Musicatlas
News for Thow
- Composer John Thow dies at 57
[posted 14 March 2007]On Sunday, March 4, John Holland Thow, professor of music at University of California, Berkeley, and an internationally acclaimed composer, died at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley.
Thow's compositions were performed at the Tanglewood and Edinburgh festivals and by the L'Orchestra della RAI in Rome, by Speculum Musicae and by the Brooklyn Philharmonic.
He received commissions from the San Francisco Symphony, Berkeley Opera, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Boston Musica Viva, Alea III, Earplay Ensemble, Ventura Chamber Music Festival and Detroit Chamber Winds, as well as others.
Thow's many awards included grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Music Center, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was artist-in-residence at the Yaddo, Djerassi, Temecula Arts, and Wurlitzer foundations, among others.Thow died of complications from a chronic illness. He is survived by his ex-wife, two daughters, and a brother.
[Source: www.berkeley.edu]
Music
- Concertos
- Chamber works
- “Two Chumash Songs” for violin, clarinet and piano (2000)
- “To Invoke the Clouds” (1997)
- Songs
- One-act opera “Serpentina” (1999)
Life
John Thow earned a bachelor’s degree in music from USC and a master’s and doctorate from Harvard University. He studied in Rome on a Fulbright Fellowship. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1981, where he taught composition, orchestration and counterpoint.