Composer, writer, and lecturer Michael Colgrass will be the focus of two October events at Ithaca College as the School of Music's 2005-6 Karel Husa Visiting Professor of Composition. In addition to the public events, Colgrass will provide individual instruction for composition students in the School of Music.
On Sunday, October 9, Colgrass will lecture about his music. The talk will begin at 8:15 p.m. in the Iger Lecture Hall in the James J. Whalen Center for Music.
On Monday, October 10, four of Colgrass's works will be performed in a free concert beginning at 8:15 p.m. in Ford Hall in the Whalen Center. Faculty members Debra Moree and Conrad Alexander will present a duet for viola and percussion, and the Ithaca College Wind Ensemble will play "The Winds of Nagual." Rounding out the program will be "Letter from Mozart," performed by the Ithaca College Chamber Orchestra, and a work for five percussionists, performed by members of the Ithaca College Percussion Ensemble.
Born in Chicago in 1932, Colgrass studied symphonic music at the University of Illinois. After composition studies with Lukas Foss and Darius Milhaud, he was a freelance percussionist with a wide range of performers, including the New York Philharmonic, Dizzy Gillespie, and the original "West Side Story" orchestra on Broadway. In 1967 he stopped playing and devoted himself entirely to composing.
Colgrass's many musical honors include a 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Music for "Déjà vu," a work that was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic, and a 1982 Emmy Award for the PBS documentary "Soundings: The Music of Michael Colgrass." Other prizes include two Guggenheim fellowships, a Rockefeller grant, first prizes in the Barlow and Sudler International Wind Ensemble Competitions, and the l988 Jules Leger Prize for New Chamber Music.
Created in 1987 to honor former longtime faculty member and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Karel Husa, the visiting professorship brings an eminent composer to campus each year. Past Husa visiting professors have included Samuel Adler, George Crumb, Libby Larson, John Harbison, Chen Yi, and Robert Beaser.
