Gunther Schuller

**Gunther Schuller** (November 22, 1925 – June 21, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian and jazz musician.

## Biography and works

### Early years

Schuller was born in New York City, the son of a violinist with the New York Philharmonic. He studied at the Saint Thomas Choir School and became an accomplished French horn player and flute player. At age 15 he played horn professionally with the American Ballet Theatre (1943) followed by an appointment as principal hornist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1943–5), and then the  Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, where he stayed until 1959. During his youth, he attended the Precollege Division at the Manhattan School of Music. He began his career in jazz by recording as a horn player with Miles Davis (1949–50).

### Performance and growth

In 1955 Schuller and jazz pianist John Lewis founded the **Modern Jazz Society**, which gave its first concert at Town Hall, New York, the same year and later became known as the Jazz and Classical Music Society. While lecturing at Brandeis University in 1957 he coined the term "Third Stream" to describe music that combines classical and jazz techniques. He became an enthusiastic advocate of this style and wrote many works according to its principles, among them *Transformation* (1957, for jazz ensemble), *Concertino* (1959, for jazz quartet and orchestra; one of its movements, *Progression in Tempo*, has sometimes been performed separately), *Abstraction* (1959, for nine instruments), the opera *The Visitation* (1966), and *Variants on a Theme of Thelonious Monk* (1960, for 13 instruments), which was recorded by Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and Bill Evans. He also orchestrated Scott Joplin's only known surviving opera *Treemonisha* for the Houston Grand Opera's premiere production of this work.

### Career maturity

In 1959 Schuller gave up performance to devote himself to composition, teaching and writing. He conducted internationally and studied and recorded jazz with such greats as Dizzy Gillespie and John Lewis among many others. Schuller wrote over 160 original compositions.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Schuller was president of New England Conservatory, where he founded The New England Ragtime Ensemble. During this period, he also held a variety of positions at the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home in Tanglewood, serving as director of new music activities from 1965 to 1969 and as artistic director of the Tanglewood Music Center from 1970 to 1984 and creating the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music.

Schuller was editor-in-chief of Jazz Masterworks Editions, and co-director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Another effort of preservation was his editing and posthumous premiering at Lincoln Center in 1989 of Charles Mingus's immense final work, *Epitaph*, subsequently released on Columbia/Sony Records. He was the author of two major books on the history of jazz, *Early Jazz* (1968) and *The Swing Era* (1991)..

His students included Irwin Swack Ralph Patt, John Ferritto, Eric Alexander Hewitt, Mohammed Fairouz, Oliver Knussen, Nancy Zeltzman, Riccardo Dalli Cardillo and hundreds of others. See: List of music students by teacher: N to S#Gunther Schuller.

### Accomplishments in final decades

From 1993 until his death, Schuller served as Artistic Director for the Northwest Bach Festival in Spokane, Washington state. Each year the festival showcased works by J.S. Bach and other composers in venues around Spokane. At the 2010 festival, Schuller conducted the *Mass in B minor* at St. John's Cathedral, sung by the chamber choir from Eastern Washington University, accompanied by the Spokane Symphony. Other notable performances conducted at the festival include the *St Matthew Passion* in 2008 and Handel's *Messiah* in 2005.

Schuller's association with Spokane began with guest conducting the Spokane Symphony for one week in 1982. He then served as Music Director from 1984-1985 and later regularly appeared as a guest conductor. Schuller also served as Artistic Director to the nearby Festival at Sandpoint.

His modernist orchestral work *Where the Word Ends*, organized in four movements corresponding to those of a symphony, premiered at the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2009.

In 2011 Schuller published the first volume of a two-volume autobiography, *Gunther Schuller: A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty*.

In 2012, Schuller premiered a new arrangement, the *Treemonisha* suite from Joplin's opera. It was performed as part of *The Rest is Noise* season at London's South Bank in 2013.

Schuller died on June 21, 2015, "...with Beethoven's *Ode to Joy* playing by his bedside." He was the father of jazz percussionist George Schuller and bassist Ed Schuller.

## Awards and recognition

Schuller was the recipient of many awards, including the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for his composition written for the Louisville Orchestra *Of Reminiscences and Reflections*, the MacArthur Foundation "genius" award (1991), the William Schuman Award (1988), given by Columbia University for "lifetime achievement in American music composition", and ten honorary degrees. He received the Ditson Conductor's Award in 1970. In 1993, *Down Beat* magazine honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to jazz. In 2005, a festival of Schuller's music directed by Bruce Brubaker involved the Boston Symphony, Harvard University, and New England Conservatory.. Mr. Schuller was awarded a lifetime achievement medal from the MacDowell Colony this year. “As a composer and teacher,” the composer Augusta Read Thomas, the chairwoman of the selection committee for the MacDowell award, said at the time, “he has inspired generations of students, setting an example of discovery and experimentation.”

**Grammy Award for Best Album Notes - Classical**:

* Gunther Schuller (notes writer) for *Footlifters* performed by Gunther Schuller (1976)

**Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance**:

* Gunther Schuller (conductor) & the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble for *Joplin: The Red Back Book* (1974)

## Partial discography

### As arranger

**With John Lewis**

* *The Queen's Fancy* (Verve, 1955)
* *Django* (Verve, 1955)

### As conductor

**On Birth of the Third Stream**

* *Three Little Feelings* (Columbia, 1957)
* *Poem For Brass* (Columbia, 1957)
* *Pharaoh* (Columbia, 1957)
* *Suspensions* (Columbia, 1957)

**With The Modern Jazz Quartet**

* *Exposure* (Atlantic, 1960)

**With Gerard Schwarz** (cornet) and the **Columbia Chamber Ensemble**

* *Turn of the Century Cornet Favorites* (CBS/Columbia Records, 1977) (M 34553)

**With Dizzy Gillespie**

* *Perceptions* (Verve, 1961)

**With Charles Mingus**

* *Mingus Revisited* (Limelight, 1960)

### As sideman

**With Frank Sinatra**

* *Come Back To Sorrento* (Columbia, 1950)
* *April in Paris* (Columbia, 1950)
* *I Guess I'll Have To Dream The Rest* (Columbia, 1950)
* *Nevertheless* (Columbia, 1950)

**With Mitch Miller**

* *Conversation Piece* (Columbia, 1951)
* *Horns O' Plenty* (Columbia, 1951)
* *Horn Belt Boogie* (Columbia, 1951)
* *Serenade For Horns* (Columbia, 1951)

**With Gigi Gryce**

* *Smoke Signal* (Signal, 1955)
* *In A Meditating Mood* (Signal, 1955)
* *Speculation* (Signal, 1955)
* *Kerry Dance* (Signal, 1955)

**With Johnny Mathis**

* *Prelude To A Kiss* (Columbia , 1956)
* *Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words)* (Columbia, 1956)

**With Miles Davis**

* *Birth of the Cool* (Capitol, 1949/50, released 1957)

**With Dizzy Gillespie**

* *Gillespiana* (Verve, 1960)
* *Carnegie Hall Concert* (Verve, 1961)

## Books

* `´ Musings: The Musical Worlds of Guther Schuller´´ Oxford University Press. 1986
* *Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development.* Oxford University Press. 1968. New printing 1986.
* *The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945.* Oxford University Press. 1991.
* *Gunther Schuller: A Bio-Bibliography* Greenwood Publishing Group, 1987.
* "The Compleat Conductor" Oxford University Press, 1998.
* *Horn Technique* Oxford University Press, 1962. New Printing 1992.
* *Gunther Schuller: A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty.* University of Rochester Press, 2011.

## References

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17. ↑ Cleary, David, "Review of Festival - I Hear America: Gunther Schuller at 80", *New Music Connoisseur*, 2005
18. ↑ macdowellcolony.org
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* Mark Tucker/Barry Kernfeld. The *New Grove Dictionary of Opera*, edited by Stanley Sadie (1992), ISBN 0-333-73432-7 and ISBN 1-56159-228-5

## External links

* Pro Arte biography of Gunther Schuller
* GM Recordings Gunther Schuller's recording label
* Art of the States: Gunther Schuller *Phantasmata* (1989)
* http://arts.endow.gov/av/video/2008jazzpanel/index.html
* Extensive Gunther Schuller interview
* Two interviews with Gunther Schuller by Bruce Duffie (May 8, 1981 & October 15, 1988)

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