Home > William Bolcom

Bolcom was born in Seattle, He entered the University of Washington at age 11, where he studied piano and composition. He later studied with Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen.

His opera, A View from the Bridge, with libretto by Arthur Miller and Arnold Weinstein, was premiered October 9, 1999, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago,

As a pianist, Bolcom has performed and recorded his own work frequently in collaboration with his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. Bolcom and Morris have recorded twenty albums together, beginning with After the Ball, a collection of popular songs from around the turn of the 20th century. Their primary specialties in both concerts and recordings are showtunes and popular songs from the early 20th century, and cabaret songs (often from failed musicals).

Bolcom's setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of ExperienceThe Songs of Experience is a poetry collection, forming the second part of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience''. Each poem written in Innocence is reflected in 'Experience', with quite a different perspective of the world. Blake believed th, a full evening's work for soloists, choruses, and orchestra culminated 25 years of work on the piece. Its premiere at the Stuttgart Opera in 1984 was followed by performances in Ann Arbor, Chicago's Grant Park, the Brooklyn Academy of MusicBrooklyn Academy of Music B. pronounced BAM! in Emerilese is located in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, at 30 Lafayette Avenue near the Flatbush Avenue Station of the Long Island Rail Road and the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, the tallest building in, St. Louis, Carnegie HallCarnegie Hall is a concert venue in Manhattan, New York City. It is one of the most significant venues for classical as well as popular music in the US, known not just for its beauty and history but also for its fine acoustics. Form Carnegie Hall is actua, and LondonLondon is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England, and with over seven million inhabitants in the Greater London area, is the second-most populous conurbation in Europe (after Moscow). From being Londinium the capital of the Roman province of Bri's Royal Festival HallThe is a conference, concert, dance and art performance venue in Lambeth, London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It seats 3,865 people in three auditoria, and is a Grade I listed building the first po, the latter performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. Bolcom's other works include a number of piano rags, some written in collaboration with William Albright (the composer, not the evangelical Methodist archaelogist, biblical authority, linguist and expert on ceramics), and a number of cabaret songs written for his wife (including the unforgettable "Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise").