Robert Paterson

Explore about the Famous Composer Robert Paterson, who was born in United States on April 29, 1970. Analyze Robert Paterson’s net worth, age, bio, birthday, dating, height-weight, wiki. Investigate who is Robert Paterson dating now? Look into this article to know how old is Robert Paterson?

Robert Paterson Biography

Known for his orchestral, wind symphony, chamber ensemble, percussion, and choral pieces, this New York-born composer, conductor, and percussionist wrote such acclaimed works as Electric Lines, Quintus, and String Quartet No. 1.

After studying composition and percussion at the Eastman School of Music, he earned advanced degrees in music composition from Indiana University and Cornell University.

He founded a New York City-based classical music group called the American Modern Ensemble.

He grew up in Buffalo, New York as the son of visual artists Tony and Eleanor Paterson. He later settled in New York City with his violinist wife, Victoria, and the couple’s son, Dylan.

During his college years, he studied with classical composer Samuel Adler.

Robert Paterson (born April 29, 1970) is an American composer of contemporary classical music, as well as a conductor and percussionist. His catalog includes over 100 compositions. He has been called a “modern day master” and is primarily known for his colorful orchestral works, large body of chamber music and clear vocal writing in his operas, choral works, vocal chamber works and song cycles.

Paterson began composing on his own at age 13 and studied composition privately for two years with William Ortiz-Alvarado from 1984–86. He also took private percussion lessons at age 12 and attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts for two summers, in 1982 and 1983. He attended the Nichols School in eighth grade and middle school and high school at the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, where he performed in the wind ensemble, jazz band and various choirs, and also played on the tennis team. He also studied percussion with various teachers in the greater Buffalo area, including Lynn Harbold (former principal percussionist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra), Jack Brennan (former assistant timpanist with the Buffalo Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, timpanist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra), David DePeters (currently percussionist and Executive Director, Iris Orchestra), Anthony Miranda and John Bacon, as well as piano with Claudia Hoca (pianist for the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra) and Edmund Gordanier. While a high school student, Paterson also attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute for two summers where he studied percussion with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, including Arthur Press, Charlie Smith and Tom Gauger, and also performed in the BUTI Orchestra under Eiji Oue and guest conductor Leonard Bernstein.

Paterson received a Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music where he studied with Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler, Warren Benson and David Liptak, graduating in 1995. While at Eastman, he was a double major in composition and percussion and studied percussion with John Beck, and also performed in Eastman’s Musica Nova ensemble under Sydney Hodkinson and also became a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. In 2001 he received a Master of Music degree from the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University in Bloomington, where he studied composition with Frederick A. Fox and Eugene O’Brien, performing in the IU Contemporary Ensemble under David Dzubay, and percussion with Gerald Carlyss (former timpanist with the Philadelphia Orchestra) and Thomas Stubbs (Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra). In 2004, he received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Cornell University where he studied composition with Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra. In 1999 he studied with John Harbison and Bernard Rands at the Aspen Music Festival and School, as part of the Advanced Master Class and as the recipient of the Second ASCAP Aspen Film Fellowship. In 2000 he studied privately with Aaron Jay Kernis at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

As a conductor, Paterson has conducted the American Modern Ensemble since it was founded in 2005, and has also conducted the Society for New Music ensemble and Atlantic Music Festival Contemporary Ensemble. As a percussionist, Paterson spent many years developing a six-mallet technique based on the Burton grip. He developed this technique while studying with John Beck at the Eastman School of Music, where he presented the world’s first all six-mallet marimba recital. As well as composing his own six-mallet works, he has “been instrumental in the commissioning of six-mallet works for solo marimba” and has to date, written fourteen works using a six-mallet technique (extended technique) he developed. His recording Six Mallet Marimba is the first all six-mallet marimba album ever released, and contains many of Paterson’s six-mallet marimba compositions. Paterson performs on a five-octave marimba made by Doug DeMorrow.

After leaving graduate school, Paterson moved to New York City and soon after began teaching at Bronx Community College for one year, and then Sarah Lawrence College for four years. While teaching, Paterson began working on a variety of commissions for ensembles such as Quintet of The Americas, The California EAR Unit and Volti. In 2005, Paterson and his wife Victoria co-founded the American Modern Ensemble and American Modern Recordings, an Independent record label distributed by Naxos of America (a division of Naxos Records) specializing in contemporary classical music, with an emphasis on music by living American composers.

Paterson was born on the West Side of Buffalo, New York. He is the son of Tony Paterson, an award-winning sculptor who was Professor of Sculpture at the University at Buffalo, and Eleanor Paterson, a painter and bilingual education director at Erie Community College who received her Ph.D. in bilingual education from the University at Buffalo. Although Paterson was surrounded by sculptors and painters while growing up, his father enjoyed contemporary classical music and took him to new-music concerts at the University at Buffalo, where he heard works by Morton Feldman and John Cage, with both composers in attendance. Paterson “grew up in a home where his parents – a sculptor and a painter – always listened to music.” He has one brother, David Paterson, who is also a musician and teaches in the New York City public schools.

Paterson is also influenced by the music of other classical composers, including Russian composers such as Igor Stravinsky (“Sun Trio”, second movement), Dmitri Shostakovich and Alfred Schnittke, and French composers such as Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen, and American composers such as Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Steve Reich and many of his former teachers. He has said, “…I am essentially interested in unifying all musical elements—and many non-musical elements (i.e. ‘noise’) — into a cohesive whole.”

In 2016 Paterson the Director of the Composition Program at the Atlantic Music Festival and he taught there from 2012–2017. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Mostly Modern Festival. Paterson has taught at Cornell University, Sarah Lawrence College, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Bronx Community College, The Walden School, Point Counterpoint (New Music on The Point) and the Rocky Ridge Music Center, where he was also Composer-In-Residence from 2012–14, and was a visiting composer in 2015.

Although many of Paterson’s works are serious or at least musically abstract in nature, a selection of his works incorporate humorous elements, such as his chamber vocal song cycles “Batter’s Box” and “CAPTCHA”, and his choral works “The Essence of Gravity” and “Did You Hear.” Regarding humor in his own music, Paterson has said, “Of all of the aspects of writing that seem to intrigue people regarding my work, my embracing humor is probably the most contentious: some people like, it, some do not. Many composers admit that they do not care to write ‘funny’ music. It seems as if they think they are in danger of being considered trivial or not serious if they embrace humor.”

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