Francis Thorne (1922 –2017) was an American composer of contemporary classical music and grandson of the writer Gustav Kobbé. Thorne was a student of Paul Hindemith at Yale University, before entering the U.S. Navy in 1942 where he served during World War II. After the war, he pursued a career on Wall Street and later, as a jazz pianist. Duke Ellington heard him play the piano and arranged an engagement for him at a New York jazz club. From 1959-61, he studied composition in Florence, Italy with David Diamond, who encouraged Thorne to incorporate his jazz sensitivities into his symphonic compositions. In December 1961, Thorne's first opera, Fortuna, premiered in New York City. In 1964 Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered his Elegy for Orchestra. In 1968, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He spent much of his career championing the works of emerging composers. He served as director of the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation and the Thorne Music Foundation from 1965–1974, organizations which commission new works by young composers. In 1977, he founded the American Composers Orchestra with Dennis Russell Davies. The orchestra focuses on performing new compositions by American composers.
Portrait courtesy of American Composers Orchestra
