Discipline: Music Composition

Donald Sur

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Somerville, MA
MacDowell Fellowships: 1987, 1988, 1989, 1994
Donald Young Sur (1935–1999) was a Korean American composer and musicologist. Although he is best known for his large-scale oratorio, Slavery Documents, most of his works were composed for small chamber ensembles. Sur was born in Honolulu and moved with his family to Los Angeles after World War II. He studied at the University of California and Princeton before spending four years in Korea researching ancient Korean court music. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard in 1972, he settled in Boston, where many of his works were premiered and where he taught at several local universities, including Harvard, MIT, and Tufts.

Studios

Irving Fine

Donald Sur worked in the Irving Fine studio.

Youngstown Studio was given to MacDowell by friends of Miss Myra McKeown in Youngstown, OH, where she promoted both art and music. It was renamed Irving Fine Studio in 1972 in honor of Irving Fine, a distinguished composer, conductor, and teacher who was a MacDowell Fellow during the 1940s and 1950s. The simple interior of the studio…

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