Allan Crossman

Biography

Sample Works

ALLAN CROSSMAN was born in 1942 into an artistic family in New York City. From an early age, he was active as pianist and composer, studying in the 1960s in Philadelphia with George Rochberg, George Crumb, and Hugo Weisgall. He is Professor Emeritus of Music, having taught composition, harmony, counterpoint, and 20th-century music at Montreal’s Concordia University.

He has written for many soloists and ensembles, among them guitarist Michael Laucke, Quatuor Morency, and pianist Max Lifchitz. The North/South Consonance (NYC) recording of Millennium Overture Dance received a GRAMMYnomination in 2003, and Music for Human Choir (SATB) shared Top Honors at the Waging Peace through Singing Festival. Pianist Nanette Solomon has performed Gypsy Ballads at the International Lorca Conference in Spain; North/South has just recorded his FLYER (cello and string orchestra), commemorating the centenary of powered flight; a recent commission is the piano trio Icarus, for the New Pacific Trio (San Francisco area). His work has been supported by the American Composers Forum, Canada Council for the Arts, Meet the Composer (SF/NY), and others.

He has composed, arranged, and directed music for theater, including The Threepenny Opera, The Comedy of Errors, and Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (Stoppard/Previn). The most recent of his theatre scores, The Log of the Skipper’s Wife, directed and with libretto by Joann Green Breuer, was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford and the Kennedy Center, with music drawn from Irish/English shanties and dances. His music is the soundtrack for the award-winning animated short, X man, by Christopher Hinton (National Film Board of Canada).

As accompanist, Crossman has performed frequently in recitals of classical, Broadway, and cabaret songs, appearing in the revue, Portraits in Song, with vocalist Nancy Helms - music by Gershwin, Porter, Weill, and others.

October 2001

Composer's Website

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