Hunter S. Thompson night in Denver May 23rd
Hi. I’m back home. The annual Derby Party was great.
A quick note to let you know that David Amram and I will be in Denver on the evening of May 23rd for a tribute to Hunter.
We did something like this at the Bradstock XII in September. It is an annual music festival that was dedicated to Hunter. So, this will be something similar. Reading Hunter’s work while David plays. It’s fun.
Here is David’s bio for those of you unfamiliar with his work:
David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works, written
many scores for Broadway theater and film, including the classic scores for the films Splendor
in The Grass and The Manchurian Candidate; two operas, including the ground-breaking
Holocaust opera The Final Ingredient; and the score for the landmark 1959 documentary Pull
My Daisy, narrated by novelist Jack Kerouac. He is also the author of two books, Vibrations,
an autobiography, and Offbeat: Collaborating With Kerouac, a memoir.
A pioneer player of jazz French horn, he is also a virtuoso on piano, numerous flutes and
whistles, percussion, and dozens of folkloric instruments from 25 countries, as well as an
inventive, funny improvisational lyricist. He has collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, who
chose him as The New York Philharmonic’s first composer-in-residence in 1966, Langston
Hughes, Dizzy Gillespie, Dustin Hoffman, Willie Nelson, Thelonious Monk, Odetta, Elia Kazan,
Arthur Miller, Charles Mingus, Lionel Hampton, E. G. Marshall, and Tito Puente
Amram’s most recent work, Giants of the Night is a flute concerto dedicated to the memory Charlie
Parker, Jack Kerouac and Dizzy Gillespie, three American artists Amram knew and worked
with. It was commissioned and recently premiered by Sir James Galway, who also plans to
record it. He is currently completing his third book Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.
Today, as he has for over fifty years, Amram continues to compose music while traveling the
world as a conductor, soloist, bandleader, visiting scholar, and narrator in five languages. He
is also working with author Frank McCourt on a new setting of the Mass, Missa Manhattan, as
well as on a symphony commissioned by the Guthrie Foundation, Symphonic Variations on a
Song by Woody Guthrie.
When not on tour, Amram and his son live on their family farm in upstate New York.
This is Amram’s third visit to the University of Denver as a Leo Block Visiting Distinguished
Professor and his first visit as a Marsico Visiting Scholar. He is also celebrated at the
University of Denver by a group of students, professors and parents called The David Amram
Collective, an organization dedicated to merging the arts and the academy, as well as The
David Amram Liberal Arts Tree planted in the University’s Arboretum. His work at the
University of Denver this spring will include co-teaching a thematic core course with Dr. Audrey
Sprenger (Names We Call America, Digging the Roots of Cool); giving a series of lectures with
live music for students and professors of English, Anthropology, Judiac Studies, Art, Art
History, Sociology, French Studies, Biology, Urban Studies and the Lamont School of Music;
offering a seminar on the work of novelist Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady with Dr. Audrey
Sprenger and Visiting Guest Lecturer Dr. Ed Adler; hosting a Tribute to Poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti with Dr. Audrey Sprenger and Visiting Guest Lecturer Chris Felver; screening his
Opera of the Holocaust, The Final Ingredient, originally telecast by ABC Network Television;
and performing in and around the city of Denver.
Details of Amram’s activities around campus for the month of April will be available on April
15 and for the month of May, April 27. Please contact Dr. Audrey Sprenger at
draudreysprenger@mac.com if you have any questions.
