January 28, 2016
For Immediate Release
Butler School of Music Announces Jake Heggie Residency, Feb. 22-26, 2016
Heggie is the recipient of the Butler School’s $40,000 Eddie Medora King Award, given every two years for achieved excellence in original musical composition
AUSTIN, Texas —The Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin hosts San Francisco-based composer and pianist Jake Heggie Feb. 22-26, 2016, the recipient of the school’s 2015-2016 Eddie Medora King Award.
Heggie will give master classes with the Sarah and Ernest Butler Opera Center and composition students, as well as attend rehearsals of his works. The Butler Opera Center will perform a double bill of Heggie’s operas At the Statue of Venus (with new orchestration) and Three Decembers on Feb. 26 and 28 and March 4 and 6 in McCullough Theatre on the UT Austin campus. Members of the media are invited to attend the master classes and opera rehearsals with Butler School students, as well as the productions themselves.
Heggie is recognized internationally as the composer of such operas as Moby-Dick, Dead Man Walking, To Hell and Back, The End of the Affair and Out of Darkness, as well as the choral opera The Radio Hour. He has composed more than 250 songs as well as chamber, choral and orchestral works. His operas – most created with writers Terrence McNally and Gene Scheer – have been produced on five continents. Moby-Dick was telecast throughout the United States in 2013 as part of Great Performances’ 40th season and released on DVD (EuroArts). Dead Man Walking has received more than 40 international productions and has been recorded twice (Atlantic Records and Virgin Classics).
“I know Jake and his wonderful music from my years in San Francisco, his professional home. His Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick are already cornerstones of the contemporary operatic repertory. Jake has the rare gift for picking stories that need to be told in music. Singers love to sing the notes he writes,” notes Mary Ellen Poole, director of the Butler School.
A Guggenheim Fellow, Heggie has served as a mentor for the Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, and is a frequent guest artist at universities, conservatories and festivals throughout the U.S. and Canada. Upcoming commissions include Great Scott for The Dallas Opera, starring Joyce DiDonato; songs for mezzo Jamie Barton and cellist Anne Martindale Williams (Pittsburgh Symphony, Carnegie Hall); an a cappella work for The King’s Singers; and a new work based on It’s A Wonderful Life for Houston Grand Opera.
Heggie is counted among such Eddie Medora King Award recipients as the inaugural year’s Chen Yi (1999), John Corigliano (2001), Joan Tower (2005), John Adams (2007) and Kevin Puts (2013).
Interviews, master class and rehearsal observations, and concert tickets can all be arranged by:
Claire Spera, publicity coordinator
Butler School of Music
(512) 471-1139
claire.spera@austin.utexas.edu