The Music of Pierre Jalbert
" an acknowledged chamber-music master." – THE NEW YORKER American composer Pierre Jalbert has been recognized for his richly colored and superbly crafted scores and “music of fierce and delicate inventiveness [with] kaleidoscope of moods and effects.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) Painting vibrant and picturesque sonic portraits for the listener, he has developed a musical language that is engaging, expressive, and deeply personal. Among his many honors are the Rome Prize, BBC Masterprize, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Stoeger Award, given biennially "in recognition of significant contributions to the chamber music repertory," and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Jalbert’s work has drawn inspiration from a variety of sources ranging from plainchant melodies to natural phenomena, and his French-Canadian heritage, hearing English folk songs and Catholic liturgical music growing up. He has earned a reputation for his mastery of color, in both his chamber and orchestral scores, creating timbres that are vivid yet refined and tonally centered, combining modal, tonal, and dissonant sonorities as it travels new and unusual paths, while retaining a sense of harmonic motion culminating in a completed journey. His music has been commissioned and performed worldwide, including the St. Paul and Los Angeles Chamber orchestras, the American Composers Orchestra, and the Symphonies of Houston, Vermont, Albany, Budapest, London, Boston and Milwaukee, the National Symphony, Cabrillo and Eastern Festival Orchestras. He received two Meet the Composer grants, including one for its “Magnum Opus Project.” Jalbert served as Composer-in-Residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, California Symphony and Chicago's Music in the Loft.
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