Name John Pozdro | Role Composer | |
Born August 14, 1923 ( 1923-08-14 ) Chicago, Illinois Died January 1, 2009, Lawrence, Kansas, United States | ||
John Walter Pozdro (August 14, 1923 – January 1, 2009) was a significant American composer and pedagogue. Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians describes his music as “inherently pragmatic, with tertian torsion resulting in the formation of tastefully enriched triadic harmony, and with asymmetric rhythms enhancing the throbbing pulse of musical continuity.”
Contents
- Biography
- Awards and honors
- Works
- Choral works
- Works for carillon
- Works for orchestra
- Symphonies
- Works for Piano
- References
Biography
Pozdro was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 14, 1923 of Polish and German descent. He began taking piano and music theory lessons at an early age with Nina Shafran. From 1941 to 1942, he studied piano and music theory with Edward Joseph Collins at the American Conservatory of Music. After service in the Military Intelligence Division of the U.S. Army, he entered Northwestern University. There, he studied with Robert Mills Delaney and received his Bachelor of Music in 1948 and Master of Music in 1949. He later studied at the Eastman School of Music with Howard Hanson, Bernard Rogers, and Wayne Barlow earning his Ph.D. in Composition in 1958.
Pozdro had his first teaching position at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls from 1949 to 1950. The following summer, he served as a visiting professor at Northwestern University. During his doctoral residence at the Eastman School of Music (1958), he served as a Teaching Fellow. From 1950 to December 1992, when he retired, he was a faculty member of the University of Kansas. He served as the Department Chairman of Theory and Composition at the university from 1961 to 1988. Pozdro served as the chairman of the university’s annual Symposium of Contemporary American Music from 1958 to 1967.
He received several research grants from the University of Kansas for projects in theory and composition. He was commissioned by the Ford Foundation, the Oklahoma City Symphony, the Music Teachers National Association, Concerts for Young Audiences, the Washington Performing Arts Society, the Stanton Memorial Foundation, and the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America. He participated as chair and panelist at numerous scholarly meetings and was a juror for several national composition competitions. He has had articles published in American Music Teacher, The Composer, and College Music Symposium, among others. His article in American Music Teacher on the nature of nonfunctional tertian harmonic progression was the first such on the subject.
Awards and honors
Pozdro received the Bernard Fink Award for Outstanding Classroom Teaching in 1961, and was selected as one of Kansas University’s outstanding teachers in 1970. He was a co-winner of the National School Orchestra Association-Roth Orchestra Competition in 1972 for Waterlow Park, and was awarded a prize from the Delius Association in 1974 for his Preludes for Piano. He was the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1976, a citation from the American Council of Polish Cultural Arts in 1978 and awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers for achievement in the field of serious music annually from 1965 until 2003. In August, 1993 he served as the guest composer at the University of California at Berkeley where he was presented with the University of California-Berkeley Medal. In 1962 his Third Symphony was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.