Gregory Spears

Background

Spears grew up in Virginia. He attended Eastman School of Music, received a master's degree at Yale University, and earned his PH.D. at Princeton University. He studied with Hans Abrahamsen and Per Nørgård while a Fulbright Scholar at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

Style

Spears’ music often draws on earlier musical styles processed through contemporary minimalist techniques.

The New York Times's Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim described his opera Fellow Travelers: "But what makes “Fellow Travelers” such a satisfying operatic experience is the old-fashioned combination of a swift-flowing and deft libretto and gorgeous music. Mr. Spears has the rare gift of artful plunder, knowing how to pluck stylistic elements from earlier centuries and weave them into a sleek and propulsive score that is accessible but unmistakably modern. With his light touch, Mr. Spears has created a tender study of innocence and the rewards and risks that lie on the other side of its destruction."

Heidi Waleson described Spears' compositional style in her Wall Street Journal review of the opera O Columbia: "Mr. Spears writes brilliantly for vocal ensembles. Starting with neoclassical-style clarity, he builds textured, complex musical structures that sound old and new at the same time, and his skillful text settings use minimalist-like repetition to give Mr. Vavrek's pointed, thoughtful words even more power and emotional specificity."

Steve Smith, in his New York Times review of the opera Paul's Case, based on the Willa Cather short story of the same title, described the score: “Mr. Spears’s elegantly spare music, with its gamelan-redolent modes and clockwork repetitions, Baroque vocal fillips, intricately woven ensembles and dramatically placed dissonances, further infuses the tale with a sense of ritual and inevitability.”

David Patrick Stearns, in his Philadelphia Inquirer review of Spears' Requiem, described his musical influences: "Spears intersperses the swan myth with the requiem text, much of it reflecting lyrical Baltic influences of Arvo Pärt, but with a young composer's restlessness. The swan's song is speculatively re-created with otherworldly vocal ornaments. The piece also contains counterpoint that echoes 16th-century madrigals as well as a modern sense of theatrical timing that keeps your ears on edge until the last note."

Fellow Travelers, adapted by Greg Pierce from the novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon, premiered at Cincinnati Opera on June 17, 2016. It received positive notices in Opera News, the New York Times, and parterre box.

Opera

Chorus and orchestra

Large chamber ensemble

Small chamber ensemble