FROM THE VASSAR QUARTERLY:

Composer Jonathan Elliott '84 is having a very good year. Several of his new works have premiered at prestigious venues-including New York City's Bargemusic, a concert series held on a barge in the East River, just under the Brooklyn Bridge-and new commissions seem to be keeping up with his inspiration.

Elliott's compositional voice is eclectic. "I was more rigidly non-tonal when I was younger," he reflects, meaning he turned away from music based on a particular key, the harmonic system that governed music from Bach forward until the early 20th century. "In my college and graduate school years, I avoided tonality at all costs. I didn't want to re-write the music of the past. I wanted to create something totally and uniquely my own, and to me, tonality was too full of reference to be usable."

Since then, though, the demands of the music market and the realities of writing for both professional and nonprofessional groups have led him to greater versatility, from creating ultra avant-garde compositions to arranging traditional tunes. He frequently uses electronic sounds in his scores.

Two short pieces the composer performed on the piano, accompanied by additional music on a recording, at the Vassar Reunion Composer's Concert last year were indicative of his new eclecticism. The works, entitled "Bugs" and "Ganges," are elements of what Elliott describes as "a large-scale work of extreme duration, made up of short individual movements." That large-scale work is grandly called A History of Sensation, and Elliott calls it a lifetime project. "I don't imagine I'll ever finish it. As I keep adding to it, it will keep growing. It will only be finished when I am finished."

"Bugs" and "Ganges" incorporate layers of independent lines-"Ganges" even uses portions of a 17th-century aria by Alessandro Scarlatti, altered and distorted by electronic sounds on tape. "Through composing, I can create my own visions of an ideal state of being. My compositions are my idyllic fantasies. Each piece establishes a world of its own."

Elliott was born in Philadelphia and began studying piano at age six. At Vassar he continued with music-studying piano with Todd Crow and composition with Annea Lockwood. He says his Vassar instructors were invaluable to his development. "They were very committed to performances of student music," he says. After graduation, he received the Chittenden Prize from Vassar, which enabled him to spend the summer at the Aspen Music School. It was there he had the opportunity to work with two giants of 20th-century composition: Jacob Druckman and Witold Lutoslawski. Vassar also supported Elliott's _efforts with a Rose Fellowship the next year. Multiple fellowships from the Yaddo and MacDowell artist colonies were crucial to his career.

Elliott went on to earn his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago, where he worked with two other towering figures in the contemporary music scene: Ralph Shapey and Shulamit Ran. But his influences go well beyond those he accrued in class; he mentions jazz and the array of styles he used when gigging in high school, from Motown and funk to covers of Rolling Stones songs.

With such a rich blend of music feeding his creative juices, it's no wonder that Elliott's works are in demand from a wide range of artists and organizations. Commissions have come in from the American Composer's Forum, CUBE New Music Ensemble, the Trio Auréole, the North American Saxophone Congress, the Poetry Project and P.S. 122 in New York City, the Riverdale Choral Society, and numerous individual performers. And last year's reunion concert elicited another commission: Alexandra Gardner '90 heard his performance and asked him to compose a piece for a concert she curated at the Levine School of Music.

Now composer-in-residence for St. Ann's School in Brooklyn Heights, Elliott is working on a quartet for piano, horn, bass clarinet, and cello for the faculty chamber music series there. Also coming up is a score for Given Fish, a short film by Melissa James Gibson and Tim Vasen. Elliott has just received a commission for a new work-which he's calling Odd Preludes for alto saxophone and piano-from the International Saxophone Congress. Underwritten by the University of Florida, Odd Preludes will premiere in Montreal this July and be followed by a monthlong residency at the university, where the composer will give concerts, seminars, and lectures on his work.

Elliott's commission from the renowned Metropolitan Opera soprano Heidi Grant Murphy, entitled "Hommage a B.B.," was released last August on the Koch International Classics label, on an album called Dreamscape. The album received widespread critical acclaim, including praise fromNew York Times new-music specialist Paul Griffiths. Murphy and the Trio Aureole also broadcast Elliott's adaptation of the classic "The Holly and the Ivy" on NPR's "Performance Today" at Christmastime last year.

SUMMER 2000 VOLUME 96 ISSUE 3 : FEATURES