Seattle-born
composer and pianist William
Bolcom entered the University of Washington at age 11, studied with Darius
Milhaud at Mills College and the Paris Conservatory, and completed his doctorate
in composition at Stanford University in 1964.
Recent premieres of Bolcom’s works range from his opera McTeague at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1992 (directed by Robert Altman) and his Lyric Concerto for flute and orchestra (written for James Galway) to his Second Piano Quartet (for clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and the Beaux Arts Trio) and his Sixth Symphony (for the National Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin). He composed the musical score for John Turturro’s 1999 film Illuminata, and his new opera, A View from the Bridge, with a libretto by Arthur Miller and Arnold Weinstein, was premiered by the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1999.
To date, Bolcom has been featured on nearly 40 albums as both performer and composer, several of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards. Twenty of those are with his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, with whom he tours worldwide.
He has taught composition at the University of Michigan since 1973, where he is the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Music and chair of the Composition Department.
Bolcom is the recipient of honorary doctorates from the San Francisco Conservatory
of Music and Albion College, and of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his
12 New Etudes for piano. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Letters.
The Peter
Sparling Dance Company presents a vast dancescape expressing human experience
from the comic, tragic and sublime to the ecstatic, ethereal and extraordinary.
The company's seven members deliver bold performances of Sparling's original
choreography, incorporating innovative uses of text and original musical scores,
as well as classical and popular music. Sparling is a veteran of the Martha
Graham and Jose Limón dance companies. The program will include a work
set to the music of the respected composer William Bolcom, as well as music
by Paul Epstein and C.W. Gluck. This event is presented in conjunction with
the College
of Musical Arts Festival Series.
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