Arthur Levering

Biography

 

Arthur LeveringComposer ARTHUR LEVERING has received many awards for his work including the Rome Prize, the Heckscher Foundation Composition Prize, the Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award, commissions from the Fromm Foundation and the Barlow Endowment, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. He has been commissioned by various ensembles including the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Musica Viva, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, Sequitur, Musica d’Oggi (Italy), and the Rascher Saxophone Quartet (Germany). His music has also been performed by such prominent groups as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the League of Composers/ISCM, Voices of Change, NewEar, and Lontano, among others, and has been featured at concerts and festivals in Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Compact disks of his work include School of Velocity, CRI CD 812 (“the best debut album by an American composer I’ve heard this year”—Robert Carl, Fanfare, July/August, 1999), Still Raining, Still Dreaming, New World CD NW 80662, and Parallel Universe, New World CD NW 80750.

Highlights of Past Performances

  • Tema (string qrt.) was played by the Boston Composers String Quartet in Rome and Imperia, Italy, in January 1992.
  • Roulade (flt., hp., string trio) was performed by the British ensemble Ondine at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, in October 1992, and by Alternate Currents in San Francisco in October 1993.
  • Clarion/Shadowing (cl., vln., pno.) premiered on a NuClassix concert in Boston in November 1992 (described by the Boston Globe as “show(ing) a canny husbanding of sonorous energy with powerful motoric impulses spelled by hypnotic calms”).
  • Twenty Ways Upon the Bells (seven players), commissioned by the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble for their 20th anniversary season, premiered in Boston in October 1994 (“drop-dead gorgeous”—Boston Globe).
  • Time’s Arrow (orch.) was performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in Cleveland in April 1996 (described by Donald Rosenberg of the Cleveland Plain Dealer as “a cascade of fascinating ideas . . . cataclysmic climaxes and delicate nuances applied with colorful economy”).
  • School of Velocity (pno.) was played by 1991 Schubert International Piano Competition prizewinner Donald Berman at New York’s Merkin Hall in March 1999 (“highly impressive . . . packed with musical energy”—Paul Griffiths, New York Times).
  • Quaterna (sax. qrt.) was premiered by the Rascher Saxophone Quartet in May 1999 in Stuttgart, Germany.

More recent highlights include the New York premiere of Catena (pno. and chamber orch.) by the New Juilliard Ensemble, Joel Sachs, conductor, on November 21, 2000, at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presented Cloches II (eight players) on February 15, 2001, on the Double Exposure Series at Lincoln Center. The 21st Century Consort performed Clarion/Shadowing on March 13, 2004, at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, DC. The revised version of Still Raining, Still Dreaming (six players) was premiered by the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble in Boston on September 18, 2005. Tesserae II (alto sax., pno.) was premiered on April 12, 2007 in Zurich, Switzerland by Harry White and Edward Rushton. Sequitur premiered Furies (eleven players) on January 30, 2008 at Merkin Hall in New York; and Il Mare Dentro (orchestra) was premiered by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project at the Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music in Boston on September 21, 2008.

Awards

  • Fromm Foundation at Harvard Commission, 2010
  • Heckscher Foundation Composition Prize, 1997
  • Barlow Endowment Commission, 1996
  • Lee Ettelson Composers Award, 1992
  • Composers Guild Prize, 1990.

Fellowships

  • Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, 2002
  • Rome Prize Fellow, American Academy in Rome, 1996-97
  • NEA Fellow, 1994
  • Fellow, Yaddo, 1993
  • Fellow, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, 1991
  • Fellow, MacDowell Colony, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996
  • Fellow, Yale at Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, 1990
  • Fellow, June in Buffalo Festival, 1988, 1989
  • Fellow, Aspen Music Festival, 1987

Education

Boston University School of Music, M.M. (Composition), 1988; Yale University School of Music, M.M. (Classical Guitar), 1979; Colby College, B.A., 1976.

Last updated: February 2014