Discipline: Music Composition

Nils Vigeland

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Tuckahoe, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1973
More: www.nilsvigeland.com
Nils Vigeland is an American composer and pianist. Vigeland made his professional debut as a pianist in 1969 with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. He later studied composition with Lukas Foss at Harvard College, graduating with a B.A. in 1972. He earned his Ph.D. at The University at Buffalo where he studied composition with Morton Feldman and piano with Yvar Mikhashoff. After graduation, Vigeland toured for eight years with percussionist Jan Williams and flautist Eberhard Blum, performing extended-length works for flute, percussion, and piano that Feldman composed for them. From 1980-89, Vigeland directed The Bowery Ensemble, which gave an annual series of concerts at The Cooper Union. The ensemble was strongly associated with the music of the New York School and gave the first performance of more than 30 works by composers including Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff, Leo Smit, Chris Newman, and John Thow. Recordings of Vigeland's music are available from Mode, EMF, Focus, Lovely Music, and Naxos. His choral music is published by Boosey and Hawkes. He taught at Manhattan School of Music for 30 years, retiring as chair of the Composition Department in 2013.

Studios

Chapman

Nils Vigeland worked in the Chapman studio.

Chapman Studio was funded by Mrs. Alice Woodrough Chapman in memory of her husband, composer George Alexander Chapman. Symmetrically massed, the building is stuccoed on the exterior with a natural, unpainted cement. Its unusual half-timbered ornament consists of slender, knotty spruce poles painted a dark green color. A central, peak-roofed entrance porch appears on the north side…

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