Artist-In-Residence Jon Magnussen Reappointed At Institute For Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study has reappointed composer Jon Magnussen as Artist-in-Residence, the appointment to continue through the academic year 2006-07. A composer of music for the concert hall, drama, and dance, Magnussen also organizes the Institute’s annual concert series and all related lectures and workshops.
Magnussen composes for a variety of ensembles and for voice; his scores on occasion combine acoustic and electronic elements.
Recent performances of Magnussen compositions include Scenes (2003), commissioned by the Symphony San Jose Silicon Valley and performed at the San Jose [Calif.] Center for the Performing Arts. A California critic described Scenes as “an accumulation of musical moments, fast-moving melodic fragments and instrumental colors.” As part of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Arts Festival, Magnussen conducted the premiere of his new ballet score for the 1967 Jose Lim�n ballet, Psalm. When Psalm was performed in New York City this year, the New York Times lauded it as “beautifully textured new music. … It sounds like a modern-day mass and matches the grandeur and simplicity and sweep and vital detail of the dance.”
Magnussen has orchestrated 19th-century chamber works for choreographer Robert Hill's new ballet Dorian, based on Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The score was commissioned by the American Ballet Theatre; the ballet is being performed this fall at New York’s City Center.
Magnussen, born in Sierra Leone and raised in Hawaii, graduated from Cornell University in 1990 with high honors in music. He studied harmony, counterpoint, and fugue in Paris for three years, where he received the Diplome D’Ecriture Musicale from the Conservatoire National Sup�rieur de Musique de Paris, and also attended composition classes at the Ecole Normal de Musique.
Returning to the United States, he entered The Juilliard School in New York City, earning his master’s degree in 1995 and his doctorate in 1999. In 1998 he received the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Martin E. Segal Award, designed to further the career of a young artist associated with the Center. While a doctoral candidate he taught Julliard courses in electronic music, concert production, and music for dancers.
He has received support from such organizations as the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts, and others. Among those who have commissioned his works are the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the Lim�n Dance Company, the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., and the New Julliard Ensemble.
Magnussen’s works have been performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and Royce Hall in Los Angeles.
Magnussen has introduced a new direction for the Institute for Advanced Study concert series, entitled Recent Pasts 20/21, through which, over the next four years, the Artist-in-Residence program will explore music of the recent past through chamber music concerts, lectures, and symposia.
For information on the Institute for Advanced Study’s Artist-in-Residence Program, call 609-734-8389.