Andrew Imbrie

Andrew Imbrie
Born (1921-04-06)April 6, 1921
Died December 5, 2007(2007-12-05) (aged 86)
Era Contemporary

Andrew Welsh Imbrie (April 6, 1921 – December 5, 2007)[1] was an American composer of contemporary classical music.

Career

Imbrie was born in New York on April 6, 1921, and began his musical training as a pianist when he was 4. In 1937, he went to Paris to study briefly with Nadia Boulanger. He returned to the United States the next year to attend Princeton University where he studied with Roger Sessions, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1942. His senior thesis there, a string quartet, was recorded by the Juilliard Quartet. He then went to the University of California, Berkeley, where he received an M.A. in Music in 1947; there he continued to study with Sessions, who had taken a position at Berkeley. Imbrie taught composition, theory, and analysis at Berkeley from 1949 until his retirement in 1991. In addition to his principal teaching job at Berkeley, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Brandeis University, Northwestern University, New York University, the University of Alabama, and Harvard University, and had a regular teaching post at the San Francisco Conservatory. He died at his home in Berkeley, California at the age of 86. His notable students include Larry Austin, Richard Festinger, Alden Jenks, Frank La Rocca, Neil Rolnick, Allen Shearer, Tamar Diesendruck, Laura Schwendinger, Nils Frykdahl, Kurt Rohde, Hi Kyung Kim, Leslie Wildman and Carolyn Yarnell.[2][3]

Style

Imbrie's style was influenced early by Béla Bartók, and then by Roger Sessions, his teacher both at Princeton and at Berkeley. Imbrie prefers harmonies that are non-triadic, or if triadic, non-functional, and he wrote a tightly organized, often atonal contrapuntal texture with attention to careful motivic development; he avoided the serial techniques which dominated art music composition after the Second World War. Imbrie was also attentive to melodic line and shape, as one of the ways to make a free atonal language accessible.

Selected compositions

Imbrie’s compositions make up a body of work that spans many genres. These compositions are cited as his chief works:[4]

Recordings

First Recordings of Two Naumburg Award Compositions. Columbia Records, MS 6597

Andrew Imbrie. New York: Composers Recordings Inc., 1973. Rereleased, New World Records, 2007.[5]

New Music for Virtuosos. New York: New World Records, 1977.

Andrew Imbrie and Gunther Schuller. New York: New World Records, 1978.

New Music Series Vol. 3. Neuma Records, 1993

Collage New Music. Boston: GM Recordings, 1989.

Andrew Imbrie. Boston: GM Recordings, 1993.

Music of Andrew Imbrie. New York: CRI, 1994.

Dream Sequence – Chamber Music of Andrew Imbrie. New York: New World Records, 1995.

Andrew Imbrie, Requiem. New Rochelle, NY: Bridge Records, 2000.

Andrew Imbrie. Albany, NY: Albany Records, 2002.

References

  1. ↑ San Francisco Classical Voice: In memoriam Andrew Imbrie (archive from December 10, 2007; accessed June 3, 2016).
  2. ↑ Kozinn, Allan (2007-12-10). "Andrew Imbrie, 86, Composer Known for Use of Dissonance". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2010-02-09. Retrieved 2016-02-13.
  3. ↑ Kozinn, Allan (2007-12-09). "Andrew Imbrie - Composer - Obituaries". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-02-13.
  4. ↑ http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/inmemoriam/andrewwelshimbrie.html
  5. ↑ New World Records: Album Details

Sources

Interviews

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