Biography Wikipedia
Wikipedia:
William Joseph Susman, born August 29, 1960 in Chicago, is an American composer of concert and film music as well as an accomplished pianist. He belongs to the generation of American composers that came of age in the late twentieth century, received traditional academic training while remaining thoroughly engaged with popular music (in his case, jazz), and who went on to establish careers for themselves outside the academic establishment. Susman has written orchestral and chamber music for concert performance, as well as documentary film scores.
His first major work and earliest recognition was for Pentateuch for soprano, three choral groups and divisi orchestra which caught the attention of Earle Brown at the BMI awards in 1985. At Brown's recommendation, he received a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation. For his Fromm commission he composed Trailing Vortices (1986) for chamber orchestra which had performances at the Aspen Music festival as well as the Alicante and Gaudeamus music festivals both conducted by Ernest Bour. Trailing Vortices was inspired by photographs found in An Album of Fluid Motion by Milton Van Dyke. He then applied the acoustical concepts of Shepard tones and the studies of Jean Claude Risset to create an "aural translation" of trailing vortices.
Music
His music is notable for how it integrates diverse influences spanning the western classical and jazz tradition to science and numerology. Rhythm plays a strong role in his compositions through musical devices such as the Afro-Cuban montuño, medieval hocket and isorhythm. The New York Times has described his music as ".. vivid, turbulent, rich-textured..." and The Folk and Acoustic Music Exchange said his album Music for Moving Pictures is "A flawless gem...of rare beauty and consummate aesthetic discretion".
In addition to performances of his music in the U.S. and Europe, his compositions have been featured on radio such as New Sounds on WNYC, Echoes on NPR and Concertzender in the Netherlands. At the 2005 Moondance Film Festival, he won the Seahorse/Best Score Award for Oil on Ice, and for Fate of the Lhapa in 2007. At the 2006 Park City Film Music Festival, he won the Gold Medal for Excellence/Jury Choice for Oil on Ice, and the Gold Medal for Excellence/Audience Choice for Native New Yorker, which also won best documentary short at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival - New York City.
He scored When Medicine Got it Wrong which premiered in May 2009 for PBS. Another score Balancing Acts: A Jewish Theatre in the Soviet Union for the Chagall exhibit at the Jewish Museum New York, ran November 2008 – March 2009 and screened at the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum April – September 2009. These scores feature grammy-nominated cellist Joan Jeanrenaud.
A one hour showcase of his music for small ensembles was featured at The Stone (music space) in NYC including a live performance to a screening of the Tribeca winner Native New Yorker with the Ebony String Quartet and Demetrius Spaneas on multi-winds.
Recent premieres in April and May 2009 include Stas Venglevski performing Zydeco Madness for accordion solo and Three Different Keyboards for accordion, marimba, and piano in Chicago by accessible contemporary music, Zydeco Madness (To the Forgotten of Hurricane Katrina) by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, and a work for string orchestra, Snow Lion of Peace, performed for His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama during his visit to San Francisco. His work The Starry Dynamo performed by the chamber ensemble Piccola Accademia degli Specchi was featured in October 2009 in Rome as part of the contemporary music festival Nuovi Spazi Musicali.
In March 2010 Metropolitan Opera principal percussionist Gregory Zuber and Met Opera flutist Patricia Zuber performed Amores Montuños at Juilliard and again at Symphony Space in September 2010 at The New York Chamber Music Festival which they commissioned.
In March 2011 the first recordings for the newly formed ensemble OCTET were produced in New York at Kilgore Sound. OCTET is a scaled down big band using one each from the brass section plus rhythm: saxophone, trumpet, trombone, drums/percussion, piano, keyboard, vocals, and contrabass. In November 2011, OCTET premiered his Piano Concerto at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.
In September 2011, his Flute quartet entitled Seven Scenes for Four Flutes premiered at The New York Chamber Music Festival with flutists from the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera including Denis Bouriakov, Maron Khoury, Patricia Zuber and Bart Feller. In October 2011, Camille, commissioned by Piccola Accademia degli Specchi premiered at the Zeeuwse Concertzaal in Middelburg, Netherlands.
Influences
His earliest orchestral works such as Openings, Pentateuch and Trailing Vortices pay tribute and demonstrate an affinity to the explorations of Iannis Xenakis and György Ligeti. His interest in algorithmic composition can be attributed also to his composition teacher Herbert Brun at the University of Illinois and John Chowning at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). His early use of microtonal composition was influenced by another University of Illinois teacher Ben Johnston as well as Xenakis.
Other influences that make their appearance early on include numerology in works such as Pentateuch and the Fibonacci number series in Twisted Figures and Uprising. He also studied piano with Pauline Lindsey (a student of Artur Schnabel), Steve Behr (pianist with Louis Armstrong) and Alan Swain.