Kurt Erickson

Bio:

Kurt Erickson's music has been commissioned and performed by a wide range of chamber ensembles, orchestras, choruses, sacred music institutions, ballet companies, and colleges and universities. Recent compositional highlights include a 45-minute ballet commission from San Francisco Opera Ballet Master Lawrence Pech, a San Francisco Girls Chorus premiere performance at Davies Symphony Hall, and a December 2006 performance and residency with the Minnesota Orchestra (under the direction of Osmo Vänskä) as part of their Composer Institute program with composer Aaron Jay Kernis. During the 2010-11 season he will be a Featured Composer at both the Festival of New American Music at California State Sacramento (November 2010) and at the New Music Festival at California State University Fresno (November 2010) - soprano Ann Moss will sing his song cycle Chicago Songs.

Currently he is working with playwright Aaron Loeb on a new commissioned one-act opera for Houston’s Lone Star Lyric Theater Festival (June 2011), Sacramento’s Next Stage Theater (fall 2011), and Fresno Community College’s Opera Workshop Program (fall 2011). During the 2008-09 season his Toccata for Organ was premiered and recorded at the American Guild of Organists National Convention, and subsequently broadcast on the nationally syndicated radio show Pipedreams. Later that season, his commissioned orchestral song set Chicago Songs was premiered on the season opening concert of the Sacramento Philharmonic, a performance that Sacramento Bee critic Edward Ortiz called the “highlight” of the concert.

As a young composer in his twenties, Erickson served a unique Three Church Composer Residency (1999-2000) at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, St. Mary the Virgin, and Berkeley’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. Shortly thereafter, he served a two-year Composer Residency (2001-2003) at the National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi where his sacred choral music was commissioned, performed, and recorded by the professional ensemble Schola Cantorum San Francisco.

In 2002 Erickson began the first of many collaborations with San Francisco Opera Ballet Master Lawrence Pech to create the music for the ballet Angels: Fallen & Otherwise. Additional commissions of note include works for pianist Teresa McCollough and the ADORNO Ensemble, West Chester University, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and Randolph Macon College. Born in Fresno, California, Erickson studied piano performance with pianist Philip Lorenz at California State University Fresno. He continued his graduate studies with pianist William Cerny at The University of Notre Dame and composition at Mills College with Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Curran.

Member Since:

February 18, 2007

Members:

I work with dancers, conductors, instrumentalists, singers, painters, playwrights, and anyone else with good ideas!

Influences:

Well, lots of course. A whole host of 19th century 'usual suspect' composers to give me a sense of emotional directness (Liszt, Chopin, Wagner, Brahms, Schubert, etc.); late 19th/early 20th century French music to teach me the importance of finding just the right harmony (Ravel, Debussy, D'Indy, and especially Roussel, etc.); early 20th century experimental composers to teach me the importance of irreverence (Prokofiev, Anthiel, Cowell); Minimalist composers to teach me the importance of rhythmic energy (Reich, Adams, Marshall, Gavin Bryars, and the whole lot of you); composers associated with the California Experimental Tradition so I could marvel at their boldness, if not always their end result (Papa Lou Harrison, John Cage, Harry Partch, Pauline Oliveros, Robert Ashley); progressive rock music from the 70's so I could learn how to be unselfconsciously enraptured (Yes, King Chrimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer, etc.); That's a pretty good start, isn't it? How about poets and assorted authors? Ted Hughes, Neruda, Joyce, Steinbeck, Homer, Stendhal, Langston Hughes, Paul Monette, George Sand, Mary Oliver, Carl Sandburg, Rorem . . . the list goes on

Sounds Like:

. . . me, everytime; even when I'm trying to sound like somebody else, which I often do, but fail in the attempt (so I guess I'm still succeeding in my failing). Got that?