Philip Koplow
Philip Koplow
Professor Emeritus
Compostion & Theory
D.M.A., Cleveland Institute fo Music
M.M. & B.M., Kent State University
E-mail: koplowp@nku.edu
Philip Koplow has fulfilled commissions for some of America's finest ensembles, including the Cincinnati Symphony, the National Symphony, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, and the Cincinnati Choral Society. He has also composed music for school and student ensembles. He is a national leader in the creation of audience interactive music, music that allows non musicians to perform with professionals and major orchestras. The principal orchestras in Cleveland, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Washington D.C. have presented his music as have regional and youth orchestras. He has used his music to speak to some of the 20th century's grimmest tragedies, like the Kent State shootings (a choral work), the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination (a viola sonata), the Vietnam War (a string quartet), the 1952 single day murder of six Soviet Jewish Poets (choral work with orchestra), the Holocaust (a choral work with string quartet), and the war in Bosnia (a work for two violins and orchestra). He has also produced lieder and choral music on texts by recognized poets and community people including children. As a child Koplow overcame severe leaning disabilities and went on to earn a doctorate and be nominated for a Pulitzer Price in Music. "I have always wanted to empower people by including them in the work of a living classical composer. It is about shared humanity, culture, and vulnerability. And it is about speaking, well singing, for justice and peace. I tell children to use their angry and hurt feelings to create something, a picture, a poem, a song, a rap. Life, and life in a good society, is about creation."
Born in Cleveland Ohio in 1943, Koplow received degrees in composition from Kent State University and his doctorate from the Cleveland Institute of Music. His teachers at Kent were Fred Coulter, Walter Watson, and James Waters. His doctoral studies were under Donald Erb. Since 1976 he has been composer-in-residence at Northern Kentucky University. NKU has promoted accessibility, community involvement and sensitivity, and a life long dedication to learning. The composer has been very comfortable in this environment and has complemented it well.
Philip Koplow's first association with professional Cincinnati musicians was the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra (CCO) performance of his tone poem "Generations" in 1980. In this work, members of the audience released music boxes on cue from conductor Paul Nadler. Koplow's first audience interactive work was "On Imagination" (1976) for choir and symphonic band; here audience members were given two nails,one tied to a string, which was used to simulate chimes which accompanied the last section of the piece. The text is drawn from a poem by Phyllis Wheatley who was an educated slave living in Boston during the American Revolution. The first performance of this work was at the dedication of the Fine Arts Theater at NKU. A second performance was during the opening celebration of the Aronoff Center for the Performing Arts in Cincinnati (1995).
In the Concerto for Piano and Public Consort (1978) audience members played toy instruments, rehearsed during intermission, and accompanied a virtuoso pianist. Legacy J. Ralph Corbett was commissioned by Cincinnati Public Radio Station WGUC to honor Cincinnati's best loved arts patron. NuTone Inc., Mr. Corbett's old company, constructed and donated nine hundred resonator bells that the audience played, cued by flashing colored lights; here the Cincinnati Symphony, under Jesus Lopez-Cobos and Keith Lockhart, was joined by six high school and youth choirs.
"Hello Family" was composed for a series of ten children's concerts with the National Symphony (1993). This work was a collaboration between the composer and ethnomusicologist/educator Dr. Craig Woodson. Woodson creates instruments out of common objects. His concerts and workshops are known internationally. In the first "Hello Family" performance, over 25,000 children from 300 Washington D.C. area schools created instruments in class and came to the Kennedy Center to perform with the National Symphony. This Spring the Hamilton-Fairfield Symphony, under Paul Stanbery, will become the eighth orchestra to perform Hello Family.
The Night of the Murdered Poets commemorative concert took place in Music Hall, Cincinnati, in 1983. This was the culmination of three years work by Koplow and composers Jonathan Kramer, Bonia Shur and a dedicated community group lead by the Cincinnati Jewish Community Relations Council. The program protested the August 12, 1952 Moscow execution of 24 Soviet Jewish artists and community leaders, including six poets. The composers set poetry by the slain poets for chorus and orchestra. Here the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and the Cincinnati Choral Society were lead by Paul Nadler. Koplow's large work, "Day Grows Darker", was premiered at this time.
The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took place on the composer's birthday, April 4th, 1968. The following year he completed "Sonata In Memoriam"; "Martin Luther King Jr". for viola and piano (available from Liben Music Publishers). Twenty-five years later an opportunity to record with an orchestra in Poland inspired the composer to orchestrate this work. "Elegy" for Viola and Orchestra; "Martin Luther King Jr." - performed by violist Karen Dreyfus and the Silesian Philharmonic - is available on the Master Musician's Collective label. Also available on this label is the Variations on a Hymn Tune ("Amazing Grace") composed for the principal cellist of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Gita Roche.
A sabbatical from Northern Kentucky University plus a commission from the Southwest Florida Symphony allowed for the composition of "For The Peace Of Cities" ( . . . Sarajevo . . Dayton . . . ) for two violins and orchestra. The work incorporated actual Bosnian folk music and was double premiered by the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra (CCO) and the Symphony of Southwest Florida (in Ft. Myers). For the Cincinnati performance the soloists were chamber orchestra concert master, James Braid, and Jorja Fleezanis, who was the original CCO concert master. To round off this special 25th anniversary reunion concert, Paul Nadler, who founded the CCO in 1973, was engaged to conduct. The work was offered in sympathy to the victims of the war in former Yugoslavia and in celebration of the peace accords which substantially ended the conflict. The accords were negotiated and signed in Dayton, Ohio, only fifty miles north of Cincinnati.
In 1987, Koplow won the Cincinnati Composers Guild / Cincinnati Choral Society contest to compose a work for the Cincinnati bicentennial. The musical theater piece "On The Banks" received three performances during the bicentennial summer and was revived for two more performances in 1993. For this work Koplow was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Another celebratory work was commissioned for the centennial season of the Cincinnati Symphony in 1995. Clear to the Final Ocean was inspired by the life and art and writing of Harlan Hubbard, a modern day Thoreau whose life was dedicated to "natural living" and the Ohio River. Here eleven community hand bell choirs joined the Cincinnati Symphony, under Ivan Fischer. Hand bell players were posted on stage and down all of the isles in Music Hall.
In 1993 the composer fulfilled a Meet the Composer residency at Robert E. Lucas Intermediate School (RELIS) in Sharon Woods, Ohio. Koplow, at a series of assemblies and classroom visits, spoke to the students about music and poetry and the role of the arts in society. He then composed "I Know A Song"; an Explor-A-Torio for Intermediate School Ensembles, setting poetry by the RELIS students to music (including a collective poem by the L.D. class). The forces involved were the band, choir, and string orchestra at the school.
Other youth oriented commissions came locally from St. Xavier High School String Orchestra (Jerusalem Laude), the Children's Ensemble of Northern Kentucky (Two Old Crows), Turkeyfoot Jr. High School band (Wind and "C") and the Southwest Florida Impressions commissioned for the Youth Orchestra of Southwest Florida in 1999. Koplow has also written considerable pedagogical piano music. A collection of these pieces, Mikro - Koplows, is available from the Willis Music Company.
The Continental Harmony Project was sponsored by the American Composers Forum, the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional funding from other foundations. The total budget was over four million dollars. The idea was to link communities with composers to celebrate the new millennium through the creation of new musical works. An organization in each state was able to commission a composer. The Etowah Youth Symphony in Gadsden Alabama commissioned Phil Koplow to create a song cycle using poetry by area residents. During the project Koplow spent a month on site, composing, visiting grade schools, colleges, and giving concerts and lectures. "I Am A Song" was premiered on November 12, 2000 with soprano Darla Brooks Mosteller and the Etowah Youth Symphony under Michael Gagliardo. Half of the eight song texts were by children. Ages of the poets ranged from ten to eighty years old.
In Cincinnati three mayoral proclamations have marked Koplow projects. The composer has commented, "Some people question whether the orchestra should survive, and others question whether they should do any music by living composers. But people must realize that the living composer is a direct link to the tradition of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Mahler and others. The most important function of this great tradition (and of all classics) is to inspire living people to create art to an equally high standard which makes it a living tradition. "That people can still create beautiful and important music is wonderful news for our culture and for our children."