Larry Bell, Composer
Recognized by The Chicago Tribune as a "major talent", composer Larry Bell has been awarded the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and the Charles Ives Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received grants from Meet the Composer, the American Symphony Orchestra League, and the American Music Center. Bell received his doctorate from The Julliard School as a student of Vincent Persichetti.
Bell's music has been performed in the United States, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, Canada, and Jamaica by leading ensembles and orchestras such as the Seattle Symphony, the RAI Orchestra of Rome, the Julliard Philharmonia, the Boston Chamber Music Society, Speculum Musicae, and Music Today. The Julliard String Quartet premiered Bell's String Quartet No. 1, written when the composer was 21. Bell's music has been heard on WXQR, WGBH, RAI 3, and on a one-hour National Public Radio documentary devoted to his music. His Sacred Symphonies was recorded by the Radio Bratislava Symphony Orchestra and released in 1993 on the Vienna Modern Masters label.
As a pianist, Bell has concertized in Italy, Austria, New York, and Boston as well as throughout the Northeast and Southeast. A champion of contemporary American music, he gave the European premiere of Persichetti's Parable for piano, and first performances of Persichetti's Twelfth Piano Sonata and Frederic Rzewski's North American Ballads and A Machine. Bell also frequently lectures and gives masterclasses on contemporary music.
In 1995, Larry Bell made his debut as a conductor at the Aspen (CO) Music Festival, and his "Blues Theme with Variations" was introduced at the Moscow Autumn Festival. Commissioned by the vocal ensemble, Modus Novus, A Cry Against the Twilight" was premiered in San Francisco in April, 1996. Bell played his Piano Sonata in Boston, New York and Tokyo; his "vibrant" (The Music Connoisseur) CD recording is on North/South Recordings. In June of 1996, he recorded his Piano Concerto with the Russe Philharmonic in Bulgaria which was to be released on the Vienna Modern Masters label late in 1996. On December 8 of 1996, his new work Mahler in Blue Light was premiered by 30 different trios through the auspices of the World-Wide Concurrent Premieres and Commission Fund, Inc. Bell's recent honors include election to the Board of NACUSA.
Larry Bell was born in Wilson, North Carolina in 1952. He taught theory and solfege at The Julliard School's Pre- College Division from 1979-1984. Since 1980, he has taught composition at The Boston Conservatory. In 1992, he was appointed to the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music.
Works Performed by the HSO
Idumea Symphony (Symphony No. 2)
The following notes were written by the composer:
"Idumea" (pronounced I-doó-ma) is the Biblical name of a hymn tune taken from the Sacred Harp, an important nineteenth-century hymn book used widely in the South. The first line of text is the haunting question "And am I born to die?" This phrase and the awestruck concluding words of text "...and see the flaming skies", are philosophical and imagistic points of departure for the music I composed for the Symphony.
The Idumea Symphony is in four movements corresponding to the classical number and pacing of movements. The first movement, a monothematic sonata form in the tempo of a slow waltz, incorporates the borrowed hymn tune with my own harmonization. Here the character is visionary and ecstatic. The second movement, Transcendental Scherzo, has two distinct tempos: one a swinging, jazzy scherzo that parodies the hymn tune, and the other tempo is a very slow-moving version of the scherzo material written in distant tonality. This second movement prophesizes the ominous fourth and last movement. Double Variation formally describes the third movement's alternation between an original melody and the hymn tune. The finale has a punning subtitle "What Goes Around Comes Around." The hymn tune is used here as the basis for "rounds" with rock-inspired rhythms culminating in a driving upbeat conclusion.
The Idumea Symphony was completed in the fall of 1996 with the help of a residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. The work is dedicated to its commissioner: Jed Gaylin and the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra.