The Music of Peter Boyer: Celebration Overture, Titanic, Three Olympians for String Orchestra, The Phoenix, Ghosts of Troy, New Beginnings
The music of American composer Peter Boyer (b. 1970) is a tasty mix of theatrical Romanticism, colorful atmospherics, and some of the most confident writing to come along in quite a while. Witness the opening bars ofCelebration Overture, written for the American Jazz Philharmonic. It's definitely a curtain-raiser. More diverse musical elements (though hardly less subdued) can be found in the tone poemTitanic(written, by the way, two years before the movie). The double-tonguing trombones and glissandi of the opening measures evoke the songs of deep-diving whales, which are then followed by water gongs and brassy bells straight out of Alan Hovhaness.Titanicis followed byThree Olympiansfor string orchestra.Olympianshas more of a British flair than anything particularly American (Britten and Tippett come to mind), but the work is in no way derivative. All in all, this is an excellent introduction to the music of a promising composer.--Paul Cook