Artists

Biography:

Composer JOHN HARBISON (b.1938) is among America’s most distinguished artistic figures. The recipient of numerous awards and honors (including the prestigious MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” award and the Pulitzer Prize), Harbison has composed music for most of America’s premiere musical institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera (The Great Gatsby, 1999), the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He received degrees from Harvard and Princeton before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is currently Institute Professor, the highest academic distinction offered resident faculty. He also serves as President of the Copland Fund. His works include four string quartets, four symphonies, a ballet, three operas, a cantata, and numerous chamber and choral works, more than sixty of which have been recorded on leading labels such as Albany, Centaur, Harmonia Mundi, New World, Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, and Koch. Mr. Harbison has been composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Academy in Rome, and numerous festivals, including Tanglewood, Marlboro, and Aspen, and he is currently Acting Artistic Director of Emmanuel Music in Boston. Recent major premieres include Umbrian Landscape (Chicago Chamber Musicians), Milosz Songs (New York Philharmonic and Dawn Upshaw), But Mary Stood (Cantata Singers, Boston), Concerto for Bass Viol (for fifteen orchestras), Crane Sightings (Tanglewood), and Abu Ghraib (Rockport Festival). Other recent works are the overture Darkbloom, for James Levine’s inaugural season with the Boston Symphony, and the motet Abraham, commissioned for the Papal Concert of Reconciliation in Rome. Upcoming premieres include chamber works for horn quartet and percussion ensemble, and Symphony No. 5 for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.