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Home , John Corigliano, John Duffy (composer)

John Duffy in 2011. Opposite: in Virginia, with Composers Institute fellows Randall Eng and Whitney George

28 November / December 2011 f anything prepared John Duffy for holding a summer job as a night watchman a career as an advocate of contem- at B. Altman’s department store in midtown porary music, it may have been Manhattan, he would often begin his evenings his childhood training as a boxer. by visiting jazz clubs to hear Charlie Parker, As a boy growing up in the Bronx, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ihe had joined his older brothers at the gym Ellington. and was undefeated as an amateur fighter. And in the Though underage, Duffy joined the Navy But he just didn’t have the temperament for during World War II and was stationed in it. “The idea of beating up on someone didn’t Composers’ Corner… San Diego. Afterward, back in , suit me, so I stopped,” Duffy recalled from he enrolled at , where he his home in Camden, Maine. He turned to studied with , taking Cowell’s his true passion, music. course “Music of the World’s Peoples,” perhaps The Emmy-winning composer of more the first world music course taught in this than three hundred pieces for the concert country (among Duffy’s classmates was Burt stage, theater, television and film fought his John Bacharach). He took summer lessons with biggest battles as the co-founder and long- at Tanglewood and studied time president of Meet The Composer. He as well with Solomon Rosowsky, a student of raised commissioning budgets during the Rimsky-Korsakov and a cantor. (From Rosowsky, flush years for arts funding but also through Duffy learned how to write Jewish cantorial recessions and periods of retrenchment. He Duffy music, experience that later paid off when convinced skeptical that new he created the nine-hour, Emmy-winning score American music was a necessary part of For more than three to the PBS series Heritage: Civilization and their mission. And he endeavored to raise the Jews.) the profile of jazz composers to that of their decades, one man In 1952, Arthur Lithgow, the director and classical counterparts. pioneer in American regional theater, estab- Duffy receives America’s has fought perhaps lished Shakespeare under the Stars, a summer Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award more effectively than festival at Antioch College in Ohio. He invited this year in honor of his several decades of Duffy to become its music director. Writing advocacy and creativity. Colleagues main- any other person to incidental music for classics like King Lear tain that few other individuals did more to bring visibility, fair and Hamlet was the beginning of a career- professionalize the field for composers. long involvement with the theater and the “John and I used to joke that it was ‘Cheat compensation, and spoken word. “Those works had a profound the Composer,’ given the way fees were work to the creators effect,” said Duffy. “They stayed with me handled until then,” says Frances Richard, and just provided inspiration and ideas that vice-president for concert music at ASCAP of American music. don’t seem to go away. To me, the great and MTC’s former vice president. “He under- dramatist is Shakespeare, and I’ve been lucky stood that composers need recognition, b y Brian Wise to earn a living over a long period compos- validation and remuneration.” ing for Shakespearean productions.” One of fourteen children of Irish immigrant Yet after a string of similar posts—at the parents, Duffy was born in Manhattan in Guthrie Theater, the Long Wharf Theatre, 1926 and raised in the Bronx’s Woodlawn and eventually, John Houseman’s American neighborhood. Sent to Catholic schools, he Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut— sang in choir and became enthralled by the Duffy shifted his career back toward New sounds of J.S. Bach played on the church York. During the mid to late 1960s he organ. As a teenager he took up piano and divided his time between writing incidental drums and played in a small dance band music for Broadway and Off Broadway that entertained at school functions. While shows—Including scores for The Ginger Man,

29 Macbird!, Mother Courage, and Playboy of said Duffy. “I love Shakespeare and Verdi and the Western World—and scoring television Marc Blitzstein, Copland and Virgil Thomson. and film documentaries. All these people seemed to be alive and in Duffy has always found ways of address- tune with their own time.” ing serious themes alongside more routine Championing of the composers of his assignments. These include the Chappaquiddick own time began for Duffy in the 1970s, incident (Black Water, his 1993 collaboration when the New York State Council on the with Joyce Carol Oates), the church bomb- Arts was searching for a leader to re-launch ings in Birmingham, Alabama (his 1965 a fledgling program called Composer in for Tenor Saxophone and ), Performance. The program had stumbled out of the gate; and Duffy, who had spoken at some panels organized by the NYSCA, was considered a natural choice to bring it The composer at home in Camden, Maine, back to life. working on the score of his King David Armed with a budget of $65,000, Duffy in 2008 renamed the NYSCA initiative Meet The Composer, which, he says, was meant to Richard Rodgers, Virgil Thomson, Copland evoke the spirit of Walt Whitman, an artist and Bernstein. These were people who who celebrated his connection with the represented the whole rich canvas of music common man. Its goal was to help living in the USA.” American composers find outlets for their Intent on expanding the program beyond music but also to help composers, directors New York, in 1976, Duffy encouraged regional and choreographers find each other and groups to form MTC affiliates by giving work together. them annual grants of $15,000. One rule The organization took shape quickly. A was that 60 percent of the affiliates’ grants New York Times profile from 1974 lauded had to be for local composers (“We didn’t Duffy’s efforts in “bringing composers into want to seem like carpetbaggers,” Duffy contact with popular audiences in theaters, said at the time). Duffy also gained access to in ghetto streets, in churches, in storefronts political channels. In 1979, when New York and in ‘rural areas.’” Duffy had made an mayor Ed Koch wanted to commission works offer to concert promoters around New York for the evenings when he entertained State: If they programmed contemporary colleagues at Gracie Mansion, Meet The works, they could have the composers— Composer was there to facilitate. famous ones as well as young upstarts—on Then, in 1982, the organization initiated hand to explain their pieces. its most visible—and still debated—endeavor: Through its core program—the Meet The an ambitious 10-year plan to place composers Composer Fund—the organization placed in residence with major American orchestras. composers in communities while establishing The Orchestra Residencies Program estab- standard fee structures and guidelines for lished three-year residencies with 21 different how composers could speak to audiences ensembles and featured 29 composers; 65 TOP: Duffy in New York City in 1992 about their work. No genre was off limits. In new works were written and 19 recordings ABOVE: With composer John Harbison the organization’s first year, it brokered a made. At a time when new American music commission for the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor was rare in orchestral concerts, composers and Muhammad Ali (his 2000 opera named with the Dance Visions Workshop in New suddenly had visible roles, from Jacob Druckman after the former world heavyweight cham- York. “I thought, ‘In unity there’s strength’,” working with the to pion). “I think of music as a social art where says Duffy. “If you look at our board in the enjoying a warm relationship you respond as you’re expressing your time,” 1970s, it included , Billy Taylor, with the San Francisco .

30 January / February 2012 The composer at home in Camden, Maine, working on the score of his opera King David in 2008

At the John Duffy Composers Institute

Previous efforts to fund new orchestral he believed was the orchestra manage- worked at Meet The Composer during the music often got caught up in politics: ment’s lack of appreciation for his music. He late 1980s and early 90s. “[John] used to foundations or wealthy donors chose the was particularly upset by music director talk about the scramble but within a matter composers they wanted to promote, regard- Georg Solti’s refusal to conduct the world of weeks there were other funders to step less of the orchestra’s preferences. Here the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Daniel in,” says Wiprud. “You’d go to a funder orchestra had a say. Still, some pointed out Barenboim conducted instead) and with the meeting with John and he’d expect to hear that once the MTC residencies program ended, quality of a test pressing of Erato Record’s back the next day. We’d say to him, it was most of the orchestras cut their composer live recording of the work. the summer and funders weren’t out looking chairs and it was back to business as usual. “John and Meet The Composer gave me at time. He’d just say ‘that is exactly why we “As orchestras retrench, the composer-in- great support when the CSO and Erato should be going after them now.’” residence will become an increasingly balked at recording my symphony,” says Meet The Composer’s funding steadily endangered species,” wrote K. Robert Schwarz Corigliano, who was installed through the increased during the 1970s and ’80s and by in in 1996. Orchestra Residencies Program in 1987. 1992, its annual budget was $3.3 million. “The specific program itself was not self- “John called up both parties and made sure “You could look back at the rather enormous supporting; that’s true,” says Ed Harsh, that the recording was made.” The work went grant budgets Meet The Composer had in president of Meet The Composer since 2007. on to receive more than 150 performances its time,” Wiprud notes. “It was only a great “But the way that the orchestra field thought in its first five years; it also won three Grammy time for funding because [Duffy] made it of the role of a composer—whether it be Awards and a . Corigliano that way. He had a salesmanship about literally a composer-in-residence or having adds: “John could be called at any time, and music that he managed to get many of the a composer onsite for a performance at a he would rush to defend the composer.” most significant private foundations on board minimum level or just a positive force in Duffy led Meet The Composer through at by stressing the importance of supporting their repertoire—that absolutely changed.” least two recessions and periodic financial contemporary culture, and supporting Duffy was aware that it would be an setbacks, as when Exxon, the co-sponsor of composition as a profession.” uphill battle. In 1991, John Corigliano the Orchestra Residencies Program, pulled With his extensive film, theater and tele- abruptly resigned from his post as composer- out all of its funding halfway through the vision credits, Duffy has had an inclusive in-residence at the Chicago Symphony initiative. Theodore Wiprud, the education view of classical music, but former colleagues Orchestra, prompted at least in part, by what director at the New York Philharmonic, continued on page 63

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AMERIGO PHOTO BY CHRIS LEE TRIO Duffy, continued from page 31 say he took care not to promote works that mirrored his own “Fluid…Elegant…Bold… tastes. Wiprud notes how, whenever Meet The Composer assembled panels to make decisions on Expressive…Fantastic” commissions, “Duffy would –THE BERKSHIRE always say, ‘We don’t make ARTS ALMANAC aesthetic decisions here.’ You’d assemble an independent panel with representatives of jazz, installation-based music, electronic, neo-Romantic, dodecaphonic music.” Faced with a compositional field that was overwhelmingly white and male, Duffy saw Listening: in a classroom at that grants were given for the 2010 Composers Institute works like Hannibal Peterson’s African Portraits, an explora- tion of African American musical styles, and Julius Hemphill’s Long Tongues: A Saxophone Opera, featuring the World Saxophone Quartet. In 1990, Duffy estimates that nearly half of the organiza- tion’s $2.5 million in grants went to women and minorities, with around a third going to jazz composers. While Duffy’s compositional output tapered off during the 1970s, the following decade saw several big public works including Heritage, a symphonic suite commissioned by the Kennedy Center for the 40th anniversary of the founding of Israel, and Wilderness, a commission from the Sierra Club to address wilderness lands endangered by developers. After Duffy retired from Meet The Composer in 1996, he con- tinued to compose and saw a number of his pieces recorded. Since 2005, he has run the annual John Duffy Composers Institute at the Virginia Arts Festival, a summer seminar aimed at teaching the basics of writing for musical theater. Meanwhile, as Meet The Composer was undergoing its complicated merger with the GLENN DICTEROW, VIOLIN American Music Center, he says that he has “enormous faith” in (NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC ONCERTMASTER) the organizations’ current leadership, adding “What they told me I KAREN DREYFUS, VIOLA trust. How I would do this is another thing, but that’s all past. But I stay out of it.” INBAL SEGEV, CELLO “John was always there at that right moments to be the right kind of voice,” says Ed Harsh. “He’s a very compelling guy. There’s Founded in 2009 and named after Amerigo kind of a positive prophet-like air to him—like Isaiah.” Vespucci, the Italian Explorer, the Amerigo Trio is committed to the exploration of the riches of FIND US ON the string trio repertoire. Learn more about The Brian Wise is an editor at WQXR Radio, New York’s classical music Amerigo Trio at www.amerigotrio.com station. He writes about music for a variety of publications, including Listen, BBC Music, and The Strad .

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