John Peel

Born in Texas in 1946, composer John Peel's earliest musical studies were on the clarinet and oboe. While in his `teens Peel began the study of piano and composition. After completing an undergraduate degree in French literature at the University of Texas, Peel pursued graduate studies at Columbia University and Princeton University where his teachers included Milton Babbitt, Benjamin Boretz, J.K. Randall, Claudio Spies and Charles Wuorinen. Peel's solo compositions have been premiered by some of today's foremost recitalists including soprano Susan Narucki, violinist Rolf Schulte and pianist Alan Feinberg.

Major ensembles that have commissioned and performed Peel's chamber and orchestral music include the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Riverside Symphony, the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic, the American String Quartet, Collage, Music Today, the New Arts Trio, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Parnassus and the California E.A.R. Unit. Peel has been the recipient of awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Heinz Foundation, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, Meet-the-Composer and the American Music Center.

In 1990 Peel was appointed Composer-in-Residence, Irene Gerlinger Swindells Professor of Music. In this position he has created New Music at Willamette, a series of concerts, residencies and lectures dedicated to presenting the finest performers and composers of our time. Peel's opera-oratorio Voces Vergilianae, with a libretto from the poetry of Vergil, was performed in 1999 to celebrate the dedication of the Rogers Music Center on the Willamette campus. Another major work, the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, commissioned by the Riverside Symphony for violinist Joseph Lin, premiered in January 2000 at Alice Tully Hall in New York's Lincoln Center. Sinfonia Romanza, a symphony commissioned by James DePreist, was presented during