Gregg Wramage
PHOTO: Murat Eyüboğlu
Bio
This season marks the premieres of both Mr. Wramage’s first opera, and his first symphony. Death in Summer, a two-act chamber opera with the renowned British librettist, Paul Bentley, based on the novel by the internationally acclaimed Irish writer, William Trevor, received two New York performances: American Opera Projects premiered the first five scenes in October, and a fully-staged performance of the first seven scenes was given by AOP and Opera Index in March. Mr. Wramage’s first symphony will be premiered in New York in June, by the North/South Consonance Chamber Orchestra.
A recipient of a 2008 N.J. State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, Mr. Wramage’s first orchestral work, Deep Midnight, was selected by David Zinman for the 2000 Aspen Music Festival Jacob Druckman Composition Prize and was premiered by Daniel Hege and the Aspen Sinfonia. Lawrence Leighton Smith and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra gave Deep Midnight its second performance during the 2002 NJSO Composition and Conducting Institute. Michael Daugherty selected Mr. Wramage’s, in shadows, in silence, for the 2003 Cabrillo Festival Composer’s Workshop, where it was premiered by the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra. Remember Death (The Hemingway Summer), was selected for the 2005 American Composer’s Orchestra Underwood New Music Reading Sessions and was premiered by Steve Sloane and the ACO in May 2005. “La tristesse durera”, was selected for the 2006 Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute and premiered by Osmo Vänskä and the orchestra in December 2006.
In addition to being selected as a finalist in the ASCAP Young Composer Awards on three separate occasions, Mr. Wramage has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Copland House, the Wurlitzer Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and scholarships from the Bowdoin, Brevard, Aspen, and Norfolk music festivals and the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. In 1998, he was awarded the New Music for Young Ensembles Josef Alexander Award for his wind quintet, Brilliant Mirrors, which was premiered by Pentasonic Winds in 2000 and sponsored in part by a Meet the Composer Fund Grant. Other prizes include multiple grants from the American Music Center, the 2000 Delius Festival Chamber Music Award for Last Words of a Hunger Artist (After Kafka), the CUNY Graduate Center Robert Starer Composition Prize, the Collage New Music Ensemble Natalie and Murray S. Katz Composition Prize, and the Third Millennium Ensemble Composition Award for, in shadows, in silence, a work premiered by eighth blackbird at the 2002 Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.
Michael Daugherty selected Mr. Wramage to receive the 2002 Michigan Music Teacher’s Association Commission, and in October 2002, Mr. Wramage’s song cycle, Mourning Songs, on poems of Donald Justice, was premiered at the MMTA annual conference. In 2003, pianist Bruce Levingston premiered Mr. Wramage’s, Seven Solitudes, at Alice Tully Hall. In 2004, Familiar Clouds, a new song cycle for soprano and piano on poems of Donald Justice was premiered by Friends and Enemies of New Music in New York, and later selected as a finalist for the 2006 National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Composition Award. Pianist Carine Gutlerner premiered a set of Mr. Wramage’s piano preludes in Paris, and at Weill Recital Hall in February 2006, and in June, Mr. Wramage was a finalist for the 2007 Utah Arts Festival Commission for Chamber Ensemble. Into the Black Oblivion (1999), a setting of Donald Justice’s, “Psalm and Lament”, for baritone and chamber ensemble, has been recorded by the SCI CD Series on Capstone Records, and The Last Days of Summer, for wind ensemble, is published by Southern Music. Several radio programs have featured Mr. Wramage’s music including “The Dean’s List”, and “Aspen Festival Showcase” on Aspen Public Radio, “Fresh Ink” on WCNY, and “Soundcheck” on WNYC.
Gregg Wramage was born in Belmar, New Jersey on June 13, 1970, and began studying composition at the age of twenty. Mr. Wramage received his BM and MM from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied on scholarship with Richard Danielpour; and his DMA from the CUNY Graduate Center, where he studied with David Del Tredici, George Tsontakis. He has also studied with Joan Tower, Steven Stucky, David Liptak, Michael Daugherty, and Christopher Rouse. Currently a resident of Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, Mr. Wramage serves on the faculty of Caldwell College, and has also taught at Westminster Choir College, the Aaron Copland School of Music, the Mason Gross School of the Arts, and the undergraduate colleges of Queens College (CUNY), and Rutgers University.
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