Jeremy Beck
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Jeremy Beck (born 1960) is a dramatic and lyrical American composer of works for varying orchestral, chamber and vocal forces. His most recent CD’s were included by Gramophone in its June 2006 Reviews: The best new recordings from North America which stated "Jeremy Beck is Exhibit A in classical music’s defense against the charge of being out of touch."
pause and feel and hark (innova 650), released in May 2006, features some of his chamber music, including Black Water for soprano and piano. A monodrama based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates, reviewers have found Black Water "enthralling ... stunning in its intensity" while Oates herself has written of her "admiration for [this] beautiful and haunting composition."
In 2004, Wave -- a Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra CD devoted to Beck's music -- was released as innova-612. Reviews of this CD describe his Sinfonietta for string orchestra as "harmonically inventive, thoroughly engaging ... sinewy and gorgeous" and Death of a Little Girl with Doves for soprano and orchestra as displaying "imperious melodic confidence [and] fluent emotional command." At its world premiere, this operatic soliloquy based on the life of sculptor Camille Claudel was appraised as flowing "seamlessly through the use of a dazzling variety of instrumental and vocal color ... a fresh, exciting piece by a major talent."
Beck's opera The Biddle Boys and Mrs. Soffel was named by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as one of the Top Ten Cultural Events in Pittsburgh for the year 2001, while the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review hailed the work at its premiere as "superb ... more successful compositionally ... than many new works seen at major opera houses." Another of his operas, The Highway, was presented by New York City Opera as a part of that company's Showcasing American Composers series in May of 2000; at the premiere of this opera at Yale University, the New Haven Register declared that Beck's "handling of dramatic relationships and superimposed time was masterful."
Beck has earned awards, grants and honors from the American Composers Orchestra, California Arts Council, the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Composers Forum, Kentucky Foundation for Women, Millay Colony for the Arts, Meet the Composer, Wellesley Composers Conference, Oregon Bach Festival, Iowa Arts Council and the American Music Center.
He holds degrees from the Yale School of Music, Duke University and the Mannes College of Music, where his principal teachers included Lukas Foss, Jacob Druckman, Stephen Jaffe and David Loeb.
Beck currently resides in Louisville, Kentucky. For more information about Jeremy Beck’s music or to hear a sampling of his compositions, please go to www.BeckMusic.org
