| Jane
Brockman's concert music is informed by her experience with other media: dance, film, and
television, as well as the formal structure of teaching in academia.
Raised
in upstate New York, Brockman was the first woman to
earn a Doctorate in Music Composition in the 150-year history
of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also
studied in Paris with Max Deutsch on a Fulbright/ Alliance
Française fellowship and in Vienna on a Rackham
Prize fellowship. She has been awarded honors and fellowships
from the MacDowell Colony (3 years), the State of
Connecticut, Meet the Composer, and the Composers
Conference (directed by Mario Davidovsky). Her first orchestra
piece won the Sigvald Thompson Prize for orchestral
composition. Brockman's mentors include Pulitzer Prize
winners Leslie Bassett and Ross Lee Finney, as well as George
Balch Wilson, Wallace Berry and Eugene Kurtz.
Brockman taught music
theory and composition at the University of Connecticut
for 9 years, where she founded the University's Computer Music
Studio and produced electronic music concerts. She has also
been on the faculties of the Hartt School of Music, the
University of Rhode Island and the University of Michigan.
She was one of four composers selected nationally for a Sundance
Institute Film Composers' Lab fellowship, working with
Henry Mancini, Bruce Broughton, Alan Silvestri, David Newman
and the Utah Symphony.
Afterward,
she left her tenured professorship at the University of Connecticut
to freelance as a composer in the Los Angeles area, scoring
films and television, as well as writing concert music. Today,
in Santa Monica, her focus is entirely on concert music. Her
music is recorded on the AIX, Leonarda, Opus One, Coronet, Drimala, Centaur
and Capstone labels, and published by Arsis Press,
Washington, D.C. and Diaphanous Music, which is
distributed by Theodore Front Musical Literature Inc.
Her music has been in the touring repertoires of Continuum
and the New Music Consort in NYC, and virtuoso clarinetists
F. Gerard Errante, William Powell, and Roslyn Dunlop (Australia). She
has served on the Boards of Directors of New York's Composers
Concordance, as well as Women in Film, and the
Society of Composers and Lyricists in Los Angeles.
She also served for three years on review panels for the National
Endowment for the arts, Washington, D.C. and produced
concerts with the LoCal Composers Ensemble. She is the director/CEO of Music and Conversations, Inc.
IN MEMORIUM: to Three Dear Friends Bebe Barron (1925-2008), "first lady of electronic music": composer with husband, Louis, of the score to Forbidden Planet. The Score Interview with Bebe, and my memoire of her, New York Times obit. Leonard Rosenman (1923-2008), prolific composer of film and concert music scores. Jon Burlingame's obit for The Film Music Society. They've also published a special issue on Leonard in The Cue Sheet to which I am a contributor. Coming soon: my 1993 interview with Leonard for The Score (Society of Composers & Lyricists) . Sara Fishko's brilliant piece on Leonard aired on NPR August 15th. You can listen to the Fishko Files here. Miriam Silverberg (1951-2008), Japanese scholar and passionate teacher.
They are all terribly missed. |
