Paul Phillips
Senior Lecturer in Music; Director of Orchestras and Chamber Music:
Music
Phone: 401-863-1472
Phone 2: 401-863-3234
Paul_Phillips@Brown.EDU
Interests: music composition, scholarship, performance. Most recent work, "A Reverie" from "Battle-Pieces", settings of war poems by Melville, premiered by baritone Kyle Ferrill and the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, January 2009. Author of "A Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess" and an essay in "Anthony Burgess and Modernity" (Manchester 2008). Recent guest conducting: 2008 Vermont All-State Orchestra; "Madama Butterfly" with Commonwealth Opera, November 2008.
Biography
Paul Schuyler Phillips, Senior Lecturer in Music, is a conductor/composer/pianist and music scholar who has conducted more than 60 orchestras, choirs, opera and ballet companies worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony and Iceland Symphony, with which he has recorded several compact disks. He received a BA cum laude in music in 1978 and an MA in composition in 1980, both from Columbia, and an MM in orchestral conducting in 1982 from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He began his professional career as a coach/conductor in Germany at the Frankfurt Opera and Stadttheater Lüneburg, returning to the US in 1984 upon his selection for the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program. Following posts with the Greensboro Symphony (1984-86) and Savannah Symphony (1986-89), he accepted an appointment at Brown in 1989 as Director of Orchestras and Chamber Music. He is also Music Director of the Pioneer Valley Symphony and Chorus.
Interests
Paul Phillips's compositions include works for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensemble, voice and keyboard, as well as music for theatre, film and television. Works include Invocation (soprano, flute, piano; 2004), Black Notes and White (brass, percussion, organ; 2001), Three Burgess Lyrics (SATB chorus, vln, pf; 1999), Celestial Harmonies (ballet for string orchestra; 1997), Nantucket Rag (piano solo; 1996), and Brownian Motion (orchestra; 1995). He composed Come On Out and Play (singer-narrator with orchestra; 1996) in collaboration with Grammy Award winner Bill Harley, and has arranged Harley's songs "You're in Trouble" and "There's a Pea on my Plate" for orchestra. His piano piece "Dorian Bagatelle" is featured in the motion picture Hachiko, starring Richard Gere and Joan Allen, scheduled to be released in summer 2009.
War Music, a 90-minute music theatre work based on Christopher Logue's retelling of The Iliad, was commissioned by the Rhode Island performance ensemble Aurea in 2005 and premiered at the 2005 FirstWorksProv Festival. Since then, it has been produced in Chicago by the Chicago Humanities Festival (2006) and in New York by the New York Institute for the Humanities. A/B, a 90th-birthday celebration of Anthony Burgess for actor and chamber ensemble, also commissioned by Aurea, was premiered at the 2007 FirstWorksProv Festival. January 2009, a concert suite from War Music was premiered by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra conducted by Kirk Trevor joined by soprano Kathryne Jennings and baritone Kyle Ferrill. Phillips's recent work, "A Reverie" from Battle-Pieces, a cycle of settings of Civil War poems by Herman Melville, was premiered by Ferrill and the ICO on the same concert, which featured Phillips as guest composer, pianist and scholar. The Norwalk Symphony, Indianapolis Philharmonic, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Maryland Symphony, Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, Ocean State Chamber Orchestra, Hopkins Symphony Orchestra and Marsh Chapel Choir are among the other musical organizations that have performed his music.
Phillips has previously composed music for productions of Shakespeare's Pericles, Brecht's Mann ist Mann and an original musical (in German) on the Wizard of Oz tale titled Dorothees Abenteuer im Lande des Zauberers von Ooz, as well as music for film and television. He has received ASCAP composition awards annually since 1996, prizes from the New England String Ensemble and St. Botolph Club Foundation, and grants from the American Music Center and Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, including a 2009 Individual Artist Project Grant from RISCA.
Phillips's publications include writings on the music of Igor Stravinsky and the British composer/novelist Anthony Burgess. His article "The Enigma of Variations: A Study of Stravinsky's Final Work for Orchestra" (Music Analysis, 1984) was cited by Richard Taruskin in his book Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions as "the best exposition in print of Stravinsky's serial methods." He has published numerous articles on Burgess, including the entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and an essay in "Anthony Burgess and Modernity" (Manchester University Press, 2008), and is the author of the forthcoming book A Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess. Phillips appears as a commentator on and performer of Burgess's music in the BBC television documentary The Burgess Variations and has been invited to conduct the world premiere of Burgess's Shakespeare ballet Mr W.S. in France in 2010.
Acclaimed as a conductor "who was born to stand on a podium", Phillips is a frequent guest conductor who has appeared with more than 60 orchestras, choruses, opera and ballet companies worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra and Choir, Boston Academy of Music, Opera Providence and numerous All-State Orchestras. In 2006 he conducted the Masterworks Chorale at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre in the east coast premiere of Robert Levin's completion of Mozart's Mass in C minor. More recently, he conducted the 2008 Vermont All-State Orchestra and a production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly with Commonwealth Opera in November 2008. Phillips has made two recordings of contemporary orchestral music with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and won eight ASCAP Awards for "Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music", including First Prize in 2005 with the Brown University Orchestra in the Collegiate Orchestra Division. Other conducting honors include First Prize in the NOS/Dutch Broadcasting Foundation International Conductors' Course, First Prize in the Wiener Meisterkurse Conducting Course in Austria, and selection as Finalist in the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program. He has performed with such musical luminaries as Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Kalichstein, Matt Haimovitz, Eugenia Zukerman, Dave Brubeck and Dizzy Gillespie, and collaborated with numerous guest composers, including Steve Reich, Steven Stucky, Michael Torke, George Walker, Lukas Foss and Samuel Adler. Phillips possesses a repertoire of over 900 works conductied in performance, including much of the standard orchestra and opera repertoire, and has led more than 30 US and world premieres. As a pianist, he has performed at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Recital Hall, on recital series throughout the country, including the Mohawk Trail Concerts and Piccolo Spoleto Festival, and with numerous orchestras and choirs, including the Aspen Festival Orchestra and Providence Singers (in Les Noces and Carmina Burana).
He attended the Eastman School of Music, Tanglewood and Aspen, studied piano in France with Jeanne-Marie Darré and conducting in Austria with Otmar Suitner at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He graduated with honors from Columbia, and holds graduate degrees from Columbia and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in composition and conducting, respectively. His teachers include Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Slatkin and Kurt Masur.
Degrees
BA cum laude (music), Columbia; MA (composition), Columbia; MM (conducting), Univ. of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music
Awards
• American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), ASCAPLUS Awards in Music Composition (13): 1996-2008
• ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music (8): Brown University Orchestra - 1994, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2004 & 2005 (1st Prize); Pioneer Valley Symphony - 1997; Greensboro Symphony Youth Orchestra - 1986 (1st Prize)
• Who's Who in America, annual listings beginning 2006
• Brown University Staff Bonus Award, 2005
• International Who's Who in Classical Music, annual listings from 2005-present
• International Who's Who in Music and Musicians' Directory; annual listings from 1990-present
• 2001 New England String Ensemble Composition Competition - Honorable Mention
• American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL) American Repertoire Project - Memphis Symphony Orchestra, 1992
• Wiener Meisterkurse Conductors Course - 1st Prize, 1990
• Music Academy of the West - Conducting Apprenticeship, 1986
• Tanglewood Music Center - Scholarship, 1985
• Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program - Finalist, 1984
• NOS International Conductors Course - 1st Prize, 1983
• Aspen Music Festival - Conducting Fellowship, 1981
Affiliations
American Music Center
American Musicological Society
American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP)
American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL)
Anthony Burgess Center & Anthony Burgess Society (Angers, France)
College Music Society
Conductors Guild
International Anthony Burgess Foundation (Manchester, England)
Funded Research
• Brown University - Humanities Research Funds, 2009-10
• RI State Council on the Arts - Individual Artist Project Grant, 2009
• Brown University Creative Arts Council - Fitt Artist-in-Residence Grant for flutist Carol Wincenc to give masterclasses and perform Christopher Rouse's Flute Concerto with the Brown University Orchestra, 2007
• Brown University - Faculty Research Grant, 2006
• American Music Center - Composer Assistance Program, 2005
• RI State Council on the Arts - Music Composition Fellowship, 2005
• RI State Council on the Arts - Individual Artist Grant, "The Burgess Project", 2005
• Brown University Creative Arts Council - Flexible Fund Grant for "A Manchester Overture", 2005
• Brown University - Faculty Research Grant, 2005
• Brown University - Faculty Research Grant, 2004
• RI Committee for the Humanities - Early Response Grant to support the Ellis Island project, 2004
• Joukowsky Family Foundation Grant - to support the Brown University Orchestra's Ellis Island project, 2004
• Brown University Creative Arts Council - Artist-in-Residence Grant for composer Peter Boyer in conjunction with performances of his works Titanic and Ellis Island: The Dream of America by the Brown University Orchestra, 2004
• Brown University - Faculty Development Grant, 2002
• St. Botolph Club Foundation - Grant-in-Aid, 2001
• RI Committee for the Humanities - Independent Research Grant, 2001
• Brown University - Faculty Development Grant, 2001
• RI State Council on the Arts - Music Composition Fellowship, 2000
• Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas-Austin - Andrew Mellon Fellowship, 1999
• American Music Center - Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance Grant, 1999
• RI State Council on the Arts - Music Composition Fellowship, 1998
• Brown University - Henry Merritt Wriston Grant, 1998
• Brown University - Henry Merritt Wriston Grant, 1997
• Brown University - Curricular Development Grant, 1997
• Howard Foundation - Merit Award, 1996
• RI State Council on the Arts - Artist Project Grant, 1996
• American Music Center - Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance Grant, 1995
• RI State Council on the Arts - Artist Project Grant, 1994
Curriculum Vitae
