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IDENTIFICATION AND BIO: Composer, Conductor, Pianist, Vocal Coach, Professor of Music Conductor of the Stonewall Chorale, New York (1986-1991)
B.Mus. in Piano, Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas (1966)
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For the last four and a half years of his life William Pflugradt was the conductor of the Stonewall Chorale, the nation's oldest gay and lesbian choral group, founded in 1979. During Pflugradt's tenure (1986 to 1991) the Chorale performed throughout the New York City area to critical acclaim. Programs included the Mozart Requiem, the Faure Requiem, Missa Brevis by Zoltan Kodaly and Three Motets by Hugo Distler, as well as spirituals, madrigals and Broadway song arrangements. Under his baton the group gave the premiere of Louis Weingarden's Evening Liturgy of Consolation — believed to be the first musical work addressing the AIDS epidemic — in 1988, shortly before Weingarden died of AIDS. Pflugradt gave his final performance with the Stonewall Chorale on March 16, 1991. He held a Ph.D. in music theory from Indiana University, with a special emphasis on twentieth-century analytical systems. He taught at Indiana State University, Indiana University, and the University of Arizona, and was a member of the Society for Music Theory and the American Choral Directors Association. Pflugradt became interested in combining the teaching of music and dance in the late 1970s when three dance students enrolled in his course on twentieth-century music at the University of Arizona. "As a coincidence, another of his students was interested in the same subject. Because she was Rebekah Harkness, wealthy benefactor of the Harkness Ballet and founder of the Harkness Theater of the Dance in New York, she was in a position to do something about it." (Larry Harnisch, The Arizona Daily Star, May 26, 1981). Pflugradt received a grant from the Harkness Ballet Foundation to develop courses to aid dancers and choreographers in the analysis of musical form and structure. He left the university in 1980 and spent a year studying the history of ballet and taking ballet classes before joining the staff of the Harkness School of Ballet. In New York he also conducted other choral groups as well as off-Broadway productions — including some of his own compositions — and cabarets. He is believed to have written quite a number of songs and arrangements, although only a few of the manuscripts have been found. William Pflugradt died of AIDS in New York at the age of 48 on December 22, 1991. —Nurit Tilles MUSICAL THEATRE
Silver Lining (1984)
OTHER SONGS
B.G.P. (1989)
ARRANGEMENTS
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane)
Never, Never Land (Jule Stein)
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