Carson Kievman

For decades, Carson Kievman has followed an independent course that has blended New Music with the theatrical, visual and literary arts. Yet neither his music nor his career has found their way into easy categories. His symphonies, operas and experimental works have been performed internationally in stage, concert, dance, and museum settings, from the Berkeley Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Florida Philharmonic, and a music-theater retrospective at the Nationaltheater-Mannheim. The recipient of numerous international awards, Kievman was honored with a Naumberg Fellowship to Princeton University and a commission Henry Eight's Harvest, for Henry's Eight Consort from the Niedersachsen Musiktage to for a concert open the European Expo 2000 in Germany and broadcast throughout Europe by NDR Radio.

SOME CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

May 4 1999, the Serioso String Quartet and child violin soloist Dakota Kievman (composer's daughter) performed the First performance of Starving Angels at Princeton University's Taplin Auditorium. On May 14 Bertram Turetsky was at Princeton for the Premiere of Kievman's new music-theater work, Contrabassimi. Directed by Mr. Kievman this was a joint production between the Princeton Composer's Ensemble and the Princeton Program in Theater & Dance. November 1998 - Premiere of "Meditation" extended work for solo piano at Princeton University, performed by pianist David Arden. March 1999 - New York City Premiere of "Nuts & Bolts" solo piano at Merkin Concert Hall, performed by pianist Joseph Kubera. In April of 1998 Kievman's Symphony No. 4 was read by the New Jersey Symphony, Lawrence Leighton Smith, conducting in Richardson Auditorium on the Princeton University campus. In 1996 Symphony No. 2(42) was performed at the 1996 Spoleto Festival (Piccolo) by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. In 1995 an all Kievman production was presented at the National Theater of Mannheim, Germany. Kievman's multi-media composition "Multinationals & The Heavens" was produced at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik, at California Institute of the Arts, in New York City, and subsequently in the musical theaters and halls throughout Europe. In 1978, the Tanglewood Music Festival, in cooperation with the Fromm Foundation at Harvard, commissioned him to create the first music theater work produced by the festival since the 1960's. In 1979, several of Kievman's music-theater works, including WAKE UP, IT'S TIME TO GO TO BED, were produced at New York City's Public Theater. In 1982 he became the first composer ever commissioned to write a full length opera -- "Intelligent Systems" -- for the prestigious Donaueschingen Musik Tages, in Germany. In 1987, he was invited by the Eugene O'Neill Opera/Music Theater Conference to begin work on a new opera -- "Tesla" -- about the life of genius inventor, Nikola Tesla. Also in 1987, Joseph Papp commissioned Mr. Kievman to compose an opera based on Shakespeare's "Hamlet". In 1990, Carson Kievman's music was performed at New Music America Festival - Montreal. Kievman was appointed Composer-in-Residence of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra in 1990. Kievman's piano music was performed by pianist David Arden in Europe and the US with a performance at Merkin Hall in New York City (together with the US premiere of Gorecki's Piano Sonata).

Related Topics:
May 4 - 1999 - May 14

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~