Composer
Child composes music for orchestra, chorus, computer synthesis, voice, and chamber groups. His compositional style has been compared to Charles Ives, Benjamin Britten, and Gustav Mahler. Among his works are Embers (1984), a one-act chamber opera based on the play by Samuel Beckett, and Clare Cycle (1984), four settings from the poetry of John Clare.
Among the musical ensembles that have performed his music are the John Oliver Chorale, the Pro Arte Orchestra, the Lydian String Quartet, Collage, Parnassus, New York New Music, New Millenium Ensemble, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Lontano (Great Britain), Interensemble (Italy), Speak Percussion (Australia), Emory University Wind Ensemble and Percussion Ensemble, and Boston Musica Viva.
Child's music has been commissioned by the Harvard Musical Association, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. Massachusetts resident Peter Grinnell Gombosi commissioned him to write several compositions for significant events in the Gombosi family's life, including a string quartet commissioned in honor of the birth of Gombosi's son Andrew.
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Famous quotes containing the word composer:
“Whenever [Leonard Bernstein] entered or exited a country he would fill in on his passport form not composer or conductor, but musician. Of course people in the press spent a lot of Lenny’s life telling him what he should have done; he should have been a concert pianist, he should have composed more.... And people wouldn’t let him live his own life. But he created his own career, in his own image.”
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