DAVID AMRAM event info
David Amram: Celebrating a Half-Century of Multi-Cultural Artistic Collaborations
Tuesday, April 15, through Tuesday, April 22, 2008.
A week long, interdisciplinary residency, with film screenings, lectures, concerts and talk backs, honoring David Amram, esteemed American symphonic composer, conductor, multi-instrumentalist, author and pioneer of world music.
Amram has collaborated with Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, Willie Nelson, Jack Kerouac, Langston Hughes, Johnny Depp, Sir James Galway, and many other of the most notable artists of our time. Heralded by the Boston Globe as “the Renaissance man of American music”, Amram was the first composer in residence of the NY Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein. Today, his celebrated compositions are performed world wide, known for their lyricism, brilliant orchestration and rhythmic flair, drawn from his life long involvement as a performer as well as a champion of jazz, folk music of the world and all music inspired by old liturgical roots.
Always open to find new ways of collaborating with others, Amram created and performed original music for New York’s first-ever jazz poetry readings with author Jack Kerouac in 1957, the same year he composed scores for New York's first season of Free Shakespeare in the Park.
One of the pioneers of jazz french horn, Amram has also performed with Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus’ Quintet with Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Pettiford, Mary Lou Williams, Kenny Dorham, Betty Carter, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Richie Havens, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Dustin Hoffman, Machito, Thad Jones, Pepper Adams, Arturo Sandoval, Paquito d’Rivera, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, Gerry Mulligan, Elvin Jones, Earl Hines, and Sonny Rollins.
Amram has composed over 100 orchestral and chamber works, written two operas, scores for theatre and films, including Splendor in the Grass, The Manchurian Candidate and The Arrangement. and is the author of three books. His latest composition Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie was commissioned by the Guthrie Foundation and was premiered September 29, 2007, in San Jose, California, by the Symphony Silicone Valley, who have also commissioned him to compose a new piano concerto to be premiered January of '09. All his concert music is published by C.F. Peters Corporation (B.M.I.)
Made possible with major support from a Fitt Artist-in-Residence Award from the Brown University Creative Arts Council. Additional support from the Brown University Department of Music, The Cogut Center for the Humanities, Hillel House, The John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization, The Watson Institute, the Department of Judaic Studies, the Department of English, and the Orwig Music Library. Additional major support for special events from The Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra & Music School, The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, Blue State Coffee, Friends of Aurea, and the Pawtucket Armory Arts Exchange.
All events are free and open to the public at the following locations:
Grant Recital Hall, behind Orwig Music Building, 1 Young Orchard at Hope St.
Brown/RISD Hillel House, 80 Brown St.
Blue State Coffee, 300 Thayer St, Providence
Pawtucket Congregational Church, 40 Walcott Street, Pawtucket, across from Slater Mill.
List Art Center, 64 College Street, Providence
For more information: Brown University Department of Music: 401-863-3234;
