Discipline: Music Composition

Grant Beglarian

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Scarborough, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1961, 1963, 1990
Grant Beglarian (1927-2002) was a composer, foundation executive, and educator from Tiflis, Georgia, in the Soviet Union. Beglarian was raised in Iran and began his musical studies there before continuing his study at the University of Michigan. After completing his studies, Beglarian studied with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, and concurrently served as an editor at Prentice Hall and as a field director and project director for the Ford Foundation. After Copland's death in 1990, Beglarian would become instrumental in the restoration and administration of the Copland House in Westchester County, N.Y. He taught at the University of Southern California, where he became the dean of performing arts and oversaw the faculties of music, cinema/television, and drama. After his time at USC, Beglarian became the president of the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, based in Miami, and oversaw collaborations between educational organizations and the internet as the international coordinator and director of global partnerships for Thinkquest. Beglarian’s work has been performed by orchestras across America, including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, and the Seattle Symphony.

Studios

Veltin

Grant Beglarian worked in the Veltin studio.

Veltin Studio was donated by alumni of the Veltin School, a school for girls in New York with a highly respected visual arts department. As the plaque just outside the entrance attests, this studio was used by poet Edwin Arlington Robinson during most of the 24 summers he spent at MacDowell. Perhaps most famously, Thornton Wilder put the finishing…

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