JOHN CORIGLIANO
John Corigliano b. 1938, New York, New York
John Corigliano is one of the finest and most widely recognized American composers. Among the dozens of honors he has received are included all of the most important music awards—several Grammy’s, a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 2 (2001), a Grawemeyer for his Symphony No. 1 (1991), and an Academy Award for his score to Francois Girard's 1997 film The Red Violin, which received it West Coast Premiere at the 2002 Cabrillo Festival. Perhaps the most important symphonist of his era, Corigliano has to date written three symphonies, each a wholly separate landscape unto itself. Symphony No. 1 (1991), commissioned by Meet the Composer for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when he was composer-in-residence, channeled Corigliano's personal grief over the loss of friends to the AIDS crisis into music of immense power, color, drama, and scope: performed worldwide by over 150 orchestras and twice recorded, this symphony earned him the prestigious Grawemeyer Award. Symphony No. 2 (2001), a rethinking and expansion of the haunted, surreal, and glitteringly virtuosic String Quartet (1995), was introduced by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2000 and earned him the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. The third symphony may be his most ambitious and remarkable yet: scored simultaneously for wind orchestra and a multitude of wind ensembles, Corigliano's excessive, crazed, and grandly barbarous Circus Maximus (2004), commissioned by the University of Texas at Austin Wind Ensemble, had its New York premiere in 2005 at Carnegie Hall. Performances of his works at the Cabrillo Festival include the Symphony No. 1 in 1993, the Scherzo for Oboe and Percussion, Fanfares to Music, and Troubadours in 1994, Pied Piper for Flute and Orchestra in 1995, and the Fantasia on an Ostinato and West Coast premiere of The Red Violin in 1998, and Symphony No.2 in 2002. On August 4, 2007 Cabrillo Festival will present the West Coast Premiere of Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (Amy Burton, soprano).