WELCOME
Named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America and honored with multiple Grammy Awards for his ground-breaking setting of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, William Bolcom is a composer of cabaret songs, concertos, sonatas, operas, symphonies and much more.

As a pianist he has recorded for Advance, Jazzology, Musical Heritage, Nonesuch, Vox, and Omega. With his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, he has performed in concert for more than 30 years throughout the United States, Canada, and abroad.
 
In February 2008, his Eighth Symphony was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by James Levine in Boston, MA and Carnegie Hall/New York. Within the same month the Guarneri and Johannes String Quartets premiered Bolcom's Octet:  Double Quartet.
 
In 2007 Bolcom was feted in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, with a two and a half-week festival of his music, including master classes, recitals and concerts of his organ and chamber music. Titled Illuminating Bolcom, the festival was highlighted by two performances of Songs of Innocence and of Experience accompanied by animated projections of Blake's illuminations. The animations were commissioned by VocalEssence and created by projection designer Wendall K. Harrington.

In September 2006 Bolcom's Canciones de Lorca with tenor Placido Domingo, the Pacific Symphony Orchestra and conductor Carl St. Clair was premiered at the gala opening concert of the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Orange Country Performing Arts Center, Costa Mesa, CA. Nine New Bagatelles, commissioned by Friends of New Music/Music Teachers’ Association of California and premiered by four student pianists in Los Angeles in July 2006.

Bolcom has taught composition at the University of Michigan since 1973. He has been a full professor since 1983 and was Chairman of the Composition Department from 1998 to 2003. In the fall of 1994 the University of Michigan named him the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition.

In addition to performing together, Bolcom and Morris have recorded two dozen albums together. Their first one, After the Ball, garnered a Grammy nomination for Joan Morris. Their most recent recordings are two albums of songs by lyricist E. Y. “Yip” Harburg and Gus Kahn on Original Cast Records and Bolcom’s complete cabaret songs, written with lyricist Arnold Weinstein, on Centaur.

Photo credit: Katryn Conlin