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Michael Colgrass |
 Biography |
BIOGRAPHY—Michael Colgrass
Michael Colgrass graduated from the University of Illinois in 1954 in percussion performance, and studied composition with Darius Milhaud, Lukas Foss and Ben Weber. He freelanced in New York City with the New York Philharmonic, Dizzy Gillespie, West Side Story on Broadway and the Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky series at Columbia Records, among many others.
Commissions include the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony (twice) and orchestras of Minnesota, Detroit, San Francisco, St.Louis, Pittsburgh, Washington, Toronto (twice), the National Arts Centre Orchestra (twice).,and numerous chamber and choral groups and soloists.
His awards are the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Music, an Emmy Award (1982), two Guggenheim Fellowships, grants from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, First Prize in the Barlow and Sudler International Wind Ensemble Competitions, and the 1988 Jules Leger Prize for Chamber Music.
Recent works are Side by Side (2007) for harpsichord and altered piano commissioned by the Esprit Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, and Zululand (2010) for wind ensemble, commissioned and premiered by the University of Wisconsin at River Falls.
He gives workshops in performance for professionals and creativity for children. His method of teaching graphic notation to children has been adopted into the junior high curriculum for Nova Scotia
Colgrass wrote “My Lessons With Kumi,” a narrative/exercise book for performers, and “Adventures of an American Composer,” an autobiography of anecdotes (www.colgrassadventures.com.)
He lives in Toronto and makes his living internationally as a composer. For more information see: www.michaelcolgrass.com
