American composer Michael Daugherty is currently composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Michael Daugherty has created a niche in the music world that is uniquely his own, composing concert music inspired by contemporary American popular culture. His Metropolis Symphony (1988-93) for orchestra, and Bizarro (1993) for symphonic winds are a tribute to the Superman comics, recorded by conductor David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for Argo. Works commissioned and recorded on Nonesuch by the Kronos Quartet include Elvis Everywhere (1993) for three Elvis impersonators and string quartet, and Sing Sing: J. Edgar Hoover (1992). Daugherty’s opera Jackie O (1997) was premiered and recorded by the Houston Grand Opera for Argo. American Icons, an Argo CD devoted to Daugherty’s chamber music, has been recorded by the London Sinfonietta and the Dogs of Desire.

Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty is the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. Daugherty grew up playing keyboards in jazz, rock, and funk bands in Iowa. At North Texas State University (1972-76) he continued performing jazz and composed his first orchestral work. In 1976 he moved to New York City, where he studied composition at the Manhattan School of Music and played piano for modern dance companies.

In the following years, Daugherty divided his time between living in Europe and the United States. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Paris, composing computer music at Boulez’s IRCAM (1979-80). Daugherty received his doctorate degree in music composition from Yale University in 1986. During this time he also collaborated with Jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York City. Daugherty moved to Amsterdam and pursued further studies in music composition with Gyorgy Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany (1982-84).

Upon his return to America, Daugherty performed live synthesizer concerts of his own music with classic silent film, and played jazz piano in lounges and nightclubs. He came to national attention as a composer when Snap! and Blue Like an Orange (1987) won a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. Since that time his music has been performed by the major orchestras and new music ensembles in the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy. After teaching music composition several years at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daugherty joined the music composition faculty at the University of Michigan, (Ann Arbor) in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition.

Currently, commissions include new orchestral works for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Ethos Percussion Ensemble. Daugherty has received numerous awards for his music, including recognition from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts and the Stoeger Prize from Lincoln Center. His music is published exclusively by Peermusic Classical, New York and represented in Europe by Faber Music, London.

7 minutes – solo cello, flute/piccolo, bass clarinet, violin, 1 perc, piano.

I composed Jackie's Song as a prelude to my opera Jackie O (1995-97). I imagine Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994) as a solitary and melancholy figure after the assassination of her first husband John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1962. My composition is a song without words, for chamber ensemble and solo cello. A mournful cello line is performed by the soloist, who plays in the extreme upper range of the instrument. The solo gradually ascends to a prolonged high C that is suddenly cut short by a riveting snare drum rim-shot. This elegiac theme, comprised of a tritone and a perfect fifth interval, is the compositional core for many of the melodies and harmonies of the composition; later, it became the leitmotif of Jackie in my opera.

(Michael Daugherty)

Sinatra Shag was commissioned and premiered on October 7, 1997, by Present Music, conducted by Kevin Stalheim, at the 32nd Contemporary Music Festival, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana. The composition is scored for flute, bass clarinet, percussion (piccolo snare drum, small tom-tom, splash cymbal, ride cymbal, hi-hat), piano, violin solo, and cello. Duration is four minutes.

"Sinatra Shag (1997) is part of my series of compositions inspired by the seminal 1972 book on American architecture entitled Learning From Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. For these authors Las Vegas was to the strip what Rome was to the piazza. Las Vegas was the final refutation of the "Either/Or" of traditional high culture. Architecturally Learning From Las Vegas revealed the strip as a complex neon landscape of symbol and iconography in space."

"In Sinatra Shag the seven members of the combo are divided into various rhythmic groups to create layers of pulse and complexity. The performers play chromatically ascending passages to the groove of a col legno battuto bass line in the cello. Swinging lounge instrumental riffs and swirling glisses are looped and layered virtuosically throughout the composition, like a multi-colored shag carpet. The composition evokes the Las Vegas era when leading American popular music entertainers of the 1960s such as Frank Sinatra, and his daughter Nancy, performed at the Sands Hotel, known for its luxurious shag carpeting."

"Other works in my Las Vegas series include Route 66 (1998) for orchestra, the piano concerto Le Tombeau de Liberace (1996), Dead Elvis (1993) for bassoon soloist and small chamber ensemble, Lounge Lizards (1994) for two pianos and two percussion, and Firecracker (1991) for oboe soloist and small chamber ensemble."

(Michael Daugherty) In the spring of 1995, I had the pleasure of working with the Milwaukee-based new music ensemble Present Music during a residency at the Cornish Institute of the Arts in Settle, Washington. During a lunch break, I chanced upon an alternative rock record store with an impressive array of offbeat postcards. One postcard in particular impressed me: Nancy Sinatra, circa 1966, sporting a pair of knee-high white boots sitting on a Harley Davidson motorcycle dressed from heat to toe in leather. I dashed back to the rehearsal filled with inspiration, and The Boots for flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion, was born. (Michael Daugherty)