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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 [1] and dissonance [2], 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 [1], which has been recorded [2] on both the CRI and Naxos labels, and Piano Trio, commissioned by the Hans Kindler Foundation [3], 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 [4], J. K. Randall [5], Earl Kim [6], and Milton Babbitt [7].
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 [8] described his Serenade as having "wintry imagery," with "brisk triplet bowings [and] dark coloration," and the Washington Post [3] 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 [4]. By contrast, a chamber work, the Spirituals for Clarinet and String Quartet, was described by The Washington Post [5] as "charming," with a "musical language…[that is] tonal and immediately accessible."
The orchestration of Gerber's music was described by the Washington Post [6] 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 [7], and the passacaglia in his Cello Concerto [8].
In the 1990s, music by Steven Gerber was heard in the former Soviet Union perhaps more widely than that of any other American composer [9]. 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 [[10]].
2 Articles
Interview with 21st Century Music: Food for Thought with Steven Gerber
[www.21st-centurymusic.com/ML210203.pdf]
Interview with Sequenza21 [11]
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 [12]
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 [13]
5.2 Audio Links
Chandos [14] Koch [15] Spirituals [16] America [17] Macomber[18] Calliope [19] Elegy [20]