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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZBOLCOM, William(b 26 May 1938, Seattle WA) Pianist and composer. He discovered recordings of Ives and Stravinsky as a child; later admired Boulez and Berio but found his own eclectic style drenched in popular music: his string quartet '65 won only second prize at the Paris Conservatoire perhaps because it alluded to rock'n'roll; his second violin sonata '76 has a last movement in memory of Joe Venuti. He wrote a piano concerto for the USA Bicentennial, etc. His recordings of piano music by Scott Joplin and others helped spark the early '70s revival of interest in ragtime (LPs on Nonesuch included Heliotrope Bouquet, Pastimes and Piano Rags; he also recorded the piano music of George Gershwin). He wrote his own rags (Plays His Own Rags on Jazzology) and co-authored a book about Eubie Blake. He was on the music faculty at the U. Of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Many of his 'classical' compositions have been recorded, e.g. his fourth symphony (including a setting of Theodore Roethke's poem 'The Rose', sung by his wife, mezzo Joan Morris) and Session 1 (a notated jam session) '88 on New World by the St Louis SO with Leonard Slatkin.Bolcom and Morris made albums of songs from the 1890s to the present including two volumes of Rodgers and Hart on RCA, Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Leiber & Stoller on Nonesuch, Kern and Youmans on Arabesque (Vincent Youmans: Orchids In The Moonlight '96), and vaudeville collections on Nonesuch: After The Ball and Songs Of The Great Ladies Of The Musical Stage. (Till The Clouds Roll By on RCA featured the songs of P. G. Wodehouse, Morris with Max Morath on piano.) If Morris had been around during the 'golden afternoon' of the Edwardian Era she would have been one of the biggest stars in the business, while the accompaniment was perfectly apposite: they did such a good job of ignoring barriers among musics that their Kern and Gershwin albums were listed in classical catalogues rather than pop. Bolcom's first two operas were written for the Chicago Lyric Opera, McTeague and A View From The Bridge; his third, A Wedding, suggested by Robert Altman's 1978 film, also premièred there in December 2004, described by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as 'a joyous hit . . a personal fusion of style and form. This is the many-sided music theatre of Monteverdi, Mozart, Verdi and Weill.' Bolcom's Songs Of Innocence And Experience was premièred '84 (in the UK '96) after many years in the making; the settings of 46 poems of William Blake was described by Ross as 'a barbaric yawp of a piece' having 'an awesome aura not only because it embraces every imaginable style but because it gathers momentum and mystery as it rolls along.' A recording on Naxos 2004 was rated by many critics as one of the most exciting classical releases of the year; the 3-CD set won three Grammys in February 2006, for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Choral Performance and Best Classical Album. |