Charles Gilibert (1866 - 1910)

Kirchner is a man of the broadest artistic and intellectual horizons, and an immensely perceptive teacher of both composers and performers. (This writer was his student at Mills College.) At Harvard he created a unique music analysis/performance class, which had an enormous impact on such budding celebrities as Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Chang, and James Oliver Buswell. A pianist and conductor of rare gifts, he has been guest conductor with major orchestras, and in residence at numerous festivals. He is especially proud of the Harvard Chamber orchestra, which he founded to perform traditional and contemporary repertoire.

Kirchners works include the opera Lily, two piano concertos, two cello concertos, three string quartets, Concerto for Violin, Cello, Ten Winds, and Percussion, Music for Orchestra I and II, Music for Flute and Orchestra, a song cycle The Twilight Stood, a monumental cantata Of Things Exactly As They Are, and other orchestral, chamber, and solo works. In recent years he has written a second Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano (1993), Duo for Violin and Piano (2002), and Piano Sonata (2003). Kirchner has received numerous major commissions and awards, including the 1967 Pulitzer Prize and the 1994 Friedheim Award of the Kennedy Center.