Edward Knight (composer)
Encyclopedia
Edward Knight is an American composer
. His work eschews easy classification, moving freely between jazz, theatrical and concert worlds.
Knight earned his undergraduate degree from Eastern Michigan University and his master’s and doctorate in composition from University of Texas. He spent a year studying privately with John Corigliano
in New York, and won a Rotary Scholarship for post-doctoral study at London’s Royal College of Music, where he studied with John Lambert
. At the Royal College, he became the first American to win the Sir Arthur Bliss
Memorial for outstanding postgraduate composer.
and David Del Tredici
.
John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune called the 10-minute piece "visceral in its excitement" and noted: "Knight appears to know his way around the Windy City, for his score persuasively catches our town's jumpy, clashing cadences. Pathetic, mewling glissandi make an amusing leitmotif, and long strings of tremolos entwine boldly colored block sonorities. The score seizes and holds your imagination and makes you want to hear it again." The Kiev Philharmonic recorded Big Shoulders for volume seven of ERMMedia's “Masterworks of the New Era.”
in August 1991. The piece was inspired by an abandoned lighthouse set atop a jagged granite island in Lake Superior. Critic Timothy Mangan of the Los Angeles Times noted: "Its originality stems form the composer's canny combination of steady meter with atonal lyricism, a waltz-like lilt with expressionist angst; as such, it sounds like Schoenberg's 'La Valse'. Its 12 minutes pass quickly and, on first hearing, seem tightly unified, suave and sinister, confidently orchestrated and worth another hearing."
Feb. 11, 1989. The premiere of his "Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Ensemble" was given by the New York Chamber Ensemble in Florence Gould Hall
with soloist Alan Kay. Reviewing the concert, Bernard Holland of The New York Times called Knight a "fresh, original voice" with "an inventive sense of humor." Knight worked as a visiting assistant professor at Hunter College, City University of New York, from 1992-94 before relocating with his family to Vermont.
poems was premiered by the American Music Festival Orchestra. Wayne Lee Gay of Knight-Ridder News Service called the work “inventive and melodic…an eclectic, lyrical orchestral song cycle.” Gay wrote: “Life is Fine has the sound of a work that may well be a major addition to the American vocal-orchestral repertoire.”
The work won first prize in the San Francisco Song Festival's American Art Song Competition and became the centerpiece of Knight’s first commercial solo CD, Where the Sunsets Bleed: The Chamber Music of Edward Knight, released by Albany Records and featuring soprano Marquita Lister. In reviewing the release, The American Record Guide called Knight “a storyteller by inclination,” and noted his “witty, in-your-face stuff sung with flair by Lister.” At the work's West Coast premiere, the San Francisco Classical Voice review noted a "Debussyan longing," noting: "The piece exhibited a remarkable expressive range, with each song in the cycle deploying a different musical strategy to match each poem's mood, from dreamlike to jazzy to sarcastic. Soprano Marnie Breckenridge
's vitality brought the piece to life...she delivered the scat-like cadenza with perfectly nuanced blue notes and a wonderful sensitivity to expressive timing."
, recruited Knight to join the OCU faculty as director of music composition and composr-in-residence in 1997. The school is home to the Oklahoma Opera and Music Theater Company, and alma mater to musicians including Mason Williams
, Kristin Chenoweth
, Kelli O’Hara, Chris Merritt
, Leona Mitchell
and Sarah Coburn
. His Oklahoma surroundings are reflected in several Knight works, including a Route 66 trilogy and a work commissioned and premiered by Brightmusic chamber ensemble: “Beneath A Cinnamon Moon,” a 23-minute trio for clarinet, viola and piano performed at the OK Mozart Festival by Chad Burrow, Paul Neubauer and Amy I-Lin Cheng.
The vocal talent at the school prompted Knight to create art songs, an additional song cycle, and two full-length musicals. He primarily worked with M.J. Alexander
, his wife and librettist. Alexander wrote the book and lyrics, and Knight the score, for the 90-minute one-act romantic musical comedy Strike A Match in 1999, for piano and six voices. The work set attendance records and was noted for its “jazzy, bluesy undertones that blur the lines separating opera, music theater and song cycle." Its success led to a commission by the music school for a fully orchestrated work to mark the 50th anniversary of the school's Oklahoma Opera and Music Theater Company. After a 30-week workshop, Night of the Comets premiered in September 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The musical produced several stand-alone songs, an orchestral suite, and chamber works.
Knight’s musical output at OCU is prolific. A 2009 release notes five premieres of commissioned works in six months, spread over four states. He toured China with the Oklahoma City University Symphony Orchestra as it performed a program of American music including his work and compositions from his students.
, Bessie Barton Paddock, and Mary Dyer
. The resulting 16-minute song cycle was premiered by mezzo-soprano Catherine McDaniel in 2007 at University of Oklahoma.
Scholar Judith Carmen called Tales Not Told an “intriguing, heartfelt and beautifully crafted cycle” suited to “Knight’s compositional style with its rhythmic vitality, melodiousness, jazz elements, and slightly askew tonalities.” Carmen commented on the origins of the piece: "The story of the song cycle itself is fascinating. The six women are all direct ancestors of the composer on his paternal grandmother’s side, and the poet, Knight’s wife, researched the histories of the women and wrote the poems that Knight set to music for their children…The direct lineage makes the composer truly an “Ur-American” composer. Knight is quite sensitive both to meaning and imagery in the text of these songs. He captures exactly the right atmosphere and overall motion of each poem as well as many details of imagery in his music."
Graduates of Knight's studio have been accepted to the composition programs at Juilliard, Yale University, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, University of Southern California’s Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television Program, New York University's Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at Tisch School for the Arts, San Francisco Conservatory, Cal Arts, University of Texas at Austin, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Arizona, Bowling Green State University, University of Louisville, the Conservatory of Music at University of Missouri-Kansas City, Florida State University, University of Oklahoma, and London’s Royal College of Music. Alumni of Knight’s studio include Jay Wadley, Rick McKee, Maya Raviv and Katarzyna Brochocka.
In 2010, he was appointed to the summer composition faculty of Interlochen Center for the Arts
, near Traverse City, Michigan.
fellow, a 2007 winner of the Aaron Copland
Award, and a past fellow at the Yaddo
and MacDowell
artist colonies.
and a solo CD released by Albany Records
:
WHERE THE SUNSETS BLEED: Chamber Music of Edward Knight, Albany Records, 2005.
MELANGE: New Music for Piano, Capstone Records, 2005.
MASTERWORKS OF THE NEW ERA, Volume 7, Kiev Philharmonic, ERMMedia, 2005.
HOLIDAYS OF THE NEW ERA, Volume 1, Kiev Philharmonic and Chamber Choir Kyiv, ERMMedia, 2006.
HOLIDAYS OF THE NEW ERA, Volume 2, Prague Radio Symphony and Kuhn Choir, ERMMedia, 2008.
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...
. His work eschews easy classification, moving freely between jazz, theatrical and concert worlds.
Background
Knight was introduced to music by his grandmother, Kathryn Dyer Knight, a concert pianist who taught piano later in life. He excelled at trumpet; as a teenager, he toured three summers with Musical Youth International, performing in Russia, Scandinavia, the British Isles, and several European capitals.Knight earned his undergraduate degree from Eastern Michigan University and his master’s and doctorate in composition from University of Texas. He spent a year studying privately with John Corigliano
John Corigliano
John Corigliano is an American composer of classical music and a teacher of music. He is a distinguished professor of music at Lehman College in the City University of New York.-Biography:...
in New York, and won a Rotary Scholarship for post-doctoral study at London’s Royal College of Music, where he studied with John Lambert
John Lambert
John Lambert may refer to:*John Lambert , English Protestant martyred during the reign of Henry VIII*John Lambert , Parliamentary general in the English Civil War...
. At the Royal College, he became the first American to win the Sir Arthur Bliss
Arthur Bliss
Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...
Memorial for outstanding postgraduate composer.
Early Orchestral Works
Knight came to national attention with four large-scale orchestral works in the late 1980s and early 1990s: Of Perpetual Solace, Total Eclipse, Granite Island, and Big Shoulders.Of Perpetual Solace
Knight’s doctoral work for University of Texas, premiered by the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Orchestra Hall, Chicago, July 30, 1989. The 14-minute piece won first prize in the National Orchestra Association’s New Music Orchestral Project.Total Eclipse
The 11-minute piece was selected for the New York Philharmonic's Horizons '90: New Music for Orchestra concert, by a committee headed by Lawrence Leighton SmithLawrence Leighton Smith
Lawrence Leighton Smith, a conductor and pianist, was born April 8, 1936 in Portland, Oregon.He studied piano with Ariel Rubstein in Portland and Leonard Shure in New York. He earned bachelor's degrees from Portland State University in 1956 and Mannes College of Music in 1959...
and David Del Tredici
David Del Tredici
David Del Tredici, born March 16, 1937 in Cloverdale, California, is an American composer. According to Del Tredici's website, Aaron Copland said David Del Tredici "is that rare find among composers — a creator with a truly original gift...
.
Big Shoulders
The 1994 winner of ASCAP’s Rudolf Nissim Prize for best new orchestral work, Big Shoulders was commissioned by ASCAP/Meet the Composer and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to commemorate the CSO's centennial.John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune called the 10-minute piece "visceral in its excitement" and noted: "Knight appears to know his way around the Windy City, for his score persuasively catches our town's jumpy, clashing cadences. Pathetic, mewling glissandi make an amusing leitmotif, and long strings of tremolos entwine boldly colored block sonorities. The score seizes and holds your imagination and makes you want to hear it again." The Kiev Philharmonic recorded Big Shoulders for volume seven of ERMMedia's “Masterworks of the New Era.”
Granite Island
The work was commissioned for the first L.A. Composers Project, a competition established to celebrate the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute's 10th season, and premiered in the Hollywood BowlHollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl is a modern amphitheater in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States that is used primarily for music performances...
in August 1991. The piece was inspired by an abandoned lighthouse set atop a jagged granite island in Lake Superior. Critic Timothy Mangan of the Los Angeles Times noted: "Its originality stems form the composer's canny combination of steady meter with atonal lyricism, a waltz-like lilt with expressionist angst; as such, it sounds like Schoenberg's 'La Valse'. Its 12 minutes pass quickly and, on first hearing, seem tightly unified, suave and sinister, confidently orchestrated and worth another hearing."
Other NYC Premieres
During the same era, while living in London and New York, Knight also premiered “O Vos Omnes,” performed by I Cantori di New York in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie HallCarnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
Feb. 11, 1989. The premiere of his "Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Ensemble" was given by the New York Chamber Ensemble in Florence Gould Hall
Florence Gould Hall
The Florence Gould Hall is a 400 seat, proscenium stage theatre and concert hall located in the Alliance Française French Institute in New York City, at 55 East 59th Street . It opened in the spring of 1988....
with soloist Alan Kay. Reviewing the concert, Bernard Holland of The New York Times called Knight a "fresh, original voice" with "an inventive sense of humor." Knight worked as a visiting assistant professor at Hunter College, City University of New York, from 1992-94 before relocating with his family to Vermont.
First Song Cycle
A commission from the American Music Festival for a 15-minute work for soprano and orchestra inspired Knight to compose his first song cycle, “Life Is Fine.” Knight’s setting of six Langston HughesLangston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
poems was premiered by the American Music Festival Orchestra. Wayne Lee Gay of Knight-Ridder News Service called the work “inventive and melodic…an eclectic, lyrical orchestral song cycle.” Gay wrote: “Life is Fine has the sound of a work that may well be a major addition to the American vocal-orchestral repertoire.”
The work won first prize in the San Francisco Song Festival's American Art Song Competition and became the centerpiece of Knight’s first commercial solo CD, Where the Sunsets Bleed: The Chamber Music of Edward Knight, released by Albany Records and featuring soprano Marquita Lister. In reviewing the release, The American Record Guide called Knight “a storyteller by inclination,” and noted his “witty, in-your-face stuff sung with flair by Lister.” At the work's West Coast premiere, the San Francisco Classical Voice review noted a "Debussyan longing," noting: "The piece exhibited a remarkable expressive range, with each song in the cycle deploying a different musical strategy to match each poem's mood, from dreamlike to jazzy to sarcastic. Soprano Marnie Breckenridge
Marnie Breckenridge
Marnie Breckenridge is an American singer based out of California's Napa Valley. She is a soprano and sings opera.She graduated from Pacific Union College in Angwin, overlooking the Napa Valley, with a bachelor's degree in music in 1993...
's vitality brought the piece to life...she delivered the scat-like cadenza with perfectly nuanced blue notes and a wonderful sensitivity to expressive timing."
Oklahoma
Mark Parker, conductor of the American Festival Orchestra and dean of the Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City UniversityOklahoma City University
Oklahoma City University, often referred to as OCU, is a coeducational, urban, private university historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church...
, recruited Knight to join the OCU faculty as director of music composition and composr-in-residence in 1997. The school is home to the Oklahoma Opera and Music Theater Company, and alma mater to musicians including Mason Williams
Mason Williams
Mason Williams is an American guitarist and composer, best known for his guitar instrumental "Classical Gas". He is also a comedy writer, known for his writing on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and Saturday Night Live...
, Kristin Chenoweth
Kristin Chenoweth
Kristin Chenoweth is an American singer and actress, with credits in musical theatre, film and television. She is best known on Broadway for her performance as Sally Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown , for which she won a Tony Award, and for originating the role of Glinda in the musical...
, Kelli O’Hara, Chris Merritt
Chris Merritt
Chris Merritt is an opera singer. He studied piano, singing, dance and drama at Oklahoma City University where he made his first stage appearance in Jacques Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann in a university production. At age 21, he was accepted into the summer season Apprentice Program for...
, Leona Mitchell
Leona Mitchell
Leona Mitchell , is an African-American and Chickasaw operatic soprano and an Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame inductee....
and Sarah Coburn
Sarah Coburn
Sarah Coburn is an American operatic soprano.-Biography:Sarah Coburn was born in Petersburg, Virginia on August 4, 1977. She graduated from Oklahoma State University and received a Master of Music degree from Oklahoma City University, studying under Larry Wade Keller...
. His Oklahoma surroundings are reflected in several Knight works, including a Route 66 trilogy and a work commissioned and premiered by Brightmusic chamber ensemble: “Beneath A Cinnamon Moon,” a 23-minute trio for clarinet, viola and piano performed at the OK Mozart Festival by Chad Burrow, Paul Neubauer and Amy I-Lin Cheng.
The vocal talent at the school prompted Knight to create art songs, an additional song cycle, and two full-length musicals. He primarily worked with M.J. Alexander
M.J. Alexander
M.J. Alexander is a writer and photographer who documents people and places of the American West, with an emphasis on the very young, the very old, and American Indian culture....
, his wife and librettist. Alexander wrote the book and lyrics, and Knight the score, for the 90-minute one-act romantic musical comedy Strike A Match in 1999, for piano and six voices. The work set attendance records and was noted for its “jazzy, bluesy undertones that blur the lines separating opera, music theater and song cycle." Its success led to a commission by the music school for a fully orchestrated work to mark the 50th anniversary of the school's Oklahoma Opera and Music Theater Company. After a 30-week workshop, Night of the Comets premiered in September 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The musical produced several stand-alone songs, an orchestral suite, and chamber works.
Twenty-first century
After composing for the stage, Knight’s chamber compositions became infused with theatrical flare and heightened interaction between players. A review of a Knight work premiered at the International Trumpet Guild Festival in 2006, noted:Edward Knight's Sonata through Salt-Rimmed Glasses tells a story of romantic hopes raised and dashed in a cantina as an evening progresses. [Trumpeter Michael] Anderson, and pianist Rebecca Wilt, gave a remarkable performance of this work, moving seamlessly between impressive all-out trumpet sonata work and something verging dangerously close to musical comedy as the protagonists worked out their tensions across a seemingly smoldering piano. This work is really a very intense and complex piece and tests the trumpet player to the limit.…The third movement in particular is wonderful, starting with a beautiful and lyrical muted tune played passionately and with supreme control by Anderson - but it all gets a bit unstructured as the night goes on and the melody comes back in a variety of guises, some distorted, others maudlin or angry, moving toward a slow tango which pretty much explodes with passion. This is a witty and novel piece.”
Knight’s musical output at OCU is prolific. A 2009 release notes five premieres of commissioned works in six months, spread over four states. He toured China with the Oklahoma City University Symphony Orchestra as it performed a program of American music including his work and compositions from his students.
Second Song Cycle
His next song cycle, Tales Not Told, was based on Alexander's historically based poems exploring the lives of six American women: Helen Harvey Tiffany Paddock, Patience Brewster, Keziah Keyes Ransom, Sarah Town Bridges CloyceRebecca Nurse
Rebecca Towne Nurse was executed for witchcraft by the government of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England in 1692, during the Salem witch trials. She was the wife of Francis Nurse, with several children and grandchildren, and a well-respected member of the community...
, Bessie Barton Paddock, and Mary Dyer
Mary Dyer
Mary Baker Dyer was an English Puritan turned Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony , for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony...
. The resulting 16-minute song cycle was premiered by mezzo-soprano Catherine McDaniel in 2007 at University of Oklahoma.
Scholar Judith Carmen called Tales Not Told an “intriguing, heartfelt and beautifully crafted cycle” suited to “Knight’s compositional style with its rhythmic vitality, melodiousness, jazz elements, and slightly askew tonalities.” Carmen commented on the origins of the piece: "The story of the song cycle itself is fascinating. The six women are all direct ancestors of the composer on his paternal grandmother’s side, and the poet, Knight’s wife, researched the histories of the women and wrote the poems that Knight set to music for their children…The direct lineage makes the composer truly an “Ur-American” composer. Knight is quite sensitive both to meaning and imagery in the text of these songs. He captures exactly the right atmosphere and overall motion of each poem as well as many details of imagery in his music."
Project 21
Upon his arrival at OCU, Knight founded Project 21: Music for the 21st Century, a forum for composers and new music. Knight and Project 21 hosted the 2009 Society of Composers, Inc., Region VI Conference As of 2010, Project 21 has premiered more than 500 student-created worksGraduates of Knight's studio have been accepted to the composition programs at Juilliard, Yale University, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, University of Southern California’s Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television Program, New York University's Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at Tisch School for the Arts, San Francisco Conservatory, Cal Arts, University of Texas at Austin, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Arizona, Bowling Green State University, University of Louisville, the Conservatory of Music at University of Missouri-Kansas City, Florida State University, University of Oklahoma, and London’s Royal College of Music. Alumni of Knight’s studio include Jay Wadley, Rick McKee, Maya Raviv and Katarzyna Brochocka.
In 2010, he was appointed to the summer composition faculty of Interlochen Center for the Arts
Interlochen Center for the Arts
Interlochen Center for the Arts is a privately owned, 1,200 acre arts education institution in Interlochen, Michigan, roughly 15 miles southwest of Traverse City...
, near Traverse City, Michigan.
Recognition
In addition to the Sir Arthur Bliss Award from London's Royal College of Music and ASCAP's Rudolf Nissim Award for best new orchestral work, Knight has won the San Francisco Song Festival’s American Art Song Competition, the Delius Composition Competition, Bergen Festival's Morton Gould Memorial, and Vienna Modern Masters. He was named Oklahoma's Musician of the Year in 2002, and cited in commendations from the Oklahoma House of Representatives and State Senate. He is a 2009 Djerassi fellow, a 2008 Ucross FoundationUcross Foundation
The Ucross Foundation, located in Ucross, Wyoming, is a nonprofit organization that operates an internationally known retreat for visual artists, writers, composers and choreographers working in all creative disciplines.-History:...
fellow, a 2007 winner of the Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
Award, and a past fellow at the Yaddo
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...
and MacDowell
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
artist colonies.
Discography
Five commercial CDs feature Knight’s work, including recordings from ERMMedia and Capstone RecordsCapstone Records
Capstone Records is an American classical music record label focusing particularly on contemporary classical music. It was established by Richard Brooks in 1986, and was based in Brooklyn, New York...
and a solo CD released by Albany Records
Albany Records
Albany Records is an American classical music record label focusing particularly on contemporary classical music. It was established by Peter Kermani in 1987, and is based in Albany, New York.-External links:**...
:
WHERE THE SUNSETS BLEED: Chamber Music of Edward Knight, Albany Records, 2005.
MELANGE: New Music for Piano, Capstone Records, 2005.
MASTERWORKS OF THE NEW ERA, Volume 7, Kiev Philharmonic, ERMMedia, 2005.
HOLIDAYS OF THE NEW ERA, Volume 1, Kiev Philharmonic and Chamber Choir Kyiv, ERMMedia, 2006.
HOLIDAYS OF THE NEW ERA, Volume 2, Prague Radio Symphony and Kuhn Choir, ERMMedia, 2008.
Additional References
- Classical Composers Database: Edward Knight. http://www.classical-composers.org/comp/knight_edward Retrieved 2 January 2010.
- Copland House: Where America’s Musical Past and Future Meet: Previous Residents. http://www.coplandhouse.org/info.asp?pk=243 Retrieved 3 January 2010.
- Knight Talks on Creativity; Song Cycle Wins San Francisco Prize. http://www.okcu.edu/news/?id=2950 Retrieved 7 January 2010.
- Music Composition at Oklahoma City University http://www.okcu.edu/music/compose.aspx Retrieved 7 January 2010.
- Subito Music Composers: Edward Knight. http://www.subitomusic.com/composers/composers.cfm?composer=11 Retrieved 7 January 2010.
- Where Art Originates: Artists and the Creative Process. Palo Alto Art Center Foundation. http://www.paacf.org/WhatWeAreDoing/SpecialEvents/index.html Retrieved 13 December 2009.