Eric W. Sawyer

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Eric Sawyer

Occupation composer
Official website

Eric W. Sawyer, or Eric Sawyer, is an American composer, pianist and assistant professor of music at Amherst College. He has studied as an undergraduate at Harvard College, where he was selected as a Harvard Junior Fellow. He undertook graduate studies at both Columbia University and the University of California, Davis (where he completed his doctorate in 1994).[1] Before taking up the position at Amherst, Sawyer spent four years as Chair of Composition and Theory at the Longy School of Music.[2]

Sawyer has written a number of pieces that have received multiple public performances. His debut was in 1985 with "Three Pieces for Orchestra", performed by the Harvard Chamber Orchestra, was described at the time as an "auspicious beginning".[3] Later pieces have included "String Quartet No. 2" (premiered at the Longy School of Music's "SeptemberFest" in 1999);[4][5] "Violin Sonata" (which included Sawyer on piano);[6] "The Humble Heart", a cantata built around texts by American Shakers, which debuted in 2006;[7] and "Trio for Three". The 2001 Laurel Trio performance of Trio for Three was well received, being described as "the work of a person who is entirely at ease with traditional tonality stretched to its limits."[8] Sawyer's first CD of his work - Eric Sawyer: String Works - was released under the Albany Records label in 2005 and featured four of his compositions.[9]

Along with librettist and University of California, Berkeley English lecturer John Shoptaw, Sawyer has composed an opera based upon a play set in Ford's Theatre the night United States President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.[10] The play, Our American Cousin, by playwright Tom Taylor, is a farce, while the opera Our American Cousin contains the play, imagined intrigue among the actors and actresses, and production staff of the play, and historical information about the assassination.[11][10][12] The opera is due to premier in Northampton, Massachusetts in June, 2008, but isolated works have been performed prior to this date. "Hawk's Aria" was performed in 1997,[6] and "Laura Keene's aria" was performed in 1993. (At the 1993 performance, reviewer Robert Commanday noted that at this early performance the music was "appealing and finely written", but found the text to be "too wordy").[13] In 2007 a concert containing several of the pieces was performed, but, as Jeff Dunn described the event, the decisions to perform excerpts rather than the full production and to accompany the singers with a piano on its own, left the performance "fatally wounded".[14] The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP/sound) has recorded the opera, "Our American Cousin", and it is available to pre-order.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Eric W. Sawyer. Amherst College. Retrieved on 2008-06-02.
  2. ^ Biography. Eric Sawyer (November 8, 2007). Retrieved on 2008-06-02.
  3. ^ Dyer, Richard. "A Wonderful Tribute from the Harvard Chamber Teacher", Boston Globe, July 8, 1985. 
  4. ^ Dyer, Richard. "Sound Choice (in African-American Singers are No Joke)", Boston Globe, September 17, 1999. 
  5. ^ Miller, Steven (November 10, 2000). "American" Music Shines. San Francisco Classical Voice. Retrieved on 2008-06-04.
  6. ^ a b Buell, Richard. "Sneakers Composers Tread Gently", Boston Globe, August 5, 1997. 
  7. ^ Noble Jr., Clifton J.. "'River of Love' a celebration of Shaker music", The Republican, October 06, 2006. Retrieved on 2008-06-02. 
  8. ^ Reinthaler, Joan. "Music", Washington Post, April 23, 2001. 
  9. ^ Lehman (March 01, 2006). "Sawyer: Quartets 2+3; 5 Bagatelles; Pas de Deux". American Record Guide. 
  10. ^ a b Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities News & Events: Our American Cousin.
  11. ^ Amherst Magazine "Setting murder to music.".
  12. ^ Herrmann, Michele. "New Opera Takes a Second Look at an American Tragedy", Fairfield Citizen News (CT), Brooks Community Newspapers, 2007-004-04. 
  13. ^ Commanday, Robert. "Bay Area Composers' Symposium - Classical Pitch to Sound Out Talent - Young musicians hear their works-in-progress", The San Francisco Chronicle, January 24, 1993. 
  14. ^ Dunn, Jeff (August 23, 2007). Fatally Wounded. San Francisco Classical Voice. Retrieved on 2008-06-04.

[edit] External links