John Corigliano is among the most honored composers in the United States. He was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Symphony No. 2, introduced in November 2000 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and subsequently heard in New York, Helsinki, Berlin, and Moscow. In March 2000, Corigliano’s third film score, for The Red Violin, was awarded the Academy Award. His Symphony No. 1, an impassioned response to the AIDS crisis, captured the 1991 Grawemeyer Award for Best New Orchestral Composition; the Chicago Symphony’s recording of the piece won the Grammy awards for both Best New Composition and Best Orchestral Performance, and it has been played by over 150 different orchestras worldwide.
Corigliano’s catalogue includes three symphonies, seven concerti (for violin, flute, clarinet, oboe, guitar percussion, and piano), numerous shorter works for orchestra and an extensive catalogue of chamber works, which have been recorded on numerous major labels. His earlier works develop further the musical language of composers such as Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland and their contemporaries, followed by a period of wider experiment in the use of more varied musical materials. His “grand opera buffa” The Ghosts of Versailles (commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera, where it premiered in December 1991) sold out two engagements at The Met (1991 and 1994) as well as its 1995 production at the Chicago Lyric Opera. In April 1999, The Ghosts of Versailles received its European premiere, in Hannover, Germany, and is due for another revival at The Met in the 2009-10 season. It collected the Composition of the Year award from the first International Classic Music Awards. Recent works include 2004’s Circus Maximus: Symphony No. 3 for multiple wind ensembles, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (‘The Red Violin’), the orchestral song cycle Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan, recorded for Naxos with leading soprano soloist Hila Plitmann and the Buffalo Philharmonic conducted by JoAnn Falletta, and A Dylan Thomas Trilogy (1999), a memory play/oratorio for boy soprano, tenor, baritone, chorus and orchestra, also recorded for Naxos the Nashville Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin. His music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer, Inc.
Born in New York City on 16 February 1938, the son of a violinist, Corigliano studied at Columbia University, before embarking on a varied musical career. He was music programmer for several radio stations, assistant to Leonard Bernstein on his Young People’s Concerts, record producer for CBS and teacher at various institutions including the Juilliard School. He was the first Composer-in-Residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1991.
A Distinguished Professor of Music at the City University of New York, Corigliano was named in 1991 both to the faculty of the Juilliard School and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an organization of American’s most prominent artists, sculptors, architects, writers, and composers: he is one of the few living composers to have a string quartet named after him.
For more information about John Corigliano, please visit his website at www.johncorigliano.com.
