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Biography
H. Owen Reed joined the composition faculty of Michigan State College in 1939. His career at MSU lasted for nearly 40 years. Reed retired from MSU in 1976. Upon his retirement, MSU granted the title of Professor Emeritus unto Reed.
Many of Reed's students have gone on to fame as composers and arrangers, including Loris Chobanian, Clare Fischer, David Gillingham, Adolphus Hailstork, and David Maslanka.
Compositions
Just as Béla Bartók investigated the traditional music of Eastern Europe, North Africa, and Turkey, using these as inspirations for his own original works, Reed similarly devoted much study to the traditional music of North America. Many of his works feature material derived from the Mexican, Native American, Anglo-American and African American cultures, blended with contemporary idioms.
Reed's best known and most widely performed work is the three-movement concert band composition La Fiesta Mexicana (1949), composed with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship. The work is based on Aztec, Roman Catholic, mariachi, and other music Reed heard while in Mexico City, Cuernavaca, and Chapala, Mexico for six months between 1948 and 1949. He returned to Mexico in 1960 for a month's further study. He also studied folk music in the Caribbean in February 1976, and in Norway in the summer of 1977.
Reed later studied Native American musics in Taos, New Mexico and Arizona, and eventually composed a trilogy of chamber operas based on Native American legends: Earth Trapped (Sioux, 1960), Living Solid Face (Algonquin, 1974), and Butterfly Girl and Mirage Boy (Hopi-Aztec, 1980). His band composition Missouri Shindig (1951) is based on the American fiddle tune "Give the Fiddler a Dram," which his father had particularly enjoyed playing.[3] Spiritual (1947), Reed's first composition for band, is based on his recollection of overhearing the exuberant religious expression of African American churchgoers while passing by their churches as a child.
Reed's music is published by G. Schirmer, Warner Brothers, Ballerbach Music, Harrock Hall Music, Triplo Press, Allyn & Bacon, Boosey & Hawkes, Edwin A. Fleisher, EMI Mills, Neil A. Kjos, Ludwig and H. O. Reed Music.
There are no productions for this artist in the Season Schedule of Performances which currently only dates back to 1991.
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Artist Information
All information is derived from OPERA America's Season Schedule of Performances and titles databases which date back to 1991. OPERA America is constantly updating this data. If you feel that a work or an artist has been omitted or that information is incorrect, please use the linked forms below. Title Information Form Artist Information Form
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