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INTRODUCTION
by Joseph Dalton
When the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS was established in 1991, its first public face was a composer. Thirty-two year-old Kevin Oldham appeared on the cover of The New York Times on December 27, 1992, in an article announcing this new initiative to assist artists who face foreshortened lives in planning for the care and preservation of their creative legacies.
For Oldham, AIDS had become a catalyst to take his muse more seriously. A virtuoso pianist who also played and sang cabaret, he was propelled by AIDS from being an occasional songwriter into a serious composer. As can be seen from his entry in this catalogue, virtually all of his works come from the last half-decade of his brief life. Oldham pursued music to the end. In January 1993, he checked himself out of a New York hospital to rehearse and perform his Piano Concerto with his hometown orchestra, the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra. The day after the performance he was admitted to a local hospital, where he died six weeks later. The heroic struggle to make music while facing death is mirrored on some level by each of the 130 composers documented in this catalogue. A few were genuinely famous, like rock star Freddie Mercury of the band Queen, guitarist and singer/songwriter Tom Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Broadway star Peter Allen, and rapper Eazy-E. But most were like the majority of composers and musicians in America today—hardworking and largely overlooked by the mainstream media, but nonetheless ull of ideas and ambitions. They just didn't have the gift of time. There is within the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic a secondary tragedy: the lost potential of artists who die before their time, often before fully finding their creative voice. AIDS doesn't make the front pages much any more, but its effects on American culture remain great. For this reason the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS continues into its second decade. The Estate Project was founded by Randall Bourscheidt, president of the Alliance for the Arts, an advocacy and support organization based in New York City, and by Patrick Moore, who was the project's first director. The Project's mission has three components:
In the early 1990s, a number of efforts began in different quarters of the music industry to support musicians with AIDS and to use music as a fundraising tool in fighting the disease. An ad hoc committee of concerned music industry professionals was gathered to provide resources and opportunities to composers living with AIDS. Formed under the Estate Project's auspices, the group became known as the AIDS Music Emergency Network. Among the members were composer John Corigliano and manager Charles Hamlen, who formed the AIDS fundraising organization Classical Action in 1992, as well as representatives of ASCAP, BMI, and other major publishing houses and independent record labels. The committee contributed to the Estate Project's publication Future Safe: Estate Planning for Artists in a Time of AIDS. Also during the early 1990s, Mimi Stern-Wolfe and Downtown Music Productions began producing annual chamber music concerts on World AIDS Day (December 1) dedicated to the music of composers with AIDS, both living and deceased. Entitled "The Benson Series," these landmark programs were an important early resource in the research for this catalogue and are fully documented in a special appendix. A similar but short-lived effort was Positive Music, a series of concerts at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in New York. Other concurrent activities included LifeBeat, a fundraising organization formed in 1992, the same year that Classical Action was established. LifeBeat was the result of a Billboard editorial by the late manager Bob Cavione, in which he disclosed his illness and challenged the industry to take action. Another on-going fundraising group is the Red+Hot Organization, which produces imaginative recordings by a diversity of artists, the proceeds of which benefit AIDS-related charities. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the American Music Center were both represented on the Estate Project's first music committee, and began taking into their collections the archives of composers who died. The Library has been a frequent collaborator with the Estate Project and is a partner in the current Music Archive. With the recent donation of the American Music Center's collection of scores and recordings to the Performing Arts Library, these holdings are now together under one roof. Throughout all of these efforts, the needs of composers with AIDS have been clear. They need money and opportunities, and they need their work performed, documented and preserved. It's an easy list to make because these are the same needs of all composers. The crucial difference is time. The terrain of the epidemic in America has changed in recent years. It's debatable whether AIDS is now a "chronic but manageable condition," as it is so often described, but thanks to the development of new generations of drugs, the relationship between AIDS and time has changed. People are living longer, and the sense of emergency has faded. By the year 2001, when the Estate Project launched its Music Archive, the effects of AIDS on American culture had largely changed from being current and critical to being of recent history. While continuing to assist composers and musicians living with AIDS, the Estate Project's greater work has become dealing with what is left behind by those who have died. Setting the goals and criteria The objective of the Music Archive has been to document the effects of AIDS on American music. The primary method has been to focus on the legacies of American composers who have died from the disease by:
From the beginning, we decided to make our research as broad as possible, embracing all genres including rock, pop, jazz, rap, musical theater and classical music. Our use of the term "composer" encompasses singer/songwriters and improvisers. In keeping with a long-stated practice of the Estate Project, we avoided any value judgments as to artistic quality. Likewise, a composer's level of fame or importance was never a criterion for inclusion. Certainly if we had looked only for professional composers—as defined by making an income from music—we would have had to exclude a lot of names. In sum, there were no subjective thresholds for inclusion in this research and the resulting catalogue. In addition to the catalogue's entries on individual composers, which are described in more detail below, we have compiled several other registries of those who have died:
At 238 names, the list of deceased performers is the most substantial. In contrast to the composer list, here we did use the criterion of professional status—in other words, that music was more than an avocation. A handful of composers who also had distinguished careers as performers—of others' music, not just their own—have their names repeated on this list. The lists of deceased music journalists and musical theater directors are an attempt to document the loss of other creative individuals from the music world. The Estate Project's work in literature and theater will surely uncover more names of writers and directors associated with music. In compiling names for all of these lists, we focused on Americans, but not so strictly as to exclude foreign composers and musicians whose work had an American presence. Thus we include the African rock star Fela Kuti, the British theater composer Stephen Oliver, the Brazilian pop star Cazuza, and the Canadian electro-acoustic composer Martin Bartlett, among others. Yet another list is Musical Works Addressing AIDS, which is divided into classical, popular, and music theater works. This began as a personal effort of mine in the early 1990s to keep track of how composers were addressing AIDS. I was inspired by visits to galleries in New York where visual artists were bringing to public consciousness the epidemic that surrounded us. The lists of AIDS deaths in music also began as a personal effort. Around 1993 I began writing down names of deceased friends, colleagues and acquaintances on the inside back cover of The New Grove Dictionary of American Music in my office at Composers Recordings, Inc. I never expected that one day I would attempt to make a comprehensive list. FINDING THE NAMES The research aspect of this project began officially in the summer of 2001, with about a dozen names—mostly classical composers, mostly New Yorkers. Nurit Tilles, the co-author of this catalogue, joined the project in the fall of 2001. The data grew quickly. Word of mouth and web searches were the primary methods by which we added new names. But that hardly evokes the detective work and dogged pursuit of information that consumed us for more than two years. There had been a few prior efforts to compile names, which proved enormously helpful. For the annual Day Without Art, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts logged the names of artists who had obituaries in The New York Times. The list covered only 1991 to 1994 but included the names of 25 composers and more than 40 musicians, the majority of which were new to us. In addition to her concert programming, Mimi Stern-Wolfe gathered information on AIDS deaths of many individuals over the years. An afternoon spent rummaging through her file drawers yielded a great deal of material. A website named "Fuller Up, the Dead Musician Directory" (www.elvispelvis.com) includes an index of causes of death and its AIDS listings led to a few more names from popular music. Paul Attinello, a musicologist and composer, has been gathering information on AIDS and music for at least a decade. He generously shared his research on deceased musicians and musical works about AIDS. Rocktober Magazine, an alternative publication out of Chicago, ran a theme issue in 1997 entitled "Rock 'N Roll AIDS Quilt," which contained quirky articles on some famous and obscure musicians. The issue's beautiful front and back covers are photos of actual quilt panels—though square like LP or CD covers rather than the traditional rectangular shape—for Peter Allen, Esquerita, Liberace, Freddie Mercury, Klaus Nomi, Sylvester, Ricky Wilson of the B-52s, and Eric Wright (Eazy-E). Other magazines that were helpful for their coverage of artists with AIDS were A&U (Art and Understanding), POZ, and The Advocate. Beyond these sources, the pursuit of deeper information on any one composer regularly led to uncovering the names of other deceased composers and performers. And there were numerous coincidental, almost fated, moments when vital information was passed on to us. Some examples:
But finding names was not always easy—because AIDS remains controversial in many quarters and in many minds. As Bourscheidt once said, "AIDS evokes homosexuality and death, which are two of many people's least favorite topics." As was commonly known at the time, obituaries from the 1980s and 1990s often did not disclose when AIDS was the cause of death. A common euphemism was "died after a long illness," but just as frequently no cause of death was given at all—in obituaries of dynamic 30- to 40-year-old men! It's a true and good thing to say that AIDS does not discriminate and strikes in every gender, race, sexual orientation and economic class. But such statements should never overshadow the fact that AIDS hit early and hard on gay men, a group vital to American arts and entertainment. And so without apology, much of our outreach effort focused on areas of the music industry where gay men are prevalent. One such area, in spite of its ecclesiastical associations, is the profession of organists. A brief case study from our research in this field illustrates the inadequacy of existing records and some of the resistance our inquiries regularly faced. Organists: A Case Study in Finding Names The American Organist is the monthly magazine of the American Guild of Organists (AGO), a national organization with more than 20,000 members. The AGO staff kindly allowed us to visit its headquarters in Manhattan, where we reviewed and photocopied the magazine's monthly obituary columns. We logged all unexplained deaths of men—mostly organists, choir directors, and composers—who were under 65 years of age. The data points to an unacknowledged impact of AIDS on one segment of American music. Each year between 1983 and 1999 there were, on average, 9 obituaries of men under age 65 in which either no cause of death was given or the stated cause of death suggested AIDS. These causes included "a long illness," "a brief illness," pneumonia, meningitis, heart failure and unspecified cancer. By contrast, each year between 1979 and 1982, there were, on average, only four obituaries of men under age 65 in which no cause of death was stated—and there was only a single obituary with a vague cause of death. For the years 2000 through 2002, the average number of obituaries of men under age 65 in which no cause of death was stated falls to less than two per year. The first time AIDS was given as the cause of death in an American Organist obituary occurred in August 1987 for Robert Jacobson (Editor of Opera News). Thereafter, each year through 1999 there was an average of three deaths reported as being due to AIDS. The number of reported AIDS deaths peaked in the years 1989 to 1994. During this same period unexplained deaths also rose. Comparison of the figures for 1987 through 1995 reveals the following: Obituaries in The American Organist of men under age 65:
These figures clearly suggest that many more individuals died of AIDS than were reported. Subsequent to our review of American Organist obituaries, we added a number of the names with no stated cause of death to our listings because either the cause was widely known, as in the case of Paul Jacobs, pianist and organist of the New York Philharmonic, or the name was brought to us by a friend of the deceased, as with organist Jerry Brainard, who died at age 35 in 1983. With the thought that attitudes toward AIDS must have softened in the years since those obituaries were written, we approached the AGO management and asked for assistance in reaching its membership. We hoped for the community's help in identifying deceased organists and others who should be included in our research. We asked if an announcement to that effect could be placed in The American Organist. AGO replied that their magazine would not be the right forum for our appeal, and suggested that we go directly to the association's 340 chapters, most of which publish newsletters. They provided the mailing list free of charge. To the editors of the chapter newsletters we sent a brief email introducing our project, saying that the AGO national office had referred us, and asking that an item be published in an upcoming issue. We also provided a suggested paragraph. Later we learned that the email prompted a number of very concerned phone calls to the AGO offices in New York asking, in particular, if they knew of us—even though our email said that AGO had referred us. And though our announcement went out to all 340 chapters, to our knowledge only about a dozen ran the item. No more than a few AGO members contacted us with any information. As a population of musicians who work in a church environment, organists may be unique, and even the gay men among them can be conservative. But we had hoped that such a close-knit musical community would respond to the opportunity for public remembrance of deceased colleagues.
A phone call to a senior public affairs officer at a major opera company, which was widely known to have lost many members to AIDS, was met with open hostility. A request to an executive at the American Symphony Orchestra League about how best to reach their national membership—through the magazine, newsletter or website—got a reply along the lines of "Let me think about the best way to do that." But no call or email followed. The silence that kept AIDS a secret in the past endures in many ways. When our phone calls weren't returned and letters and emails not answered, we could never be completely sure of the exact reasons. But getting hung up on—as happened with an inquiry to a conductor—was hard to misinterpret. In compiling these registries, we never assumed that AIDS was a cause of death unless it was confirmed either in the press or by a friend or family member of the deceased. In a few cases, family members asked that a name not be included in this research. We respected such requests, but with considerable regret. Gathering the Information Each catalogue entry is intended to provide a portrait of the composer's life and music, and to serve as a finding guide to the music itself. Thousands of scraps of information were compiled to make these entries. Yet many still seem woefully incomplete, because either that's all the information that could be found, or the name came to us late in the research process when time and funding were running out. Gathering information on the deceased composers—biographies, resumes, work lists, clippings, photographs, etc.—was a fascinating journey with many dead ends. It alternated between being exhilarating, frustrating and deeply moving. Since the majority of composers had no publisher or record label—they hadn't had time—we usually started research on a case by approaching companions, friends and family members. Sometimes these contacts were suggested to us when someone gave us the name of the deceased: "He was a friend of mine and here's who you should contact…" We also tried to locate survivors—companions, wives, siblings, parents—who were listed in obituaries, even if the articles were sometimes more than ten years old. Early in this project, we started a simple Web site that explained the project, asked for help from the music community and the general public, and gave regular updates on our progress with each composer's case. This instigated a number of emails from family members of the deceased who volunteered information and assistance. Few composers had designated their musical executors. When there was a musician or composer acting as executor, designated or de facto, it was more likely that the music was still alive in some way—being published, performed or recorded. But it was far more common that musical matters—and the music itself—were left in the hands of a family member with no knowledge of how to proceed. Hand in hand with the process of gathering the information on any particular composer was addressing the state of his archives. The size and condition of the archives varied widely—as did the level of cooperation and follow-through from the executors. In the easiest cases, there was a website devoted to a composer which gave plenty of pertinent information. Or the composer's scores, recordings and professional papers were already archived at a library, usually his alma mater. In a number of instances, our contact with librarians inspired them to finally get around to cataloging their holdings of the composer's music. Sometimes this led to the faculty learning of the music and considering it for performance. But for most cases we would send letters to a number of names and addresses—guessing at who might be the parents, friends, or colleagues—until we got a response. So that our letters would not be mistaken for fundraising appeals, we started putting a handwritten note on the front of each envelope: "re: Music of -." Not all of the composers during their lifetimes had registered as members of the performing rights organizations ASCAP or BMI. But when those organizations had names on their rosters that at least resembled the ones that we were looking for, they would forward our letter of inquiry to the last available address. This succeeded in a few cases, including reaching the wife of the late actor and singer/songwriter Larry Riley. When we found the right person, the response was often emotional and along the lines of: "Oh, thank you. No one ever remembers him but he wrote such beautiful music. Yes, I want to cooperate. What do you need?" Since we were frequently dealing with non-musicians, we learned to answer that question as simply as possible: "Well, let's start with a resume and a list of his songs if you have it." We would then be told that boxes of the composer's music were in the proverbial attic or basement (which raised concerns about their condition). There followed promises to get them out, find what we needed, and get back in touch soon. In spite of the best of intentions, silence usually followed. As weeks turned into months, we varied between two approaches: waiting patiently versus calling repeatedly. Sometimes neither worked. Not every case was so difficult. Many of our contacts took the time to gather up and send to us programs, clippings, cassettes and CDs. Opening a package that had arrived by mail and then going through such a collection and listening to the music was like getting to know a new friend—but then immediately having to make a record of his life. Touching the music and the grief When information was not forthcoming, a site visit became the most effective means of working with recalcitrant survivors. In nearly two dozen visits to survivors, we squatted down on the floor and sorted through boxes of dusty material. We made inventories of the music and organized it, in hopes that it would next go to a library. We borrowed resumes and reviews for photocopying and asked to keep copies of "headshot" photos. This direct access was valuable not only for identifying and documenting the music but also for our contact with the survivor. Through face-to-face conversation, we learned more of the composer's personality and human story—such as travels, interests and history of love affairs—than could be contained in any resume. In one instance, a composer's freewheeling sex life had become the subject of a published poem. This wasn't something his sister would have volunteered in a phone call or letter. But after we had spent the better part of a day together, she took a small volume from a shelf, showed me the poem and, upon my request, agreed that it could be cited in his catalogue entry. In site visits as well as telephone calls we also encountered the grief—still lingering, still unresolved—caused by the untimely deaths of beloved and talented men. It was as if the survivor's inability to deal with the disposition of the man's music—to take it out of the attic and allow it to be catalogued and archived —symbolized an inability to deal with his death. By keeping the tangible remains close by, something of him remained close by as well. On another site visit, I helped a woman sort through the manuscripts of her late brother as well as his personal effects. In a suitcase, which she had packed up 11 years prior when she closed his apartment, were his Bible, journal, razor, and eyeglasses. Opening the suitcase prompted her to finally unlock her feelings as well. The mother of another composer keeps her son's few manuscripts in a small fireproof safe in her home. "Sometimes I just like to take them out and look at them," she told me. The format of the composer entries in this catalogue varies slightly according to the nature of the material at hand. In certain cases, we were able to list a composer's musical output but unable to locate the actual scores or tapes. We pursued information when leads could be found. There were some cases that we returned to again and again without ever finding a contact or a piece of music. In the case of genuinely well-known composers, we relied upon publicly available data to prepare an entry and did not pursue executors or archives. With a few exceptions, each composer's entry gives at least some suggestion of the story of that man's life. But there is also the story of how his music has been dealt with after his demise. Was it catalogueed and archived? Have there been subsequent performances, publications or recordings? Sometimes the Estate Project arrived after this work had been done. With many cases we are proud to have instigated or helped move that process along. There remain other cases where we still have only a name and a few bare facts. But ultimately it is by honoring and remembering the music that we honor the artist. Assessing the DATA We believe our research to be thorough although we cannot claim it to be scientific. Some statistics can be extracted from the raw data, but the bulk of the information deals with music, which is by its nature elusive and subjective. For all the names that have been found and all the music that has been catalogueed, there are composers we still don't know about and pieces of music we still have not located and which might be lost. But in stepping back from the details to look at the larger picture, something else is missing: the music that might have been written—songs, symphonies, musicals—had the composers themselves not been lost to AIDS. We began the research with only a few assumptions, all of which were quickly proven wrong. We thought that there wouldn't be that many names, that most of the composers died rather young, and that they wouldn't have written very much music. Proof of the fallacy of these notions lies before you. Perhaps a bigger mistaken notion lies in the general public consciousness: that music wasn't as badly hit by AIDS as some other art forms. As our study shows, the number of composers who have died of AIDS, the breadth of their work, and the depth of their influence on the history of American music were great indeed. Age We know the age at the time of death for 117 of our 131 composers. Of these, the average age at death is 43; the median age is 42. The youngest died at age 26 (Travis John Alford), the oldest at age 65 (Harold Zabrack). A number of the composers were known as "long-term survivors," though they lived only into their 40s. Following are the numbers of deceased composers in each age bracket:
Died in their 20s: 5 composers
Year of Death The earliest AIDS death we have identified is that of Patrick Cowley, an influential disco singer/songwriter and producer, who died in 1982 at age 32. The most recent death, in May 2002, was that of Jackson Myars, a composer and singer who founded Positive Voices, a choir of all HIV-positive singers in Dallas. Following is the breakdown of deaths by year:
1982: 1 composer died
Sexuality, Gender, and Race All of the composers who we have identified as having died of AIDS are men. We do not assume that all of them were gay. We never asked how a composer contracted HIV. Though we have been unable to identify any female composers who died of AIDS, the list of deceased performers includes five women: the Cuban singer Elena Burke; the Israeli pop vocalist Ofra Haza; the rock bassist Glynnis Johnson, who co-founded the band Red Red Meat; the rock singer Lucy Offerall, who was known as "Miss Lucy" of The G.T.O.'s; and the R&B singer Sharon Redd. It was not always easy to determine the race of a composer. However, we know 11 composers to be African American: Keith Barrow, Kerrigan Black, Eazy-E, Esquerita, Eugene Hancock, Jerriese D. Johnson, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Philip B. McIntyre, Larry Riley, Ronald Roxbury and Jermaine Stewart. Geography AIDS affected musical life in every region of the country. The life of a musician can be hard to pin down. For most of the composers we have cited the cities or towns where they were born and died, but those places aren't necessarily where they made their careers. Certainly there was a concentration of composers who worked in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, which are centers for the music industry and for gay life. But both music and AIDS are integrally woven into the fabric of life throughout the country. Here are examples of the geographic diversity:
Every realm of American music was touched by AIDS. The diversity of music in this catalogue is evidence of that fact. The Index to Genres and Forms is our attempt to categorize the composers by the types of music they wrote. Though the composers' work lists have not been gathered into a database, we estimate that there are at least 5,000 works contained in this catalogue. Some of the composers were very productive. A few examples:
Classical:
Popular song:
Music theater:
TOTAL: 413 musical works addressing AIDS CONCLUSION:
As has already been stated, our research on one composer often led to the discovery of other composers and performers. The levels of collaboration among them are worth noting. These interactions speak of the musical communities of a particular era, and suggest that these men represent a distinct generation in American music. Here are few examples:
A number of our composers somehow found the time and energy to strengthen their communities by creating ensembles, festivals and venues to present the work of other artists. Among these:
To the extent that the information was available, a composer's complete creative output—including works outside of music—is covered in his catalogue entry. A number of composers excelled in other fields. Here are some of the most prominent examples:
As this catalogue nears completion for its online publication on World AIDS Day 2003, a number of composers' archives are being donated to the Estate Project Music Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. We expect that the collection will continue to grow over the years with archives that are currently pledged or deeded to the Library. Archives of composers who died of AIDS are also housed in more than a dozen college and university libraries across the nation. Though many works listed in this catalogue may be lost, we hope this publication will bring to light more music by composers with AIDS. KEEPING THE WORKS ALIVE The ultimate goal of our catalogueing and archiving is that the music may live. We hope that this catalogue will inspire listeners and scholars to pursue the music. While many of these composers had little of their music recorded or published, there is a great deal of music listed in this catalogue that is commercially available. Not everything is lost or available only in archives! We also hope that performers will pursue this music and consider adding it to their repertoire. Let the label of AIDS fall away, and evaluate the music on its own terms. If you decide to play it, don't just do so in concerts about AIDS. We think that the composers would have preferred it that way. During the course of this research, the Estate Project has been helping to keep the music alive. We have also been working with composers who are living with HIV/AIDS. All of these activities sponsored by the Estate Project, including concerts, recordings and commissions, are listed in the appendix Concerts, Recordings & Commissions. Please note that all of these endeavors, including the research and publication of this catalogue, were supported by grants and contributions, which are acknowledged herein. The Estate Project for Artists with AIDS is not a foundation or grant-making organization and is unable to provide any financial assistance to any projects involving the music contained in this catalogue. The Estate Project does not own or hold any rights to the musical works contained in this catalogue. Those rights remain with the composers' estates or other parties as indicated in the catalogue entries. CONCLUSIONS: Pop music may have a short shelf life in terms of visibility, while classical music may take years to reach audiences. But for any kind of art, it takes a generation or more to judge what's good and what will last. No judgments can be made when the music is lost or forgotten. Nevertheless, 20 years have passed since AIDS began to strike in the music world. Two composers who have been watching the field throughout that time are John Corigliano and David Del Tredici. Both have been advisors to the Estate Project and each recently offered some insights on the effects of AIDS on American music. During a short panel discussion at our May 2002 concert, Corigliano ventured some thoughts about the effects of AIDS on American classical music. Citing the evolution toward a more accessible and emotionally communicative style among American composers, he contrasted this with Europe where composition remains more arid and complex. "AIDS did not happen in Europe the same way it did in America," he said. "And I think that difference in what's happened in American music is due to AIDS." Del Tredici offered an insight that pertains more to the effects of AIDS on the individual creator. Speaking to the audience at our February 2003 concert, he recalled the life of his friend and former student Robert Savage, who died in 1993 at age 42:
Joseph Dalton has worked with American composers for more than 15 years. He was Executive Director of Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI) from 1990 to 2000, where he produced 300 recordings, including the first discs of Bang on a Can, Tan Dun, Aaron Kernis and many other artists. The New York Times said of his CRI tenure, "He was a discerning impresario with courage and vision... (who) produced a legacy that has added immensely to the richness of the field." Kyle Gann, writing in the Village Voice, called Dalton "a downtown hero." He is a voting member of the Recording Academy and has been an advisor to the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Jerome Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts. In 2000 Dalton received the Founders Award from the Gay Lesbian American Music Awards (GLAMA). He holds degrees in music from the Catholic University of America and in arts administration from Southern Methodist University. He writes for The Advocate and Time Out New York among other magazines and was a contributing editor for EAR Magazine. He is currently an arts reporter and music critic for the Albany Times Union. Praised by Kyle Gann of The Village Voice as "one of new music's most valuable pianists" and by Allan Ulrich of The Advocate as "one of the country's most respected musicians," NURIT TILLES has performed and recorded with the duo-piano team Double Edge since 1978 and has been a member of Steve Reich & Musicians since 1975. She has worked for many years with Meredith Monk, David Borden (The Mother Mallard Band), Eve Beglarian, "Blue" Gene Tyranny and other distinguished composers. Tilles joined the Lincoln Center Institute in 2000 as a solo artist, performing Samuel Barber's Piano Sonata and Charles Ives' Sonata No. 1 for students and teachers at New York City public schools and universities. She has recorded for ECM, Nonesuch, CRI, New Albion, New World, Lovely Music and Jazzology, and has worked with video artist Janene Higgins and choreographers Richard Daniels, Laura Dean, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Tamar Rogoff. |
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