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Associate Professor of Composition Lewis Nielson's Year of Living Dangerously
 Danger Man Lewis Nielson |
Associate Professor of Composition Lewis Nielson has won honorable mention in the International Society of Bassists Composition Competition 2000 for his Duo Concertant (Danger Man), a work for double bass and percussion.
More than 35 pieces, submitted internationally, were under consideration in Nielson's category, which covered works for solo bass or bass with one other instrument. Robert Black, associate in double bass at the Hartt School of Music, was chair of the judging committee. The compositions receiving honorable mention (only one first prize was awarded) were, he says, "very good music, breaking new ground, expanding and extending the use of the instrument and challenging to play." Joseph Guastafeste of the Chicago Symphony and Hans Sturm, professor of bass at Ball State University, were the other jurors. The composition contest is held every two years.
Later this month, Nielson will travel to Brazil at the invitation of the Brazilian Association for Research and Graduate Studies in Music to deliver a lecture, "Tone Color, Function, and Structural Implications of Unconventional Performance Techniques in Contemporary Music," at their annual conference. He will also conduct an ensemble of low-strings players that include members of the faculty of the Federal University of Brazil and of the Sao Paolo Philharmonic. The concert program includes the Gubaidulina bassoon concerto and two of his own works: Around…Among…Within--a bassoon solo he describes as "very extensive," and the aforementioned Duo Concertant (Danger Man).
We are not, Nielson advises, to think of the popular 1960s television program known in the U.K. as Danger Man and in the U. S. as Secret Agent that starred Patrick McGoohan. "The piece has some hard harmonics for the bass player, so the intent is a warning: 'watch out! danger, man.'"
Nielson has a long list of honors and awards in his dossier, including a Fulbright-Hays grant from the French government and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Meet the Composer. His works have been performed by, among others, the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, and at such venues as Musique Expèrimentale de Bourges, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art, and the World Saxophone Congress. Vortex: Music by Lewis Nielson, is available on the ACA Digital label.
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