John Kenneth Graham
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American composer John Kenneth Graham (born July 26, 1955 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana), studied at Southeastern Louisiana University and Louisiana State University, and writes orchestral tableaux of American legend and folklore. A traditionalist, his most representative works include the first four symphonies of a nine-symphony cycle. Other works include a Festival Mass in C Minor for choir and chamber orchestra, First Piano Concerto, numerous works for percussion and several large works for symphonic band. The recent performance of Lines After Bidart While Watching Television featured symphonic band and full choir with alto solo, and is a commemorative to those who served in the relief of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Graham's aesthetic relies upon the use of tonal harmony, with poetic applications of both form and style. He freely makes use of traditional harmonic applications while at the same instance reaching the listener with fresh approaches to musical structure and climactic timing. The crucial effort is always in the storytelling, which is why almost all of his music has some literary basis. As regards modern technique and atonality, he stands in agreement with the conductor Ernest Alexandre Ansermet, whose book Les Fondaments de la Musique dans la Conscience Humaine contains arguments that Schoenberg's twelve-tone idiom was false and inherently irrational. Graham's main classical influences include Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Giovanni Gabrieli, Beethoven, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Respighi, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives and John Adams. His influences from various contemporary popular artists are considerable, primarily rock, progressive jazz and American folk music. He is a member of the international Delian Society.
Graham's lifelong artistic interest is in the creative use of sonata form to produce works which convey a tale. It is his habitual collecting of folktales, hobo stories, ghost stories and other Americana which forms the literary basis of most of his serious music work. His music is organic, built up from motifs representing various emotional and philosophical constructs which hail back to the Latin Liber Usualis and even historically to ancient Greek and Hebrew hymns. It is this hidden emotional language of music which has informed much of the emotional content of western music, even to be found in modern times. This emphasis upon motivic development of melodic materials is evident in Graham's use of melismatic textures to convey both texture and motif (Melisma). The classic and romantic symphony is the principal form used by Graham for purposes of shedding light upon this universal musical understanding, yet even in his masses and small vocal works one can detect the same style of craftsmanship.
The craft of melodic and rhythmic variation is taken up in a particular manner in Graham's work. Two guiding principles regarding the genesis of new thematic material are: (1) the use of the Golden ratio to determine poetic (emotional) climaxes to his work, and (2) the use of prime numbers to describe rhythmic limits to motif, and to propel phrasing and overall musical effect forward through the work. This practice is evident in all his works, from smaller choral settings to symphonic settings, including the massive oratorio Angels of Light and Darkness in twelve movements.
He is also known for commemorative works for special occasions. In 1983, he conducted the Baton Rouge Concert Band in a performance of his symphonic poem Freedom's Defense for the occasion of the dedication of the Fletcher-class, WWII destroyer USS Kidd. This particular work included use of the actual guns aboard the vessel, reminiscent of Beethoven's Battle Symphony. The march at the climax of Second Symphony has been titled Rangers Lead the Way, and is a Sousa-style march which has been arranged for band and field drums. It has been adopted by the U.S. Army Ranger Association as their official march.
His symphony cycle consists of nine works, each of which conform to a separate area of the United States at different seasons of the year. Four of these are complete, First Symphony (northeastern Missouri in the spring), Second Symphony (southeastern Iowa in the summer), Third Symphony (about Yellowstone National Park during the fall), and Fourth Symphony (the Dakotas during the winter}. Other planned symphonies include Fifth Symphony (California during the spring}, Sixth Symphony (Nebraska during the summer), Seventh Symphony (Texas during the fall), Eighth Symphony (Virginia during the winter), and Ninth Symphony (about Louisiana during the spring). Thus, the cycle begins and ends in spring, and the final projected movement of Ninth Symphony will feature a choral setting of the Latin Dies Irae from the old requiem-style mass set against full orchestra and Dixieland jazz-band.
His works in the jazz-fusion style blend taut Latin rhythms and percussion, full use of horn lines and electronica, as well as his signature melodic gift and expressively poetic use of song-forms. These works make full use of jazz piano with influences from New Orleans-style blues to big band to third-stream rock.
