Hoosier composer Ned Rorem in Bloomington next week

Ned Rorem CD cover "The End of Summer"

Two events will be held on Saturday, July 26, in Auer Concert Hall in celebration of his appearance. At 2:30 p.m., Rorem will be the featured speaker at a forum moderated by IU faculty member Paul Kiesgen. At 7 p.m., IU faculty members and students will hold a recital featuring selected compositions of Rorem. Both events will be free of charge and open to the public.

Words and music are inextricably linked to the composer. Time has called him "the world’s best composer of art songs," and his musical ventures encompass an array of critically acclaimed new music. He also is the author of 16 books, and the latest, A Ned Rorem Reader (Yale University Press), won the author an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ Award for Special Recognition in 2002. Now in his 80th year, the native Hoosier continues to celebrate with world premieres, special recordings and guest appearances throughout the world.

His orchestral scores include Piano Concerto for Left Hand and Orchestra (1991), premiered by soloist Gary Graffman, with André Previn conducting the Symphony Orchestra of the Curtis Institute of Music; and Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra (1993), commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in honor of its 150th anniversary season. Kurt Masur conducted the premiere, with Tom Stacy as the soloist. His most recent orchestral work is a Double Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Raymond Leppard conducted longtime Rorem advocates Jaime Laredo (violin) and Sharon Robinson (cello) in the work’s premiere in October 1998. One week after the work’s debut in Indianapolis, Leppard and his soloists traveled to the United Kingdom to perform the concerto with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Rorem has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship (1951), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1957), and an award from the National Institute for Arts and Letters (1968). In January 2000, he was elected president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award in 1971 for his book Critical Affairs, A Composer’s Journal, in 1975 for The Final Diary, and in 1992 for an article on American opera in Opera News. In 1998, he was chosen Composer of the Year by Musical America Among his many commissions for new works are those from the Ford Foundation (for Poems of Love and the Rain, 1966); the Atlanta Symphony (for the String Symphony, 1985); the Chicago Symphony (forGoodbye My Fancy, 1990); and from Carnegie Hall (for Spring Music, 1991). Among the distinguished conductors who have performed his music are Bernstein, Masur, Mehta, Mitropoulos, Ormandy, Previn, Reiner, Slatkin, Steinberg, and Stokowski. His suite Air Music won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize in music. The Atlanta Symphony recording of the String Symphony, Sunday Morning and Eagles received a Grammy Award for Outstanding Orchestral Recording in 1989.

Read more about his life at this PBS archival site:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/composer/rorem.html

For more about IUB’s Summer Music Festival, go to this IU School of Music site:

http://www.music.indiana.edu/publicity/summer_fest/