Barbara Kolb

Barbara Kolb (February 10, 1938 – October 21, 2024) was an American composer and educator, the first woman to win the Rome Prize in musical composition. Her music features sound masses of colorful textures, impressionistic sounds and atonal vocabulary, with influences from literary and visual arts. She taught at the Third Street Music School Settlement, Rhode Island College and Eastman School of Music.

Life and music

Kolb was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on February 10, 1938 (many sources erroneously state her birth year as 1939). As her father was the music director of WTIC there, she was exposed to music early, meeting musicians. She went to jazz clubs with her parents.

Kolb studied clarinet and composition at the Hartt College of Music (now The Hartt School) at the University of Hartford with Arnold Franchetti, receiving her B.M. (cum laude) in 1961 and her M.M. degree in 1964. Kolb was a proficient clarinetist. At the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, she studied composition with Lukas Foss and Gunther Schuller. Following her graduation, Kolb relocated to Vienna, Austria, from 1966 to 1967 with a Fulbright Fellowship grant.

Kolb was the first female American composer to win the Rome Prize, in 1969–1971. Kolb's composition ''Soundings'' was premiered by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 1972. It was performed in a revised version for orchestra in 1975, played by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Pierre Boulez, with the orchestra positioned in three groups on the stage. She received commissions from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University.

From 1979 to 1982, Kolb served as the artistic director of contemporary music at the Third Street Music School Settlement, where she presented the "Music New to New York" concert series, a series that featured composers from outside New York City. Additionally, she had a teaching career at Rhode Island College and at Eastman School of Music as a visiting professor in composition, as well as an association with The MacDowell Colony. She developed a course in music theory course for blind and physically disabled people from 1982 to 1986.

In 1983–1984, Kolb was in residence at IRCAM in Paris for nine months, where she received the commission for '' Millefoglie''. The piece was premiered at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on June 5, 1985, by the Ensemble intercontemporain conducted by Péter Eötvös. She received the 1987 Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for it, and it became performed at major venues Amsterdam, Helsinki, Vienna, Montreal and Tokyo. Kolb composed ''Voyants'', a concerto for piano and chamber orchestra, in 1991, dedicated to the memory of Aaron Copland. Commissioned by Radio France, it received its world premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with soloist Jay Gottlieb and the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Joel Revsen.

A selection of Kolb's compositions were featured at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., performed by the Theatre Chamber Players in 1992, including the American premiere of ''Voyant'' and the world premiere of ''Introduction and Allegra'' for guitar.

Kolb composed ''All in Good Time'' on a commission from New York Philharmonic for its 150th anniversary in 1993. The world premiere was played in 1994 conducted by Leonard Slatkin, who also led performances of it with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. It was recorded by the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Carlos Kalmar, along with works by John Corigliano, Aaron Jay Kernis, John Harbison and Michael Hersch on a CD released by Cedille Records in 2006. Albums devoted solely to Kolb's music have been released by CRI and New World Records

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