Tobias Picker (b. Manhattan, 1954) is known as “a genuine creator with a fertile unforced vein of invention” (The New Yorker), "displaying a distinctively soulful style that is one of the glories of the current musical scene” (BBC Music Magazine) and “our finest composer for the lyric stage” (Wall Street Journal). His music has been performed and commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, BBC Proms, Munich, Helsinki and Strasbourg Philharmonics, numerous leading international festivals, chamber ensembles and soloists. Picker’s first opera, Emmeline (1996) premiered at the Santa Fe Opera, telecast nationally by PBS Great Performances, led to commissions by LA Opera, The Dallas Opera, San Francisco Opera, L’Opera de Montreal and The Metropolitan Opera. New productions have appeared at New York City Opera, Covent Garden and throughout Europe. Awakenings, commissioned by Rambert Dance Company, was performed 80 times with live orchestra during Rambert’s 2010-11 UK and European tours. By age twenty-six, Picker received the Bearns Prize (Columbia University), BMI Award, Charles Ives Scholarship, and two fellowships from NEA and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Later he received the Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Picker’s piano concerto Keys to the City (1983) was commissioned by the City of New York for the centenary of Brooklyn Bridge and described as “an exuberant, brassy, celebratory evocation, 18 minutes of irrepressible energy and a cosmopolitan eclecticism” (New York Times). Tobias Picker studied composition with Charles Wuorinen, Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter and holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, the Juilliard School and Princeton University.
May 12, 2011
Abbreviated Biography
