Department of Music
Willamette University
900 State Street
Salem, Oregon 97301
(503) 370-6255 |
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Mailing Address:
Willamette University
Department of Music
900 State Street
Salem, OR 97301
Phone: (503) 375-5379
Fax: (503) 370-6260
Email: jpeel@willamette.edu
Office: Rogers Music Center 112
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Born in Texas in 1946, composer John Peel's earliest musical
studies were on the clarinet and oboe. While in his `teens Peel
began the study of piano and composition. After completing an
undergraduate degree in French literature at the University
of Texas, Peel pursued graduate studies at Columbia University
and Princeton University where his teachers included Milton
Babbitt, Benjamin Boretz, J.K. Randall, Claudio Spies and Charles
Wuorinen. Peel's solo compositions have been premiered by some
of today's foremost recitalists including soprano Susan Narucki,
violinist Rolf Schulte and pianist Alan Feinberg.
Major ensembles that have commissioned and performed Peel's
chamber and orchestral music include the Pittsburgh Symphony,
the Seattle Symphony, the Riverside Symphony, the Bohuslav Martinu
Philharmonic, the American String Quartet, Collage, Music Today,
the New Arts Trio, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Parnassus and the
California E.A.R. Unit. Peel has been the recipient of awards
and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome
Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Heinz
Foundation, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, Meet-the-Composer
and the American Music Center.
In 1990 Peel was appointed Composer-in-Residence, Irene Gerlinger
Swindells Professor of Music. In this position he has created
New Music at Willamette, a series of concerts, residencies and
lectures dedicated to presenting the finest performers and composers
of our time. Peel's opera-oratorio Voces Vergilianae, with a
libretto from the poetry of Vergil, was performed in 1999 to
celebrate the dedication of the Rogers Music Center on the Willamette
campus. Another major work, the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra,
commissioned by the Riverside Symphony for violinist Joseph
Lin, premiered in January 2000 at Alice Tully Hall in New York's
Lincoln Center. Sinfonia Romanza, a symphony commissioned by
James DePreist, was presented during the Oregon Symphony's 2005-2006
concert season with Maestro DePreist conducting.
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