American composer Tom Myron was born November 15, 1959 in Troy, NY. His compositions have been commissioned and performed by the Kennedy Center, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, the Topeka Symphony, the Yale Symphony Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Bangor Symphony and the Lamont Symphony at Denver University.
He works regularly as an arranger for the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, writing for singers Rosanne Cash, Kelli O'Hara, Maxi Priest & Phil Stacey, the Young People's Chorus of New York City, the band Le Vent du Nord & others. His film scores include Wilderness & Spirit; A Mountain Called Katahdin and the upcoming Henry David Thoreau; Surveyor of the Soul, both from Films by Huey.
Individual soloists and chamber ensembles that regularly perform Myron's work include violinists Peter Sheppard-Skaerved, Elisabeth Adkins & Kara Eubanks, violist Tsuna Sakamoto, cellist David Darling, the Portland String Quartet, the DaPonte String Quartet and the Potomac String Quartet.
Tom Myron's Violin Concerto No. 2 has been featured twice on Performance Today. Tom Myron lives in Northampton, MA. His works are published by MMB Music Inc.
FREE DOWNLOADS of music by TOM MYRON
Symphony No. 2
Violin Concerto No. 2
Viola Concerto
The Soldier's Return (String Quartet No. 2)
Katahdin (Greatest Mountain)
Contact featuring David Darling
Mille Cherubini in Coro featuring Lee Velta
This Day featuring Andy Voelker
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Monday, April 25, 2005
Richard Yates
Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!
-John Keats
As an artist and as a man Richard Yates has never been for the faint of heart. His territory was the pervasive sense of hollowness and self-deception that began to haunt America?s ?Greatest Generation? as the 1950?s gave way to the 60?s and 70?s. His dialog is astonishing. It rings in the mind's ear like music and his ability to use it to let his characters unwittingly lay bare their delusions (particularly artistic delusions) is peerless.
But for all his works relentless intimacy Yates, for me, is ultimately a ?big picture? writer. With few other writers do I experience the unity of the story itself and the way it?s being told so keenly. From the subtlest modulation in tone to the over-arching structure of an entire novel, his best work achieves a formidable narrative momentum that is capable of conjuring deeply haunting images out of the simplest gestures without ever resorting to sprawl or ?special effects.? In fact, one of the most salient features of his authorial voice is its near-invisibility; a fact that contributes in no small measure to the work?s ultimate impact as shattering, believable and utterly beautiful.
As a composer I am very interested in fairly traditional ?large forms?, particularly spans of music that develop in various ways over periods of 25-35 minutes. The problems of making a piece of music function in time in a way that justifies the amount of time it takes to unfold strike me as similar to those involved with making the sections of a novel hang together in a satisfying and meaningful way. In that sense I consider my work to have a ?narrative? dimension, one that places those larger elements of the work in the service of the musical material that is being developed.
In his 1981 essay ?Some Very Good Masters? Yates writes about his craft in way that strikes me as very ?composerly.? His thoughts about Fitzgerald and Keats can stand in for mine on Bartok and Barber.
??F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby turned out to be the most nourishing novel I read, in much the same way that my discovery of John Keats some years earlier made most other English lyric poets seem insubstantial. Like certain of Keats's poems, Fitzgerald's novel is a short piece of work that gains range as it gathers momentum, until the end of it leaves you with a stunning illumination of the world. And the best part of this for an apprentice writer is that the novel can be seen not only as a miracle of talent but as a triumph of technique, suggesting at least a hope that you might be able to figure out how it's done.?
posted by Tom Myron
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