David Gompper

Echoes (2007)

 

Biography:

David Gompper has lived and worked professionally as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer in New York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan, Texas and Iowa. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London with Jeremy Dale Roberts, Humphrey Searle and Phyllis Sellick.  After teaching in Nigeria, he received his doctorate at the University of Michigan, taught at the University of Texas, Arlington, and since 1991 has been Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa.  In 2002/2003 Gompper was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching, performing and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory.

Gompper's compositions are heard throughout the United States and Europe. In 1999 his Transitus (for wind ensemble) premiered at Carnegie Hall, and a number of his works have premiered in London¹s Wigmore Hall, including: Hommage à W. A. (William Albright) for piano; and Shades of Love, a song cycle on the poetry of Constantin Cavafy. Gompper’s Violin Concerto, written for Wolfgang David, will be recorded by the Slovak Radio Orchestra in November of 2007.

Subsequent returns to Moscow have included premieres and performances of Crossed (November 2003); Music in the Glen and Six Love Poems (November 2004); Star of the County Down (November 2005, again in May 2006; and Butterfly Dance (Albany Records TROY882). Both Music in the Glen and Star of the County Down have been released on Albany Records (TROY937). His Outside Cage for piano and electronics was premiered at the Institute of Music and Acoustics (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany last June.  Gompper’s An Elm We Lost and Kuta Muela appear on the CD Monsterology (Albany Records TROY900). A new work for 2 violins and string orchestra will be premiered in December in Albania.

 

Program Notes:

Echoes (2007) for violin and piano, serves as an earlier version of the Violin Concerto. Both works were written for the violinist Wolfgang David. The musical material is generated from the idea of a continuous series of perfect fifths (the open strings of the violin are all tuned a fifth apart), but which are “broken” or interrupted by a number of minor seconds at various junctures. The composition is in a single movement with three distinct sections. The first fast exposition alternates between a single note (G) and robust jabbing sonorities, where throughout the roles of horizontal and vertical are continually alternated between the soloist and the piano. The middle section presents a slow lyrical melody along with a series of contrapuntal lines based on the augmented triad. Following the cadenza, the final fast romp leads to a chorale-like coda, not unlike that found in the Berg concerto.

 

Contact information:

David Gompper
www.davidgompper.com
david-gompper@uiowa.edu