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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Website http://www.ericsawyer.net/
Eric W. Sawyer or Eric Sawyer (born June 2, 1962 in Brookhaven, New York) is an American composer, pianist and associate professor of music at Amherst College. He has studied as an undergraduate at Harvard College, where he was selected as a Harvard Junior Fellow. He undertook graduate studies at both Columbia University and the University of California, Davis (where he completed his doctorate in 1994).Before taking up the position at Amherst, Sawyer spent four years as Chair of Composition and Theory at the Longy School of Music.
Sawyer has written a number of pieces that have received multiple public performances. His debut was in 1985 with "Three Pieces for Orchestra", performed by the Harvard Chamber Orchestra, was described at the time as an "auspicious beginning". Later pieces have included "String Quartet No. 2" (premiered at the Longy School of Music's "SeptemberFest" in 1999);"Violin Sonata" (which included Sawyer on piano); "The Humble Heart", a cantata built around texts by American Shakers, which debuted in 2006; and "Three for Trio". Sawyer's first CD of his work - Eric Sawyer: String Works - was released under the Albany Records label in 2005 and featured four of his compositions. Along with librettist and University of California, Berkeley English lecturer John Shoptaw, Sawyer has composed an opera based upon a play set in Ford's Theatre the night United States President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth
A concert version of the opera was performed in 2007 and isolated works have been performed prior to this date. "Hawk's Aria" was performed in 1997,and "Laura Keene's aria" was performed in 1993. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project has recorded the opera, "Our American Cousin" on the BMOP/sound label. Sawyer is currently working on a new opera, "The Garden of Martyrs," which received a workshop performance on January 9, 2011.
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