William Duckworth (composer) - Biography

Biography

Duckworth was born in North Carolina in 1943. He obtained a bachelor's degree in music from East Carolina University, then master's and doctorates in music education from the University of Illinois at Urbana. He studied composition under composer Ben Johnston and wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the notation of composer John Cage. (Duckworth's music publishing and record company, Monroe Street Music, is named after the street in New York City where Cage lived and worked.) In 2002 he was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Over the years Duckworth enjoyed a close collaboration with James Jordan who frequently performs Duckworth's music with his world-renowned choral ensembles. Duckworth passed away at his home in West New York, N.J., after a long fight with pancreatic cancer.

Read more about this topic:  William Duckworth (composer)

Famous quotes containing the word biography:

    The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

    A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.
    André Maurois (1885–1967)