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Home , Edward MacDowell Medal, Melinda Wagner, Yehudi Wyner

2015 MEDAL DAY Michael Chabon reflects on mortality and the importance of making art 2 Terrance McKnight describes multiple ways to remember 5 Composer reviews the genius that was his friend 6

Gunther Schuller 56TH EDWARD MACDOWELL MEDALIST REMEMBERED ON GLORIOUS MEDAL DAY

Medalist Gunther Schuller, who was president of the New England Conservatory from 1967-1977, is seen here conducting the NEC Jazz Orchestra in 2010. (photo by Andrew Hurlbut)

MacDowell Chairman Michael Chabon welcomed the Medal Day crowd with a moving address, combining mirth and poignancy in his words calling attention to the importance of making art.

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n a day glorious for its perfect weather, nearly 1,100 people gathered at the MacDowell Colony Sunday, August 9 to commemorate composer, educator, and conductor Gunther Schuller as the 56th Edward MacDowell Medalist. It was also a day to celebrate “the creative spirit that he embodied so durably and so inexhaustibly,” said author Michael Chabon in opening the Medal Day ceremony in his capacity as Chairman of the MacDowell Board. Public radio host Terrance McKnight memorialized Schuller Obefore celebrated composer and pianist Yehudi Wyner spoke about his friend. Wyner accepted the Medal on behalf of the Schuller family. Schuller was named the 2015 Medalist in April by a selection committee that included composers Augusta Read Thomas, Sebastian Currier, , , , Alvin Singleton, and Melinda Wagner. Before he could accept the award, Schuller died at the age of 89 on June 21 as preparations were underway for his visit to the Colony. Following the award ceremony at the free public event, guests enjoyed picnic lunches on Colony grounds and then toured the paths of the Colony’s 450 acres for visiting 31 open studios. The annual event offers the public the rare opportunity to visit with artists-in-residence to experience what’s happening on the leading edge of contemporary arts around the world.

2 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 MacDowell Colony chairman welcomes Medal Day crowd with universal themes Clockwise from top left: Resident TRANSCRIPT: MICHAEL CHABON REFLECTS Director David Macy, Executive ON MORTALITY AND MAKING ART Director Cheryl A. Young, Colony Chairman Michael Chabon, WQXR Radio Host Terrance McKnight, Thank you, thank you all for being here on this Colony President Susan extraordinary day, the sun is repeatedly threatening to Davenport Austin, Composer Yehudi Wyner break through the clouds and it looks like it’s happening for us now. As I’m sure everyone here must be aware, our Nicholson, Jytte Jensen, and Susan Sollins-Brown. Susan medalist this year, our 2015 Medalist Gunther Schuller, We’re here to actually served on the Medal selecting panel for our died on June 21st, at the age of 89. Now, it’s a nice day, celebrate the Medalist last year. Two of our board members endured shaping up to be a beautiful day, here in Peterborough. creative spirit the deaths of their beloved spouses in the past year. We’re all happy to be together, in this beautiful place. of all the artists And here we are in New England, a region that from The idea of the Medal, the MacDowell Medal, is to in residence Cotton Mather to Emily Dickinson to Anne Sexton to celebrate, and that’s what we’ve gathered here to do. today, and of the Pixies’ Black Francis has historically shown itself to We’re here to celebrate both the life and the work of every artist who be amenable to extended ponderings of mortality, of that Mr. Schuller and the creative spirit that he embodied has put in time death who kindly stops for us, whether or not we stop so durably and so inexhaustibly right up to the end of here since we for him. And here we are at the MacDowell Colony, a that life. We’re here to celebrate the creative spirit of all first opened for place that openly encourages the artist in residence to the artists in residence today, and of every artist who has business 108 ponder his or her mortality. put in time here since we first opened for business 108 years ago. Don’t believe me? In every studio at the MacDowell years ago. (David, I know you remember). I know that, Colony, as many of you know, and as all of you will and I’m sure that’s how Mr. Schuller would want it. No see when you tour the studios this afternoon, you will doubt he would want us to celebrate him, and not to find a number of tombstones. These are small wooden dwell. I don’t want to dwell. planks, some straight rectangles, some pointed at the But I just can’t help it. First of all, the MacDowell top or rounded like actual headstones, on which a Board of Directors, which I have the honor of chairing, resident artist, typically just before departure, signs lost three of its members in the past year: George his or her name and supplies the dates of his or her residency. As each tombstone fills with names it is hung from a nail on the wall or lined up along the Electric Earth Concerts performed Gunther Schuller’s fireplace mantle; year after year, decade after decade, 1967 quartet Aphorisms under the tombstones accumulate. In the oldest studios, they the Medal Day tent after the crowd the walls by the dozen. ceremony. Sooner or later, when you work in a studio at MacDowell, a day or an hour will come when the work’s not going that great, your attention wanders, your eye strays to the tombstones lined up over your fireplace or nailed up on the wall over your desk, and if your studio is old enough and your eye strays back far enough, back before the mid-1950s or thereabouts, it will occur to you that all of the artists and writers and composers whose names appear on those tombstones are at least highly likely to be dead by now. In some of the oldest studios, the inscriptions on the first few tombstones, especially those that were written in pencil, have faded to illegibility. Many tombstones are almost completely blank.

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Visitors from far and near took advantage of the perfect weather to enjoy a picnic lunch before going off to explore the historic structures on the Colony grounds, and satisfy their curiosities about the contributions to culture being made by MacDowell Fellows.

Now, I know that the tombstones are meant to The question of stand on the whole “soul” question. Though I certainly feel be the record of a continuous active creative human what matters, as if I possess one, there’s just something too wishful in that presence in a studio, going all the way back, in some and why, is feeling, and so I’m inclined to dismiss it at the same time cases, to before the First World War. But again, I can’t fundamental to that it comforts me. I can live with that contradiction, as help it; I dwell. I’m a dweller. I have always found the the work we do with the knowledge that my time is finite, and growing tombstones to be a powerful reminder of the oblivion at the MacDowell shorter by the day. It’s just that lately, for the first time, that that awaits me and, in all likelihood, the work that I’ve Colony. shortening has become truly perceptible. I can feel each tiny come to MacDowell to struggle with. skyward lurch of the balloon as another bag of sand goes I mean, no wonder wroteOur over the side of my basket. Town here, bringing a graveyard up onto the stage, and When I was young and callow (as opposed to middle- filling the world—or reminding us of how the world is aged and callow), and I would hear about the death of filled—with the presence of the dead. someone I knew or admired, in particular someone older The other day as I was walking with my dog along than me, my thoughts tended to run more or less along the road up to the little Maine village where we spend the following lines: That is so sad. Well, of course, everyone our summers with my family, the downeast sky was has to die sometime. Everyone, that is, but me. (Remember tufted with high white clouds, a smell of salvia and salt feeling that way?)To be accurate this wasn’t really something in the air, a pickup truck racing by with its window I thought, exactly. More like something I simply assumed, rolled down, trailing a sweet ache of the Allman Brothers’ took for granted. Back then I took pretty much everything “Melissa,” it struck me that, at 52, my present age, by for granted, but especially, time. even the most optimistic scenario I am well past the Now, when I consider the death of a friend, a loved midpoint of my life. A hundred and four would be pretty one, a colleague, a fellow board member, a beloved spectacular. teacher and influential artist, like Gunther Schuller, Now, I’m comfortable with the idea of mortality, or I am much more likely to feel, in addition to grief or at least I always have been. I never felt the need to believe regret, Soon enough it will be you. And then—I can’t in heaven or an afterlife. It’s been decades since I stopped seem to help it—I think something along these lines: believing—a belief that was never really more than fitful And so, what was the point of it all? All the hard work, and self-serving to begin with—in the possibility of all the disappointment, all the striving and wishing and reincarnation of the soul. I’m not totally certain where I heartbreak, all the hours and money and time and hopes invested by the parents of the dead one. Whether you

4 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 are a mensch or a rogue, lazy or industrious, greedy or giving, the end of your story is the same as everyone else’s. And to what end? Why does it matter? And for at least a few minutes after I hear the bad news, a bleak, small voice within me says, very clearly, It doesn’t. We all have our own way of grieving, I guess. The thing is, the question of what matters, and why, is fundamental to the work we do at the MacDowell Colony. On the Board of The MacDowell Colony, we spend vast amounts of time sitting around long tables or dialing in on a conference line, trying to figure out for ourselves so that we can tell others, why MacDowell matters, why solitude and fellowship and a picnic lunch matter, why a library matters, why a peer selection matters. And most centrally of all, sometimes overtly and underlying every other discussion, why art matters. To each of these questions that bleak, clear voice replies, it doesn’t. Or perhaps that small voice throws the question back at us, turns it around, and asks, To whom? Art lunches, and libraries don’t matter to the universe. They don’t matter to neutron stars, nebulae or gas giants. Rocks, trees and zebras don’t care if our admissions Interdisciplinary artist Colony, and as a result she is obliged to give up on system is unbiased. When some nut-job takes a knife to John Kelly describes painting, for good, the loss fails to register on history and his work to Medal Day a Rembrandt, when the Taliban dynamite a 1500-year visitors in Cheney Studio. Time. old hundred-foot-tall statue of the Buddha, the earth The only ones, of course, to whom tasty and nutri- rolls on, to the next ice age or meteor impact. If there’s tiously composed picnic baskets, the caliber of applicants, no money available to help defray the expense when a or the Afro-Cuban musical tradition matters, of course, is painter, who is also a working mother, has to arrange us. Poor little humans, caring about stuff. Caring about art, unpaid leave and child care so that she can come for two and tradition, and the creative lives of working mothers, and all-too-brief but transformative weeks at the MacDowell about each other. That, I end up saying to the gray despairing voice inside me, is the point of it all. You’re right: nothing matters—except to us. As far as we know, we are the only objects, the only beings, in the entire universe, to whom the universe matters. That’s our nature; our role, in turn, is to matter to other people, and our task, our greatest work, is to matter to them in a way that brings them comfort, safety, peace, knowledge or joy. Art can do and has done all of those things, at one time or another, sometimes all at once. Gunther Schuller with his gifts as a composer, musician and teacher could do, and did, all of those things. So has the MacDowell Colony and, on a good day, so has its hard-working and faithful Board of Directors, and the loved ones who support them. The work that we do matters and because it matters, we matter. Because those we have lost matter so much to us, we mourn that loss. The extent of the grief we feel is a A visitor contemplates the measure of how much they and their lives and their work work completed by painter Valerie mattered. Let the loss serve to renew and to remind us of Hegarty during her residency how much we all matter to each other, and how much it in Graphics Putnam Studio. (photo by Jenni Wu) matters that we carry on, in spite of the indifference of galaxies and zebras, with our work. n

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Music is a Force WQXR Radio Host Terrance McKnight that Brings Humans addresses the crowd, asking them to Together remember Gunther Schuller as someone TRANSCRIPT: WQXR RADIO HOST TERRANCE who did so many things MCKNIGHT EXPLAINS THE UNIVERSE OF extraordinarily well. ACTIVITY THAT WAS GUNTHER SCHULLER

So what Michael didn’t say, I will forewarn you, is that my father is a Baptist preacher, and today is Sunday. I’m really overjoyed to be here, for a number of reasons. But I want to take a moment to just imagine the occasion, 7 weeks ago, perhaps a lavish ceremony, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Gunther Schuller was the guest of honor, it was his day, and all his old friends were there. A whole generation of musicians. John Lewis and Leopold Stowkowski, Miles and Diz were there, Toscanini. Giants in the world of music. They were there to witness Gunther receiving his award for a life well lived and an art well served. Perhaps Louis He believed that his compositions. One of my favorites was Gunther Armstrong even played “When the Saints Go Marching art and culture narrating the piece about the young trumpet player In” with strings and woodwinds. I imagine that’s the made for a more learning to play jazz. Or maybe we’ll remember him way Gunther Schuller would want it. Because in his humane society, from some of the books he authored. Maybe we’ll imagination human beings were not to be separated by and he was reflect upon all the students he touched and the music music, but music should be the force that could bring us always in search programs that he shook up. Remember the first time together. That was Gunther Schuller. of people. Gunther picked up a horn, he got an F out of the Imagine just a few months ago Gunther Schuller instrument, a beautiful tone. And how about a few years being interviewed and asked the question, how he later when at 16 he played Shostakovich with the New wanted to be remembered. His response was, I’d like to York Philharmonic. The very next year he was principal be remembered. So I ask you, how will we remember horn in the Cincinnati Symphony. But maybe some of Gunther Schuller. Perhaps we’ll remember a few of us will remember him as a journalist or radio personality. Gunther did so many things well. Perhaps we’ll think of Gunther every summer as the ice cream trucks roll The crowd under the tent listens through the neighborhood playing Scott Joplin’s “Maple as speakers give context to the Leaf Rag.” Because we know Gunther did a lot to help choice of Gunther Schuller as the revive Joplin’s music. 56th Edward MacDowell Medalist. How will we remember Gunther Schuller? He did so many things extraordinarily well. I knew of Gunther years before meeting him. I finally got the chance to shake his hand seven years ago. I never sat in his classroom or under his baton and unlike many of you I can’t really claim him to be a friend. But you know what, Gunther and I, we were cool. I had his phone number, and I’d just call him up. And he’d say, “You just called me to talk? You just called to see how I was doing? Nobody does that anymore.” And I said, “Well I do, and I’m going to call you again. I’m going to keep calling you.” And I did. We had riveting conversations, the last in which he lamented the fact that our society has become almost completely commercialized. That in large part we don’t value the

6 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 arts the way we used to. That bothered him. He believed It didn’t make It didn’t make sense to him that the blues was that art and culture made for a more humane society, sense to him considered low brow, he thought the poetry of Bessie and he was always in search of people. It was also in that an orchestra Smith was brilliant. He wrote about it. He understood those conversations that I learned Gunther didn’t do couldn’t swing, jazz as an American masterpiece, it didn’t make sense to everything well. or that its him that it wasn’t being taught in our conservatories, so His father was an accomplished violinist, but players couldn’t he did something about that. Gunther couldn’t make a violin speak. Couldn’t play improvise. So he At Tanglewood, Gunther saw a dearth of African- composed music it at all. Piano, very little talent. He wasn’t great at that did. American musicians, so he brought them in. everything. And aside from the scholarly writing, the To Gunther, if it didn’t make sense he didn’t sit by prophetic compositions, I propose that we remember quietly. It didn’t make sense to him that an orchestra Gunther for his abilities and his inabilities. The couldn’t swing, or that its players couldn’t improvise. So most important inability was his inability to tolerate he composed music that did. nonsense. So when we hear the grooves in Paul Moravec’s He couldn’t do it. When something didn’t make , remember Gunther Schuller. sense or was just flat out wrong, he had to say something When you feel the passion in ’ about it and he had to do something about it. blues-inspired symphonies, remember Gunther Schuller. He didn’t sit by quietly during his school days in When you witness Donal Fox at the piano going to Germany. He wrote letters to his parents about the town on Bach, think about Gunther Schuller. Injustice until they did something about it. Or when you hear me on the radio know that I’m At 14 years old he understood the genius of there due in part to Gunther Schuller. Beethoven and Duke Ellington and he felt that the two Gunther Schuller and I were just cool, and I can had something to learn from the other. That was heresy hardly wait to hear what one of his friends has to say to many, but not to Gunther. So he talked about it. about him. Yehudi Wyner. n

Visitors and honored guests alike enjoy one of Medal Day’s oldest traditions, a picnic lunch. After the ceremony, which is always free and open to the public, art lovers had the opportunity to visit with 31 artists-in- residence in their studios to get a look at what happens behind the normally closed doors of the Colony.

MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 7 Composer Yehudi Wyner, (left) who accepted the Medal on behalf of the Schuller family, is greeted by artist-in-residence and 2015 MEDAL DAY composer Richard Danielpour.

He Was the Whole Man and a Remarkable, Majestic Human Being TRANSCRIPT: FELLOW COMPOSER YEHUDI WYNER AND FRIEND OF THE MEDALIST REVIEWS THE GENIUS OF GUNTHER SCHULLER.

Editor’s note: MacDowell Colony Chairman Michael Chabon introduced Yehudi Wyner and had just mentioned it was inconceivable that Wyner had not been to the Colony as a Fellow. His love of music a contemporary group performing contemporary music, and openness and his principal violinist was a wonderfully able con- I think I was probably exhibiting a kind of quiet heroism to all genres of temporary music player named Matthew Raimondi who in proving that one can do something with one’s life genuine human founded the Composer’s School many years later. But he without going to MacDowell. I had no idea that this expression kept had trouble with a particular piece, and Matthew said ‘I him vibrant ceremony and encounter would be informal. I feel griev- and striving for don’t know I never get it right’, and Gunther said ‘watch ously overdressed. I might take off my tie. Or tell you greatness until me, I will give you a signal, watch my eye.’ The perfor- about one of my grandchildren who came, when he was the very end. mance came and went, Matthew made the same mistake 11, to his mother (my daughter): as before, Gunther came off really quite irritated, ‘What “Mommy, can I go to school commando today?” happened Matthew!’ Matthew said ‘I watched your eye!’ “Commando, what’s that?” Gunther said ‘No, not this one, this one!’ ”No underpants.” Here is a statement that I will read from George, One of the people who was a very strong supporter Edwin, and Nicole Schuller, George and Edwin are the of the things that Gunther did was a man named Paul sons of Gunther and Margy: Fromm, who was the mogul of Christian Brother’s Wines, a man who assembled substantial wealth and “On behalf of our father, Gunther Schuller, we would put it into the support of contemporary music. Support like to thank MacDowell Colony for bestowing such a great which goes on even today with many great concerts, honor. All of us had hoped that we could be here to accept festivals, et al. Fromm concerts, Fromm commissions, this award for our father. Unfortunately, due to the extreme Fromm conferences. Fromm was German, his broth- complexity of our current situation, we were unable to er Herbert was a composer (the two didn’t get along, attend this afternoon ceremony. However, we are all here in though) nevertheless Fromm was a ubiquitous presence spirit, and so is Gunther, of course, listening intently with at Tanglewood with Gunther. He called Gunther Ganse, his customarily wide open and discerning ears. Gunther was because he couldn’t say it so well, and I picked that up as a man who wore many hats. This includes being a musician, well, in a way sort of making fun of Paul (which was not a conductor, a composer, a scholar, a writer, and an educa- very nice of me), but suddenly realized that Ganse means tor. And this is but a short list of all the things that this man the whole enchilada! And that, for me, was what Gun- accomplished during his long life. One thing that has to be ther really represented; the whole man, the entire artist, added to this list is that he was also a great father. When but more than just an artist, but a remarkable, majestic, we both were young and upcoming musicians, he never human being. failed to show us his support and answer our questions no I’ll tell you one other incident, which might amuse matter how busy he was (and he was always extremely busy). you before I go into the serious business of talking not Besides that he lived a life that most people couldn’t even just admiringly but gravely about Gunther. You may not imagine, keep in mind that he was completely self-taught, know that I think at the age of 8 he had an accident and but it was his curiosity and his thirst for creativity that lost an eye. Gunther lived his entire life with one eye, made him succeed in all of his endeavors. His love of music couldn’t drive. How one eye can encompass and absorb and openness to all genres of genuine human expression kept very complex orchestral scores is beyond me. But he said him vibrant and striving for greatness until the very end. for example that he had great ears, he admitted that he This was a man who didn’t believe in retirement. Recently had a wonderful memory, and he had preternatural pow- we’ve discovered how many people he had really touched, er of perception. Well, there was a concert at Carnegie influenced, mentored, and helped to also fulfill their artistic Recital Hall with a group that Gunther was conducting, dreams. Again we would like to thank The MacDowell

8 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 Colony, Augusta Read Thomas, and the rest of the selection the music of composers he deemed authentic. Typical- committee, Yehudi Wyner, Terrance McKnight, and all of ly profits from these activities as well as money from you who have come to be a part of this historic occasion for commissions and other awards and prizes were at once honoring the life and legacy of Gunther Schuller.” ploughed into supporting the work of others. And that is signed by George, Edwin, and Nicole Schuller seemed to know everything, to know Schuller. everybody, to remember every event, every fact. Similarly Much of what I have written has already been cov- he had a comprehensive grasp of history. His work habits ered so I beg you forgive me for this redundancy, I didn’t were relentless. In general we expect such obsession to be know what Terrance was going to write, I had no idea driven by a kind of febrile intensity, a nervous impa- what George and Edwin were going to transmit. tience, perhaps even a menacing presence. But these were not Schuller’s characteristics. Prevailingly he revealed an GUNTHER SCHULLER 1925-2015 equable temperament, a benign patience, an absence of Upon his death the following appeared in The New York arrogance. The creative maelstrom, the chaos of ideas, Times: impressions and obligations, remained active under the “Gunther Schuller: Composer, conductor, performer, surface, not suppressed under tension but fermenting in educator, publisher, master of Jazz and Classical, his a different mental realm, functioning invisibly. capacious gifts in all realms of music generated an Schuller revealed something about his own character inspiring life—his accomplishments define an era.” when he writes in Memoir about his relationship with his How to expand that compressed statement? Truth beloved Margie during their courtship: to tell it would take a vast amount of elaboration to “I was (and am) a basically gentle type to begin with. I begin to come to terms with the miracle of his life. had seen enough scarring rancor, disaffection and estrange- As a teenager he was obsessed with music. He was a ment on too many occasions between my own parents. So I prodigy horn player. Before he was twenty he was in the vowed I would never let such clashes destroy our relation- Cincinnati Orchestra and soon after in the Metropolitan ship. My love for her had one agenda: To make her happy.” Opera Orchestra. But he was already composing and arranging, insatiable in his appetite for all styles of music Usually we think that such behave on the part of parents including jazz. It was not long before he gave up horn Schuller was would lead to all kinds of neurotic tendencies. It’s not playing to devote himself to composing, conducting and a model of always so. Bach was orphaned very, very young, and all manner of musical enterprises. The list of activities industry, brought up by relatives, brothers who were not always is too long to assemble here, but in the course of time discipline, kind to him and he nevertheless turned out to be one he became a notable conductor, an important scholar, a receptiveness, openness to art, of the most generous and gentlest human beings who revolutionary educator and administrator at Tanglewood, to cinema, to we can imagine. Similarly, Gunter did not go in the at the New England Conservatory, and at other festivals music of every direction of the way he was brought up. He reports in his he led and created. He wrote books, which in their kind from every book his mother behaved mercilessly. vividness and comprehensiveness, have become classic culture and from Only rarely would his benignness be breached. It sources; Horn Technique 1962, Early Jazz 1968, Swing every era. had to do with two issues which enraged Schuller. The Era 1989, The Compleat Conductor 1998, and Memoir: A first involved the sacredness of the musical scores of great life in Pursuit of Beauty 2011. This last book, remarkable composers, which Schuller felt were intentional, detailed in its density of events and references, carries us only to 1960. Schuller intended to embark on Volume II to bring us into the present. Photographer Susan May Tell (left) Schuller was a model of industry, discipline, recep- discusses her approach to her art tiveness, openness to art, to cinema, to music of every with visitors to Nef Studio during the kind from every culture and from every era. His passion afternoon open studio tour. was not restricted by ideology or narrow prejudice. While of course he possessed an ego of a creator it did not lead him to a rejection of the work of others. His appetite for genuine expression of any kind was inexhaustible and his generosity of spirit was constantly in play. Hence his founding of MARGUN, a music publishing company which promoted the work of underrepresented com- posers. Hence his transcriptions of jazz and ragtime recording so they could be studied and circulated. Hence his launching a recording company GUNMAR to record

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and literally inviolable. He excoriated conductors (and It is the ing of old age or failing health. On the contrary it was performers in general) who “interpreted” or distorted massive creative full of fun and optimistic brilliance. great works according to ego or ignorance, violating the achievement, the Composer Margaret McAllister, close friend of instructions of the text. The second area of angry protest feverish energy, Schuller, told me that, “Gunther was composing in the the inexhaustible was directed at The Music Business. He found adminis- curiosity, the morning the day before he passed (just sketching out trators, conductors, players, managers, publicity agencies openness to ideas). He had completed all his outstanding commis- and unions destroying elements of art and joy in mu- new experience, sions (23 compositions in two to three years!) and was sic-making. Not infrequently he would lecture orchestras the enduring looking forward to other projects.” Gunther’s sons Edwin with much irritation, accusing players of indifference to generosity and and George estimate that he completed well over 180 the highest aspirations of the art. support for compositions during his lifetime. My most sustained contact with Gunther took place at friends and In the end it is the massive creative achievement, the Tanglewood–during the years 1975-1984—where he was colleagues that feverish energy, the inexhaustible curiosity, the openness director of the Music Center. Always approachable, always begin to define to new experience, the enduring generosity and support open and patient and interested in the activities of others, the man. for friends and colleagues that begin to define the man. he was totally immersed in all the activities of the Festival. It I say “begin” because the details are infinite and they was miraculous, almost inconceivable, how he could deter- inflect every moment of this individual’s life. mine all repertory, scheduling, personnel, ensembles for the I conclude with a paraphrase of Beethoven’s words about entire eight-week season, thousands of decisions regarding Mozart: We shall never see the likes of him again. n choice of music from the obscure to the familiar, another indication of how universal and catholic was his enthusiasm for the vast repertory of musical art. And what of recreation, of free time? Such concepts were swallowed up by Gunther’s love of work, by any- thing to do with music. I have left composition for last. But it stands as first in the life of Gunther Schuller, the activity around which swirled all the other aspects of his hyperactive life. He com- posed constantly and with extraordinary fluency. The music is imaginative, inventive, colorful and complex, restlessly morphing, transforming, surprising. From the very begin- ning the craft was exemplary, with an uncanny understand- ing of instrumental capabilities and textural clarity, along with a fearless tendency to test conventional boundaries. Notable compositions would include the Seven Studies on Paul Klee, orchestral images of wonderful color and variety, including an impression of Klee’s Twittering Machine. The popularity of this piece is enhanced by its pictorial reference, not surprising given our obsession with visual images of all kinds. Of Reminiscences and Reflections (a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1994) is a deeply expressive creation in memory of Margy. Her death created a sense of loss that was never far from Gunther’s thoughts. Dreamscape, a substantial recent composition for the Boston Symphony, which Schuller said came to him in a dream clear in shape and elaborated by a myriad of details. The intricacy and animated inventiveness of the piece is astonishing as is the genesis of its creation. Mixed media artist David Magical Trumpets, a brand new piece for 12 trumpets Opdyke and visitors to his studio are framed by commissioned by Tanglewood for this summer’s Con- the arched doorway of temporary Music Festival, was performed for the first Alexander Studio. The time just two weeks ago. Scintillating, vital, brilliantly public visited with artists- polychrome, preternaturally virtuosic, it betrayed noth- in-residence in 31 open studios on Medal Day afternoon. 10 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 MacDowell Colony Chairman and author Michael Chabon presents the Edward MacDowell Medal Gunther Schuller 1925-2015 to composer Yehudi Wyner who accepted on behalf of the Schuller Gunther Schuller was born in New York on November 22, 1925. family. He began his professional music career as a French horn player, performing with the American Ballet Theater as a teen, as principal horn in the Cincinnati Symphony (1943-1945), and with the Metropolitan Opera from 1945-1959. He also played French horn on Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool recording (1949-1950), and composed and conducted for jazz greats John Lewis and Dizzy Gillespie. As an educator, Schuller taught at the Manhattan School of Music and . He began teaching at the Berkshire Music Center (at Tanglewood) at the request of , and later served as president of the New England Conservatory where he formalized NEC’s commitment to jazz by establishing the first degree-granting jazz program at a major classical conservatory. Schuller composed more than 180 works, spanning all musical genres, including solo works, orchestral works, chamber music, opera, and jazz. Among Schuller’s orchestral works are Symphony (1965), Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee (1959), and An Arc Ascending (1996). Schuller’s large scale work Of Reminiscences and Reflections was composed as a tribute to his wife of 49 years, Marjorie Black, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Edward MacDowell Schuller was the recipient of the Award (1988), the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award (1991), the Gold Medal Medal Awarded for Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1997), Annually Since 1960 the Downbeat Lifetime Achievement Award, and an inaugural membership in the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. He was The Edward MacDowell Medal isa named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2008. national award presented annually to Despite illness, he never stopped composing. an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to our culture. Since 1960, Medal Day has brought to New Hampshire some of the most influential artists of our time, including , Georgia O’Keeffe, I.M. Pei, , , , and . A complete list of past Medal winners is available on our website at macdowellcolony.org/ events-MedalDay-History.html.

An independent committee of peers selects the Medalist. Next August, The Edward MacDowell Medal will be awarded to an artist working in literature.

MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 11 2015 MEDAL DAY

Medal Day Sponsors MacDowell Medal Day supplement @ 2015

INDIVIDUAL SPONSORS Hon. Paul W. Hodes Dan Hurlin Lead Sponsors Editor: Jonathan Gourlay In Memory of William Kimbrel Charles F. Christ Deece Lambert Design and Production: Fred Clarke and Laura Weir-Clarke Blake Leister and Edward Doyle Melanie deForest Design, LLC Barbara and Andy Senchak Scott Manning and Frank Guerra All photographs not otherwise Ilse Traulsen Nancy B. Roberts credited: Joanna Eldredge Morrissey Lewis and Melinda Spratlan Benefactors Jamie and Laura Trowbridge Eleanor Briggs Mary Vallier-Kaplan The MacDowell Colony is located at Deborah Butler Mary N. Young 100 High Street Peter and Eileen Jachym Peterborough, NH 03458 Honorable Samuel K. Lessey, Jr. and Telephone: 603-924-3886 Christine B. Joosten BUSINESS SPONSORS Mollie Miller and Robert Rodat Fax: 603-924-9142 Robert and Stephanie Olmsted Corporate Partner Peter and Suzanne Read Administrative office: Phyllis and Jim Rogers 163 East 81st Street Cheryl A. Young New York, NY 10028 Patrons Telephone: 212-535-9690 Susan and Kenneth Austin Lead Sponsor Fax: 212-737-3803 Andi Axman and Mark Goldstein Bobbie Bristol Web site: www.macdowellcolony.org Mrs. Abram T. Collier E-mail: [email protected] Tom and Ellen Draper Sarah Garland-Hoch and Roland Hoch Medal Day Lead Contributor Betty and Russell Gaudreau The MacDowell Colony awards Gerald and Theresa Gartner Fellowships to artists of exceptional Adele Griffin and Erich Mauff talent, providing time, space, and an John Hargaves and Nancy Newcomb inspiring environment in which to do Robert M. Larsen and creative work. The Colony was founded Senator Sylvia Larsen Benefactor in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell Monica and Michael Lehner David and Susan Lord and pianist Marian Nevins MacDowell, Jean and Kyra Montagu his wife. Fellows receive room, board, Tom and Babs Putnam and exclusive use of a studio. The sole Andrew Rudin Patrons criterion for acceptance is talent, as The Sandback Family Bellows-Nichols Insurance determined by a panel representing Vijay Seshadri and Suzanne Khouri Colony Mill Marketplace/Ben and the discipline of the applicant. The Karina Kelley MacDowell Colony was awarded the Supporters Monadnock Paper Mills, Inc. Michael and Joyce Askenaizer Northeast Delta Dental National Medal of Arts in 1997 for Mary and Bob Carswell RiverMead “nurturing and inspiring many of this Eleanor Drury The Segal Company/Robert D. Krinsky century’s finest artists.” Litty Holbrooke Mary and John M. Lord, Jr. Supporters Barbara A. Pike Belletetes, Inc. Applications are available on our Web site Brian Rogers CGI Business Solutions at macdowellcolony.org. Jack Daniels Motor Inn Chairman: Michael Chabon Advocates The Kingsbury Fund President: Susan Davenport Austin William D. Adams the lakes gallery at chi-lin Executive Director: Cheryl A. Young Suellen and Stuart Davidson Orr & Reno, P.A. Resident Director: David Macy Walter and Barbara Burgin The Toadstool Bookshops Aleta Connell Yankee Publishing, Inc. Patience Haley Ghikas facebook.com/MacDowellColony Judson Hale portablemacdowell.org

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