Composer
While Previte is a talented drummer he has also received critical acclaim for his "exceptional abilities as a composer and orchestrator." A review of his 1988 album Claude's Late Morning reports that "Perhaps most striking is Previte's skill in composing music that fully integrates these disparate instruments — including drums and drum machine, electric guitar and keyboards, trombone, harp, accordion, banjo, pedal steel guitar, tuba, and harmonica — while emphasizing each instrument's unique, individual sound." Another critic notes Previte's "driving and propulsive compositions, featuring both fiery jazz expressionism and layered counterpoint that suggested elements of contemporary minimalism.
Previte's compositions are often tightly arranged, although they leave room for significant amounts of improvisation. Additionally, Previte often uses unusual instrumentation and also draws on many non-jazz musics for his compositions.
In 1991, he wrote the score for "Cirk Valentin" (Moscow Circus on Stage), a stage show consisting of circus acts created by Valentin Gneushev that performed at the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway.
Recent large-scale compositional works as of Spring 2007 include:
- "The Constellations Ensemble," a chamber group touring the multi-media show, The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró.
- "The Separation," a collaboration with writer/director Andrea Kleine "dealing with the role of religion in society. Based on the 15th century composer Guilliaume Dufay’s Missa Sancti Jacobi and written for early music pioneers the Rose Ensemble with electric band."
Previte is currently working on a series of percussion concertos featuring So Percussion ensemble and solo improvisers scheduled to premiere in 2011.
Read more about this topic: Bobby Previte
Famous quotes containing the word composer:
“A person taking stock in middle age is like an artist or composer looking at an unfinished work; but whereas the composer and the painter can erase some of their past efforts, we cannot. We are stuck with what we have lived through. The trick is to finish it with a sense of design and a flourish rather than to patch up the holes or merely to add new patches to it.”
—Harry S. Broudy (b. 1905)
“Whenever [Leonard Bernstein] entered or exited a country he would fill in on his passport form not composer or conductor, but musician. Of course people in the press spent a lot of Lenny’s life telling him what he should have done; he should have been a concert pianist, he should have composed more.... And people wouldn’t let him live his own life. But he created his own career, in his own image.”
—John Mauceri (b. 1945)
“A nation creates music—the composer only arranges it.”
—Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857)