Carter Pann
- BM Eastman School of Music
- MM, DMA Unviersity of Michigan
- Major teachers include William Bolcom, William Albright, Bright Sheng, Evan Chambers, Michael Daugherty, Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, Warren Benson, David Liptak
- Commissions from Richard Stoltzman and the New York Youth Symphony, The Haddonfield Symphony, The River Oaks Chamber Orchestra –Houston, Antares, The Ying Quartet, Brave New Works Ensemble, The Amelia Trio, Barry Snyder, The Three’s Company Trombone Trio, various Wind Ensembles, CBDNA, ABA, and the Colorado Wind Symphony.
- Awards include 5 ASCAP awards, including the Leo Kaplin award, a Charles Ives Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters, the Zoltan Kodaly award in Warsaw for Piano Concerto No. 1, Finalist at the London Symphony’s 2001 MASTERPRIZE Competition, 2000 Grammy nomination for Piano Concerto/Dance Partita album released on NAXOS.
My life as a musician started with the piano. Come to think of it, it will probably end with the piano as well! There is nothing musically that has resounded with me so boldly as my experience with this instrument. My appetite as a musician was formed at the piano smorgasbord, learning the works of Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, Ravel, Debussy, Bartok, Messiaen, etc. These are the composers that have laid the foundation for my own DNA as a composer. It occurred to me at a fairly early age however that a composer’s value is found in his/her originality. Let me be clear about that: I don’t believe composers are charged to reinvent the wheel with every stroke. No… what I do believe is that even though we may go through a formative stage in which we idolize and thereby imitate certain composers, our true, individual colors should come to bloom with time…showing our inner souls as artists. This is not something that comes so naturally to most. I passed through a stage of heavy imitation as a student (Chris Rouse and Bill Bolcom were my heroes… Bill is to this day). An epiphany happened for me at one point, however, when I started to trust my own instincts as an artist… when I found my ideas to be worthy just as they were, on their own. This was quite a breakthrough for me as I was a maturing composer, and I was lucky it happened as early as it did. It is this quality in a young composer I strive to nurture forward. For a student I cannot stress enough the importance of brutal score study, listening, compositional practice, and a regular regiment. This is how one grows up. There is no greater lesson a student can have than the one where an ensemble visits our private hour to play through his/her work-in-progress. You can imagine the hours and hours of speculation that are saved once a group of instrumentalists is “in on the game,” providing invaluable insights into the localized do’s and don’ts, the goods and bads. I wish I had more of these kinds of lessons, so I try to have at least one of these experiences per semester for my own students.
10 things on my iPod:
- Resphigi, Pines, Festivals, Fountains of Rome
- Prokofiev, Complete Orchestral works, including all Concerti
- Led Zeppelin, entire output
- Christopher O’Reilly playing Radiohead
- The Complete Bartok String Quartets, Emerson String Quartet
- Beethoven, Complete String Quartets, Cleveland String Quartet
- Steely Dan, entire output
- Sibelius, Complete Symphonies
- Strauss, Four Last Songs
- Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder, entire outputs
Visit Carter Pann's website.