Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

Bio:

Composer and conductor Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was born on June 14, 1932. He was named for the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. His mother ? already familiar with the music of the Afro-British composer — was active as pianist, organist, and director of a theater in the Bronx. Prior to his entrance in New York?s High School of Music and Art in 1945, he exhibited an interest in dance, studying with Pearl Primus and Ismay Andrews. Mentored in high school by his teacher Hugh Ross, he came to meet Igor Stravinsky. By the time of his graduation in 1949, when he won the LaGuardia Prize for music, he had begun composing. Perkinson’s 1948 composition And Behold won the High School for Music and Art Choral Competition He majored in education for two years at New York University (1949-1951), then transferred to the Manhattan School of Music in 1951 (B.M., 1953; M.M., composition, 1954) where he was a composition major under Charles Mills and Vittorio Giannini, and conducting with Jonel Perlea. His interest in jazz was stimulated while enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music in association with classmates Julius Watkins, Herbie Mann, Donald Byrd, and Max Roach. He has been engaged as arranger and/or music director for Marvin Gaye, Lou Rawls, Barbara McNair, Donald Byrd, Max Roach (as pianist in the Roach Quartet, 1964-1965), Melvin Van Peebles, and Harry Belafonte. Arrangements he made for Hamiet Bluiett appear on the CD, Bluiett blueback. In the summer of 1954 he studied conducting at the Berkshire Music Center. This was supplemented with additional study with Earl Kim at Princeton University from about 1959 to 1962. During his student days, he roomed with his good friends, Arthur LaBrew and Noel DaCosta. For three summers (1960, 1962, and 1963), he studied in the Netherlands with Dean Dixon and Franco Ferrara in conducting at the Netherlands Radio Union in Hilversum, spending part of the 1960 summer at the Mozarteum. He also studied with Dimitri Mitropoulos, Lovro von Matacic, Franco Ferrara, Dean Dixon and Clarence Williams. His ballet scores include works for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey, and the Eleo Pomare Dance Company. He has composed and conducted scores for numerous award-winning theatrical, television, and documentary films such as Montgomery to Memphis (Martin Luther King), Bearden on Bearden (Romare Bearden), A Woman Called Moses (Cicely Tyson), and A Warm December (Sidney Poitier) and has arranged for jazz and popular artists including Harry Belefonte and Marvin Gaye. Perkinson also wrote the themes for the television shows Room 222 and Get Christie Love! He conducted orchestras all over the world and served as music director or composer-in-residence for the Negro Ensemble Company, Alvin Ailey Dance Company, Dance Theatre of Harlem and various theatre groups. From 1998 until his death in 2004, Perkinson was affiliated with the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago. He was appointed Coordinator of Performance Activities at the Center for Black Music Research in 1998 (advisor to Ensemble Stop-Time, then in 1999 as music director of the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble which offered 34 concerts in Chicago, in Washington for Congress, in New York, and for the premi?re of Wendell Logan?s opera, The doxology) and composer-in-residence for the Ritz Chamber Players of Jacksonville. He also served as guest conductor of the Antara Ensemble of the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

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