Rodney Lister received his early musical training at the Blair School of Music in Nashville, Tennessee. He was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music (Bachelor of Music degree, with honors) from 1969 to 1973 and at Brandeis University (Master of Fine Arts degree) from 1975 to 1977. In between his stay at those two institutions, he lived in England, where he studied privately with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He subsequently was a member of Davies's composition seminar at the Dartington Hall Summer School of Music (1975, 1978, 1980-82). He was a Bernstein fellow at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in 1973. His composition teachers, aside from Davies, have been Malcolm Peyton, Donald Martino, Harold Shapero, Arthur Berger, and Virgil Thomson. He has also studied piano with Enid Katahn, David Hagan, Robert Helps, and Patricia Zander.
Mr. Lister was co-founder and co-director of Music Here & Now, a concert series of new music by Boston area composers at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1971-1973), and from 1976 until 1982 was music coordinator of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. He was a founding member of the Music Production Company in 1982 and continues to work with the group as pianist and composer.I’m just about to start loading my car to move out to Greenwood for the next five weeks. Greenwood is a music camp in Cummington, in Western Massachusetts, mainly devoted to chamber music (although all the kids play in the orchestra and they all sing in the chorus, both of which perform every week on the Saturday night concerts along with all the chamber music groups.) It’s hard to say exactly what it is about the piece that makes it as wonderful and magical as it is, but it is. Even though it’s sort or trite to say so, people who have been there as kids (or as faculty) feel some kind of common bond, and they tend to stay in touch with each other throughout their lives. I was there first for a week in 1992, or 1991, I think… I wrote a ‘cello quintet which was played; I’m still in contact with four of the five kids who played the piece. The Chiara Quartet has been in residence since last summer; two of them are former campers.
This summer is Greenwood’s 75th anniversary, and there are various celebratory things happening, including a concert on July 6 by the Chiara and Joel Krosnick (another alum) featuring the Schubert Quintet. Peter Westergaard, also a former camper, from the 40’s, has written a flute quartet which will be played by students sometime during the summer. There’s a piece commissioned for the orchestra every year; this year the composer is Geoff Hudson. I’m not sure what else might be done. (I’ve been thinking maybe Irving Fine Quartet, maybe Shostakovich 7th, maybe Copland Sextet, but who knows…In a way it doesn’t matter.)
The concerts start a week from tomorrow. They start at 7:30 and go on for a long time. They’re pretty wonderful. The kids are incredibly good, and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced an audience anywhere else that listens so intently, with such concentration and interest. If anybody’s going to be in the neighborhood, they’re worth going to hear.
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