Innova, Yank Gulch, Albany, and Attacca.
Morris has written music for a wide diversity of musical forms and media. He has composed over 160 works including computer and improvisational music. Much of his output from the 1970s is influenced by non-Western music and uses structural principles from Arabic, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, and early Western musics. While such influences are less noticeable in his more recent works, the temporal and ornamental qualities of Eastern music have permanently affected Morris's style. Moreover, Morris has found much resonance among his musical aesthetics, his experiences in hiking (especially in the Southwestern United States), his study and appreciation of Carnatic Music of South India, and his reading of ancient Indian, Chinese, and Japanese Buddhist texts. Among his present compositional projects is a series of the works to be played outdoors in a natural setting. Five of these works are complete and have been performed: Playing Outside (2000), Coming Down to Earth (2002), Oracle (2005), SOUND/PATH/FIELD (2006), and Arboretum (2007-8).
In addition to his music, Morris has written four books and over 50 articles and reviews which have appeared in the Journal of Music Theory, In Theory Only, Music Theory Specteum, Journal of the American Musicology Society, and Perspectives of New Music contributing to theories of musical analysis and aesthetics, compositional design, and electronic and computer music. Morris was the recipient of the "Outstanding Publication Award" of the Society for Music Theory in 1988 for his book, Composition with Pitch-Classes: A Theory of Compositional Design, published by Yale University Press, and in 2001 for his article "Voice Leading Spaces" in Music Theory Spectrum 20/2. His most recent book, The Whistling Blackbird: Essays and Talks on New Music, was published by the University of Rochester Press in December of 2010. Morris is presently Co-editor of Perspectives of New Music and Contributing Editor of The Open Space Magazine.
Paul Sperry MSM, is recognized as one of today’s outstanding interpreters of American music. Although he is equally at home in a repertoire that extends from Monteverdi opera and the Bach Passions to Britten’s "Nocturne" and hundreds of songs in more than a dozen languages, he brings to American music a conviction and an enthusiasm that has brought it to life for countless listeners.
Many of today’s leading composers have written works specially for him; Sperry has world premieres of works by more than thirty Americans to his credit. He premiered Leonard Bernstein’s "Dybbuk Suite" with the composer conducting the New York Philharmonic, Jacob Druckman’s "Animus IV" for the opening of the Centre Georges Pompidou at Beaubourg in Paris in 1977, and Bernard Rands’ Pulitzer Prize winning "Canti del Sole" with the New York Philharmonic in l983 under Zubin Mehta.
Other composers whose works he has premiered include Robert Beaser, William Bolcom, Victoria Bond, Daniel Brewbaker, Tom Cipullo, Nathan Currier, Daron Hagen, Richard Hundley, William Kraft, Libby Larsen, Harold Meltzer, John Musto, Stephen Paulus, Russell Platt, Robert Rodriguez, Larry Alan Smith, Louise Talma, Francis Thorne, Nicholas Thorne, Dan Welcher, Richard Wilson and Charles Wuorinen and Judith Lang Zaimont.
Because he is a passionate advocate for American music, Sperry has tried to insure that many of the wonderful works he has unearthed will be easily available to others. To that end, he has compiled and edited several volumes of American songs, both anthologies and single composer collections for G. Schirmer, Peer-Southern, Boosey & Hawkes, Carl Fischer and Dover Publications. His collection "American Encores" was released by Oxford University Press in October, 2002.
