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Steven R. Gerber

Born September 28, 1948

Origin: Washington, DC

Genre: Contemporary

Occupation: Composer

Steven Roy Gerber (born September 28, 1948) is an American composer. He is especially noted for a contemporary vocabulary rooted variously in lyricism and dissonance, with works ranging from solo compositions to extended scores for full symphony orchestra.

Content

* 1 Biography

* 2 Articles

* 3 List of Compositions

* 4 Recordings

* 5 External links

o 5.1 Composer Website

o 5.2 Audio

1 Biography

Steven R. Gerber was born in 1948 in Washington, DC , and was raised in Chevy Chase , Maryland. He began taking piano lessons when he was eight and writing music seriously when he was fifteen. During his college years he wrote such works as the Fantasy for Solo Violin, which has been recorded on both the CRI and Naxos labels, and Piano Trio, commissioned by the Hans Kindler Foundation , also on Naxos. He received his undergraduate degree from Haverford College, where he majored in music, and an MFA degree from Princeton University, where he received a 4-year fellowship. His composition teachers included Robert Parris, J. K. Randall , Earl Kim , and Milton Babbitt.

His early works are in a free atonal style and are often highly charged emotionally. During his years as a graduate student at Princeton he wrote first some serial but non-twelve-tone works, such as the a cappella choral works "Dylan Thomas Settings" and "Illuminations" (Rimbaud), and throughout the remainder of the seventies most of his works were twelve-tone. Beginning in the early eighties he abandoned twelve-tone composition, with rare exceptions, and his music became much more tonal, for example in his Piano Sonata and in such songs as his settings of Yeats ("Songs from 'The Wild Swans at Coole'") and Frost ("Desert Places"). Since then his music has remained largely tonal, sometimes extremely chromatic, sometimes diatonic.

The New York Times described his Serenade as having "wintry imagery," with "brisk triplet bowings [and] dark coloration," and the Washington Post pointed to the "flowing lyricism" of the Cello Concerto. The use of an ostinato in the Symphony No. 1 was noted by the Washington Post. By contrast, a chamber work, the Spirituals for Clarinet and String Quartet, was described by The Washington Post as "charming," with a "musical language…[that is] tonal and immediately accessible." The orchestration of Gerber's music was described by the Washington Post as "vivid without losing the transparency essential in music for a chamber orchestra." Formally Gerber has drawn upon classic structures, as in the Fantasy, Fugue, and Chaconne, and the passacaglia in his Cello Concerto.

In the 1990s, music by Steven Gerber was heard in the former Soviet Union perhaps more widely than that of any other American composer. Gerber took part in concerts in October 1990 in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kishinev (now in Moldova), Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, and Talinn (now in Estonia), during which his Symphony No. 1 and Serenade for Strings received their world premieres. Later in the decade his works were given numerous performances in Moscow and St. Petersburg and in the Russian cities of Rostov-on-Don and Togliati, as well as in the Ukrainian cities of Kiev (now Kyiv), Kharkov (now Kharkiv), Donetsk, Zaporozhie (now Zaporizhie), and Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnipropetrovsk).

In 2005 the conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy commissioned Gerber to compose an orchestra work. The resulting six-movement suite, Music in Dark Times, was premiered by Ashkenazy with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra on March 25-28, 2009 [].

2 Articles

Interview with 21st Century Music: Food for Thought with Steven Gerber [www.21st-centurymusic.com/ML210203.pdf]

Interview with Sequenza21

Essay on Orchestration, by Steven Gerber for New Music Box [www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=2094]

Keeping America Real: Essay on Steven Gerber by Robert Reilly 

3       List of Compositions

Orchestral

1981   HARMONIUM: SIX POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS for solo soprano and orchestra

1989   SYMPHONY NO.1 1990   ODE (1st movement of SERENADE) for string orchestra

1990   SERENADE for string orchestra

1992   PIANO CONCERTO

1992   DIRGE AND AWAKENING

1993   VIOLIN CONCERTO

1994   CELLO CONCERTO

1996   VIOLA CONCERTO

1998   SERENADE CONCERTANTE

1998   TRIPLE OVERTURE for solo violin, cello and piano and orchestra

2000   SPIRITUALS  for string orchestra

2002   Fanfare for the Voice of A-M-E-R-I-C-A

2002   CLARINET CONCERTO

2004   SYMPHONY NO. 2, “Elegies and Fanfares”

2005   TWO LYRIC PIECES for solo violin and string orchestra

2005-08 MUSIC IN DARK TIMES

Chamber

1967   SONATA for violin and piano

1967   WOODWIND QUARTET

1968   TRIO   violin, cello and piano

1969   DUO    cello and piano

1969   DUO    violin and cello

1971   STRING TRIO

1972   NEXUS for violin and percussion

1973   STRING QUARTET NO. 1

1977   DUO    flute and piano

1978   DREAMWORK for flute, viola, cello, and piano

1979   DUO for viola and piano

1981   STRING QUARTET NO. 2

1984   DUO IN THREE MOVEMENTS for violin and piano

1984   CONCERTINO for string quartet and piano

1986   WOODWIND QUINTET

1987   FANTASY QUARTET for percussion

1988   STRING QUARTET NO. 3

1991   PIANO QUINTET for string quartet and piano

1995   STRING QUARTET NO. 4

1996   NOTTURNO for violin, cello and piano

1996 (rev. 2006)  FIVE CANONIC DUOS for oboe and bassoon

1996   SONATINA for oboe and guitar

1997   THREE PIECES FOR TWO VIOLINS

1999   PRELUDE AND FUGUE for oboe, bassoon, and piano

1999   GERSHWINIANA for 3 violins (or 2 violins and viola)

2000   STRING QUARTET NO. 5

2001   THREE FOLKSONG TRANSFORMATIONS for violin, cello, and piano

2002   SPIRITUALS  for clarinet and string quartet

2003/ 1997 FANTASY, FUGUE, AND CHACONNE for 2 cellos or viola and cello

2003   FIVE GREEK FOLKSONGS (AFTER RAVEL) for violin and piano

2007   DIALOGUES for clarinet and piano

Vocal

1966   THREE FRENCH SONGS (Baudelaire and Verlaine) for high voice and piano

1967   AFTER THE FUNERAL (Thomas) for baritone and string trio

1974   DORIA: THREE POEMS OF EZRA POUND for soprano and piano

1974   "MY PAPA'S WALTZ" AND OTHER SONGS (Williams, Moore, Plath, Roethke) for soprano and piano 1975   BLACK HOURS: FIVE SONNETS OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS for soprano and piano

1976   TWO LYRICS OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS for soprano and string trio

1978   SESTINA: ALTAFORTE (Pound) for baritone and piano

1978   SONGS FROM "THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE" (Yeats) for high voice and piano

1982   DESERT PLACES: FIVE POEMS OF ROBERT FROST for high voice and piano

1984   DRUM-TAPS: THREE PATRIOTIC POEMS (Frost, Whitman, Emerson) for soprano and piano

1985   WORDS FOR MUSIC PERHAPS (Yeats) for soprano and two violins

1986   FOUR ELEGIAC SONGS (Hopkins, Yeats, Shakespeare, Dryden) for high voice and piano

1988   SIX SONGS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE for medium voice and piano

Choral

1972   DYLAN THOMAS SETTINGS

1972   ILLUMINATIONS (Rimbaud)

1973   CEREMONY AFTER A FIRE RAID (Thomas)

1985   FOUR CHORUSES FROM UNE SAISON EN ENFER (Rimbaud)

1985   UNE SAISON EN ENFER (Rimbaud) for solo high baritone or tenor, chorus, and piano

2004   SESSIONS OF SWEET SILENT THOUGHT (5 Sonnets of William Shakespeare)

Piano

1966   TWO TOCCATAS

1970   VARIATIONS

1976   VOICES

1982   PIANO FANTASY: HOMAGE TO COPLAND (first movement of PIANO SONATA)

1982   PIANO SONATA

1985   TWO INTERMEZZI

1989   COCKTAIL MUSIC (SONG WITHOUT WORDS)

Other Solo

1967   FANTASY for violin

1971   EPITHALAMIUM for flute

1977   FANTASY

1978   HIGH WOOD for oboe

1987   THREE SONGS WITHOUT WORDS (arranged from WORDS FOR MUSIC PERHAPS) for violin

1991   ELEGY ON THE NAME "DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH" for viola (or cello)

2005   DUET FOR SOLO CLARINET

4       Recordings

Spirituals for String Orchestra

Clarinet Concerto

Serenade Concertante

St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony

Vladimir Lande, conductor

Jon Manasse, clarinet

Jose Miguel Cueto, violin

Natalia Malkova, violin

Arabesque CD Z6803

Symphony No. 1

Dirge and Awakening

Viola Concerto

Triple Overture

Russian Philharmonic Orchestra

Thomas Sanderling, conductor

Lars Anders Tomter, viola

The Bekova Sisters:

Elvira Bekova, violin

Alfia Bekova, cello

Eleonora Bekova, piano

Chandos CD 9831

Violin Concerto

Cello Concerto

Serenade for String Orchestra

National Chamber Orchestra

Piotr Gajewski, conductor

Kurt Nikkanen, violin

Carter Brey, cello

KOCH International Classics KIC-CD-7501

Fantasy

Three Songs Without Words

Curtis Macomber, violin

Composers Recordings, Inc. CD 706

Une Saison en Enfer

The New Calliope Singers

Peter Schubert, conductor

William Parker, baritone

Steven R. Gerber, piano

Composers Recordings, Inc. CD 638

Elegy on the Name "Dmitri Shostakovich"

Françoise Renard, viola

Suoni e Colori SC 53006

Gershwiniana for three violins

3 Folksong Transformations

3 Pieces for two violins

Notturno for piano trio

Elegy on the Name Dmitri Shostakovich for viola

3 Songs Without Words

Fantasy for violin

Duo for violin and cello

Piano Trio

Kurt Nikkanen, violin and viola

Cho-Liang Lin, violin

Cyrus Beroukhim, violin

Brinton Averil Smith, cello

Sara Davis Buechner, piano

Naxos 8.559618

5	      External Links

5.1             Composer Website

StevenGerber.com

5.2             Audio Links

Chandos Koch Spirituals America Macomber Calliope Elegy