Lucia Dlugoszewski

Lucia Dlugoszewski ( born June 16, 1931 in Detroit, † April 11, 2000 in New York City ) was an American composer of contemporary music, also known as a performer and as an inventor of new instruments has meaning.

Life

Dlugoszweski grew up as the daughter of Polish migrants in Detroit. She studied piano at the conservatory in her native city. After being denied the inclusion of a medical school, she moved in 1950 to New York City. There she took 1952-1955 piano with Grete Sultan; 1952/53, she studied at the Mannes College of Music with Felix Salzer; they also took composition lessons with Edgar Varèse. She worked closely with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, for which she served as musical director and wrote a number of works. After the death of Hawkins, with whom she was married, she since 1996, the dance company on; In 1998 she presented her first choreography.

Work

Since 1957 she has written works for this dance company, but also for the Foundation for Modern Dance, as Journey of a Poet, the Mikhail Baryshnikov interpreted, and Taking Time to be Vulnerable for Pascal Denichou. They also wrote music for the film Guns of the Trees by Jonas Mekas (1962). She also wrote music for Marie Menken's later film Visual Variations on Noguchi.

Much like Pauline Oliveros, Harry Partch or Moondog was Dlugoszewskis musical work, about the search Ness Concert ( 1958), stimulated by the development of new sounds. According to its own estimates, it developed primarily in the 1950s, more than a hundred musical instruments that she built with the sculptor Ralph Dorazio. In most cases, they developed percussion instruments, but also built pianos to. Still, for her composition Eight Clear Places (1961 ), new instruments; later they resorted to this instrument and explored in other works whose possibilities. Other pieces were conventional, about their Abyss and Caress, which was premiered in 1975 by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Pierre Boulez. Other commissions came from the Louisville Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony. Her work has been comparatively little documented on recordings ( for Nonesuch Records, Folkways and New World Records ). The first CD under her own name, Disparate Stairway Radical Other, was not published until after her death.

Awards

Dlugoszewski was a Guggenheim Fellow; they also received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation was the first woman. In 1977 she was honored as the first woman with the Koussevitzy International Recording Award, for her work Fire Fragile Flight, which was interpreted by the Orchestra of Our Time.