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    • Featured Artist - Moses Hogan


    Morten Lauridsen


    Morten Johannes Lauridsen, Composer-in-Residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994-2001 and Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for more than thirty years, occupies a permanent place in the standard vocal repertoire of the Twentieth Century. His seven vocal cycles -- Les Chansons des Roses (Rilke), Mid-Winter Songs (Graves), Cuatro Canciones (Lorca), A Winter Come (Moss), Madrigali: Six "FireSongs" on Renaissance Italian Poems, Nocturnes, and Lux Aeterna -- and his series of sacred a cappella motets (O Magnum Mysterium, Ave Maria, O Nata Lux, Ubi Caritas et Amor and Ave Dulcissima Maria) are featured regularly in concert by distinguished ensembles throughout the world. O Magnum Mysterium, Dirait-on (from Les Chansons des Roses) and O Nata Lux (from Lux Aeterna) have become the all-time best-selling choral octavos distributed by Theodore Presser, in business since 1783. In speaking of Lauridsen's sacred works in his book, Choral Music in the Twentieth Century, musicologist and conductor Nick Strimple describes Lauridsen as "the only American composer in history who can be called a mystic, (whose) probing, serene work contains an elusive and indefinable ingredient which leaves the impression that all the questions have been answered... From 1993 Lauridsen's music rapidly increased in international popularity, and by century's end he had eclipsed Randall Thompson as the most frequently performed American choral composer."

    His works have been recorded on over a hundred CDs by ensembles including the Robert Shaw, Dale Warland and Donald Brinegar Singers, the San Francisco, Cleveland and Dallas Symphony Choruses, Pacific Chorale, Seattle Pro Musica, the Los Angeles and San Francisco Chamber Singers, Choral Cross-Ties, Chicago a cappella, New York Concert Singers, Germany's Nordic Chamber Choir, Finland's Lumen Valo and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. Maestro Paul Salamunovich and the Los Angeles Master Chorale received a Grammy nomination in 1998 for their CD of his compositions entitled Lux Aeterna on RCM Records. His principal publishers are Peermusic (New York/Hamburg) and Peer's affiliate, Faber Music (London).

    A recipient of numerous grants, prizes and commissions, Mr. Lauridsen chaired the Composition Department at the USC Thornton School of Music from 1990-2002, and has held residencies as guest composer/lecturer at over two dozen universities. His most recent commissions have been from Harvard University, the San Francisco Bay Brass, and the Raymond Brock Memorial Commission for the American Choral Directors Association's 2005 national convention in Los Angeles.

    Raised in Portland, Oregon, Mr. Lauridsen (b. February 27, 1943 in Colfax, Washington) attended Whitman College and worked as a Forest Service firefighter and lookout (on an isolated tower near Mt. St. Helens) before travelling south to attend USC, where he studied composition with Ingolf Dahl, Halsey Stevens, Robert Linn and Harold Owen. He divides his time now between Los Angeles and his summer cabin on a remote island off the northern coast of Washington. (Photo and biography taken from the arranger's web site.)
     
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