John Harbison

John Harris Harbison ( born December 20, 1938 in Orange ( New Jersey)) is an American composer, conductor and university professor.

Life

John Harbison founded already twelve years old a jazz band. The Bachelor he acquired in 1960 as a student of Walter Piston at Harvard University, continued his studies at the Berlin Academy of Music in 1961 with Boris Blacher, where he received the 1963 Master of Fine Arts degree from Princeton University as a student of Roger Sessions and Earl Kim. After a Junior Fellowship at Harvard Harbison was a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is a music professor since 1984.

Harbison also taught at CalArts, Boston University and Duke University, and was composer -in-residence from various orchestras (including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and at Tanglewood ). As a conductor he has directed numerous smaller and larger ensembles, including Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

The cantata " Flight into Egypt" wore Harbison 1987 Pulitzer Prize of Music a. In 1989 he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Among his other awards, the Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities (1998), the Harvard Arts Medal (2000 ), the American Music Center 's Letter of Distinction (2000), the Distinguished Composer Award from the American Composers Orchestra (2002 ) and several honorary doctorates.

Work

The compositional work Harbison includes six symphonies, a ballet ( "Ulysses", 1983), three operas ( including the composer commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera 's opera " The Great Gatsby " premiered his own libretto, 1999), numerous chamber works ( including five string quartets ) and choral works. Several violin compositions Harbison's written for his wife, Rose Mary, with whom he shared the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, founded in 1989 is derived.