Blue Skies for Jeffrey Mumford by Marci Janas '91
	RELATED Alumnus Also Honored by Academy Composer Jeffrey Mumford's "Good Dial Days" on WCLV Composer Jeffrey Mumford Awarded Second National Symphony Orchestra Commission Cleveland Chamber Symphony Premieres Jeffrey Mumford's "a still radiance within dark air" Works by Two Oberlin Composers Featured in Cleveland Composers Guild Concert		Photo by Al Fuchs Assistant Professor of Composition Jeffrey Mumford says he draws much of his inspiration from clouds. Considering this penchant of his, it is ironic that his past year has been unusually sunny. The brightest beam shone down in March 2003, with an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award, to be presented at the academy's annual ceremonial in May 2003, honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges Mumford as a "composer who has arrived at his own voice." The previous March, he received his second commission from the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), which will perform the commissioned work, amid the light of quickening memory, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in June 2003. The NSO premiere will be the culmination of a busy season for interpreters of Mumford's music, several of whom are Oberlin alumni. In December 2002, violist Wendy Richman '01 performed wending on a concert of Mumford's music at Columbia University's Miller Theater, part of its Portrait Series profiling American composers. Mumford, who studied with Elliott Carter, is referred to by the Miller brochure as "one of . . . Carter's most fascinating musical heirs." Allan Kozinn, writing about the concert for The New York Times, said the program of works "described not only a personal style, but also a philosophy of music making that embraced both raw passion and a gentle, imagistic poetry." Mumford is currently composing a piano quintet to be premiered in 2004 by pianist Amy Dissanayake and the Pacifica Quartet (with violinists Sibbi Bernhardsson '95 and Simin Ganatra '96). This past year Mumford also received an ASCAP award, a Ucross Residency Prize from the Herb Alpert Foundation, and an Individual Artists Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, which he will use to produce a new CD of his works on Albany Records that will feature the Corigliano Quartet, pianist Margaret Kampmeier, violist Richman, and the CORE Ensemble. Mumford was also commissioned by WCLV-104.9 FM, Cleveland's classical music radio station, to write an original fanfare marking the station's 40 years in broadcasting. Fanfare (good dial days) We Celebrate Luminous Voices, for winds, brass, and timpani, was recorded by an Oberlin ensemble conducted by Associate Professor of Conducting Timothy Weiss.
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