composer

Lee Hyla was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and grew up in Greencastle, Indiana. He studied composition with Malcolm Peyton at New England Conservatory, and at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, with David Lewin. His musical background also includes extensive experience as a pianist in new music, rock, and free improvisation. He has been commissioned by numerous performers including the Midori/Vadim Repin commissioning project, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet (with Allen Ginsberg), The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Speculum Musicae, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Lydian String Quartet, Triple Helix Piano Trio, the Firebird Ensemble, Tim Smith, Tim Berne, Rhonda Rider, Stephen Drury, Mia Chung, Judith Gordon, Mary Nessinger, and Boston Musica Viva.

In addition, Hyla has received commissions from The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Fromm Music Foundation, Barlow Endowment, The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, The Mary Flagler Carey Charitable Trust, Concert Artists Guild, three commissions from Chamber Music America, and four Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest Consortium commissions. In 2007-08 he was the composer-in-residence with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra as part of the Meet the Composer Music Alive Residency program. Hyla has also been the recipient of the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a Guggenheim Fellowship Award, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Goddard Lieberson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Rome Prize.

His music is published exclusively by Carl Fischer and has been recorded on Nonesuch Records, New World Records, Avant Records, Tzadik, and CRI. His CD Wilson’s Ivory-bill was released on Tzadik. In the fall of 2004, Hyla was Resident Composer at the American Academy in Rome. He also served as chairman of the composition department at New England Conservatory, where he taught from 1992 to 2007. In September 2007 he began an appointment as the Wyatt Chair in Music Composition at Northwestern University.

Performances

Moonshine Room at Club Café | January 29, 2013
John Knowles Paine Hall at Harvard University | March 22, 2007
Bellefield Hall Auditorium at University of Pittsburgh | January 28, 2006
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | January 21, 2006
Moonshine Room at Club Café | November 16, 2004
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | January 18, 2003
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | January 19, 2002
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | January 20, 2001
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | May 8, 1999
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | February 21, 1997

News and Press

[News Coverage] Lee Hyla, 61, Who Mixed Rock and Jazz Into Classical Works, Dies

Lee Hyla, an American composer whose work marries the formal rigor of classical music with the driving energy of rock and the improvisational abandon of jazz, died on June 6 in Chicago. He was 61.

His death, from complications of pneumonia, was announced by Northwestern University, where he held the Harry N. and Ruth F. Wyatt chair in music theory and composition.

The New York Times Full review
[CD Review] Fanfare reviews Lee Hyla: Lives of the Saints

Lee Hyla (b. 1955) writes a muscular music that is deeply rooted in classical practice, but also owes a lot to more roughhewn influences: to my ear, at least, the strongest is progressive/free jazz. In an interesting way, he’s found a way to do what many composers have attempted but failed at—to produce a genuinely American form of Expressionism, freed from the trappings of fin de siecle Vienna.

Fanfare Full review
[CD Review] American Record Guide reviews Lee Hyla: Lives of the Saints

Two spiritually charged pieces from vastly different worlds by Lee Hyla, who has recently lefts his long-time post at New England Conservatory for an appointment at Northwestern University in Chicago. Both of these pieces were written for Nessinger while Hyla was in residence at NEC. At Suma Beach (2003) is a work in four sections for mezzo, solo clarinet, and chamber ensemble, based on the Noh play Matsukaze.

American Record Guide Full review
[News Coverage] A record label of one's own

The news these days about the classical music recording industry is almost always bleak, so it’s a pleasure to report a bright spot on that landscape: the Boston Modern Orchestra Project has finally launched its own record label called BMOP/sound.

The Boston Globe Full review
[Concert Review] Dulcimer, dances mark Fromm event

CAMBRIDGE -- Pull enough threads in American contemporary music of the last 50 years and you’ll arrive at the Fromm Foundation, which has funded commissions from many of the 20th century’s most distinguished composers. Paul Fromm (1906-1987) was an emigre who fled Nazi Germany and settled in this country, establishing a successful wine importing business in Chicago and, later, a foundation pledged “to restore to the composer his rightful position at the center of musical life.”

The Boston Globe Full review
[Press Release] The Boston Modern Orchestra Project performs in 2007 Fromm Players at Harvard Festival

Presented by Harvard University's Department of Music, this year's "Fromm Players at Harvard" music series features works of five composers to be performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the nation's only orchestra dedicated to performing, commissioning, and recording new music of the 21st century. Curated by British composer and Harvard faculty member Julian Anderson, the 2007 Fromm Festival takes places Thursday, March 22nd, and Friday, March 23rd @ 8:00pm, in the John Knowles Paine Concert Hall at Harvard University (Oxford Street, Cambridge).

Full review
[CD Review] Performance of "Saints" so good it was sinful

The concert began with a composition set At Suma Beach, but a summa of a different kind highlighted this Pitt Music on the Edge event at Bellefield Hall in Oakland.

Guest composer Lee Hyla’s Lives of the Saints, a work for solo voice and chamber ensemble, not only took theology as its subject, but also amounted to a virtual musical treatise.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Full review
[Concert Review] "Connection" proves spirited and spiritual

An indelible image from Saturday’s Boston Modern Orchestra Project concert was that of mezzo soprano Mary Nessinger, shouting through a megaphone some wisdom from St. Francis about perfect joy.

The Boston Globe Full review
[Press Release] BMOP presents 8th annual celebration of Boston composers

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), under artistic director and conductor Gil Rose, presents its 8th annual "Boston ConNECtion" concert on Saturday, January 21. BMOP is one of the few professional orchestras in the United States dedicated exclusively to performing and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Since its founding in 1996, BMOP has programmed 46 concerts of contemporary orchestral music, including 37 world premiere performances, released ten world premiere recordings, and won eight ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming.

Full review
[Press Release] BMOP opens its season with the North American premiere of Louis Andriessen's Trilogy of the Last Day

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), under artistic director and conductor Gil Rose, is one of the few professional orchestras in the United States dedicated exclusively to performing and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Since its founding in 1996, BMOP has programmed 46 concerts of contemporary orchestral music, released ten world premiere recordings, and won eight ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming.

Full review
[CD Review] Lee Hyla: Trans

Lee Hyla writes in a tremendously compressed style in which shape and gesture stand in for conventional melody despite an often clear tonal orientation. Rhythm also plays an important role in activating his musical textures and maintaining linear transparency, and it’s clear from a cursory listen to any of these three works that Hyla writes with a great deal of talent and confidence.

ClassicsToday.com Full review