David Amram

David Amram (born November 17, 1930) is an American composer, conductor, multi-instrumentalist, and author. As a classical composer and performer, his integration of jazz (including being one of the first noted as an improvising jazz French hornist^[1]), folkloric and world music has led him to work with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Willie Nelson, Langston Hughes, Charles Mingus, Pepper Adams, Levon Helm, Betty Carter and Jack Kerouac. In the early 1950s, he was encouraged to pursue his unique path by mentors Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, the New York Philharmonic's conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, Miles Davis, Aaron Copland, Gunther Schuller, and visual artists Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Today, as he has for over 50 years, Amram continues to compose music while traveling the world as a conductor, soloist, bandleader, visiting scholar, and narrator in five languages.

Biography

David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works, written many scores for Broadway theater and film, including the scores for the films Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate; two operas, including the Holocaust opera The Final Ingredient, a comic opera Twelfth Night with a libretto by Joseph Papp; and the score for the 1959 film Pull My Daisy, narrated by novelist Jack Kerouac. He is also the author of three books: Vibrations, an autobiography; Offbeat: Collaborating With Kerouac, a memoir; and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat, all published by Paradigm Publishers. He is currently writing his fourth book, "David Amram: The Next 80 Years."

Along with Julius Watkins, Amram is considered a pioneer of jazz French horn. He also plays piano, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion, and dozens of folkloric instruments from 25 countries, as well as being an improvisational lyricist. Since working with Leonard Bernstein, (who chose him as The New York Philharmonic's first composer-in-residence in 1966^[1]), he has been one of BMI's twenty most performed composers of concert music of the last thirty years.

Some of Amram's recent orchestral works include Giants of the Night, a concerto for flute and orchestra (commissioned and premiered by Sir James Galway in 2002); Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie,^[2] (commissioned by the Woody Guthrie Foundation and premiered in 2007); and Three Songs: A Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (written for and premiered by pianist Jon Nakamatsu in 2009).^[3] Currently Amram is working on a new orchestral piece, a new chamber work, and is participating in releases of a new series of CDs of his orchestral chamber music and jazz compositions. Violin virtuoso Elmira Darvarova and members of the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera Orchestra participated in the annual New York Chamber Music Festival, performing an evening of Amram's chamber works at Symphony Space in New York City, to be released as a CD in 2013. Amram guest conducted the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in Denver in a program which included his "Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie" and "Theme and Variations on Red River Valley," for flute and strings, both of which will appear on a new CD of Amram's music in 2013. The Boston Symphony's classical saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky has commissioned Amram to compose a new work, "Greenwich Village Portraits," to be premiered worldwide February 1, 2014, by forty different saxophone soloists in forty different venues, sponsored by The Worldwide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Funds, Inc. There are plans to release a CD of Amram's symphonic and chamber compositions for saxophone with Radnosky as the soloist in 2013. Radnofsky also appears with Sir James Galway, Pete Seeger, Kurt Elling, Buck Henry, Tiokaskin Ghost Horse, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, David Broza, Candido, Bobby Sanabria, the Queens College Orchestra (conducted by Maurice Peress and Candido), singers and players from the LSU Opera, and other artists, in Lawrence Kraman's new documentary feature film David Amram: The First 80 Years. Amram also appears in Andrew Zuckerman's book and new feature film documentary Wisdom: The Greatest Gift One Generation Can Give To Another, as one of the world's 50 Elder Thinkers and Doers, and his instructional video, Origins of Symphonic Instruments, released by Educational Video, is shown in over 6,000 schools throughout the United States and Canada. Amram's many honors include the borough president of Brooklyn's creating David Amram Day in 2009, celebrating Amram's 29 years as the Brooklyn Philharmonic's conductor and narrator for free school, community, and parks concerts, pioneering world music and soloists of many genres with the European classics presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

A 5CD collection celebrating 60 years of David Amrams film scores, was released in 2016, by UK based label, Moochin' About. Jazz On Film...David Amram's Classic American film Scores 1956 - 2016, features "The Manchurian Candidate", "Splendor In The Grass", "The Arrangement", "Echo of an Era", "Isn't it Delicious",. Plus two Broadway scores, "After The Fall" and "On The Waterfront" The collection also features "Pull My Daisy" , a short written and narrated by Jack Kerouac.

The Music Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center has acquired the complete archive of David Amram's manuscripts, scores, recordings, videos, photographs, and artwork. There are plans for an exhibition, and the archive provides the opportunity for scholars and the general public to study his work. All of his concert music is published by C. F. Peters Corporation. Douglas A. Yeager Productions Ltd represents Amram for all of his live appearances and residencies.

Amram is mentioned in the popular children's song "Peanut Butter Sandwich" by Raffi, in the line "one for me and one for David Amram", a fact which Amram said "impressed" his children; Raffi later admitted that he had mentioned Amram because he "couldn't think of anything [else] to rhyme with 'jam'."^[4]

Recent Awards

• On November 16, 2011, Amram was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame and given their Jay McShann Lifetime Achievement Award for his sixty-year career as one of the first jazz French hornists, a multi-instrumentalist, a pioneer of world music, a scat singer, the creator with author Jack Kerouac of Jazz Poetry in 1957, and one of the first conductors to bring the worlds of jazz and classical music together during the past fifty years.
• On November 19, 2011, Amram was awarded the 1st Annual Bruce Ricker Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to him by Clint Eastwood's editor Joel Cox. under the auspices of The Paso Digital Film Festival.
• On November 10, 2012, Amram was the recipient of the second annual Pete and Toshi Seeger Power of Song Award at Symphony Space in New York City, in a gala evening presented by Peter Seeger's Clearwater Foundation.
• Amram is also the recipient of six honorary Doctorates.

Discography

Bibliography

• 2001: Vibrations: The Adventures and Musical Times of David Amram (Thunder's Mouth Press) ISBN 1-56025-308-8
• 2003: Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac (Paradigm) ISBN 1-56025-460-2
• 2007: Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat (Paradigm) ISBN 978-1-59451-424-1
• Douglas Brinkley wrote in the introduction to Vibrations: The Adventures and Musical Times of David Amram and Audrey Sprenger wrote the Afterwards (Paradigm, 2008)
• 1986: "Making Music" (Atheneum) {{ISBN 0689311192}} by Arthur K. Paxton

References

External links

• David Amram's home page
• David Amram Videos and Quotes
• David Amram oral history
• David Amram papers, 1937-2011 Music Division, The New York Public Library.
• David Amram on IMDb
• Interview at Pif Magazine
• Interview with David Amram, July 4, 1986
• Appearances on C-SPAN