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Revision as of 21:19, 28 November 2008 by JustAGal (talk | contribs) (added default sort)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Phillip Ramey (b. Elmhurst, Illinois, United States, September 12, 1939) is an American composer, pianist, and writer on music.
He studied composition with the Russian-born composer Alexander Tcherepnin from 1959 to 1962, first at the International Academy of Music in Nice, France, then at DePaul University in Chicago. He later studied composition with Jack Beeson at Columbia University (1962-65)
For many years, Ramey was one of the closest friends and a neighbor of Paul Bowles in Tangier, Morocco. He has had professional associations with Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Virgil Thomson and Vladimir Horowitz.
Ramey is the composer of orchestral works including three piano concertos, chamber music, and many works for solo piano, among them five sonatas. In 1993 he was commissioned to compose his Concerto for Horn and Strings for Philip Myers and the New York Philharmonic, in celebration of that orchestra's 150th anniversary.
He is the author of several hundred liner notes and interviews with American composers, and served from 1977 to 1993 as the annotator and program editor for the New York Philharmonic. He is also the author of Irving Fine: An American Composer in His Time, which received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor/Nicolas Slonimsky Award for Outstanding Musical Biography.
Compositions
- 1968 - Commentaries, for flute and piano
- 1972 - Leningrad Rag, for piano
- 1984 - Idyll, for flute and piano
Recordings
- 1975 - Carlos, Wendy. Wendy Carlos, By Request. LP. Columbia. Re-released on enhanced CD in 2003 by East Side Digital (Minneapolis, Minnesota). Performed by Wendy Carlos, synthesizer; with Phillip Ramey, piano (4th and 5th works: Dialogues for piano and two loudspeakers and Episodes for piano).
- 2006 - Piano Music, 1961-2003. Stephen Gosling, piano. CD. Toccata Classics.
Books
- Ramey, Phillip (2005). Irving Fine: An American Composer in His Time. Lives in Music series, no. 8. Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press, in association with Library of Congress.
External links
- Interview with Phillip Ramey about Irving Fine biography
- Paul Bowles memoir
- Phillip Ramey page from New Music Jukebox site