Discipline: Music Composition

John Morrison

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Medford, MA
MacDowell Fellowships: 2001
John Morrison is a contemporary classical composer and educator. His works have been commissioned and performed by the Intergalactic Contemporary Ensemble, Minnesota Contemporary Ensemble, and Galhano/Montgomery Duo, among others. His recording, Hard Weather Makes Good Wood, was released on the Innova Music label in 2003. Morrison held the Chair in Composition and Theory at the Longy School of Music from 2003 to 2010. He later received a Regents Fellowship to study and work as a teaching assistant at the University of Michigan under William Bolcom, William Albright, Nicholas Thorne, George Wilson, and Leslie Bassett where he completed his doctor of musical arts degree in 1991. His doctoral dissertation was Hear What the Earth Says, a composition for large orchestra in three movements. Morrison has since taught at Tennessee State University, Luther College, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Oberlin College. He has served as a member of the board of directors for the Iowa Composers Forum and the president of the Cleveland Composers Guild. Morrison teaches at the Longy School of Music, where he served as chair of the Theory and Composition Department from 2003 to 2010. His wife is the keyboardist and conductor Vivian Montgomery.

Studios

Monday Music

John Morrison worked in the Monday Music studio.

Given to the residency by the Monday Music Club of Orange, NJ, Monday Music Studio is sited next to an enormous boulder deposited by glaciers thousands of years ago. A small dormer once pierced the east slope of the roof, but after damage suffered in the 1938 hurricane, the roof was rebuilt without the dormer. The interior…

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