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Composer—Conductor—Scholar

Gunther Schuller is a world-renowned composer, conductor, performer, educator, record producer, and until recently, music publisher. Performing professionally since the age of sixteen, he played with the New York Philharmonic and was principal horn in the Cincinnati Symphony. He was also active in the New York bebop scene and recorded with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Ornette Coleman, among others. At the age of twenty-five he started his teaching career at the Manhattan School of Music, and went on to be professor of composition at Yale University's School of Music, President of the New England Conservatory of Music, and Artistic Director of the Tanglewood Berkshire Music Center. Gunther Schuller has written more than 160 original compositions in virtually every musical genre, authored five books, and started his own recording company, GM Recordings, in 1980. He has also won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur "Genius" Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Music, BMI Lifetime Achievement Award, and Columbia University's William Schuman Award.

Selected Works

Compositions

  • Horn Concerto, 1942-44
  • Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee, 1959
  • Variants on a Theme of Thelonious Monk, 1960
  • Variants on a Theme of John Lewis, 1960
  • The Visitation, 1966 — not recorded
  • Of Reminiscences and Reflections, 1994

Writing

  • Horn Technique (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962)
  • Early Jazz: its Roots and Development (New York: Oxford university Press, 1968)
  • Musings: the Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)
  • The Swing Era: the Development of Jazz, 1930-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
  • The Compleat Conductor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)

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