Moses Hogan - American Masterpieces: Choral Music Wednesday, February 16, 2011
The National Endowment for the Arts' American Masterpieces: Choral Music initiative is designed to celebrate our national musical heritage by highlighting significant American choral composers and their works of the past 250 years. Stanton's Sheet Music is proud to present this series highlighting the composers and their works featured in this groundbreaking project.
(from NEA.gov)
A native of New Orleans, Moses Hogan (1957-2003) spent most of his career in that city except for music studies (principally piano) at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and The Juilliard School. He also studied at Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge) and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. He won first place in the 28th annual Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition in New York and soon achieved an international reputation as pianist, conductor, and arranger.
Hogan was one of America's most admired choral arrangers of the younger generation, building on the tradition of predecessors like Harry T. Burleigh and R. Nathaniel Dett. He founded the acclaimed Moses Hogan Singers in 1993, and was subsequently appointed Artist-in-Residence at Dillard University in New Orleans. In 1995 he arranged and performed several pieces for the PBS documentary The American Promise. At the height of his career, he died unexpectedly on February 11, 2003 at the age of 45.
Hogan's sensitive settings, more contemporary in sound than those that held sway for decades, are accessible without sacrificing dignity. They have become favorites of high school, college, church, community, and professional choirs, as well as with audiences worldwide. In addition, his arrangements have been generously praised by critics in the New York Times and Gramophone magazine, among others.
Surely one of his finest legacies was editing the Oxford Book of Spirituals, first published in 2001 and recognized today as one of the most comprehensive anthologies of spirituals ever assembled.
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