Composer Background

To say that a composer's style is unique merely states what should be true of every composer, and yet when confronted with Michael Daugherty's music one feels compelled to make this claim. Enzo Restagno, Artistic Director of Settembre Musica in Torino, Italy has written:

To observe The American landscape in Michael Daugherty's company is an unforgettable experience which I had during a long nocturnal walk through the streets of New York. Naturally we talked about music, but our talk was interrupted every minute because he kept stopping ecstatically outside a show window or some public building. He wanted to call my attention to some gadget or individual abounding in symbolic value. Clothing, menus, items for everyday use, gestures, posters, billboards, photographs, and architecture, all inspired lengthy observations endowed with great insight, but, at the same time, an affectionate irony. Like the energy that radiates from the icons housed in our European museums and art galleries, Michael Daugherty's music successfully releases the poetic power of American icons.

It is in part this fascination with the vernacular that sets Daugherty's music apart. By using sophisticated compositional techniques to develop his melodic motives combined with complex polyrhythmic layers, he has created a style that is bursting with energy and truly unique. Niagara Falls for symphonic winds will be the principal work considered here, though general background and performance considerations would apply to Desi and Bizarro for orchestral winds, Motown Metal for brass ensemble, Timbuktuba for euphoniums, tubas , and percussion, and UFO, Rosa Parks Boulevard and Red Cape Tango for symphonic winds.

Daugherty's connection to the pop world infuses his work at every level. The inspiration for much of his music comes from icons of the American pop culture. He acknowledges his debt to pop culture, saying:

"For me icons serve as a way to have an emotional reason to compose a new work. I get ideas for my compositions by browsing through second book stores, antique shops, and small towns that I find driving on the back roads of America. The icon can be an old postcard, magazine, photograph, knick-knack, matchbook, piece of furniture or roadmap. Like Ives and Mahler, I use icons in my music to provide the listener and performer with a layer of reference. However, one does not need the reference of the icon to appreciate my music. It is merely one level among many in the musical, contrapuntal fabric of my compositions."

The Metropolis Symphony and Bizarro are based on the Superman story; Desi is inspired by the television character Ricky Ricardo. One hears urban Detroit in the industrial sounding Motown Metal and the courage of an Afro-American civil rights icon in the emotional charged Rosa Parks Boulevard. UFO is inspired by the unidentified flying objects that have been an obsession in American popular culture since 1947.

Not surprisingly, Niagara Falls draws its inspiration not only from the falls themselves, but most importantly from the pop culture that surrounds this natural wonder.

"My parents went on their honeymoon and I've visited there many time as I have in-laws in Syracuse so we stop at Niagara Falls on the way. Niagara Falls is a destination for honeymooners and its also one of the biggest capitals of tourist traps in North America. I think that to even write a piece inspired by this sort of concept is still uncommon in concert music. Yet when I am writing the music I am extremely serious about putting the notes, the dynamics and the articulations, the timbre, the structure and the counterpoint. When I compose, I think in a very structural logical way as Webern and Bach did."

Daugherty's melodic material--usually short motives that are repeated in sequences or canons--frequently comes straight from jazz or Latin musical idioms with strong syncopation. Often the accompanying figures are rooted in big band jazz, whether the closely harmonized scale fragments typical of a saxophone section or the explosive interjections by the brass. All of this occurs over rhythmic ostinati or grooves in the bass and percussion sections--the classic rhythm section of pop and jazz.

-- Timothy Salzman

Biographical Information

Michael Daugherty is one of the most performed and commissioned American composers of his generation. Daugherty came to international attention when his Metropolis Symphony (1988-93), a tribute to the Superman comics, was performed in 1995 at Carnegie Hall by conductor David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and subsequently recorded for Argo/Decca. Other large orchestral works include UFO (1999), a percussion concerto commissioned and premiered by Evelyn Glennie and the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin, and Fire and Blood (2003), a violin concerto commissioned and premiered by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by conductor Neeme Järvi. The Detroit Symphony also commissioned and premiered Daugherty’s second symphony, MotorCity Triptych (2000). His third symphony, Philadelphia Stories (2001), was commissioned and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by David Zinman.

Daugherty’s chamber music is widely performed as well, and has been recorded for Argo/Decca on the CD American Icons. His string quartets include Sing Sing: J.Edgar Hoover (1992) and Elvis Everywhere (1993), both performed on world tours and recorded on Nonesuch by the Kronos Quartet. His opera Jackie O (1997) has been produced in the United States, Canada, France, and Sweden and recorded by Argo/Decca. Daugherty has also composed numerous works for sumphonic band and wind ensemble, recorded by Klavier on a disk entitled UFO: The Music of Michael Daugherty.

Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty is the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. He studied music composition at North Texas State University (1972-76) and Manhattan School of Music (1976-78), and computer music at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM in Paris (1979-80). Daugherty received his doctorate in composition from Yale University in 1986. During this time he also collaborated with jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York, and pursued further studies with composer György Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany (1982-84). After teaching music composition 1986-1991 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daugherty joined the School of Music at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in 1991, where he is currently Professor of Composition. He was composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1999-2003) and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (2001-2003).

Daugherty has received numerous awards for his music, including the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, recognition from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.

Grove Dictionary of Music Entry

Daugherty, Michael

(b Cedar Rapids, IA, 28 April 1954). American composer. He grew up playing the keyboard in jazz, rock and funk bands. He studied at North Texas State University (1972--6), at the Manhattan School of Music (1976--8) and at Yale University (DMA 1986), where his teachers included Earle Brown, Jacob Druckman, and Roger Reynolds. He also spent a year at IRCAM as a Fulbright Fellow (1979--80), collaborated with jazz musician Gil Evans in New York (1980--82) and studied with Ligeti in Hamburg (1982--4). After teaching composition at Oberlin College Conservatory (1986--91), he was appointed professor of composition at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1992.

Daugherty first came to national attention in the USA when Snap! -- Blue Like an Orange (1987) won a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award in 1989. The work, which established the primary characteristics of his compositional style, combines rigorous polyrhythmic counterpoint with a playful and pointed use of the popular music of his youth. This lively mixture is presented in many works with a wry sense of timing, deft orchestration and a sensitivity to the spatial dimension of music. The Metropolis Symphony (1988--93) and Bizarro (1993) were inspired by Daugherty's enthusiasm for the Superman comic strip of the 1950s and 60s. The symphony inaugurated a series of works concerned with American icons. Other works in the series include Desi (1991), a Latin big band tribute to Desi Arnaz in the television show 'I Love Lucy'; the chamber work Dead Elvis (1993); and a piano concertino, Le tombeau de Liberace (1996). Works commissioned by the Kronos Quartet include Sing Sing: J. Edgar Hoover (1992), featuring the voice of the infamous FBI director, and Elvis Everywhere (1993) for three Elvis impersonators and string quartet. The chamber opera Jackie O (1997), set in the late 1960s, explores the interplay of musical idioms associated with 'high' and 'popular' culture. Daugherty has also composed a series of works dedicated to popular places in America, including Niagara Falls for band (1997), Route 66 for orchestra (1998), Sunset Strip for chamber orchestra (1999) and his symphony in three movements, Motorcity Triptych (2000).