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Michael Colgrass is an American-born Canadian musician, composer, and educator.
His musical career began in Chicago as a jazz musician. He graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in percussion performance and composition, including studies with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Festival and Lukas Foss at Tanglewood. He served two years as timpanist in Seventh Army Symphony in Stuttgart, Germany and then spent eleven years supporting his composition activities as a free-lance percussionist in New York City where his performance experiences included such varied groups as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, The Metropolitan Opera, Dizzy Gillespie, the Modern Jazz Recording Orchestra's Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky series, and numerous ballet, opera and jazz ensembles. He organized the percussion sections for Gunther Schuller's recordings and concerts, as well as for recordings and premieres of new works by John Cage, Elliott Carter, Edgard Varèse and Harry Partch. During his New York period he continued to study composition with Wallingford Riegger and Ben Weber.
Colgrass has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic and The Boston Symphony, as well as the orchestras of Minnesota, Detroit, San Francisco, St.Louis, Pittsburgh, Washington, Toronto, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the Manhattan and Muir String Quartets, the Brighton Festival in England, the Fromm and Ford Foundations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and numerous other orchestras, chamber groups, choral groups and soloists.
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