# Interview with Nils Vigeland



## composersforum (Mar 8, 2012)

Monday, February 27, 2012 • Interview: № 4-120205.

http://www.remusik.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/reMusik.org_small_icon_3.jpg
By Stanislava Evtushina

*In June 2010, American composer and professor at the Manhattan School of Music Nils Vigeland took part in the 2nd International Music Festival "Contemporary Past" in St. Petersburg, Russia. To recap on this event, reMusik.org has asked Mr. Vigeland to answer a few questions about his own music and the musical influences of his past.* Read More»»


----------



## composersforum (Mar 8, 2012)

composersforum said:


> Monday, February 27, 2012 • Interview: № 4-120205.
> By Stanislava Evtushina
> 
> *In June 2010, American composer and professor at the Manhattan School of Music Nils Vigeland took part in the 2nd International Music Festival "Contemporary Past" in St. Petersburg, Russia. To recap on this event, reMusik.org has asked Mr. Vigeland to answer a few questions about his own music and the musical influences of his past.* Read More»»
> ...


Nils Vigeland was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1950 and made his professional debut as a pianist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969, Lukas Foss conducting. He later studied composition with Mr. Foss at Harvard College, graduating with a BA in 1972. Graduate studies were at the State University of New York at Buffalo in piano with Yvar Mikhashoff (MFA 1975) and composition with Morton Feldman (PhD 1976).
For eight years Mr. Vigeland was the director of the Bowery Ensemble, which gave an annual series of concerts at the Cooper Union in New York City. The ensemble gave the first performance of over thirty works by composers including John Cage, Jo Kondo, Pauline Oliveros, and Dane Rudhyar. With Jan Williams, percussion, and Eberhard Blum, flute, Mr. Vigeland has recorded all the extended length works of Feldman for this ensemble on HAT ART. His own work appears on CD releases from Mode and Lovely Music and is published by Boosey and Hawkes.In 1992 The English National Opera commissioned and gave the first performance at the Almeida Theatre in London of Mr. Vigeland's chamber opera,False Love True Love , based on two scenes from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. In 1989 his orchestral work My Father's Song was a winner of the Rose Prize and given its first performance by the Brooklyn Philharmonic. He has been the recipient of grants from Harvard College, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Mary Flagler Cary Trust.Mr. Vigeland has taught at Manhattan School of Music since 1984 and is presently the chair of the composition department.


----------

