Evan Hause

Evan Hause (born 1967) is an American composer, percussionist and conductor. Hause has composed over eighty works ranging from rock music to opera.

Biography and career

After growing up in Greenville, North Carolina, he earned the Doctor of Music Arts and Master of Music degrees in composition from the University of Michigan, and the Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory in composition and percussion, where he was awarded the Herbert Elwell Award. He also attended the North Carolina School of the Arts. He studied composition with Sherwood Shaffer, Randolph Coleman, Richard Hoffmann (at the Schoenberg Haus in Moedling, Austria in an Oberlin abroad program), William Albright, William Bolcom and Leslie Bassett, among others. He has been commissioned by the Albany Symphony Orchestra, Riverside Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Tales&Scales, Alarm Will Sound, and the Carolina Chamber Music Festival. He has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Aspen Music Festival, June in Buffalo and the Edward Albee "Barn" at Montauk, NY.[1]

Hause has composed for standard instrumentations, including solo instruments, chamber groups, orchestra, band, chorus, rock band, big band, and opera. He has set to music the poetry of D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Hugh Ogden, Adrienne Rich, and himself. He created three chamber operas with the librettist Gary Heidt called "The Defenestration Trilogy" and four "mini-operas" for the Dogs of Desire (a satellite ensemble from the Albany Symphony). He has a catalog of some 80 rock songs, many of which were released on the 1998 CD "Adventures of Freddy," the 2015 double LP "Dr. Hoss - Dust for Prints," and the 2017 digital release "Mad Geography," albums on which Hause plays (and sings) all parts. He made two arrangements for the New York-based ensemble, Alarm Will Sound. The first, Aphex Twin's "Omgyjya Switch 7" was performed at the Lincoln Center Festival on July 24, 2005, and was released on Cantaloupe Records on the CD Acoustica. The second, of Edgard Varèse's Poème Électronique, was premiered at Columbia University's Miller Theater on January 20, 2007.[2]

As an educator, Hause taught at the North Carolina Governor's School, Pittsburg State University, and Concordia College in Bronxville, NY.

Hause is the General Manager for the Edward B. Marks Music Company. In this capacity he oversees publications by composers William Bolcom, Kenneth Fuchs, Norman Dello Joio, Roger Sessions, Mario Davidovsky, the Cuban composers Ernesto Lecuona and Gonzalo Roig, and others.

The Defenestration Trilogy

The trilogy consists of: The Birth and Theft of Television (2001), premiered March 26, 2001 at the Theater for the New City, Nightingale: The Last Days of James Forrestal (2002), premiered May 19, 2002 at the Present Company Theatorium, and Man: Biology of a Fall (2007), premiered October 4, 2007 at Kumble Theater of Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus. Each work sets a libretto by Gary Heidt, employs a cast of approximately 10 singers, and employs an orchestra of 7-15 players.[3]

The Birth and Theft of Television (later re-titled On The Air) is a fictional interweave of the travails of the two great American inventors, Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor of television) and Edwin H. Armstrong (inventor of F.M.), and their battles against corporate America, consolidated into the personage of David Sarnoff (CEO of RCA), leading up to Armstrong's suicide by self-defenestration in 1954.

Nightingale: The Last Days of James Forrestal is an imagined glimpse into the mind of the first U.S. Secretary of Defense in his final six weeks of life (1949) as he underwent treatment for nervous exhaustion in the 16th floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Among the characters who visit him are Harry Truman, Sidney Souers, his wife Josephine, and Lyndon B. Johnson before Forrestal dies by falling from his window.

Man: Biology of a Fall is a similar glimpse into unknowable events surrounding the last week of life of Frank Olson, a biochemist who is believed to have been murdered in 1953 by defenestration. The backdrop of this opera is Fort Detrick, the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind control program, Greenwich Village, and the Statler Hotel in New York City. Other characters drawn from real persons include Sidney Gottlieb, William Sargant, and George Hunter White.

References

  1. ↑ Biography on the official web site of Evan Hause
  2. ↑ Midgette (January 27, 2007)
  3. ↑ Lockwood (October, 2007)

Sources

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