updated 24 September 2009
© Kathleen Karn

Edmund Campion

American composer born in 1957 in Dallas, Texas.

Edmund J. Campion was born in the United States in 1957. He received his doctorate from Columbia University, where he studied under Mario Davidovsky. In 1989, He received a Fulbright-Hays Award to study composition and orchestration at the Conservatoire national de Paris under Gérard Grisey.

In 1992 he was a guest of the Tanglewood Music Center, where he received the Paul Fromm Award, which included a commission for What goes up for ensemble. A year later, the University of Massachusetts, Boston, awarded him the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Composition Award, and in 1994, he was a fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Soon after he traveled to Paris to participate in Cursus (the IRCAM’s composition and computer music course), where Losing Touch was premiered in 1995. Afterward, the IRCAM commissioned other works from him: Natural selection in 1996; Play-Back, a dance, video, and musical performance for the Festival Agora in 1999; and Corail, in 2001. That same year, L’Autre, a commission from Radio France, which premiered at the Festival Présences, was also performed at the IRCAM.

Campion often explores the relationship between music and nature, which is a major theme of several of his works, such as Ellipsis (1995), Corail, and Outside Music (Fromm Foundation, 2004). The CIRM (Centre national de création musicale) commissioned Me for solo baritone and electronics, which premiered at the Festival Manca in 2002, based on a text by the poet John Campion on the relationship between art and ecology. The creation of multidimensional spaces is fundamental to his work, as is evident in Quadrivium (1995-1998), a cycle for ensemble and quadriphonic tape.

In 2005, a commission from the French Ministry of Culture for Les Percussions de Strasbourg Ondoyants et divers premiered on WDR German Radio. In 2006, Practice, commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, premiered at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. 600 secondes dans le vieux modèle was commissioned by Radio France for large ensemble and premiered in 2009 at the Festival Présences.

Campion has received numerous awards and honors from institutions such as the Fondation de France, the Fondation Nadia et Lili Boulanger, the American Center, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Charles Ives Prize. He teaches music at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also co-director of the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT).


© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2009

Sources

  • Site internet du compositeur
  • Université de Berkeley
  • CNMAT

(voir ressources documentaires)

  • Solo (excluding voice)
  • Chamber music
    • Acwot A Complete Wealth of Time, for two pianos (1989-1990), 17 mn
    • Repetition 75 for flute and clarinet (1992), Lemoine
    • Encore des ronds for eight cellos (1995), 6 mn, Lemoine
    • Rounds for five saxophones (1995), 6 mn, Lemoine
    • Musica for flute, clarinet, marimba and piano (1997), Inédit
    • Domus aurea for vibraphone and piano (1999), 13 mn 30 s, Peters
    • elec ircam stage Play-Back dance, video and music show (1999), 2 h 20 mn, Inédit [program note]
    • elec Adkom A Different Kind of Measure, for four percussionists and electronics (2001), Inédit [program note]
    • elec Outside Music for ensemble and computer-sampler controlled by keyboard (2004), 15 mn 30 s
    • Overheard chime duo (2004)
    • Ondoyants et divers for percussion sextet (2005)
    • From Swan Songs for violin and piano (2008)
    • elec Auditory Fiction for flute, clarinet, cello, piano and electronics (2010), 11 mn
  • Instrumental ensemble music
  • Vocal music and instrument(s)
    • Ellipsis installation in the Acquario Romano, for piano, choir and accessories (1995-1996), 2 h 24 mn, Inédit
    • elec ircam L’autre for horn, two percussionists, harp, mezzo-soprano-narrator and stereo tape (1999), 20 mn, Inédit
    • elec Name calling poetic reading with synthesizer (1999), Inédit
  • A cappella vocal music
  • Electronic music / fixed media / mechanical musical instruments

Bibliographie

  • Edmund CAMPION (an interview with), par Keeril Makan, Computer Music Journal, ed. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hiver 2004, vol. 28, n° 4, p. 16-24, téléchargeable sur http://www.mitpressjournals.org (lien vérifié en septembre 2009).

Cds, dvds

  • Edmund CAMPION, Melt me so with thy delicious numbers, Ellen Ruth Rose : alto, dans Tribute to Chou Wen Chung, avec,des œuvres de Chou Wen-chung, Joji Yuasa, Chinary Ung, Edgard Varèse, Hi Kyung Kim, Bright Sheng, Zhou Long, Pablo Ortiz, James Tenney, Chen Yi, 2 cds Albany Records, 2009.
  • Edmund CAMPION, Losing Touch, dans Roland Auzet : Percussion (s), avec des pièces de Carlos Roque Alsina, Roland Auzet, Alain Bancquart, Pierre Jodlowski, Darius Milhaud, Gérard Pape, Yoshihisa Taïra, Karen Tanaka, Iannis Xenakis et des textes de Pierre Boulez, Pierre-Albert Castenet, Roland Auzet et Steven Schick, 3 cds, 1 dvd, 1 livre Inactuelles, Mode, 2008.
  • Edmund CAMPION, Outside Music, comprenant aussi Domus Aurea ; Complete Wealth of Time ; Melt me so with thy delicious numbers… ; Losing Touch, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, David Milnes, 1 cd Albany Records, 2002, n° TR1037.
  • Danielle JAEGGI, Losing touch, Ed Campion, film, images : Christophe Maizou, son : Alberto Crespo, montage : Nicole Sérès, producteurs : Les Films d’Ici, partenaires : MCM Classique Jazz-Muzzik, Centre Georges Pompidou, Ensemble intercontemporain, Ircam, Sacem, Ministère de la culture et de la communication, direction de la musique, de la danse du théâtre et des spectacles, CNC, Les Films d’Ici, 1999.
  • Edmund CAMPION, Ellipsis, Edmund Campion : piano, membres de la chorale de l’Université de Berkeley, P.S.1 Volume : Bed of Sound, http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/audio/7675 (lien vérifié en novembre 2010).

Liens Internet