Thomas Wells (composer)

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Thomas Wells (born January 8, 1945 in Austin, Texas) is an American composer, pianist, organist, and arts-organization administrator.

Austin, Texas Capital of Texas

Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. It is the 11th-most populous city in the United States and the 4th-most populous city in Texas. It is also the fastest growing large city in the United States, the second most populous state capital after Phoenix, Arizona, and the southernmost state capital in the contiguous United States. As of the U.S. Census Bureau's July 1, 2017 estimate, Austin had a population of 950,715 up from 790,491 at the 2010 census. The city is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan statistical area, which had an estimated population of 2,115,827 as of July 1, 2017. Located in Central Texas within the greater Texas Hill Country, it is home to numerous lakes, rivers, and waterways, including Lady Bird Lake and Lake Travis on the Colorado River, Barton Springs, McKinney Falls, and Lake Walter E. Long.

Composer person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition

A composer is a musician who is an author of music in any form, including vocal music, instrumental music, electronic music, and music which combines multiple forms. A composer may create music in any music genre, including, for example, classical music, musical theatre, blues, folk music, jazz, and popular music. Composers often express their works in a written musical score using musical notation.

Pianist musician who plays the piano

A pianist is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, jazz, blues, and all sorts of popular music, including rock and roll. Most pianists can, to an extent, easily play other keyboard-related instruments such as the synthesizer, harpsichord, celesta, and the organ.

Contents

Biography

Thomas Wells began his formal composition studies at the University of Texas at Austin in 1960 with Kent Kennan and Clifton Williams. He received his Bachelor of Music (1966) and D.M.A. (1969) degrees from that institution, studying with Hunter Johnson. Wells founded the University of Texas Electronic Music Studio in 1967 and served as its director until 1975. He was accepted in Karlheinz Stockhausen's Composition Studio in Darmstadt in 1968, and participated in the project Musik für ein Haus ( Stockhausen 1971 , 217, 222). Wells joined the faculty of the Ohio State University School of Music in 1976, and continues to teach there as Professor of Composition and Director of the Sound Synthesis Studios. [1] [ citation needed ] In addition, he has served as guest professor and artist in residence at the University of Novi Sad (Serbia), Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz), and Ball State University. His works have been performed throughout the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Korea, and by orchestras and ensembles such as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Spokane Symphony, Columbus Symphony, and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble.

University of Texas at Austin public research university in Austin, Texas, United States

The University of Texas at Austin is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. The University of Texas was inducted into the Association of American Universities in 1929, becoming only the third university in the American South to be elected. The institution has the nation's eighth-largest single-campus enrollment, with over 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students and over 24,000 faculty and staff.

Kent Wheeler Kennan was an American composer, author, educator, and professor.

[James] Clifton Williams, Jr. was an American composer, pianist, French hornist, mellophonist, music theorist, conductor, and teacher. Williams was known by symphony patrons as a virtuoso French hornist with the symphony orchestras of Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Houston, Oklahoma City, Austin, and San Antonio. The young composer was honored with performances of Peace, A Tone Poem and A Southwestern Overture by the Houston and Oklahoma City symphony orchestras, respectively. He remains widely known as one of America's accomplished composers for the wind ensemble and band repertory.

He has received grants and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ohio Arts Council, Ohio Humanities Council, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Texas Commission on the Arts. Wells received the Governor's Award in the State of Ohio for Outstanding Individual Artist in 1990. He hosted the 1984 Society of Composers National Conference (Frank Zappa, keynote speaker), and the 1989 International Computer Music Conference, both at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He is active in the 1500-member Society of Composers, serving as its president from 2002 to the present.

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. The NEA has its offices in Washington, D.C. It was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 1995, as well as the Special Tony Award in 2016.

The Ohio Arts Council (OAC) is an agency serving the U.S. state of Ohio.

The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA) is an agency serving the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Its mission is to strengthen the cultural, educational, and economic vitality of Pennsylvania's communities through the arts.

Musical style and influences

Wells' instrumental music is strongly influenced by Varèse, Stockhausen, electroacoustic music, and spectral music. When he was 18, Wells met Karlheinz Stockhausen and hearing that composer's electroacoustic music for the first time marked the foundation of Wells' aesthetics in that medium.[ citation needed ]

Edgard Varèse French composer

Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States.

Electroacoustic music is a style of Western art music which originated around the middle of the 20th century, following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition to fixed media during the 20th century are associated with the activities of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales at the ORTF in Paris, the home of musique concrète, the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR) studio in Cologne, where the focus was on the composition of elektronische Musik, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City, where tape music, electronic music, and computer music were all explored. Practical electronic music instruments began to appear in the early 1900s.

Spectral music is a compositional technique developed in the 1970s, using computer analysis of the quality of timbre in acoustic music or artificial timbres derived from synthesis.

Selected compositions

Georg Trakl austrian poet

Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet and brother of the pianist Grete Trakl. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists. He is perhaps best known for his poem "Grodek", which he wrote shortly before he died of a cocaine overdose.

Discography

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References

  1. ↑ https://music.osu.edu/people/wells.7
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