Theodore Dollarhide : Represented Artist
Random Audio Sample: Ragings of a one pot screamer (unaccompanied piano) by Theodore Dollarhide, from the CD Contemporary Australian piano
Theodore Dollarhide, born 30 August 1948, Santa Rosa, California, currently resides there as a freelance composer. Dr Dollarhide received his B.A. in Music with Honours at San Jose State University (1974) where he studied composition with Higo Harada. His graduate degrees (a Masters and Doctorate) were earned at The University of Michigan under the teaching of Leslie Bassett, George Balch Wilson and William Bolcom. In 1978-79, as a Fulbright Scholar in Paris, he studied with composer Eugene Kurtz.
Dollarhide has received much recognition for his large and varied output through commissions, performances, recordings, publications, awards and composer residencies. Major performances would include: Other Dreams, Other Dreamers, - Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Detroit (1986); Madness in Paradise - Elision, Melbourne (1986); Shadows for woodwind quintet, London (1986); The Night Life - Robert Curry (piano) Seoul (1988).
Theodore Dollarhide's association with the Australian music environment began when he took residence in Melbourne (1981) after accepting a lectureship at La Trobe University, remaining there until 1989. It was mainly through this position that he was to become an important influence on a group of younger Melbourne composers and performers. In particular his knowledge of new American and European music and his skill as an orchestrator were to offer new directions for a new generation of students at La Trobe University including Peter Myers and Mark C. Pollard.
Dollarhide's two-year residence as Visiting Professor of Composition at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea (1987-8) also influenced a group of young Korean composers, especially in the area of integrating rhythm into the structure of their music.
As a composer he developed a close working relationship with local Melbourne goups and performers, especially Elision, receiving many commissions and performances. Dollarhide states that his early works were influenced in the main by the textures and colours asscociated with the music of Penderecki, Crumb and Berio. Faces at the Blue Front (1978) is a good example of a work in this early style. Later works were progressively influenced by the environment in which the composition was written and the unique exploration of the time and pitch continuum found in the music of Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt. Samul Nori (1988) is a good example of a work from this later period.
Biography provided by the composer