Amram, David (Werner III) 1930-

views updated

AMRAM, David (Werner III) 1930-

PERSONAL: Born November 17, 1930, in Philadelphia, PA; son of Philip Werner (a lawyer and writer) and Emilie (Weyl) Amram; married Lora Lee Ecobelli (a veterinarian), January 7, 1979; children: Alana Asha, Adira, Adam. Education: Attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music, 1948-49; George Washington University, European history, B.A., 1952; Manhattan School of Music, graduate study, 1955-56; studied composition with Vittorio Giannini, and French horn with Gunther Schuller. Politics: "One world in harmony." Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Kayaking, sailing, skiing, running track, playing jazz, learning languages.

ADDRESSES: Home—461 Sixth Ave., New York, NY 10011. Office—c/o Barna Ostertag, 501 Fifth Ave., Room 1410, New York, NY 10017. Agent—c/o New World Music Artists, 928 Peekskill Hollow Rd., Putnam Valley, NY 10579-1705.

CAREER: Composer, conductor, musician. Worked at various odd jobs prior to stage assignments, including truck driver, gym teacher, and short order cook. Musician, National Symphony Orchestra, 1951-52, United States Information Agency, and Hotel des Etats Unis, Paris, France; played with various jazz groups, including those of Charlie Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Oscar Pettiford; played with his own group, Amram-Barrow Jazz Quartet, 1955. Musical director, New York Shakespeare Festival, New York City, 1956-68, and Phoenix Theatre, 1958. Guest composer in residence, Marlboro Music Festival, VT, 1961; first composer in residence, New York Philharmonic Orchestra, New York City, 1966-67, and at city schools of Birmingham, AL, 1972; first composer/conductor in residence, All-State High School Orchestra, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1970. Free Schooltime Concert Series, Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, head, 1971—; University of Denver, Leo Block chair for the Arts & Humanities; Conductor for World Council of Churches in Kenya, Africa, 1975. Conductor of own work on "Sound Stage," PBS-TV, 1978. Conductor/soloist with various orchestras including Montreal Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Grant Park Orchestra, National Jewish Arts Festival; Cultural ambassador for the State Department in ten countries, including Brazil, May, 1969, Central America, 1977, and the Middle East, 1978. composer for several Broadway plays, Hollywood films, including The Manchurian Candidate, Splendor in the Grass, and television productions and appearances. Military service: U.S. Army, horn player in Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra, 1952-54.

MEMBER: American Federation of Musicians.

AWARDS, HONORS: Obie Award, Village Voice, 1959, for compositions for Phoenix Theatre and New York Shakespeare Festival; honorary Doctor of Laws, Moravian College, 1979.

WRITINGS:

Vibrations: The Adventures and Musical Times ofDavid Amram (autobiography), Macmillan, 1968, revised edition, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 2001.

(Contributor) Beat Culture: The 1950s and Beyond, edited by Cornelis A. van Minnen, Jaap van der Bent, Mel van Elteren, VU University (Amsterdam), 1999.

(Contributor) The Stamp of Impulse: Abstract Expressionist Prints, by David Acton, Worcester Art Museum (Worcester, MA), 2001.

Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 2002.

COMPOSITIONS

The Passion of Joseph D. (incidental music for play of the same title), first produced on Broadway at Ethel Barrymore Theatre, February 11, 1964.

Two Anthems for Mixed Voices A Cappella (choral work), C.F. Peters, 1964.

Three Songs for Marlboro, Horn and Violincello (chamber music), C. F. Peters, 1964.

Shir L'Erev Shabat: Friday Evening Service for TenorSolo, SATB, and Organ (first performed in New York at Town Hall by Beaux Arts Quartet with George Shirley, February 20, 1962), C.F. Peters, 1965.

(With others) A Year in Our Land (cantata), first performed in New York City at Town Hall by Interracial Chorus and Orchestra, May 13, 1965.

(With Langston Hughes) Let Us Remember (cantata), first performed at San Francisco Bay Opera House, November, 1965.

(With Arnold Weinstein) The Final Ingredient (opera), first networked by American Broadcasting Companies (ABC-TV) for "Directions '65," April 11, 1965.

Twelfth Night (opera) first produced in Lake George, NY, at Lake George Opera Festival, August 1, 1968.

Three Songs for America (voice and orchestra), first performed on National Educational Television, April 27, 1969.

Author of jazz poetry and music for jazz poetry reading with Jack Kerouac at Brata Art Gallery, New York, NY. Also composer of choral works By the River of Babylon, The American Bell, Let Us Remember, Five Shakespearean Songs, The Trail of Beauty, Kaddish, May the Words of the Lord, Yigdal, Rejoice in the Lord, and Thou Shalt Love the Lord, Thy God, and others, all published by C.F. Peters. Composer of symphonies, chamber music, incidental music for theater, and film and television scores. Composer of "Giants of the Night," a concerto for flute and orchestra, having its world premier 2002. Also working with author Frank McCourt on "Missa Manhattan," for narrator, chorus, and orchestra, celebrating American multiculture of immigrants over the past three hundred years, including Native American culture. Composed score for the documentary feature Boys of Winter, concerning the life of baseball players Peewee Reece and Carl Erskine of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Mark Reese Productions is making a documentary film about the life of Amram, to be released 2003. Amram is collaborating with author Frank McCourt on a work called "Missa Manhattan," which will include a narrator, chorus, and orchestra. The work will honor New York's diverse cultural heritage over the last 300 years.

SIDELIGHTS: Praised by musical critics and musicians of various genres, David Amram has been called by Saturday Review contributor Victor Chaplin "a composer who may write the great American opera and already has created some of the best incidental theatre music of our time." Amram's autobiography, Vibrations, has likewise received critical praise. Thomas Lask stated in the New York Times that "the great quality of his book is zest. He relishes everything. He is always moving forward to meet life. He is the least introspective of men; he never apologizes for his existence; he never tries to explain it away; he enjoys it. His responses are infectious."

Amram, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a farmer turned lawyer, recalls that the first music he remembers hearing was his father trying to pound out Mozart and Brahms on an old piano in his grandmother's living room. The first instrument that he received was a bugle, a present from his father for his sixth birthday. When he was seven, he began to take piano lessons; and a year later, he studied the trumpet. From there, he moved on to the tuba and finally settled on the French horn.

Amram recalls first hearing jazz in the 1930s, most notably in the sound of the big bands of that era. He was especially drawn to the music of Bix Beiderbecke, whose works he later compared to Bach's Brandenburg concertos.

Amram's first professional engagement as a musician came when he was twelve and living in Washington, DC. He had met Louis Brown, leader of a Dixieland band, who invited the young Amram to sit in as a trumpet player. The music he played was old-school jazz, he recalls, the favorite of the all-black musicians and their audience. The experience of playing with these men would deeply affect him.

After a year of studying music at Oberlin Conservatory, Amram decided that he no longer wanted to study institutionalized music. Later, he graduated from George Washington University with a degree in European history. During the war, he played the French horn for the army, after which he toured Europe, spending most of his time in France, where he struggled to make a living as a jazz musician and composer.

When he returned to the States, he settled in New York City, where he attended classes at the Manhattan School of Music and played gigs with jazz greats Charlie Mingus, Oscar Pettiford, Sonny Rollins, and others. He also started his own group at the Five Spot Cafe on the Bowery. He associated with many of the Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac. In the late 1950s he began writing music for various events, including Joseph Papp's Shakespearian productions, plays for the Phoenix Theatre and various Broadway shows. In the 1960s, he wrote scores for operas and movies, including the films Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Manchurian Candidate (1962) and began conducting music for several different orchestras. He was chosen as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's first composerin-residence in 1966.

During the 1970s, under the sponsorship of the U.S. State Department, Amram toured South America, Africa, Central America, the Middle East, and Cuba. The mixture of all these world beats culminated in a 1977 release, Havana/New York, a mixture of jazz and Afro-Latin rhythms. Two more albums would also reflect this influence, At Home/Around the World (1980) and Latin Jazz Celebration (1982).

To date, Amram has composed more than one hundred musicals works, including two operas. The people with whom he has collaborated on various work is a "Who's Who" of the arts; he has worked with such masters as Leonard Bernstein, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, Willie Nelson, Dustin Hoffman, Elia Kazan, and Arthur Miller.

Vibrations: The Adventures of Musical Times of David Amram was first published in 1968 but was revised in 2001. In this autobiography, Amram details his development as a composer and the influences that have affected his music. The revised edition includes a foreword written by best-selling author and historian Douglas Brinkley. Amram contributed a new preface and epilogue, along with a discography of his works.

For The Stamp of Impulse: Abstract Expressionist Prints, David Acton put together many of the prints that were exhibited at the Worcester Museum of Art in Massachusetts. Curator Acton asked Amram (and poetcritic David Lehman) to write essays about the collection. Amram's commentary emphasized the collection's link to music. The expressionist artists in this collection include De Kooning, Frankenthaler, Gottlieb, and Kline. Acton has added short biographies of the artists and critical sketches of their works.

In 2002, Amram published his book Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac, based on his 1950s' relationship with the Beat writer. Amram used to do gigs with Kerouac in Greenwich Village, playing his horn while Kerouac recited poetry. Later they collaborated on an underground film called Pull My Daisy, for which Amram wrote the score and Kerouac narrated. This book, wrote Eric P. Nash, for the New York Times, "provides a compassionate, firsthand portrait" of Kerouac. After their work on the film, the two parted and never collaborated again. Still, William Garagan of Library Journal noted that Offbeat "documents the continuing influence and growing recognition of the Beat movement." Amram continues to participate in various projects and conferences that are related to the Beat Generation.