Michael Colgrass

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Michael C. Colgrass (April 22, 1932 – July 2, 2019) was an American-born Canadian musician, composer, and educator.

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Life and career

Colgrass was born in Brookfield, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. (1944-1949), his musical career began in Chicago as a jazz pianist (1944-1949). He graduated from the University of Illinois (1954) with a degree in percussion performance and composition, as well as studies with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Festival and Lukas Foss at Tanglewood. In the United States, he spent two years as a timpanist. Seventh Army Symphony in Stuttgart spent eleven years as a freelance percussionist in New York City, where his performance experiences included such diverse ensembles as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, The Metropolitan Opera, Dizzy Gillespie, the Modern Jazz Recording Orchestra's Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky collection, and numerous ballet, opera, and jazz ensembles. He arranged the percussion sections for Gunther Schuller's albums and performances, as well as the recording and premieres of new works by John Cage, Elliott Carter, Edgard Varèse, and Harry Partch's ensemble, as well as others. During his New York years, he continued to study composition with Wallingford Riegger (1958) and Ben Weber (1960).

Colgrass has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic and The Boston Symphony, as well as the orchestras of Minnesota, Detroit, San Francisco, San Francisco, Patrick, and Toronto (twice), the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the London and Muir String Quartets, the Fromm and Ford Foundations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Corporation, and several other orchestras, chamber ensembles, orchestra groups, and soloists from the Brighton Festival in England.

The Colgrass family migrated to Toronto in 1970 mainly due to street violence, labor strikes, and civil unrest in the city of New York, which is an urban quality-of-life crisis that reached its peak under Mayor John Vliet Lindsay. "Crime was at its peak at the time in New York and Ulla, and I was wondering where to live," Colgrass later told a Toronto reporter. "We... happened to see a 60 Minute special on Toronto, which featured a low crime rate, multiculturalism, and a slew of parks." We loved what we saw," the author says. Colgrass' life would be divided into two parts: an American half and a Canadian half.

Colgrass received the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his symphonic work Déjà vu, which was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic. In addition,, he received an Emmy Award in 1982 for a PBS documentary Soundings: Michael Colgrass's Music. Other prizes include two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Award, First Prize in the Barlow and Sudler International Wind Ensemble Competitions, and the 1988 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music.

Crossworlds (2002) for flute, piano, and orchestra, one of his later works; the Boston Symphony Orchestra has commissioned this work and premiered with soloists Marina Piccinini and Andreas Heafliger. In 2003, he conducted the premiere of his new chamber orchestra version of the Bach-Goldberg Variations with members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Side by Side (2007), a twenty-first century premiere, was performed by the Esprit Orchestra, The Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and Orchestration Orchestra conducted soloist Joanne Kong. The Canadian premiere took place in Toronto on May 13, 2007 under conductor Alex Pauk; the American premiere followed in Boston on November 2nd, 2007. Pan Trio, a steel drums, harp, and percussion (marimba/vivbraphone), was soon after launched in Toronto by Soundstreams Canada and starring pans virtuo Liam Teague. His work was also featured on Mark Hetzler's latest album Blues, Ballads, and Beyond.

Colgrass also invented a system of teaching music creation to children; he taught middle- and high-school music teachers, who would then instruct children to write and perform new music of their own invention. His papers on these subjects appeared in the Music Educators Journal (September 2004) and Adultita, an Italian education journal. He also wrote a number of children's books.

Colgrass wrote My Lessons with Kumi, a fictionalized "teaching book" outlining his methods for success and creativity; he also gave workshops around the world on the psychology and technique of performance. Adventures of an American Composer: An Autobiography, which Colgrass wrote in collaboration with his wife and son, was also published in 2010.

Colgrass lived in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, for almost five decades, before establishing his career as a composer. He was an associate composer with the Canadian Music Centre.

Colgrass died on July 2, 2019, at the age of 87.

Ulla's widow, Ulla, is a writer and editor who writes about music and the arts; his son Neal is an editor, reporter, and screenwriter.

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