Randolph Coleman
Encyclopedia
Randolph 'Randy' Coleman (born 1937) is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and educator. He was the first chairman of the national council of the American Society of University Composers (now Society of Composers, Inc.), a position later held by Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

.

Biography

Coleman was raised in Charlottesville, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

. He "felt compelled to compose as a teenager" and pursued this first at the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

 before completing Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral work at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

. At Northwestern he studied with Anthony Donato (composition),
Arrand Parsons (theory), and John Ohl (musicology).

Coleman spent the majority of his career at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music
Oberlin Conservatory of Music
The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, located on the campus of Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, was founded in 1865 and is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. Students of Oberlin Conservatory enter a very broad network within the music world, as the school's alumni...

 at Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

, teaching composition and classes on intersections in the arts for 43 years while also teaching in guest residencies at a variety of schools and programs.

Among his students at Oberlin were Kyle Gann
Kyle Gann
Kyle Eugene Gann is an American professor of music, critic and composer born in Dallas, Texas. As a critic for The Village Voice and other publications he has been a supporter of progressive music including such Downtown movements as postminimalism and totalism.- As composer :As a composer his...

, Christopher Rouse, Greg Saunier
Deerhoof
Deerhoof is a musical group consisting of Satomi Matsuzaki, John Dieterich, Ed Rodriguez and Greg Saunier.-Origins:In 1992, Greg Saunier, having recently graduated with a degree in music composition from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, joined a short-lived San Francisco quartet called Nitre Pit, on...

, Evan Hause
Evan Hause
Evan Hause is an American composer, percussionist and conductor. Hause has composed over fifty works ranging from rock music to opera.-Biography and career:...

, and Brenda Way
Brenda Way
Brenda Way is the Artistic Director/Founder of ODC/Dance ODC has since become the premier contemporary dance company of the West Coast, performing for more than 50,000 people a year....

. He also worked with then students Bill Irwin
Bill Irwin
William Mills "Bill" Irwin is an American actor and clown noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American circus during the 1970s. He is known for his vaudeville-style stage acts, but has made a number of appearances on film and television and won a Tony Award for a dramatic role on...

 and Julie Taymor
Julie Taymor
Julie Taymor is an American director of theater, opera and film. Taymor's work has received many accolades from critics, and she has earned two Tony Awards out of four nominations, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design, an Emmy Award and an Academy Award nomination for Original Song...

 as part of the InterArts program Coleman founded at Oberlin in the 1970s.

He currently lives in Oberlin with his wife, Rebecca, and their son, Schuyler. Their daughter, Emma Rose, passed away in 2011.

Music

Coleman's musical style is self described as trying to move on from his roots in late modernism. He often concentrated on developing and promoting interdisciplinary works involving students from all the creative fields.

The wide range of styles and genres of his music are influenced by his own history, including performance (on piano and trombone), and conducting new music and writing prose about many types of music (traditional chamber and symphonic music, Jazz, Rhythm and Blues and a variety of non-western musics) for NOTES (MLA Journal), Fine Arts and other journals.

Awards and commissions

Coleman has had commissioned work performed by a variety of ensembles including the Brooklyn Philharmonic
Brooklyn Philharmonic
The Brooklyn Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, commonly known as the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is an American orchestra based in the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City...

 (1984), eighth blackbird
Eighth blackbird
eighth blackbird is a Grammy Award-winning contemporary music sextet based in Chicago. The group derives its name from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens' poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird...

, Cincinnati Percussion Group, and the Cleveland Contemporary Ensemble. The Fromm Music Foundation commissioned Coleman to write a work for the first American Music Festival at Tang1ewood in 1964 (Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra).

He received a Fulbright fellowship
Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright-Hays Program, is a program of competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists, founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946. Under the...

 which took him to Paris and Mexico. Early in his career his work received awards from the International Society of Contemporary Music in 1962 and 1963. In 2002 he was awarded a residency at the Rockefeller Institute in Bellagio, Italy as well as an Ohio Arts Council
Ohio Arts Council
The Ohio Arts Council is an agency serving the U.S. state of Ohio.Established in 1965, its mission is to "foster and encourage the development of the arts and assist the preservation of Ohio's cultural heritage." Each year it awards grants to arts organizations and individuals throughout the state...

Individual Artist's Award.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK