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BIOGRAPHY
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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