Robert Boury ***

"The musical highlight of my year was hearing my music beautifully performed by Victoria Wefer, Frank Conlon, and Michael Braz at the SAI Centennial Convention in Dearborn, MI. Performances of my colleagues were equally well performed, and it was a pleasure to hear new works by Libby Larsen, Persis Parshall Vehar, and 2003 IAMA Competition winner Robert Gross. I was honored to be one of the judges of the IAMA Competition. Earlier in the summer I served as guest composer at a Composers Institute sponsored by the National Federation of Music Clubs at Northwestern College in St. Paul, MI, where I heard a concert of gifted teens and gave a lecture/demonstration, "How I Became an American Composer." I served on a panel that selected the winning song to be used at the close of national conventions of the NFMC. Fall semester is starting at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock where I have a record number of students enrolled in my Songwriting class, twenty students! We have had to expand the Songwriters Showcases to twice a year, but it appears that will not be time enough to satisfy the growing interest in songwriting on our campus."

Premieres

Soprano Katheryn Venable and pianist Kurt Carpenter presented the voice and piano version of SAI National Arts Associate Robert Boury's setting of Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, as well as two songs from the group American Names and three poems by the composer set to music by Mr. Carpenter, on an Artbursts Concert at the Unitarian Church in Birmingham, AL. Soprano Victoria Wefer and pianist Francis Conlon premiered Boury's commissioned work To Dream Again at the August 2003 SAI Centennial Convention in Dearborn, MI.

Performances

Harold Jones conducted a performance of the composer's Three Pastorales for English Horn and String Orchestra, with soloist Toyin Spellman and the Antara Ensemble, at The Graduate Center CUNY, New York, NY. The composer accompanied soprano Christine Donahue in a performance of the song cycle A Bowlful of Rhinos (poems by Little Rock School Children) at a spring meeting of The Little Rock Musical Coterie; and at a meeting in the fall, he performed his Sonatina 2000. For the 21st year the composer's Prelude in C and Alma Mater were performed at Commencement exercises at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where Boury serves as Resident Composer. Prelude in C was performed in its original version for brass ensemble under the direction of Michael Braz at the opening ceremony of the SAI Centennial Convention in Dearborn, MI. Soprano Katheryn Venable and pianist Kurt Carpenter performed Boury's song cycle The American Sublime (poems by Wallace Stevens), on a BAMA concert in Birmingham, AL.

***Sigma Alpha Iota National Arts Associate

Further Information

• 2001-2002 American Composers Update
• 2000-2001 American Composers Update
• 1997-1998 American Composers Update
• SAI's Composers Bureau Online