It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the seventieth birthday celebration on May 26, 2008 of the consummate American composer and pianist William Bolcom. His musical education encompassed both piano and composition with Berthe Poncy Jacobson and John Verall respectively during his formative years; his undergraduate and graduate studies, with such notables as Darius Milhaud at Mills College, Leland Smith at Stanford University, and Olivier Messiaen and Milhaud at the Paris Conservatoire, culminated in a D.M.A. and Deuxieme Prix de Composition.
While teaching in New York in the late 1960's through early 1970's, he explored, performed and wrote piano rags and was a major figure of the ragtime revival. With mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, he examined and researched cabaret, popular and music hall songs dating from the 1890s through the 1930s, and gained new audiences for them in concert and on records. He began to teach at the University of Michigan in 1973 and became the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition in the fall of 1994. In 1988, he won the Pulitzer Prize in music for 12 New Etudes for Piano. He was the recipient of four Grammy Awards for his setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 2005.
His colleague and fellow composer John Corigliano paid him the highest compliment in the February 24, 2008 New York Times. "He's got such skills, such great compositional techniques. Music flows out of him the way it flowed from Mozart."
The Library invites you to judge his music for yourself with his A View from the Bridge, Session I and Symphony #4 and Songs.