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Benjamin Lees

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Name
  
Benjamin Lees


Role
  
Composer

Benjamin Lees wwwbruceduffiecomlees1ajpg

Died
  
May 31, 2010, Glen Cove, New York, United States

Spouse
  
Leatrice Lees (m. 1948–2010)

Education
  
University of Southern California (1945–1948)

Books
  
Benjamin Lees - Dialogue: Cello And Piano, String Quartet No. 3: Set of Parts

Awards
  
Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada

Similar People
  
Ian Hobson, Cypress String Quartet, Elmar Oliveira, John McLaughlin Williams, Harlem Quartet

Benjamin lees 1924 2010 piano sonata no 4 adagio


Benjamin Lees (January 8, 1924 – May 31, 2010) was an American composer of classical music.

Contents

Benjamin lees 1924 2010 symphony no 2 movement ii


Early life

Lees was born Benjamin George Lisniansky in Harbin, China, of Russian-Jewish descent. He began piano lessons at 5 with Kiva Ihil Rodetsky of San Francisco and started composing as a teenager.

After serving in the United States military, Lees studied composition under Halsey Stevens, as well as with Kalitz and Ingolf Dahl, at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. Composer George Antheil, impressed by Lees' compositions, offered further tutelage; this period lasted four years, at the end of which Lees won a Fromm Foundation Award.

The receipt of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954 allowed him to live in Europe, realizing his goal of developing his individual style away from current fashions in the American art music scene and resulting in a number of mature and impressive works. Returning to the United States in 1961, he divided his time between composition and teaching at several institutions. These included the Peabody Conservatory (1962–64, 1966–68), Queens College (1964–66), the Manhattan School of Music (1972–74), and the Juilliard School (1976–77).

Compositions

Lees rejected atonalism and Americana in favor of classical structures. Niall O'Loughlin writes in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "From an early interest in the bittersweet melodic style of Prokofiev and the bizarre and surrealist aspects of Bartók's music, he progressed naturally under the unconventional guidance of Antheil." Lees' music is rhythmically active, with frequently changing accents and meter even in his early works, and is known for its semitonal inflections in melody and harmony.

In 1954, the NBC Symphony Orchestra performed his Profiles for Orchestra on a national radio broadcast. Notable works include Symphony No. 4: Memorial Candles, commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1985 to commemorate the Holocaust, and Symphony No. 5: Kalmar Nyckel, written in 1986 to honor the founding of Wilmington, Delaware. (Kalmar Nyckel was the name of the ship that first carried the original settlers from Sweden to what would become Wilmington.) His 1998 Piano Trio no. 2, "Silent Voices" was written in Palm Springs.

Lees received a Grammy nomination for Kalmar Nyckel in 2003, following release of a recording by the German orchestra Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz under Stephen Gunzenhauser. He lost to Dominick Argento.

Awards and honors

  • 1953: Fromm Foundation Award
  • 1954: Guggenheim Fellowship
  • 1955: Copley Medal
  • 1956: Fulbright Fellowship
  • 1958: UNESCO Award, Sir Arnold Bax Society Medal
  • 1966: Guggenheim Fellowship
  • 1985: Lancaster Symphony Orchestra's Composer's Award
  • 2003: Grammy Nomination
  • National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.
  • Discography

  • String Quartets Nos. 1, 5 and 6 (Naxos)
  • Complete Violin Works of Benjamin Lees (Albany)
  • Concerto for French Horn and Orchestra (New World)
  • Violin Sonata No. 2 (Polystone)
  • Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (VoxBox, EPR)
  • Prologue, Capriccio and Epilog (CRI)
  • Symphonies No. 2, No. 3 and No. 5, Etudes for Piano & Orchestra (Albany)
  • Symphony No. 4: Memorial Candles (Naxos)
  • Concerto No. 2 for Piano & Orchestra (Albany)
  • Concerto No. 1 for Piano & Orchestra (Pierian)
  • Piano Trio No. 2: Silent Voices (Albany)
  • Passacaglia for Orchestra (Delos)
  • Piano Sonata No. 4, Mirrors, Fantasy Variations (Albany)
  • Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra (conducted by Igor Buketoff)
  • References

    Benjamin Lees Wikipedia