Discipline: Music Composition

John David Earnest

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Walla Walla, WA
MacDowell Fellowships: 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996

John David Earnest has composed extensively for many types of ensembles, large and small, vocal and instrumental. His orchestral works include Second Symphony “The Hastening Light” for soprano, chorus, and orchestra, premiered in 2001 by the Walla Walla Symphony; Southern Exposure, commissioned by the Mobile Symphony Orchestra in 2002; and Chasing the Sun, recorded by the Warsaw National Philharmonic. Among his other orchestral works are Bountiful Voyager, Concerto for Piano & Orchestra, and Concerto for Piano & Strings, premiered in 2004 in Bucharest, Romania. Earnest’s major choral works are Sun Songs and Nocturnes, commissioned for Chanticleer in 1991, A Van Doren Triptych, Only in the Dream, Variations on Three American Folksongs, and The First Day, commissioned by the Santa Fe Desert Chorale in 2006. Among his many solo vocal works are the cycles In Tomorrow’s Fields, Postcards from Frank, Crickets and Commas, The Future In My Hand, and Songs of Hadrian.

Studios

Irving Fine

John David Earnest 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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