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A
Lehman Music Teacher
Comes Home With an Oscar
by Karen Aronson
The New York Times, March 29, 2000
John Corigliano's
mother was concerned about whether he could make a living
as a composer. So when she met the mother of Lehman College's
music department chairman at the beauty parlor in 1972, she
asked whether he could get her son a job.
Mr. Corigliano
has been teaching at Lehman in the Bronx ever since.
His mother need
not have worried. At 62, he is one of the most successful
American classical composers. On Sunday he won an Academy
Award for his score for the movie "the Red Violin."
An earlier film score was nominated in 1981. His 1991 opera,
"The Ghosts of Versailles," was the Metropolitan
Opera's first commissioned piece in 25 years.
A new work, "Mr.
Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan," had its premiere
March 15 at Carnegie Hall. Yesterday he was in Minnesota for
yet another premiere.
Mr. Corigliano,
whose father was a concertmaster for the New York Philharmonic,
says he loves teaching and loves Lehman. He is now a distinguished
professor teaching composition and orchestration two days
a week. One of the things that makes teaching there reqarding,
he said, is a program with Local 802, the musicians' union,
in which musicians study for undergraduate or master's degrees.
He has had bass players, trombonists and members of the Metropolitan
and City Operas.
Last year, a student
won a $5,000 Ascap award for a violin concerto. This week,
a former student, Michael Bacon, was mentioned during the
Academy Awards broadcast for his work on the Oscar-winning
documentary, "King Gimp."
The only problem,
he said, is that the college tried to merge the music department
with the speech and theater department several years ago during
a period of retrenchment. For the moment, it remains an independent
department, but one that is shrinking, not growing.
If anything happens
to the department, of course, Mr. Corigliano can always fall
back on his composing. He says that even his mother, who is
now 94 years old and living in Florida, recognizes his success
as a composer, and is proud of him.
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