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The Cambridge Commission
The Cambridge Commission is a community-supported award for new chamber music premiered by Music from Salem every two years.
Gerald Busby Receives The 4th Cambridge Commission
On July 12, 2008, Quartet for Piano and Strings by Gerald Busby will be premiered by Music from Salem at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, New York. The New York City composer dedicates this extraordinary piece to artists Gerald Coble and Robert Nunnelley of Battenville, NY. The quartet will be performed by Music from Salem’s four artistic directors: Lila Brown, Judith Eissenberg, Judith Gordon and Rhonda Rider.
The program will also include Viola by Gerald Busby and Craig Lucas, a humorous piece for Viola and Mezzo-soprano.
July 10, 7 PM --- Music From Salem’s Open rehearsal with composer Gerald Busby. Open free to the public at the Brown Farm, Salem, NY.
July 11, 7 PM –- The Composer and 3 Women—an evening with Gerald Busby and a screening of Robert Altman’s 3 Women
Come hear Gerald Busby’s lively stories about how he composes; his new Quartet for Piano and Strings for Music from Salem; and how he got the Altman commission. A screening of 3 Women, a remarkable film brought to life by Busby’s haunting music, will follow his talk. Open free to the public at Hubbard Hall, Beacon Feed Building
Gerald Busby
A brilliant and original composer, Gerald Busby is best known for his film score for Robert Altman’s 3 Women, his dance score for Paul Taylor’s Runes, and his opera with Craig Lucas, Orpheus in Love. He has written more than 200 concert works including pieces for large and small ensembles, song cycles, solo instrumental pieces, operas, and theatrical chamber music scenarios such as Body Ode for three singers and a glass eater.
Gerald Busby’s life has been as unique and exuberant as his music. Born in Texas in 1935, he began playing piano at age 5 and performed with the Houston symphony when he was 17. He studied piano and music at Yale, but majored in philosophy. He never had any formal training in composition. Busby toured much of the country as a college textbook salesman for 8 years while continuing to play and beginning to write music.
Busby visited New York frequently and returned to live. A passionate cook, he agreed to prepare dinner for a friend who then invited Virgil Thomson. They became close friends. The famous composer and critic inspired Busby, helping him in many ways from getting an apartment at the legendary Chelsea Hotel where he still resides to connecting him with piano students including Leonard Bernstein’s daughter. Several of his connections led to patrons like Paul Taylor who gave Busby his first commercial commission.
Recent premiers include: Dances for Piano and Others by Akira Eguchi; Words With My Mouth by The Gregg Smith Singers; Quatrains by The Stephen Smith Singers; Bonfire at Midnight by The New York Treble Singers; and Love Notes, a choral suite commissioned and premiered by the Stonewall chorale in New York City with a text of daily notes between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.
Gerald Busby has received numerous awards, commissions, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, the Aaron Copland Foundation, and now The Cambridge Commission for Music from Salem.
"Gerald Busby is an excellent composer, spontaneous, original, and a sincere workman." –Virgil Thomson
“Gerald Busby is an American gem—no one else has ever written music that sounds remotely like his; my collaboration with Gerald are some of the happiest experiences of my creative life and I hope he lives forever.”—Craig Lucas
“Gerald Busby’s music for ‘ 3 Women’ is so perfect I don’t know how to talk about it.”—Robert Altman
“ Gerald Busby combines masterful craftsmanship with quirky originality. His work is high voltage, evocative, rhythmically charged, and full of fascinating surprises.”—Lila Brown, Violist and Co-Artistic Director of Music from Salem
for more about Gerald Busby: Click here
and here
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