Maurice Wright

Described by the New Grove Dictionary as "extremely prolific," Maurice Wright's work is a synthesis of his diverse interests: vocal and instrumental music (new and old); technology and acoustics; and drama and film. Composer and critic Kyle Gann, writes: “Wright’s ideas – thoughtful, gritty, and quick to break into fantasy – develop within a well-calculated symmetry. To follow this interplay of textures as they shift, dart away, and return, is to hear the qualities that make Wright one of the most subtle and eloquent of recent composers.”

Outstanding ensembles and soloists, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Emerson String Quartet, the American Brass Quintet, the Riverside Symphony, and the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, have commissioned work from Wright, who has been honored with awards from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Recordings on New World, Innova and CRI include his compositions.

Wright is founder and curator of the electroacoustic music and video series CYBERSOUNDS, which presents concerts of media compositions old and new at Temple University’s Rock Hall. He collaborates with video artist Peter d’Agostino, providing music and sound designs for projects including Y00 (YearZEROZERO), Between Earth & Sky, and @Silicon.Valley. Working with the outstanding American soprano, Laura Heimes, Wright is creating a series of settings of the poems of William F. Van Wert (1945-2003) whose texts constitute a large portion of The Lyric’s Tale, "an entertainment" for baritone voice, actress, chamber orchestra and projected video, that plays themes of religion, existentialism and science against one another in a fast-paced, 45 minute work featuring dozens of characters, including Galileo, Sigmund Freud and Martin Luther.

Increasingly interested in the folk music of Scotland and its emigration to the American Applachians, Wright has composed a number of works based on this music: Fantasy Meditation on “Kingsfold”, Song Cycle (“Crow, Black Chicken”)Plaints and Airs and Variations on “Adieu, Dundee.” Since 1981 Wright has contributed to the solo repertoire of percussionists, with Marimba Music, Set-up Music, Movement in Time, Grand Duo, and Concertpiece for Marimba and Orchestra.

Maurice Wright was born in 1949 in Front Royal, Virginia, a small town situated between the forks of the Shenandoah River and near the Blue Ridge Mountains; he began composing at age 10. He attended Duke University and Columbia University, where he explored diverse interests that included music composition, computer science and film.

Wright was introduced to the craft and technology of film when he met Director Gene Searchinger in 1976 and contributed an electronic score for an unusual film about recycled aluminum, "Metallic Tales: The Social Life of a Non-Ferrous Metal," which received a Golden Eagle Award. Over the next two decades Wright continued to work with Searchinger, most recently contributing music and special sound for the three-program series about linguistics, "The Human Language," broadcast in the United States and Japan.

His interests in image were incorporated into two electronic operas: The Trojan Conflict (1989), and Dr. Franklin, an opera about Benjamin Franklin, produced in Philadelphia in 1990 as part of the Electrical Matter Festival. In both works a video screen was embedded in the set, and short scenes written and directed by Wright were integrated into the operatic fabric. Since then he has experimented with visualization of musical sound and with digital animation, making his first professional presentation as an animator in March, 1996. Shortly thereafter he was commissioned by the Network for New Music to create a work for computer animation and computer sound for their 1996-1997 season in Philadelphia. The resulting work, "Taylor Series," was described in the Philadelphia Inquirer as "visionary" and "lyric." Recent work, which he calls “sound animation” has been seen and heard in festivals in San Diego, Miami, Eugene (Oregon), Richmond (Virginia), DeKalb (Illinois), Philadelphia, Beijing and the United Kingdom.

Wright is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Music Studies at the Boyer College Of Music and Dance. Temple University, where he co-founded the Interactive Arts and Technology Laboratory and the Presser Center for Creative Music Technology. He served as Interim Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Financial Aid and Technology in 2004, and is now Director of Graduate Studies and Coordinator of the Music Composition Division at Temple.  In 2006 he received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. He recently served as Composer in Residence at the Center for Advanced Music at Istanbul Technical University, and taught electroacoustic music at the University of Pennsylvania as Visiting Professor for the Fall Term, 2006.

www.mauricewright.org