Location: Zoom, for more information and access please contact Janet Smith.
Presenting District: Central Oregon
Presenter: Dr. Matt Cooper[expand title=”Read Presenter Bio” swaptitle=” “]Matt Cooper is a Professor Emeritus of Music at Eastern Oregon University, where he was awarded the 2019 Distinguished Teaching Faculty award, retiring after a 31-year college teaching career. He served as OMTA President from 2000 to 2002, during which time he traveled to Khabarovsk, Russia as part of the “Music Without Borders” exchange program, leading to two additional invitations to perform in Khabarovsk in 2002 and 2004.
Dr. Cooper earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He has done extensive study in the Taubman approach at the Golandsky Institute and Princeton University and has studied Tango music in Buenos Aires. A former prizewinner in the Thelonious Monk and Great American Jazz Piano competitions, he is the author of Duke Ellington: A Study in Styles.
Dr. Cooper has adjudicated many piano festivals and competitions and has performed numerous solo recitals, chamber recitals, and concerto appearances throughout the Northwest. He has recorded four jazz and classical CDs and is in frequent demand throughout the Northwest as a performer, adjudicator, clinician, and presenter.[/expand]
Program Description: Duke Ellington has been widely acknowledged as America’s greatest “jazz” composer, but[expand title=”Read More” swaptitle=” “]from a 21st Century perspective many are now viewing his work as the equal of other composers working from European models. Ellington himself liked to use the phrase “beyond category” as the highest praise, and as recent scholarship by David Schiff and Harvey Cohen points out, Ellington’s music has been “ghettoized” partly due to popular mythology about his methods of composing.
Although he did not attend conservatory and he purposely avoided European models in his quest to create a music that would reflect the unique perspective of African Americans, Ellington did in fact study harmony and composition with Henry Grant, Will Marion Cook, and Will Vodery. His longtime collaborator from 1941 to 1967, Billy Strayhorn, was also an accomplished classical musician who thoroughly understood Ravel, Stravinsky, and Debussy. Contrary to popular belief, Ellington was a tireless composer who left behind nine cubic meters of scores, many in his own exquisite hand. Although a single critical edition of Ellington’s work is long overdue, these manuscripts reside in the Smithsonian and include several fully notated solo piano pieces which would make a fine addition to Syllabus, contemporary festivals, or recitals. Though currently unpublished, they are available to the public and are eminently more playable than comparable, hybrid pieces by Astor Piazzolla.
In this workshop, Dr. Cooper will share Ellington piano works such as “The Single Petal of a Rose,” “Meditation,” and “The Clothed Woman” as well as original transcriptions from his book, Duke Ellington as Pianist: A Study in Styles (College Music Society, 2013) and attempt to place Ellington in his rightful place in the wider canon of American music and music in general.[/expand]