Chatman, Stephen
Biography
Born: 1950
Country: Canada
Studies: Oberlin Conservatory, University of Michigan
Teachers: Joseph Wood, Walter Aschaffenburg, Ross Lee Finney, Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, and Eugene Kurtz
Website: http://www.drstephenchatman.co
One of Canada's most prominent composers, Stephen Chatman, Professor of Composition at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver since 1976, is the first Canadian ever short-listed in the BBC Masterprize international competition (2001, “Tara’s Dream” for orchestra).
A winner of the 2005, 2006 and 2010 Western Canadian Music Awards "Classical Composition of the Year" (2005 - Proud Music of the Storm, 2006 - Lawren S. Harris Suite for Piano Quintet, 2010 - Earth Songs), 2010 and 2012 SOCAN Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Awards, and multiple Juno nominee, Chatman is recognized internationally as a composer of choral, orchestral, and piano music. In 2012, Dr. Chatman was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. Dr. Chatman's approximately 100 choral works, widely performed and published by Highgate Press (ECS Publishing, Boston), Boosey & Hawkes (New York), Oxford University Press (New York), earthsongs (Corvallis, Oregon), E.B. Marks (Hal Leonard), Mayfair (Markham, Ontario) and Alfred, have sold more than 500,000 printed copies. Recorded works include three choral collections performed by the Vancouver Chamber Choir, “Due North” (Centrediscs), “Due East” (Centrediscs) and “Due West” (CBC Records-Centrediscs),"Magnificat" (Centrediscs), "A Chatman Christmas" (Centrediscs), mixed ensemble collections, "Vancouver Visions" (Centrediscs), "Earth Songs" (Centrediscs), an orchestral collection, “Proud Music of the Storm” (Centrediscs), and instrumental recordings on C.R.I., CBC Records, Naxos, Atma, Globe, Crystal, Skylark, Arsis, and Frederick Harris Music Celebration Series. His orchestral works, commissioned by the Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton, Windsor, and Madison symphonies, Calgary Philharmonic, and the CBC Radio Orchestra, and published by Highgate Press (ECS Publishing) and Theodore Presser (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania), have been performed and recorded by the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Niagara, Sydney, Seoul, San Francisco, St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas, New World, Montreal, Quebec, Calgary, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, P.E.I., and Newfoundland symphonies.
Numerous volumes of Dr. Chatman’s elementary through intermediate level piano music are published in the Stephen Chatman Library series, Frederick Harris Music Co., Mississauga, Ontario, and many piano pieces are included in the syllabus of Canada’s Royal Conservatory of Music.
In 1988-89, Dr. Chatman became British Columbia’s first ‘composer in residence’, composing several works for Vancouver’s Music in the Morning concert series, June Goldsmith, director. He was ‘composer in residence’ with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada in 2004. In 2003, Dr. Chatman was one of three Canadian composers to visit Beijing and Shanghai in the “First Exchange of Canadian and Chinese Composers”, sponsored by the Chinese Musicians’ Association (CMA) and the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Vancouver. In 2004, he was the first composer ever awarded the Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance and Development in the Visual and Creative Arts from the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Chatman has received many commissions through the Canada Council, the C.B.C., the B.C. Arts Council, and the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, including works for Vancouver New Music, Montreal’s S.M.C.Q., Winnipeg’s Music Inter Alia, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, musicfest Vancouver, Michigan State University’s Verdehr Trio; Purcell (Vancouver), Accordes (Toronto) and Pro Arte (University of Wisconsin) string quartets; pianists Marc-Andre Hamelin and Jane Coop, contralto Maureen Forrester, baritone Tyler Duncan, violinists Andrew Dawes and Gwen Thompson, cellist Eric Wilson, clarinettists Gene Ramsbottom, Henri Bok, and Philip Rehfeldt, saxophonists Julia Nolan, David Branter, and Donald Sinta, the S.C. Eckhardt-Gramatte Competition, Vancouver’s Chamber Choir, Bach Choir, Cantata Singers, Phoenix Chamber Choir, and Chor Leoni, Calgary’s Kantorei, Toronto’s Elmer Iseler Singers, Oriana Singers, Maryland State Boychoir, Mississauga Children's Choir, Kingston's Cantabile, Surrey (BC) Children's Choir, Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus, Association of Canadian Choral Conductors, Nova Scotia Music Educators’ Assoc., Newfoundland's Philharmonic Choir, University of Michigan Chamber Choir, Peterborough Singers, International Choral Festival Kathaumixw, Banff Centre School of Fine Arts, and Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra.
The only North American to have won three consecutive BMI Awards to Student Composers, Inc. (New York) prizes (1974,’75,’76), Dr. Chatman has also received a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a M.B. Rockefeller Fund Grant, and a U.S. Fulbright Grant for study with Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne. “Crimson Dream” (1983) for orchestra, commissioned by the Edmonton Symphony, was chosen from more than 100 submitted works, for a performance by the Detroit Symphony during the American Symphony Orchestra League’s 1986 annual conference. It has since been performed by dozens of orchestras. “Tara’s Dream” (1999) for orchestra, commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony, was one of 11 works short-listed from 1160 orchestral entries from 63 countries in the 2001 BBC Masterprize international competition. Dr. Chatman’s major work, “Proud Music of the Storm” (2001-02), for large chorus and orchestra, received a standing ovation after its 2002 world premiere performance by the Vancouver Bach Choir and the CBC Radio Orchestra.
Born in 1950 in Faribault, Minnesota, Dr. Chatman studied with Joseph Wood and Walter Aschaffenburg at the Oberlin Conservatory and with Ross Lee Finney, Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, and Eugene Kurtz at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He completed his D.M.A. degree in 1977.
Stylistically, many of Dr. Chatman’s pre-1982 works are complex, virtuosic, and atonal. His early chamber works, in particular, are highly concerned with colour, contrast, and tightly controlled motivic development. By the late 70’s, Dr. Chatman’s music suggests a more complete musical expression, encompassing a broad range of musical traditions, eclecticism, and post-modern aesthetics: collage techniques, simplified musical language, tonality, modality, minimalism, traditional forms, popular music influences, counterpoint of styles, veiled references, and theatrical elements. Dr. Chatman has remarked, “It’s easy to enjoy all types of music-- I don’t want to be pigeon-holed. A composer must be true to himself”. (Stephen Chatman brochure, PROCAN, Toronto, May, 1989).
In 1982, Dr. Chatman began composing choral music influenced by various traditional musical styles. “You Have Ravished My Heart” for SATB (1982), a transitional work and the first of many “accessible” or “popular” choral works, signals Dr. Chatman’s gradual departure from modernism and a path toward post-modernism, spirituality, and a wider audience. These post-1982 secular and sacred choral works, in addition to many educational piano pieces, embrace a predominantly pan-diatonic tonal language, lyricism, melody, folk song, and more traditional musical gestures, forms, and compositional techniques.
As Professor of composition, orchestration, co-director of University of British Columbia Contemporary Players new music ensemble, and Head of the UBC School of Music composition division, Dr. Chatman has taught a generation of prominent Canadian composers. Among his former composition students are Canadian Music Centre Associate Composers, Mark Armanini, Howard Bashaw, Rolf Boon, Glenn Buhr, John Burge,Timothy Corlis, Paul Cram, Neil Currie, Arne Eigenfeldt, John Estacio, Peter Hatch, Melissa Hui, John Korsrud, Christopher Kovarik, Jacqueline Leggatt, Brent Lee, Grace Lee, Ramona Luengen, Michael Maguire, Mark Mitchell, Jocelyn Morlock, Larry Nickel, John Oliver, Bob Pritchard, Laurie Radford, Douglas Schmidt, Paul Steenhuisen, Brian Tate, Peter Togni, Neil Weisensel, and Rui-shi Zhuo. Chatman, who has served on many Canada Council juries and national student composition contest juries, was Jury Chairman of the 2001 CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers.
Stephen Chatman is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, a past President of Vancouver New Music; and a member of the Canadian League of Composers, SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Inc., and the American Music Center. [1]
Works for Percussion
O Lo Velo! - Multiple Percussion, Saxophone
Quiet Exchange - Multiple Percussion (2 Cymbals), Clarinet
References