William Bolcom

by Georgia Rowe, San Francisco Classical Voice 
November 17, 2009 

William Bolcom has always made his own way. Throughout his career, which has produced symphonies, operas, chamber pieces, and piano and vocal works, the Seattle-born, Michigan-based composer has often rejected the prevailing notions of what “serious” music should include. 

He was among the first to revive the piano rag form, and with his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, has explored the American song repertoire in concert and recordings for over 35 years. Bolcom, who won multiple Grammy Awards for his setting of William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Twelve New Études for piano. At 71, he continues to compose. This week, the New Century Chamber Orchestra will perform his Three Rags and Serenata Notturna. Later this season, the ensemble will premiere his newest work, Romanza. I spoke to him by phone in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan 

Speech at the Reception and Induction of New Members of Phi Kappa Phi 
March 15, 2009 

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you. I’ll be talking to you today about something very much on my mind, the continuation of artistic health in a hostile environment. I should qualify that remark: it is often said that America is a philistine country toward the arts, and there is some truth to that. But I would contend that perhaps in some ways the US relative lack of support might have been healthier for these arts in some ways than the European state support has proven to be, which I’ll come to later. The comparisons of the two scenes, at the admittedly anecdotal level I can cite in my own history as composer for concert hall, cabaret, stage, opera, ballet, film — in other words what a busy composer does these days in the 20th and 21st centuries — will be the basis for my text. 

Listen to the story at National Public Radio 

Visit William Bolcom's Page at National Public Radio 

December 31, 2008 - This week, gifted young musicians gather at Boston's New England Conservatory to perform music by an American original — William Bolcom, who joins them in a concert of his music. A 17-year-old violinist plays the "Graceful Ghost" rag, a 14-year-old soprano enlivens a campy cabaret song, and a teen string quartet performs music Bolcom wrote at age 12. 

Program Notes by Steven Blier 
September 23 and 25, 2008, Merkin Hall 
© 2008 New York Festival of Song (Listen to the feature story online at http://www.wnyc.org/story/56893-a-bernsteinbolcom-celebration/) 

If Michael Barrett and I were to create our own musical Mount Rushmore, we would have to start with sixty-foot sculptures of Leonard Bernstein and William Bolcom. We might argue about the other two profiles—I’d be lobbying for Carlo Maria Giulini, and Michael would be pushing for Robert Schumann—but Lenny and Bill would certainly have pride of place.

An Interview with American Composer William Bolcom by Christopher Wright 
​AdventuresInMusic.biz sat down with William Bolcom and asked him, among other things, what's wrong with music today.

An interview by Terrence McNally 
December 21, 2002 

WB       They’re two things happened that might have happened on the same day.  I get a call from Ardis.  She said that Bruno has just come back Italy and she said, “Well now Bruno said, ‘Why doesn’t Bill do, what you call it in English, Uno Squardo dal Ponte?’” -- View from the Bridge in Italian.  And I get a call from Arnold, Arnold Weinstein.  Now often, it seems to happen a couple of times a year people have decided on their own recognizance to make an opera out of Death of a Salesman or All My Sons, or one of the other major plays.  And they will send whatever music is already done to Arnold and Arthur. 

The Henry Russel Lecture at the University of Michigan
11 March 1997 

Few writers on music have been as colorful, as astute, or as infuriating as the composer-critic Virgil Thomson. Chief music critic for the late, lamented New York Herald-Tribune from 1940 through 1954, he used his bully-pulpit to increase public awareness of the newest American music and our best young native composers and performers. He also shamelessly used his critic's power to obtain performances of his own music and to settle scores in the music world in the most highhanded way possible. He certainly indulged in some of the "old-American" set of prejudices that can also be found in the writings of a close counterpart, H. L. Mencken. As with Mencken, however, the rereading of Thomson is usually worth the occasional wince. 

by William Bolcom 

In March of 1996 the composer Donald Martino came under attack from the musicologist-critic Richard Taruskin, who in a New York Times article on twelve-tone composition excoriated Martino as one of its more perniciously academic practitioners.(1)  All this only occasioned by the reissue, mind you, of a Nonesuch record of around twenty years before; it's as if someone, now, decided to ambush a prizefighter walking by for winning a controversial match in 1965.