Harvey Hess

Harvey Hess (February 14, 1939 – July 18, 2012) was an American poet, librettist, educator, arts critic and theologian. His life and work are associated primarily with the states of Iowa and Hawaii.

Biography
Harvey Jason Hess, III was the first of three children born in Waterloo, Iowa to parents Harvey J. Hess, Jr. and Esther Miller Hess. His sister Lucy Schempp lives in Decorah, Iowa and Linda Hess in Spokane, Washington. Harvey received early music training, played flute in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony, and was an amateur countertenor. He earned a B.A. degree from McPherson College, McPherson, Kansas (1961); an M.A. from University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa (1995); and studied at Bethany Theological Seminary, Oak Brook, Illinois (1962–1964). He also studied French language and culture at la Sorbonne in Paris (1957) and Japanese language and culture at the University of Washington, Seattle (1963).

He taught English, Creative Writing and Humanities courses at Hawkeye Community College (1992–2007) at Waterloo and the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls (1989–2011). He was music and arts critic for The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier for twenty years (1987–2008) and, before that, the music critic for the Spokane Spokesman-Review (1984 - 1987). He edited the haiku column for the Hawaii Tribune Herald (1978–1983) and was the Big Island [Hawaii Island] correspondent for Ha`ilono Mele, the Journal of the Hawaiian Music Foundation (1977–1979) and had articles published in The Instrumentalist and Opera Monthly. He wrote the "Hawaii" entry for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Harvey specialized in poetry with meter and rhyme systems, lyrics for musical setting, and Japanese poetic forms tanka, senryu and haiku. Five books of his poetry have been published. In collaboration with composer Jerré Tanner he wrote librettos for seven operas, three of which are of notable historic interest (The Garland of Kāne-first opera based on Hawaiian culture; The Singing Snails-first Hawaiian opera for youth; The Kona Coffee Cantata-first recorded Hawaiian opera ), three choral symphonies, song cycles, concert arias and art songs. His haiku have been published internationally, including in Japan. His collected papers are in Special Collections, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa.

He received grants and commissions from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts (1973, 1975, 1979), the National and Hawaii Bicentennial Commissions (1975), Continental Harmony-administered by the American Composers Forum (1999), Summit Choral Society, Akron, Ohio (2000) and the Iowa Arts Council (2002).