About Robert Paterson, composer
Composer Robert Paterson's richly colorful, wildly eclectic and intensely rhythmic music is influenced by visual art, nature, machines, and more, and is inspired by everything from the changing seasons, crashing waves, and Dali's melting clocks to the life of New York Mets Baseball catcher Mike Piazza. From 2009-2012, he is the Music Alive composer-in-residence with the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association, sponsored by Meet The Composer and the League of American Orchestras. This residency culminates in a commission for a thirty-minute work for orchestra, chorus and narrator entitled A New Eaarth. To be premiered in May 2012, this work will be narrated by noted environmentalist Bill McKibben and is inspired by Eaarth, Mckibben's best-selling book on global warming. Other recent honors include winning the Cincinnati Camerata Composition Competition, the Copland Award, Louisville Orchestra Composition Competition, Brian Israel Prize, two ASCAP Young Composer Awards, and grants from Meet The Composer, the American Music Center, the American Composers Forum and ASCAP, as well as fellowships to Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
Born in 1970, Paterson was raised in Buffalo, New York, the son of a sculptor and a painter. Percussion was his first love, and an enduring one. Paterson pioneered the development of a six-mallet marimba technique presenting the world’s first all six-mallet marimba recital at the Eastman School of Music in 1993. He discovered a passion for composition early in life as well, writing his first piece at age thirteen.
Recent and upcoming performances of Paterson’s work include the European premiere and sixteen additional performances of Dancing Games by the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire (France); the premiere of a new work for the Vermont Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jaime Laredo; two new choral works for the Chamber Choir of Europe; an orchestral opera in two acts with writer and librettist David Cote, based on the award-winning British novel A Child Possessed by R.C. Hutchinson; Wind Quintet by the Philharmonia Quintet (Poland); Eternal Reflections, commissioned for the San Francisco-based Volti choir; Embracing the Wind by the Aureole Trio and New York Harp Trio; the Louisville Orchestra world premiere of Electric Lines, winner of the orchestra’s new music competition, and a work previously selected for the Minnesota Orchestra and American Composers Orchestra New Music Readings; Enlightened City, commissioned for the 100th anniversary of the IHS Orchestra; and the world premiere of Crimson Earth by the University of Connecticut Wind Ensemble.
Ensembles that have performed Paterson’s music include the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, New York New Music Ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, California EAR Unit, Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble, Ensemble Aleph (Paris), Naiades Ensemble (London), Ensemble Nouvelles Consonances (Belgium), the Kairos String Quartet, the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, the MANCA Festival presented by the Centre National de Création Musicale (CIRM) and the June in Buffalo new music festival. Paterson appears on recordings for Mode Records, Centaur Records, Capstone, and Riax. In 2011, The Book of Goddesses, which won Paterson the Composer of the Year Award from the Classical Recording Foundation, and Star Crossing were released by American Modern Records, the label of American Modern Ensemble.
Paterson has received degrees from Eastman (BM), Indiana University (MM), and Cornell University (DMA). He resides in New York City with his wife, Victoria, a violinist, and their young son Dylan.
