NYFOS Composer Bios

William Bolcom

 Composer/pianist William Bolcom was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1938. Exhibiting musical talent while still very young, he began private composition studies at age 11 with John Verrall and piano lessons with Berthe Poncy Jacobson at the University of Washington. During this time he performed extensively in the Northwest and Seattle areas. In 1958 Bolcom earned his B.A. from the University of Washington, studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College in California and at the Paris Conservatoire de Musique, and earned a doctorate in composition in 1964 from Stanford University, where he worked with Leland Smith. Returning to the Paris Conservatoire, he won the 2ieme Prix in Composition in 1965. While in Europe he began writing stage scores for theaters in West Germany, continuing at Stanford University, in Memphis, Tennessee, at Lincoln Center/New York, and at the Yale Repertory Theater.

Mr. Bolcom’s very long list of prizes and awards began with a BMI award in 1953.  He has since won almost every major musical award, including the Marc Blitzstein Award (1966) from the Academy of Arts and Letters for Dynamite Tonite, an opera for actors written with his long-time collaborator, Arnold Weinstein; the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano; and the Governor’s Arts Award from the State of Michigan.  He was named “Composer of the Year” in 2007 by Musical America.  The 2005 recording of his Songs of Innocence and of Experience received four Grammy Awards for Best Classical Album, Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Best Producer of the Year/Classical. 

William Bolcom’s compositions include four violin sonatas; eight symphonies; three operas (McTeague, A View from the Bridge, and A Wedding), plus several musical theater operas; eleven string quartets; two film scores (Hester Street and Illuminata); incidental music for stage plays (including Arthur Miller's Broken Glass); fanfares and occasional pieces; and numerous chamber, keyboard, choral and vocal works.  Mr. Bolcom’s Eighth Symphony will be premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by James Levine in Boston in February 2008.

Bolcom’s setting of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, a full-evening work for soloists, choruses, and orchestra, was composed over a 25-year span. Premiered at the Stuttgart Opera in 1984, it enjoyed subsequent performances in Ann Arbor, Chicago’s Grant Park, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Powell Hall in St. Louis, Carnegie Hall, Royal Festival Hall/ London (broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 throughout the United Kingdom), and La Jolla, California (selected parts from Songs of Experience). The April 8, 2004, performance in Ann Arbor, Michigan, commemorated the reopening of recently-renovated Hill Auditorium and occurred, almost to the day, 20 years after the U.S. premiere in the same hall. Utilizing the University of Michigan School of Music orchestra, various choirs and professional soloists, it was recorded by Naxos and won four Grammys in February 2006.  Bolcom’s Grammy nominations from previous years were for recordings of his Fourth Symphony (featuring Joan Morris as soloist) with Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and Orpheé-Sérénade, recorded by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Bolcom as pianist.  Other recent premieres include Canciones de Lorca with Placido Domingo, tenor, and the Pacific Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carl St. Clair at the gala opening concert of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Orange Country Performing Arts Center, Costa Mesa, California, on September 15, 2006; his eleventh String Quartet, written for, and premiered by, the Mendelssohn String Quartet in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on October 25, 2003; Medusa, a monodrama for soprano and string orchestra, premiered March 5, 2003, with Catherine Malfitano and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies; and his 7th Symphony: “Symphonic Concerto”, premiered by The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra conducted by James Levine at Carnegie Hall, New York on May 19, 2002.  It was also performed by the Munich Philharmonic under Maestro Levine in early June 2003, and has been conducted by Patrick Gardner, available on Ethereal Recordings.

Bolcom is well represented on recordings as a pianist on the Avance, Jazzology, Musical Heritage, Nonesuch, Vox, and Omega labels; in collaboration with his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris on Albany, Arabesque, BMG/RCA, Centaur, Columbia, Koch, Nonesuch, Omega, and Original Cast Records; and as composer on Albany, Argo, CRI, Nonesuch, New World, BMG/RCA, First Edition, Deutsche Grammophon, Laurel, Crystal, Koch Classics, Newport Classics, Vox, Centaur, Naxos, and many other labels.

In addition to concertizing together for over 30 years throughout the United States, Canada, and abroad, Bolcom and his wife, Joan Morris, have recorded two dozen albums together. Their first, After the Ball, garnered a Grammy nomination for Ms. Morris. The most recent Bolcom/Morris recordings include two albums of songs by lyricist E. Y. “Yip” Harburg and Gus Kahn on Original Cast Records, and all of the Bolcom/Weinstein Cabaret Songs and Ancient Cabaret on Centaur.

Other recent Bolcom recordings include Music for Two Pianos, with duo-pianists Elizabeth and Marcel Bergmann; William Bolcom Songs with Carole Farley, soprano and William Bolcom, piano (Naxos)—two  Grammy nominations; Complete Violin Sonatas with Solomia Soroka, violin and Arthur Greene, piano (Naxos); Piano Quintet with The Ames Piano Quartet (Albany); and A View from the Bridge, the original cast recording from the Lyric Opera of Chicago performances (New World Records) among many, many others. 

James Levine and the Vienna Philharmonic premiered the Fantasia Concertante for Viola, Cello, and Orchestra in 1986 at the Mozarteum in Salzburg; the Fifth Symphony was premiered in 1990 by The Philadelphia Orchestra and Maestro Dennis Russell Davies. Also under Davies’ baton, Bolcom’s first opera, McTeague, starring Ben Heppner in the title role and Catherine Malfitano as his wife Trina, was premiered by the Lyric Opera in Chicago on October 31, 1992, and subsequently played to nine sold-out houses. Maestro Davies also presided at nine sold-out performances of A View from the Bridge in October and November 1999 in Chicago, as well as at The Metropolitan Opera in December 2002.  The University of Indiana at Bloomington, Pittsburgh Opera Theater and Portland Opera have also produced View.

Bolcom and Weinstein’s 1990 cabaret opera, Casino Paradise, was revived by the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia in May 2004 and was presented as part of the American Songbook Series in the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center in February 2005.

Future commissions include a fourth opera for Lyric Opera of Chicago; an adaptation of Idiot’s Delight, featuring Joan Morris, for Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera; a string octet; and a work for the University of Michigan Bands.

Mr. Bolcom has taught composition at the University of Michigan since 1973.  He has been a full professor since 1983 and was Chairman of the Composition Department from 1998 to 2003. In the fall of 1994 the University of Michigan named him the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Music in Composition. During the fall 2003 semester he was in residence at the American Academy in Rome and was the Ernest Bloch Composer in Residence at UC/Berkeley during the winter of 2005.