Michael Colgrass

Michael (Charles) Colgrass
(b Chicago, 22 April 1932). American composer and percussionist. He graduated from the University of Illinois (BMus 1956), and studied composition with Milhaud, Riegger and Foss, among others.

The recipient of many grants, fellowships and commissions, he is particularly well known for his orchestral and percussion works. From 1956 to 1967 he was a freelance solo percussionist with various New York groups including the New York PO, Dizzy Gillespie's band, and the Columbia SO. In 1978 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his percussion and orchestra piece Déjà vu. In 1974 he settled in Toronto.

Colgrass has an uncanny ability to write accessible music that simultaneously challenges the intellect and stirs the emotions. His highly personal compositional technique draws on a diversity of styles, reflecting his widespread interests, and involves a free-flowing mixture of tonal and atonal harmonic language. Early compositions of the 1950s and 60s follow strict serial techniques and reflect the influence of his teachers, most notably Riegger and Ben Weber. Colgrass broke with serialism in the mid-1960s with his orchestral piece As Quiet As. References to various jazz styles are found in many of his works, especially Light Spirit and Déjà vu. In later works, such as Letter from Mozart (1976) and The Schubert Birds (1989), Colgrass works out his fascination with paraphrase, employing music by composers of the 18th–20th centuries as a basis for thematic material, subjecting it to various permutations and distortions. His vocal music is defined by its verbal clarity, which is perhaps at its most effective in his music theatre pieces, such as Virgil's Dream (1967).