European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

Alvin Singleton Celebrates 80 With a Flurry of Performances

Dec. 01, 2020

Schott Music composer Alvin Singleton will celebrate 80 years "around the sun" on December 28, 2020! Alvin Singleton has collaborated extensively with major orchestras worldwide and has written significant works for chamber and vocal ensembles, as well for the theater, and solo instruments, his celerbated series of solo "Argoru" pieces (available now on PSNY) having been performed across the globe. Alvin Singleton's many awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, commissions from The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation and American Composers, the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis by the City of Darmstadt, the Musikprotokoll Kompositionspreis by the Austrian Radio, the Mayor’s Fellowship in the Arts Award by the City of Atlanta, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2014, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

This season has been a busy one for Singleton who is currently serving as the Karel Husa Visiting Professor of Composition at Ithaca College for the 2020-21 academic year. November 6 saw the release of Against Method, a recording which celebrates the 20th anniversary of the New York-based new music collective counter)induction. Included in this new release is the world premiere recording of Singleton's Ein Kleines Volkslied. On September 26, the Locrian Chamber Players performed In My Own Skin as part of their "Online Festival of Solos." After Choice was streamed as part of the Bard Music Festival's "Out of the Silence" series on September 12, and on October 18 Seth Parker Woods played Argoru II  as part of the livestreamed Bang on a Can Festival. On November 2, Philip Brunelle, Artistic Director of Vocal Essence, presented an introspective feauture on Alvin Singleton's music as part of Brunelle's engaging "Musical Moments" series. 


(Philip Brunelle discusses the music of Alvin Singleton on the "Musical Moments" series)

Bent Frequency performed Jasper Drag on November 6 at Georgia State University, and Ensemble Modern, led by Vimbayi Kaziboni, performed the German premiere of Alvin Singleton's Again on November 7 as part of their Festival NOW! 2020 which was focused on "Afro-Modernism in Contemporary Music" and curated by composer and professor, George Lewis. The concert was streamed live on YouTube. Finally, on November 20, the University of Miami's Frost Symphony Orchestra, led by Gerard Schwarz, performed Ein idee ist ein Stück Stoff to a virtual audience on YouTube which is still available to view.

We wish Alvin Singleton a very happy 80th birthday!

To learn more about Alvin Singleton, visit: schott-music.com.

News