Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson "[The opera] Aethelred the Unready turns out to be a work of whimsy and even an occasional belly laugh, though there are also genuinely touching moments in it to remind us of the eternal human need for self-esteem.... joyously recommended." - Barry L. Cohen, New Music Connoisseur, on Albany CD TROY 512.

"...[L]yricism is given freer reign in Mr. Wilson' s Piano Trio (2002), a world premiere. This is a passionate work with tendrils that extend toward Debussy and Messiaen, particularly in extended tandem passages for the cello and violin. Striking, too, are the rhythmic vitality of this trio and the tightness of the interplay between the three instruments." - Allan Kozinn, The New York Times

Recent and upcoming events

April 17, 18, 2009 Premiere performances of The Cello Has Many Secrets. Mary Nessinger, soprano, Sophie Shao, cello; The American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein conducting, Fisher Center, Bard College
2008: Release of seven chamber works on "Brash Attacks," Albany Records CD1080.

Biography

Richard Wilson was born in Cleveland on May 15, 1941. He studied piano with Roslyn Pettibone, Egbert Fischer, and Leonard Shure, and cello with Robert Ripley and Ernst Silberstein. After beginning composition studies with Roslyn Pettibone and Howard Whittaker, he went on in 1959 to Harvard, studying with Randall Thompson, G.W. Woodworth, and principally with Robert Moevs, and graduating in 1963 magna cum laude. Awarded the Frank Huntington Beebe Award for study abroad, he continued studying piano with Friedrich Wührer in Munich, and composition, again with Moevs, in Rome, where he also gave piano recitals. Wilson joined the faculty of Vassar College in 1966. He was appointed to the Mary Conover Mellon Professorship of Music there in 1988, and he has served three times as chairman of the Department of Music.

In the last few years Wilson’s music has begun to make a wider mark, with the help of commissions from the San Francisco Symphony and other organizations. His works have been heard not only in such American musical centers as New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Cleveland, and Los Angeles and at the Aspen Music Festival, but also in London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Zurich, Milan, Amsterdam, Graz, Leningrad, Stockholm, Tokyo, Bogota, and a number of Australian cities.

The recipient in 1992 of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he was awarded the Elise L. Stoeger Prize of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 1994, the Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004, and has served as composer in residence with the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992. Recent commissions have come from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Fromm Foundation, and the Chicago String Quartet.

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