"Paul Moravec comes to the Institute with a great body of achievement, which has been widely recognized," commented director Peter Goddard. "He will build upon and develop our artist-in-residence program, which has established a strong reputation as a promoter of challenging and provocative music and music scholarship, while also utilizing this opportunity for growth in his own work."
The recipient of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Tempest Fantasy, a thirty-minute "musical meditation" on Shakespeare's play scored for clarinet, violin, cello and piano, Moravec has composed more than ninety orchestral, chamber, choral, lyric, film, and electro-acoustic compositions. While at the Institute he will compose his first major opera as well as a new piece for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. "inasmuch as I was raised in Princeton during the late 'sixties," he observed, "I regard this residency as a kind of homecoming."
Born in Buffalo, New York, Moravec attended the Lawrenceville School and received his B.A. in music composition from Harvard University in 1980. After graduation, he won a Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome. Upon obtaining both his master's (1982) and doctoral (1987) degrees in music composition from Columbia University, Moravec went on to teach at Columbia and later at Dartmouth and Hunter Colleges. He is currently University Professor at Adelphi University.
Recent world premieres include Anniversary Dances by the Ying Quartet, Atmosfera a Villa Aurelia by the Lark Quartet, Mark Twain Sez by cellist Matt Haimovitz, Cornopean Airs by the American Brass Quintet, The Time Gallery by eighth blackbird at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Everyone Sang by baritone Troy Cook for the Marilyn Horne Foundation, and two works written for for the Elements String Quartet.
Moravec's music is published by Subito Music Publishing.
