Tag: 80th Birthday

Well, I missed it. I was off by one day. While I was busy lauding Ulysses Kay on the 100th anniversary of his birth, I failed to notice that January 8 was also the birthday of my friend, composer Robert Moran. And it was not just any birthday. It’s hard to believe that classical music’s merry prankster is now 80 years-old.

Bob has lived a lot in 80 years. Not only did he study twelve-tone music with Hans Erich Apostel in Vienna, he was accepted into a composition class of four at Mills College, where he was taught by Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio. His classmates included Steve Reich, Phil Lesh and Tom Constanten. Lesh and Constanten went on to play for The Grateful Dead. And Reich? Who knows what happened to that guy.

Moran gained notoriety in the late 1960s and early ‘70s through a series of performance pieces that incorporated entire cities, including San Francisco, Bethlehem, Pa., and Graz, Austria. These involved tens of thousands of performers.

His many stage works include “Desert of Roses,” written for Houston Grand Opera, and, in 2011, “Alice” composed for the Scottish Ballet. Maurice Sendak introduced him to the Grimm fairy tale “The Juniper Tree,” which became an operatic collaboration with Philip Glass.

For the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Moran was commissioned to write a work for the youth chorus of Trinity Wall Street, the so-called “Ground Zero” church in Lower Manhattan. “Trinity Requiem,” scored for children’s chorus, four cellos, harp and organ, offers a similar brand of solace to that conjured in the 19th century masterwork by Gabriel Fauré.

With Robert Moran, you never know what you’re going to get. In his more puckish moments, he might write for 39 autos, giant puppets or electric popcorn popper. But then there are times when his natural gift for lyricism will melt your heart.

Happy belated birthday, Bob. We’ll melt a few hearts this afternoon, between 4 and 7 EST, with at least one of his works, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

An aria from “Desert of Roses”:

Selections from “Trinity Requiem”:

“Obrigado” for Iowa Percussion:

Bob, looking groovy in merry prankster mode, introducing his “Lunchbag Opera” for the BBC:

PHOTO: Bob (left) getting caffeinated with conductor, composer and performance artist Rupert Huber