I was raised by my teachers on a diet of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schuman, and eventually Brahms, my favorite. There was always some "modern" music thrown in.... With the discovery of each new composer a new world opened up for me. It wasn't really until I discovered the music of Charles Wuorinen with whom I began studying at eighteen that I finally was exposed to Carter (with whom I later studied) and Boulez and Stravinsky and Stefan Wolpe.[7]
Picker's Symphony No. 1 premiered at the San Francisco Symphony in 1983, and, that same year, Picker was the soloist in his Piano Concerto No. 2: "Keys to the City", commissioned by the city of the New York for the Brooklyn Bridge Centennial.[12] Later that year, Picker's "The Encantadas" was premiered by the Albany Symphony Orchestra. In 1985, Picker was appointed the first composer-in-residence of the Houston Symphony[13] where he introduced his most popular orchestral work, Old and Lost Rivers, as well as two symphonies and other concerted works. In 1992, Picker was awarded the Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Music.[11]
Since 1993: Operas, directorship, and later career
Other works include Tres sonetos de amor, settings of Neruda love poems in versions for baritone and orchestra, and voice and piano; and The Blue Hula, a work for chamber ensemble. Picker's complete orchestral catalogue includes three symphonies, four piano concertos and concertos for violin, viola, cello and oboe.[56]
Picker has also composed numerous chamber works. In 2009, the American String Quartet commissioned and premiered his String Quartet No. 2 at Merkin Concert Hall in New York.[57] In that same year, the pianist Ursula Oppens premiered Picker's Four Etudes for Ursula and Three Nocturnes for Ursula at Baisly Powell Elebash Recital Hall, also in New York.[58] In 2011, Picker was featured in a Miller TheatreComposer Portrait Concert, featuring the Signal Ensemble, Sarah Rothenberg, and the Brentano String Quartet, who premiered his Piano Quintet "Live Oaks".[59]
Operas
edit
Emmeline (1996): The Santa Fe Opera commissioned and produced the world premiere of Picker's first opera, which was subsequently broadcast nationally on the PBS Great Performances series. The premiere recording was released on CD by Albany Records.[60]
Thérèse Raquin (1999/2000): Picker's third opera (libretto by Gene Scheer) was commissioned by a consortium of companies, including The Dallas Opera, San Diego Opera, and the Opéra de Montréal. Picker received a new commission from Opera Theatre Europe for a reduced-scale version of Thérèse Raquin, which was performed in March 2006 at the Linbury Studio of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.[64] The premiere performance was recorded and released by Chandos in 2001.[65]
Picker composed the ballet, Awakenings (2010), inspired by Awakenings by his long-time friend, Oliver Sacks,[73] and commissioned by the Rambert Dance Company. The piece was premiered by Rambert in Salford, UK, in September 2010. Rambert toured the work around the UK with over 80 performances in the 2010–11 season.[74]
Additional recordings of the composer's music are available on Sony Classics, Virgin, Nonesuch Records, Ondine, Bridge and First Edition, among others.
Picker's partner since 1980 has been Aryeh Lev Stollman. They were married on March 9, 2016, in a ceremony officiated by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the United States Supreme Court.[114][115]
Picker has Tourette syndrome.[14] He has mentioned that there are "tourettic" elements in his music. Picker appeared in a BBC Horizon television documentary, titled Mad But Glad, exploring a link between Tourette's syndrome and creativity,[116] and has been involved in mentoring programs for children with Tourette's.[117] Picker has tics which he says disappear when he is composing, playing the piano, or conducting. He has said, "I live my life controlled by Tourette's...but I use music to control it. I have harnessed its energy—I play with it, manipulate it, trick it, mimic it, taunt it, explore it, exploit it, in every possible way."[118] Sacks wrote of the inspiration he took from Picker's music in the preface to his book, The Island of the Colorblind, saying he "owe[d] a special debt to Tobias Picker's version of The Encantadas", and that "whenever, in the writing, memory failed me, listening to the piece operated as a sort of Proustian mnemonic, transporting me back to the Marianas and the Carolines".[119]
References
edit
^"Biography". Tobiaspicker.com. Archived from the original on February 7, 2009. Retrieved January 25, 2009.
^Matthew Gurewitsch (October 25, 2001). "A Soap Opera in Song". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved September 21, 2020. "Which has also attracted the notice of Tobias Picker, our finest composer for the lyric stage."
^Andrew Porter (November 13, 1978). "Musical Events". The New Yorker. Retrieved September 21, 2020. A genuine creator with a fertile, unforced vein of invention.
^Michael Kennedy; Joyce Bourne Kennedy (2007). "Picker, Tobias". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-920383-3. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
^"House and Collection". The Stanley Picker Trust. Retrieved September 24, 2020.
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^ abSlice, John Van der (2001). "Picker, Tobias". Grove Music. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.42554. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
^Schonberg, Harold C. (January 22, 1977). "Concert: Speculum Musicae Presents 'Old' and New". The New York Times. Retrieved July 9, 2018.
^Andrew Porter (November 13, 1978). "Musical Events". The New Yorker. Retrieved September 21, 2020. "A genuine creator with a fertile, unforced vein of invention."
^ abc"Tobias Picker". Schott Music. Retrieved September 21, 2020. By the age of thirty, Picker was the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the Bearns Prize (Columbia University), a Charles Ives Scholarship, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. ... He received the prestigious Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1992 and was elected to lifetime membership in the Academy in 2012. ... The Encantadas (for actor and orchestra) features texts drawn from Herman Melville's poetic descriptions of the Galapagos Islands and was recorded by the Houston Symphony with Sir John Gielgud; it has been performed throughout the world in seven languages.
^Page, Tim (May 25, 1983). "A concerto to the beat of the city". The New York Times. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
^Zinn, Joshua (February 24, 2017). "Picker, Paganini, And The Piano | Houston Public Media". Houston Public Media. Retrieved July 9, 2018.
^ abSchwarz, K. Robert (May 2, 1999). "A Composer Freed by Opera To Be Tonal And Tuneful". The New York Times. Retrieved September 19, 2020. It was a signal moment in the rebirth of tonality. When the curtain rose on Tobias Picker's first opera, Emmeline, in 1996, the orchestra conjured an atmosphere of grim foreboding, circling endlessly around a single, brooding chord. As if to emphasize his immersion in the dark realm of B flat minor, Mr. Picker prefaced the score with a device long scorned by modernists: a key signature.
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