Gunther schuller biography

Gunther Alexander Schuller (November 22, 1925 – June 21, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher.
Gunther Alexander Schuller was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician.
Gunther Schuller was an American composer, performer, conductor, teacher, and writer noted for his wide range of activity in both jazz and classical music.

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Biography

Gunther Schuller was born in New York on November 22, 1925. His professional music career began as a French horn player, performing with the American Ballet Theater as a teenager, as principal horn in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1943-1945), and with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (1945-1959). He performed under legendary maestros of the 20th century including Toscanini, Stokowski, Walter, Reiner, Szell, Mitropoulos, and Doráti.

Schuller also played French horn on Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool and Porgy and Bess recordings, and composed and/or conducted for jazz greats John Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, J. J. Johnson, George Russell and Joe Lovano, among others. He also had significant interactions with Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman, and Eric Dolphy.

Schuller composed more than 200 works (and created dozens of arrangements), spanning many musical genres including solo works, orchestral and wind ensemble pieces, chamber music, opera, and jazz. Among Schuller’s orchestral works are Symphony&nb

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Gunther Schuller

Home » Jazz Musicians » Gunther Schuller

The composer Gunther Schuller is, famously, a man of many musical pursuits. He began his professional life as a horn player in both the jazz and classical worlds, working as readily with Miles Davis and Gil Evans as with Toscanini; he was principal horn of the Cincinnati Symphony from age sixteen and later of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra until 1959.

In the 1950s he began a conducting career focusing largely on contemporary music, and thereafter conducted most of the major orchestras of the world in a wide range of works, including his own. He was central in precipitating a new stylistic marriage between progressive factions of jazz and classical, coining the term "Third Stream" and collaborating in the development of the style with John Lewis, the Modem Jazz Quartet, and others.

An educator of extraordinary influence, he has been on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and Yale University; he was, for many years, head of contemporary music activities (succeeding Aaron Copland) as w

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Gunther Schuller

American musician (1925–2015)

Musical artist

Gunther Alexander Schuller (November 22, 1925 – June 21, 2015)^[1] was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician.

Biography and works

Early years

Schuller was born in Queens, New York City,^[1] the son of German parents Elsie (Bernartz) and Arthur E. Schuller, a violinist with the New York Philharmonic.^[2] He studied at the Saint Thomas Choir School and became an accomplished French horn player and flute player. At age 15, he was already playing horn professionally with the American Ballet Theatre (1943) followed by an appointment as principal hornist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1943–45), and then the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, where he stayed until 1959.^[3] During his youth, he attended the Precollege Division at the Manhattan School of Music, later going on to teach at the school.^[4] But, already a high school dropout because he wanted to pla