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| David Amram's 75th Birthday Concert  On Saturday, November 19 Jazz Forum Arts will present Amram Jam II, celebrating David Amram's 75thBirthday at the historic Tarrytown Music Hall. David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works, written many scores for Broadway, theater and film, including the classic scores for the films “Splendor in The Grass” and “The Manchurian Candidate;” two operas, including the ground-breaking Holocaust opera “The Final Ingredient;” and the score for the landmark 1959 documentary “Pull My Daisy, ” narrated by novelist Jack Kerouac. He is also the author of two books, Vibrations, an autobiography, and “Offbeat: Collaborating With Kerouac, ” a memoir.A pioneer player of jazz French horn, he is also a virtuoso on piano, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion, and dozens of folkloric instruments from 25 countries, as well as an inventive, funny improvisational lyricist. He has collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, who chose him as The New York Philharmonic's first composer-in- residence in 1966, Langston Hughes, Dizzy Gillespie, Dustin Hoffman, Willie Nelson, Thelonious Monk, Odetta, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Charles Mingus, Lionel Hampton, E. G. Marshall, and Tito Puente. Amram's most recent work “Giants of the Night” is a flute concerto dedicated to the memory Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac and Dizzy Gillespie, three American artists Amram knew and worked with. It was commissioned and recently premiered by Sir James Galway, who also plans to record it.He is also completing his third book “Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.” Today, as he has for over fifty years, Amram continues to compose music while traveling the world as a conductor, soloist, bandleader, visiting scholar, and narrator in five languages. He is also currently working with author Frank McCourt on a new setting of the Mass, “Missa Manhattan, ” as well as on a symphony commissioned by the Guthrie Foundation, “Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie.” write your comments about the article :: © 2005 Jazz News :: home page |