Robert Paterson (born April 29, 1970) is an American composer of contemporary classical music, as well as a conductor and percussionist. His catalog includes over 120 compositions. He has been called a "modern day master" and is primarily known for his colorful orchestral works, large body of chamber music and clear vocal writingRosenberg, Donald, Eternal Reflections review, Gramophone, July 2015. in his operas, choral works, vocal chamber works and song cycles.
Early years Paterson was born on the West Side of Buffalo, New York. He is the son of Tony Paterson, an award-winning sculptor who was a Professor of Sculpture at the University at Buffalo, and Eleanor Paterson, a painter and bilingual education director at Erie Community College who received her Ph.D. in bilingual education from the University at Buffalo. Although Paterson was surrounded by sculptors and painters while growing up,Schulslaper, Robert, Giving a Voice to American Music: A Conversation with Composer Robert Paterson, Fanfare Magazine, March 28, 2011. his father enjoyed contemporary classical music and took him to new-music concerts at the University at Buffalo, where he heard works by Morton Feldman and John Cage, with both composers in attendance. Paterson "grew up in a home where his parents – a sculptor and a painter – always listened to music."Roka, Les, Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: ‘Hell's Kitchen,’ ‘Jura,’ ‘Drum’ highlight new music, dance commissions, The Utah Review, June 25, 2014. He has one brother, David Paterson, who is also a musician and teaches in the New York City public schools.
Paterson began composing on his own at age 13 and studied composition privately for two years with William Ortiz-Alvarado from 1984–86. He also took private percussion lessons at age 12 and attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts for two summers, in 1982 and 1983. He attended the Nichols School in eighth grade and middle school and high school at the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, where he performed in the wind ensemble, jazz band and various choirs, and also played on the tennis team. He also studied percussion with various teachers in the greater Buffalo area, including Lynn Harbold (former principal percussionist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra), Jack Brennan (former assistant timpanist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, timpanist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra), David DePeters (former percussionist and Executive Director, Iris Orchestra, CEO of the National Repertory Orchestra), Anthony Miranda and John Bacon, as well as piano with Claudia Hoca (pianist for the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra) and Edmund Gordanier. While a high school student, Paterson also attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute for two summers, where he studied percussion with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, including Arthur Press, Charlie Smith, and Tom Gauger, and also performed in the BUTI Orchestra under Eiji Oue and guest conductor Leonard Bernstein.
Education Paterson received a Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music where he studied with Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler, Warren Benson and David Liptak, graduating in 1995. While at Eastman, he was a double major in composition and percussion and studied percussion with John H. Beck, and also performed in Eastman's Musica Nova ensemble under Sydney Hodkinson and also became a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. In 2001 he received a Master of Music degree from the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University in Bloomington, where he studied composition with Frederick A. Fox and Eugene O'Brien, performing in the IU Contemporary Ensemble under David Dzubay, and percussion with Gerald Carlyss (former timpanist with the Philadelphia Orchestra) and Thomas Stubbs (Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra). In 2004, he received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Cornell University where he studied composition with Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra. In 1999 he studied with John Harbison and Bernard Rands at the Aspen Music Festival and School, as part of the Advanced Master Class and as the recipient of the Second ASCAP Aspen Film Fellowship.ASCAP, Winter, 2010. Retrieved July 2, 3015. In 2000 he studied privately with Aaron Jay Kernis at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
Career After leaving graduate school, Paterson moved to New York City and soon after began teaching at Bronx Community College for one year, and then Sarah Lawrence College for four years. While teaching, Paterson began working on a variety of commissions for ensembles such as Quintet of The Americas, The California EAR Unit and Volti. In 2005, Paterson and his wife Victoria co-founded the American Modern Ensemble and American Modern Recordings, an Independent record label distributed by Naxos of America (a division of Naxos Records) specializing in contemporary classical music, with an emphasis on music by living American composers.
Paterson's music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, and his works have been commissioned and/or performed by over one-hundred ensembles, including American Modern Ensemble, both self-produced as well as presented by ChamberMusicNY at Merkin Concert Hall, the Louisville Orchestra, Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Austin Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Quintet of the Americas, Chamber Choir of Europe, Musica Sacra (New York) and the Volti choir of San Francisco. Other ensembles that have performed Paterson's works include The New York New Music Ensemble, Fireworks Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, PubliQuartet, MAYA, Da Capo Chamber Players, California EAR Unit, Cygnus, Ensemble Aleph (Paris), Ensemble Nouvelles Consonances (Belgium), Kairos String Quartet, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, Russian Chamber Orchestra, MANCA Festival presented by the Centre National de Creation Musicale (CIRM) and the June in Buffalo new music festival.
As a conductor, Paterson has conducted the American Modern Ensemble since it was founded in 2005, and has also conducted the Society for New Music ensemble and Atlantic Music Festival Contemporary Ensemble. As a percussionist, Paterson spent many years developing a six-mallet technique based on the Burton grip. He developed this technique while studying with John Beck at the Eastman School of Music, where he presented the world's first all six-mallet marimba recital. As well as composing his own six-mallet works, he has "been instrumental in the commissioning of six-mallet works for solo marimba" and has to date, written fourteen works using a six-mallet technique (extended technique) he developed.Jones, Timothy, A Survey of Artists and Literature Employing Extended Multiple Mallets in Keyboard Percussion; Its Evolution, Resulting Techniques and Pedagogical Guide, Doctoral Dissertation, College of Fine Arts, Graduate College, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, August 2003, p. 15. His recording Six Mallet Marimba is the first all six-mallet marimba album ever released, and contains many of Paterson's six-mallet marimba compositions. Paterson performs on a five-octave marimba made by Doug DeMorrow.
Paterson's work as a composer and percussionist appear on recordings for American Modern Recordings (AMR), Mode Records, Bridge Records, Centaur Records, Capstone Records, and Riax.
Teaching In 2016, Paterson was the Director of the Composition Program at the Atlantic Music Festival, and he taught there from 2012 to 2017. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Mostly Modern Festival. Paterson has taught at Cornell University, Sarah Lawrence College, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Bronx Community College, The Walden School,Faculty and Staff (Past Faculty and Staff), The Walden School. Retrieved July 2, 3015. Point Counterpoint (New Music on The Point), the Atlantic Music Festival, where he was head of the composition program for two summers, and the Rocky Ridge Music Center, where he was also Composer-In-Residence from 2012–14, and was a visiting composer in 2015.Theory and Composition Faculty, Rocky RIdge Music Center. Retrieved July 2, 3015.
Personal life Paterson is the son of American sculptor Tony Paterson. He lives in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan in New York City with his wife, Victoria Paterson, a violinist, and their son Dylan Paterson. He is vegan and an accomplished cook, and has compared inventing recipes to composing, but with food instead of musical notes.Kaminer, Michael, 'The buzz, In Person: In Tune, Interview with Robert Paterson', Vegetarian Times, October, 2012. Retrieved June 30, 3015.
Musical style Paterson's music is influenced by nature (particularly the classical elements), and many of his works have ecological themes, such as "A New Eaarth" and "Embracing The Wind". His works are also inspired by rock and roll (such as "Ghost Theater" which quotes the John Bonham drumset part from When the Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin and "Hell's Kitchen"), jazz (the last movement from "Symphony in Three Movements" and "Thursday"), world music ("The Book of Goddesses")Smith, Ken, The composer's own ensemble in a broadly influenced work, Gramophone, December 2011.Nugent, Patricia, Digging The Deities, Organic Spa Magazine, November–December, 2011. Retrieved July 2, 2015. and Indian music (the third movement of "Sun Trio").
Paterson is also influenced by the music of other classical composers, including Russian composers such as Igor Stravinsky ("Sun Trio", second movement), Dmitri Shostakovich and Alfred Schnittke, and French composers such as Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen, and American composers such as Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Steve Reich and many of his former teachers. He has said, "...I am essentially interested in unifying all musical elements—and many non-musical elements (i.e. ‘noise’) — into a cohesive whole.”
Stylistically, although some of Paterson's works are atonal, a large selection of Paterson's works are tonal, combining major and minor scales and modes with chromaticism, Octatonic scales, Blues scales, Tone rows, artificial scales and scales from non-Western cultures, such as his use of the Indonesian Pelog scale in his work "Quintus". Some of his works derive their material from chromatically saturated harmonic patterns that combine chords, melodies and motivic ideas that complete the chromatic scale within given sections of works. Formally, some of Paterson's works are highly episodic, such as his "Sextet" and "Hell's Kitchen", while others are more seamless, such as "Dark Mountains" for orchestra, "A Dream Within A Dream" for a cappella choir or "Deep Blue Ocean" for two pianos.
Paterson's music is generally very colorful, and he incorporates extended techniques in many of his works, such as "Scorpion Tales" for two harps, "The Book of Goddesses" for flute, harp and percussion, "Komodo" and "Piranha" for solo marimba and "Eating Variations" for baritone and chamber ensemble. He also occasionally uses found objects, such as in his work "Hell's Kitchen", which calls for kitchen utensils, pots and pans, and even a kitchen sink.
Many of his works also use bell sounds, and Paterson has said, "I am fascinated with resonance, and how notes ring. I also like bell sounds, and often ask non-percussionists to play cup gongs (temple bowls or Tibetan bowls), finger cymbals and other hand-held percussion instruments",Carey, Christian, Robert Paterson: Marimba Plus Six Mallets, Sequenza21, November 13, 2012. Retrieved July 2. 2015. such as "The Thin Ice of Your Fragile Mind", which calls for many of the performers to use graduated finger cymbals and Tingshas, "Eating Variations" which calls for specifically-pitched singing bowls, and "A New Eaarth," which calls for non-percussionists (such as one of the flute players) to use specifically-tuned wind chimes.