Mel Powell

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Mel Powell (born Melvin Epstein) (February 12, 1923 – April 24, 1998), a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer and the founding dean of the California Institute of the Arts's music department.

He served as a music educator for over 40 years, first at Mannes College of Music and Queens College, then Yale University, and then CalArts.

He began his career as a jazz pianist.

Early life

Mel Powell was born in Melvin D. Epstein, the second of Russian Jewish parents Milton Epstein and Mildred (Mollie) Mark Epstein's three children, in The Bronx, New York City. He started playing piano at age four and learned from Nadia Reisenberg, among other things. He was living within sight of Yankee Stadium as a lifelong baseball fan. While playing baseball as a child, a hand injury led him to try music rather than sports as a career. Powell wished to be a concert pianist before his older brother brought him to see jazz pianist Teddy Wilson perform, and later on a Benny Goodman performance. In a 1987 interview with The New Yorker magazine, Powell said, "I had never heard anything as thrilling as this music," triggering a change from classical to jazz piano. Powell, at the age of 14, was playing jazz regularly around New York City. He was involved with Bobby Hackett, George Brunies, and Zutty Singleton, as well as writing Earl Hines' papers as early as 1939. He changed his name from Epstein to Powell in 1941, just a few years before joining Benny Goodman's band.

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Career

Powell's style was rooted in the stride style that served as the direct precursor to swing piano. The Earl's portrait, which is perhaps his best known from that time, is certainly one from his Goodman days. The song, which was dedicated to Earl "Fatha" Hines, one of Powell's piano heroes, was recorded without a drummer. Powell spent a brief time with the CBS radio band under the guidance of Ray Scott, who spent almost two years with Goodman. Powell was recruited into the United States Army during World War II but fought his battles from a piano stool after being assigned to Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band from 1943 to 1945.

Powell was stationed in Paris, where he performed with Django Reinhardt, and then returned to a brief period in Goodman's band after being barred from the service. Powell migrated to Hollywood and started providing music for movies and cartoons, including the Tom and Jerry shorts, from mid-to-late 1940s. He appeared in the film A Song Is Born (1948), along with many other well-known jazz artists, including Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman. Martha Scott, a Hollywood actor, met and married her during his time as a child actor.

Powell's muscular dystrophy was apparent shortly after. For a time, he was dependent on a wheelchair but then walked with the help of a cane. The illness, rather than appearance, ended his potential to work as a traveling musician with Goodman or other bands, causing him to devoted himself to composition rather than show. He enrolled at the Yale School of Music in 1948, where he studied with German composer and music theorist Paul Hindemith and received a B.M. In 1952, the degree was awarded. He recorded the jazz album Thigamigig in 1954, which included a piano/trum/drums track that was picked by Art Clokey for his claymation short Gumbasia in 1955. He appeared with Benny Goodman in New York for a three-week engagement.

Powell continued to explore atonality, or "non-tonal" music as he described it at first, as well as Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg's serialism. Powell began as a music educator in Mannes College of Music and Queens College in his hometown New York City, then returning to Yale in 1958, replacing Hindemith as chair of the composition faculty and director of one of the country's first experimental music studios. Powell created several electronic pieces in the 1960s, some of which were performed at the Electric Circus in New York's East Village, a venue that also featured pioneering rock music acts such as The Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead. However, Powell did not totally abandon jazz. He played piano and recorded music with Benny Goodman again, as well as on his own during his time teaching in the 1950s.

Powell composed for orchestra, chorus, voice, and chamber ensemble during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In 1969, he returned to California to serve as the founding dean of the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. He was the Roy O. Disney Professor of Music from 1972 to 1976, and taught at the Institute until shortly before his death. Ann Millikan and Anthony Brandt, two composers, are among the notable students. N to Q#Mel Powell, a teacher, sees a list of music students by teacher.

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