Biography

Born in Chicago, April 22, 1932;
now living in Toronto

Michael Colgrass holds the unique distinction among prominent classical composers in North America in that he is the only one whose music is well known equally on both sides of the Canadian-American border. Nearly every major orchestra in both Canada and the United States has played his music. Colgrass’s life has divided neatly into two nearly equal halves, first in the United States, then in Canada, where he has lived since 1974.

Beginnings in jazz

Colgrass grew up in the Chicago area. “Jazz was my only ambition up to age nineteen,” says the composer. “I was a bad student academically because I was playing [drums] in a jazz band six nights a week.” Twice Colgrass was placed on academic probation. While at the University of Chicago, he attended a concert of percussion music and was asked by one of his professors what he thought of the music. “I thought it was terrible,” replied Colgrass. “If you don’t like what you heard, why don’t you try your hand at it?” asked the professor. And the rest, as they say, is history.

From Chicago to Germany to New York

Colgrass studied composition with several prominent figures, including Eugene Weigel, Darius Milhaud, Lucas Foss, Ben Weber and Wallingford Riegger. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1956 with an undergraduate degree (the only one he ever pursued), he joined the army and served as timpanist in the Seventh Army Band stationed in Stuttgart, Germany. After two years in the army he resettled in New York City where he free-lanced as a percussionist for eleven years in “gigs” ranging from subbing with the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra to playing in Dizzy Gillespie’s jazz band and the pit orchestra for the original Broadway production of West Side Story. He composed a bit on the side, but performing provided his income. Colgrass was one of the busiest percussionists in New York, he had a highly successful career going for himself, and he might have still been at it … except …

An epiphany

One night Colgrass had an epiphany. He was walking down 57^th Street dressed in concert attire and suddenly couldn’t remember if he was on his way to a concert or coming from one (it was the latter). “I laughed about the incident, but then asked myself, ‘How could you play a concert and forget about it ten minutes later?’ I had become numb and realized I had to get off the treadmill and somehow retrieve the spirit and spontaneity of creativity and music-making.” He achieved this by studying other art forms: acting, mime, theater directing, fencing, ballet and modern dance. “After that I was a changed person, renewed. My composing broadened, I opened up as a person. I wanted to communicate with people, relating the arts and including the public in the artistic process.” Over the years, Colgrass turned more to composing and eventually settled into a career based solely on commissions, a rarity in his field. His works have been commissioned by many of North America’s top orchestras, including the Boston Symphony (twice), the New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony, the Toronto Symphony and the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Delta in 1979 and The Schubert Birds in 1990).

The composer as communicator

Colgrass developed into a composer with an abiding concern for reaching out to and involving audiences of all ages: “I love to work with students, give workshops, coach my music and share ideas with the teachers. I’m especially interested in children and am inspired by them, and often go into the schools and show them how to write music. …

I want to communicate with people, relating the arts and including the public in the artistic process. I started to give workshops for performers, which grew in scope to include people of all professions.”

Quite predictably, most of Colgrass’s music can be grasped by listeners without a lot of concert hall experience. Not that it’s always easy listening. But there’s nearly always a “hook,” an evocative idea, an image or intellectual challenge that intrigues or directly involves the attentive listener. “I came from a world of music [jazz] where you improvise and have close contact with your audience, and the music is not intellectualized. I grew up listening to Charlie Parker and people like that. So my background is different from that of most composers.”

Some of his works

Hence, we find works like As Quiet As, seven vignettes describing in sound the essence of phenomena such as a leaf turning color, the first star coming out or a child falling asleep; Concertmasters, in which three solo violinists, backed by the orchestra, behave like actors in a play with their conversations and confrontations; The Winds of Nagual, based on writings of Carlos Castaneda about his apprenticeship with an Indian sorcerer from Mexico; and Arctic Dreams, a musical evocation of the far north community where Colgrass lived for an extended period prior to writing it.

Prizes and awards

Colgrass’s impressive list of prizes and awards includes a Pulitzer, two Guggenheims, a Rockefeller Grant and the 1988 Jules Léger Prize for Chamber Music. Nevertheless, he is humble and unassuming about winning these highly prestigious prizes, noting that the difference of a single jury member could easily have swung the vote to a different candidate each time.

Books

Colgrass, as articulate in words as he is in notes, has written a book dealing with the psychology of performance called My Lessons with Kumi (1990), which presents the author’s techniques for performance and creativity within the context of a novel. Recently, he published a collection of 89 anecdotes masquerading as an autobiography called Michael Colgrass: Adventures of an American Composer. In deliciously witty and entertaining prose, he describes incidents from his musical and personal life: saving Leonard Bernstein from assault by an angered percussionist, being accused of spying in Prague, writing a new 20-minute piece for the Joffrey Ballet on twelve hours’ notice when lawyers yanked a Ravel score from the music stands for copyright reasons, even running down and capturing a bank robber. One sees him in all his guises – as jazz artist, classical percussionist, composer, dancer, mime, philosopher, neuro-linguistic programmer, father, even child psychologist. If there is a theme that runs unspoken throughout these pages, it is the inspiring tale of a man who has questioned his goals in life but, once having chosen them, strove mightily to achieve them and succeeded brilliantly. Would that we might all follow his example. 

Concert Program Notes

Michael Colgrass: Born in Chicago, April 22, 1932; now living in Toronto

Michael Colgrass holds a unique distinction among prominent classical composers in North America as the only one whose music is well known equally on both sides of the Canadian-American border. His life has divided neatly into two nearly equal halves, first in the United States, then in Canada, where he has lived since 1974.

Colgrass’ musical education was undertaken with such prominent figures as Darius Milhaud, Lucas Foss, Ben Weber and Wallingford Riegger. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1956, he went to New York City where he free-lanced as a percussion player in a wide range of “gigs” ranging from the New York Philharmonic to Dizzy Gillespie’s jazz band to the original West Side Story orchestra on Broadway. Over the years, Colgrass turned more to composing, and now enjoys a career based solely on commissions, which have come from the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Toronto Symphony and many others. Colgrass’ list of prizes includes a Pulitzer (for Déja vu, 1978), two Guggenheims, a Rockefeller Grant, and the 1988 Jules Léger Prize for Chamber Music. Recent works include Raag Mala for wind ensemble (2006) and Side by Side, a work for harpsichord, altered piano and orchestra premiered in 2007.

From the composer’s own web site (www.michaelcolgrass.com), we learn that he has also “devised a system of teaching music creativity to children which he has taught to middle and high school music teachers who have used his techniques to teach children to write and perform new music of their own. His articles on these activities have appeared in the Music Educators Journal (September 2004) and Adultita, an Italian education magazine. He has also written a number of works for children to perform. As an author, Colgrass wrote My Lessons with Kumi, a narrative/exercise book outlining his techniques for performance and creativity. He also gives workshops throughout the world on the psychology and technique of performance.

The Schubert Birds was commissioned by the NAC Orchestra and first performed by this ensemble on January 17, 1990 under its music director at the time, Gabriel Chmura. This eighteen-minute work again reveals its composer’s ability to write accessible music that simultaneously challenges the intellect and stirs the emotions. Colgrass describes the fancifully-titled work as “a concerto for orchestra based on Franz Schubert’s Kupelwieser Waltz, a little-known piano piece that Schubert wrote as a wedding gift for Leopold Kupelwieser, a painter-friend of the composer. The title comes from my perception of Schubert as a bird who spent his life singing, surrounded by a circle of others who were attracted by his lyricism and sang with him.”

Though The Schubert Birds does employ lyrical elements, they are not nearly as prominent as in Schubert's own music. What Colgrass offers instead is a rich tableau of sustained musical discourse in which instrumental lines take on roles similar to those of characters in a play. Moving through a large gamut of emotions, the music consists of various fragmentations, permutations and distortions of the waltz tune, often played several at a time, and woven together into a tapestry of almost perpetual counterpoint. Colgrass thinks of the music as “a stroll through my own fanciful concept of Schubert’s subconscious world.” The composer further notes that “from my vantage point, I have often thought of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker as a kindred spirit to Schubert. Parker, too, sang with the natural ease of a bird and was even nicknamed “Bird.” They both lived fast and died tragically young (Parker at 34, Schubert at 31), so it seemed quite natural to me that the middle section of this work be in the recitative blues style of Charlie Parker, to show their affinity.”

The Schubert Birds is an extraordinarily active and busy composition, with a fascinating array of arabesques, colors, timbres and textures all skillfully deployed in kaleidoscopic profusion. Colgrass calls it “a crazy quilt of theme and variations.” The element of conflict is basic to the musical thought, and this is ultimately what gives The Schubert Birds its poignant, personal quality. One is inevitably drawn into these conflicts - between major and minor tonalities; between the exuberant and the static; of gaily twittering “birds” perched over a bleak, gray carpet of strings; or a hilarious, jazzy duet for solo oboe and contrabassoon, in which the latter tries hopelessly to appear as nimble as the former. All of these and more coalesce into a commentary on life itself, with its disputes, struggles, joys, sorrows, choices and decisions. Images appear, merge and fade with astonishing suppleness and variety. When the original waltz is finally heard near the end of the composition in an unadorned, tonally harmonized presentation, the effect is deeply moving, as if the conflicts of life have finally been resolved.

This Year in History: 1990

History, Politics and Social Affairs

• The Supreme Court rules that psychiatric evidence is admissible in a court of law.
• The Meech Lake Accord dies when Manitoba refuses to accept it.
• The Oka crisis begins over land dispute between the Mohawk nation and the town of Oka, Quebec.
• Brian Mulroney ensures the passage of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as law by temporarily increasing the size of the Senate.
• Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison, near Cape Town, South Africa, after 27 years behind bars.

Nature, Science and Technology

• Richard Taylor wins the Nobel Prize in Physics for verifying the Quark Theory.
• Tim Berners-Lee publishes a more formal proposal for the World Wide Web that comes to fruition over the next few years.
• The World Health Organization removes homosexuality from its list of diseases.

The Arts, Literature and Entertainment

• The National Gallery of Canada acquires Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire for $1.8 million, causing a storm of controversy.
• The Royal Ontario Museum is attacked as racist on the occasion of an exhibition of African artifacts collected by colonial interests.
• The film Jésus de Montréal receives sixteen nominations and thirteen awards at the Genie Awards. It also wins a Jury Prize at the Cannes International Film Festival and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film.
• The Prix Gilles-Corbeil, the richest literary award in Canada ($100,000), is founded to honor French-language writers. The first recipient is novelist Réjean Ducharme.
• Arthur Hailey publishes his thriller The Evening News.
• John Kenneth Galbraith publishes A Tenured Professor.