Keeril Makan An Interview with School of Music University of Illinois 1114 West Nevada Street Edmund Campion Urbana, Illinois 61801 USA
[email protected] Edmund J. Campion was born in Dallas, Texas, in Time (ACWOT) for two pianos, was unlike any 1957. (See Figure 1.) He received a doctorate in music I had ever written. Since then, the computer composition at Columbia University and attended has been my playground and teacher, a testing site the Paris Conservatory where he worked with com- for ideas. The questions I ask, the pieces I write, poser Ge´rard Grisey. In 1993, Campion was se- the locations I choose for musical presentation lected for the one-year course in computer music at have all been rethought. It’s easy to get lost in the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acous- technical issues, but my focus remains music crea- tique/Musique (IRCAM). He was eventually com- tion. Rhythm, timbre, and spatial studies are cen- missioned by IRCAM for his work Natural tral. Still, I’ve always felt a need to contextualize Selection and the evening-length dance piece Play- my artistic output in relation to the larger social back with choreographer Franc¸ois Raffinot. In picture. None of us wants to live in a computer 1995, Hillary Clinton presented him with the music ghetto. Rome Prize in Music Composition at the White Makan: How did working with two such different House. figures as Davidovsky and Grisey challenge you as Mr. Campion is currently Associate Professor of a young composer? Music at the University of California at Berkeley, Campion: Davidovsky was New York; Grisey was where he serves as the Co-Director of The Center Paris.