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George Peter Tingley is a composer, teacher, and pianist currently living in Point Richmond, California (in the San Francisco Bay Area). He is a highly active member of the Music Teacher’s Association of California, participating in Marin County events and serving of the Board of Director’s of the Alameda County Branch. He administrates the Composers Today of the Alameda County Branch, evaluates student compositions at the regional level and adjudicates the state contest. In 1996 he was a featured composer at the national convention of the MTNA in Kansas City, Missouri. He has been invited once again to present his work at the 1998 convention to be held in Nashville, Tennessee.
George received a BA in piano performance from California State University, Hayward, and completed both BM and MM degrees in Music Theory at the University of Southern California. During the 1970’s he was a private composition student of the legendary Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
In a teaching career spanning nearly 20 years, George has taught hundreds of students at a variety of institutions throughout Northern California, including extension courses at both San Francisco State University and Sacramento State University. College teaching has included lessons and classes in piano performance, jazz improvisation, musical composition, and music theory. In the field of scholarship, Mr. Tingley’s detailed discussion of the technique of metric modulation appeared in the Indiana Theory Review (Spring 1981), a paper that was both cited in Music Analysis: An annotated Guide to the Literature (Schirmer Books, 1991) and praised by Pulitzer-prize winning composer Elliott Carter.
In 1989, George began writing music for the educational market and now has over 60 published piano pieces to his credit. His late-intermediate piano solo "Reverie", published by Alfred in 1991, has become a standard teaching piece and is performed over 3000 times a year in the United States and abroad. His collection of piano duet music, "Fiddle and the Tuba" (written for teachers and students to perform together on one piano), is listed in the bulletin of the National Federation of Music Clubs.
George’s association with Olympic figure-skating champion Kristi Yamaguchi began in 1992 when he completed a composition written especially for her entitled "Kristi’s Theme". A Warner Bros. publication, the piece was arranged for full symphony orchestra and recorded at the Fantasy Studios in Berkeley featuring Mr. Tingley as piano soloist. Kristi has skated to the music on such programs as CBS This Morning, ABC Wide World of Sports, and IBM Skates of Gold, as well as in live performances at the Boston Garden, and in New York, at the Rockefellar Center and in Central Park.
In March 1997, the Berkeley Symphony premiered George’s arrangement of the Irish folk melody "The Gold Ring", a performance that featured 10-year old daughter Ariel as flute soloist. And in May 1997, Mr. Tingley’s 13-year old composition student, Jennifer Wang of El Cerrito, placed 2nd in her age division in the state contest of the MTAC Composers Today Program, an honor which subsequently led to a special invitation for her to perform at the state convention in San Francisco.
Of all his various activities, Mr. Tingley perhaps finds greatest pleasure learning from his students and sharing pedagogical ideas with his fellow teachers. He hopes to continue exactly what he is doing.
For more recent developments in George’s career please follow links.