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Tobias Picker

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Tobias Picker
File:Parkave23.jpg
Background information
Born (1954-07-18) July 18, 1954 (age 70)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Genres
Occupation(s)Composer
Years active1975–present
Websitetobiaspicker.com
List of compositions by Tobias Picker

Tobias Picker (born July 18, 1954)[1] is an American composer and pianist noted[2][3][4][5][6] for his orchestral work Old and Lost Rivers, as well as the operas Emmeline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Dolores Claiborne.

Biography

1954–1975: Early years, influences, and education

File:Pickerandwuorinen.jpg
Picker with Charles Wuorinen

Picker was born in New York City on July 18, 1954, the son of painter and fashion designer Henriette Simon Picker and news-writer Julian Picker; he began composing and studying the piano at the age of eight:

I was raised by my teachers on a diet of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schuman, and eventually Brahms, my favorite. There was always some "modern" music thrown in. Kabalevsky was a favorite of one of my piano teachers. Syzmanowski was a favorite of another. With the discovery of each composer a new world opened up for me. All of them influenced me. It wasn't really until I discovered the music of Charles Wuorinen with whom I began studying at eighteen that I finally was exposed to Elliott Carter (with whom I later studied) and Boulez and Stravinsky and Stefan Wolpe.[7]

Picker started composing in 1962, and, that same year, began corresponding with composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who encouraged his studies. Three years later, Picker was taken into the preparatory division of the Juilliard School of Music for instruction in piano and theory. At the age of eighteen, Picker was an improvising pianist for the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance,[8] and, that same year, he enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Charles Wuorinen. After graduating in 1976, he returned to the Juilliard School of Music to take instruction in composition from Elliott Carter, and, afterwards, pursued graduate studies at Princeton University with Milton Babbitt.

1976–1992: Early success

File:Pickerandcarter.jpg
Picker with Elliot Carter

In 1976, at the age of twenty-two, Picker was commissioned to compose "Sextet No. 3" by Speculum Musicae, which premiered at Alice Tully Hall.[9] Soon after, in 1978, the premier of "Rhapsody for Violin and Piano" led New Yorker critic Andrew Porter to deem Picker "a genuine creator with a fertile, unforced vein of invention."[10] By the age of thirty, Picker had been recognized with numerous awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Joseph H. Bearns Prize (Columbia University), a Charles Ives Scholarship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Picker's "Symphony No. 1" premiered at the San Francisco Symphony in 1983, and, that same year, Picker was the soloist in his "Piano Concerto No. 2: Keys to the City," commissioned by the city of the New York for the Brooklyn Bridge Centennial.[11] Later that year, Picker's "The Encantadas" was premiered by the Albany Symphony Orchestra. In 1985, Picker was appointed the first composer-in-residence of the Houston Symphony[12] where he introduced his most popular orchestral work, Old and Lost Rivers, as well as two symphonies and other concerted works. In 1992, Picker was awarded the Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Music.

Since 1993: Operas, directorship, and mature career

File:Pickerstagebow.jpg
Picker's stage bow with librettist Gene Scheer for An American Tragedy
File:Pickergrammyrecording.jpg
Picker rehearsing with conductor Gil Rose for Grammy Award-winning Fantastic Mr. Fox

In 1993, Picker began composing his first opera, Emmeline, commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera, with a libretto by J.D. McClatchy; Emmeline premiered in 1996.[13][14] In 1998, two years after the debut of Emmeline, Picker’s second opera, Fantastic Mr. Fox premiered at the Los Angeles Opera.[15] Fantastic Mr. Fox would go on to receive the 2020 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording.[16] A consortium of The Dallas Opera, San Diego Opera, and Opéra de Montréal commissioned Picker’s third opera, Thérèse Raquin, which debuted in 2001.[17] In 2005, The Metropolitan Opera debuted Picker’s fourth opera, An American Tragedy, based on the novel by Theodore Dreiser; a revised version was premiered at The Glimmerglass Festival in 2014.[18] In 2010, Picker composed a ballet, Awakenings, for the Rambert Dance Company, inspired by the work of Oliver Sacks.[19][20] That same year, he co-founded Opera San Antonio, where he served as artistic director from 2010 to 2015.[21] Picker’s fifth opera, Dolores Claiborne, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, premiered at the San Francisco Opera in September 2013.[22] In 2018, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis commissioned Picker's sixth opera, Awakenings, also based on Awakenings by Oliver Sacks.[23] Picker was appointed artistic director of Tulsa Opera in 2016.[24]

Works

Main article: List of compositions by Tobias Picker

Instrumental music

Picker's symphonic music, including the tone poem Old and Lost Rivers, has been performed by major orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, The Munich Philharmonic, the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich, and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. His piano concerto Keys to the City (written for the Centenary of the Brooklyn Bridge) is recorded on Chandos with his cello concerto and the orchestral work And Suddenly It's Evening. Following this Chandos release, BBC Music Magazine proclaimed Picker's recent music "one of the glories of the current musical scene."[25]

The Encantadas (for narrator and orchestra) features texts drawn from Herman Melville's descriptions of the Galápagos Islands. It was recorded on Virgin Classics by the Houston Symphony Orchestra with narration by Sir John Gielgud.

Other works include Tres sonetos de amor, settings of Neruda love poems in versions for baritone and orchestra, and voice and piano; and The Blue Hula, a work for chamber ensemble. Picker's complete orchestral catalogue includes three symphonies, four piano concertos and concertos for violin, viola, cello and oboe.

Picker has also composed numerous chamber works. In 2009, the American String Quartet commissioned and premiered his String Quartet No. 2 at Merkin Concert Hall in New York.[26] In that same year, the pianist Ursula Oppens premiered Picker's Four Etudes for Ursula and Three Nocturnes for Ursula at Baisly Powell Elebash Recital Hall, also in New York.[27] In 2011, Picker was featured in a Miller Theatre Composer Portrait Concert, featuring the Signal Ensemble, Sarah Rothenberg, and the Brentano String Quartet, who premiered his Piano Quintet "Live Oaks".[28]

Operas

Stage works

File:Pickerandsacks.jpeg
Picker with Oliver Sacks in 2015

Picker composed his first ballet, Awakenings (2010), inspired by Awakenings by Oliver Sacks and commissioned by the Rambert Dance Company. The piece was premiered by Rambert in Salford, UK in September 2010. Rambert toured the work around the UK with over 80 performances in the 2010–11 season.[36]

Select discography

Additional recordings of the composer's music are available on Sony Classics, Virgin, Nonesuch Records, Ondine, Bridge and First Edition, among others.

Personal life

Further information: Societal and cultural aspects of Tourette syndrome
File:PickerStollmanGinsburg.jpg
Picker, Aryeh Lev Stollman, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Picker's partner since 1980 has been Aryeh Lev Stollman. They were married on March 9, 2016 in a ceremony officiated by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the United States Supreme Court.[37][38]

Picker has Tourette syndrome.[39] He has mentioned that there are "tourettic" elements in his music. Picker appeared in a BBC Horizon television documentary, titled Mad But Glad, exploring a link between Tourette's syndrome and creativity,[40] and has been involved in mentoring programs for children with Tourette's.[41]

Picker has various tics which disappear when he's composing, playing the piano, or conducting. He has said, "I live my life controlled by Tourette's...but I use music to control it. I have harnessed its energy—I play with it, manipulate it, trick it, mimic it, taunt it, explore it, exploit it, in every possible way."[42] Picker was a long-time friend of neurologist Oliver Sacks, who wrote of the inspiration he took from Picker’s music in the preface to his book, Island of the Color Blind:

I owe a special debt to Tobias Picker’s version of ‘’The Encantadas’’. The fusion of Picker’s music, Melville’s text, and Gielgud’s voice exerted a disturbing and mysterious effect upon me, and whenever, in the writing, memory failed me, listening to the piece operated as a sort of Proustian mnemonic, transporting me back to the Marianas and the Carolines.[43]

References

  1. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on February 7, 2009. Retrieved January 25, 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. ^ Matthew Gurewitsch (October 25, 2001). "A Soap Opera in Song". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved September 21, 2020. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help) "Which has also attracted the notice of Tobias Picker, our finest composer for the lyric stage."
  3. ^ Andrew Porter (November 13, 1978). "Musical Events". The New Yorker. Retrieved September 21, 2020. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help) "A genuine creator with a fertile, unforced vein of invention."
  4. ^ Schwarz, K. Robert. "A Composer Freed by Opera To Be Tonal And Tuneful". The New York Times. Retrieved September 19, 2020. "It was a signal moment in the rebirth of tonality. When the curtain rose on Tobias Picker's first opera, Emmeline, in 1996, the orchestra conjured an atmosphere of grim foreboding, circling endlessly around a single, brooding chord. As if to emphasize his immersion in the dark realm of B flat minor, Mr. Picker prefaced the score with a device long scorned by modernists: a key signature."
  5. ^ Michael Kennedy and Joyce Bourne Kennedy (2007). "Picker, Tobias". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Retrieved September 21, 2020. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  6. ^ "Picker, Tobias". Grove Music. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  7. ^ "An Interview with Tobias Picker". Sequenza 21. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  8. ^ "Picker, Tobias". Grove Music. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  9. ^ Schonberg, Harold C. "Concert: Speculum Musicae Presents 'Old' and New". Retrieved July 9, 2018.
  10. ^ "Picker, Tobias". Grove Music. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  11. ^ Page, Tim. "A CONCERTO TO THE BEAT OF THE CITY". Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  12. ^ Zinn, Joshua (February 24, 2017). "Picker, Paganini, And The Piano | Houston Public Media". Houston Public Media. Retrieved July 9, 2018.
  13. ^ Schwarz, K. Robert. "A Composer Freed by Opera To Be Tonal And Tuneful". Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  14. ^ Smith, Steve. "Tobias Picker's Oedipal Opera at Dicapo Theater". Retrieved July 9, 2018.
  15. ^ Hofler, Robert (November 16, 1998). "'Mr. Fox' bows in L.A." Variety. Retrieved July 9, 2018.
  16. ^ Salazar, David. "Composer Profile: Tobias Picker, Dynamic American Composer". Opera Wire. Retrieved September 12, 2020.
  17. ^ Midgette, Anne (February 19, 2007). "Some Advice for Spurned Lovers: Decline Invitations for Boat Trips". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  18. ^ "Glimmerglass Festival: "An American Tragedy" (July 25)". The New Yorker. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  19. ^ http://palace.co, Palace -. "Awakenings – Rambert". Rambert. Retrieved July 9, 2018. {{cite news}}: External link in |last= (help)
  20. ^ Harries, Rhiannon. "How We Met: Oliver Sacks & Tobias Picker". The Independent. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  21. ^ News, Opera. "Tobias Picker to Depart From Artistic Director Post at Opera San Antonio". Opera San Antonio. Retrieved September 9, 2020. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  22. ^ Kosman, Joshua (September 19, 2013). "Opera review: Dolores Claiborne". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved May 27, 2014
  23. ^ "'Awakenings' Opera Premiering In St. Louis Came From Couple's 'Mutual Inspiration'". St. Louis Public Radio. February 13, 2020. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
  24. ^ "Artistic Director – Tulsa Opera". tulsaopera.com. Retrieved July 9, 2018.
  25. ^ "Tobias Picker". Shuman Associates. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
  26. ^ "Commissions & Premieres". American String Quartet. Archived from the original on December 15, 2016. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  27. ^ [1]
  28. ^ "Nine Rivers – Part I: Leukosis". Millertheatre.com. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  29. ^ "Investec Opera Holland Park LondonInvestec Opera Holland Park". Rbkc.gov.uk. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  30. ^ "Fantastic Mr Fox: composer meets conductor". English Touring Opera. November 15, 2010. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  31. ^ "An American Tragedy – Theopera – An American Tragedy – Theopera". Anamericantragedy-theopera.org. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  32. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on October 28, 2007. Retrieved April 3, 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  33. ^ "Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy". The Rest Is Noise. December 26, 2005. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  34. ^ Johnson, Lawrence A. (January 18, 2012). "San Francisco Opera to present three American world premieres in 2013". The Classical Review. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  35. ^ "'Awakenings' Opera Premiering In St. Louis Came From Couple's 'Mutual Inspiration'". St. Louis Public Radio. February 13, 2020. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
  36. ^ "Rambert Dance Company: The Making of Awakenings". The Ballet Bag. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  37. ^ Buono, Alla Vita (October 24, 2013). "The World Premiere of Dolores Claiborne, an Opera by Tobias Picker". GEV Magazine. Archived from the original on July 30, 2017. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  38. ^ Lebrecht, Norman (April 20, 2016). "US Composer is Married by Supreme Court Justice". Slipped Disc. Archived from the original on April 11, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  39. ^ Schwarz, K. Robert. "A Composer Freed by Opera To Be Tonal And Tuneful". Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  40. ^ "Horizon – Mad But Glad". BBC. October 29, 2014. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  41. ^ "TSANJ partners with Rutgers on Tourette syndrome clinic" (PDF). Tsanj.org. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 15, 2006. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  42. ^ Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, revised and expanded (New York: Random House, 2007), p. 252. ISBN 978-0-676-97979-4
  43. ^ Oliver Sacks, The Island of the Colorblind, Illustrated Edition, (New York: Vintage, 1998), p. xxi. ISBN 9780375700736
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